ANOHNI, the artist formerly known as Antony & The Johnsons, has shared a new video for her song "Obama" and urged the outgoing US President to free Wikileaks whistleblower, Chelsea Manning.
The singer posted a lengthy message in the clip, which you can watch below.
https://www.youtube.com/watc...
ANOHNI, the artist formerly known as Antony & The Johnsons, has shared a new video for her song “Obama” and urged the outgoing US President to free Wikileaks whistleblower, Chelsea Manning.
The singer posted a lengthy message in the clip, which you can watch below.
“Obama, please let Chelsea Manning out of prison,” it reads. “Recognise her tremendous sacrifice, and her vulnerability… If you leave her in prison, you send the final message to our nation that the Obama administration brutally punished moral courage in these unforgiving United States.”
She continued: “Show us the heart of the Obama administration now. The election is over. There is no political advantage left in allowing Chelsea to perish in prison.”
Manning is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence in maximum security for charges stemming from her leaking of classified information in 2010.
The song is taken from this year’s Mercury nominated album, Hopelessness.
The complexities and ironies of success, even on a small scale, have not often been so pointed. Here is MC Taylor, introducing a song about the emotional strain of being a father in a touring band, about the guilt of abandoning the school run for road jaunts across North America and Western Europe. ...
The complexities and ironies of success, even on a small scale, have not often been so pointed. Here is MC Taylor, introducing a song about the emotional strain of being a father in a touring band, about the guilt of abandoning the school run for road jaunts across North America and Western Europe. The song is called “Cracked Windshield”, from the sixth Hiss Golden Messenger album, Heart Like A Levee, and since it was released last October the poignancies have multiplied. If Heart Like A Levee documented Taylor’s fraught attempts to balance domesticity with artistic fulfilment, subsequent acclaim has only exarcerbated the paradox. Nevertheless, Taylor introduces the album’s most conflicted song with an emphatic statement of satisfaction: “Man,” he says, “I would not trade this for anything.”
Taylor’s humility, and his air of a man making the most of long-awaited opportunities, is contextualised by the fact that he’s been chasing them for the best part of two decades, from the hardcore squalls of Ex-Ignota, through the putative country rock of The Court & Spark, and on into the long, constantly evolving saga of Hiss Golden Messenger. At this point, live incarnations of the band suggest a close musical community in constant flux. Previous lineups have included independent talents like William Tyler, Nathan Bowles and, most recently, Tift Merritt, while the current touring roster includes three other musicians who’ve released fine solo records in the past 18 months: keys and slide maestro Phil Cook; bassist Scott Hirsch; and guitar/banjo player Ryan Gustafson (as The Dead Tongues).
So many autonomously creative artists under one banner sounds like a recipe for friction and ego, but that would underestimate the fraternal empathies nurtured by Taylor. Hiss shows, whatever the configuration, have grown into loose, unostentatious celebrations of virtuosity, and tonight is no exception. Initially, it seems as if a bunch of Taylor’s questing engagements with American tradition have been reconfigured to showcase the needlepoint wonder of Gustafson’s electric lead lines. Their cover of “Brown Eyed Women” is omitted, but Gustafson’s agile channelling of Jerry Garcia sends the likes of “Saturday’s Song” beyond its roots in Ronnie Lane vernacular and away towards something more cosmic. When he switches to banjo, and Cook steps out from behind his keyboard to take lead, it’s as if Garcia’s been subbed out in favour of Ry Cooder: a huddled boogie at the death of “I’ve Got A Name For The Newborn Child” is almost ridiculously intricate and, at the same time, apparently effortless.
Plenty separates HGM’s work from most other artists tentatively sorted into the Americana category: Taylor’s nuanced honesty and disdain for self-mythologising, for a start. But it’s their insistent pursuit of a groove that’s most striking, so that “Like A Mirror Loves A Hammer” has a kind of supple intensity that echoes the stripped-back funk of Curtis Live. “Tell Her I’m Just Dancing”, meanwhile, is propelled by downstroke skanks that make Taylor’s love of reggae, as a votive dance music, more explicit than before.
It’s a combination of air and heat that pervades even the climactic processional of “Brother, Do You Know The Road?” Taylor’s understanding of how music can be a healing ritual – one where ordinary life embraces the transcendent, and which unites both players and audience in a shared series of epiphanies – becomes stronger and more profound as his following grows. He invokes crowd singalongs, on a rousing “Heart Like A Levee” and an outstandingly soulful “Day O Day”, as a means to confound cynicism, no matter how dark it gets.
By the end of “Brother…”, Taylor’s in the crowd without his mic, hollering the refrain, at once anguished and triumphal. The road through autumn and early winter is almost done: soon enough, it’ll be time to go home.
Sales of vinyl outstripped digital album downloads last week for the first time ever.
The figures provided by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), which revealed that more money had been spent on vinyl albums than on digital albums downloads last week.
As The Vinyl Factory reports, ERA h...
Sales of vinyl outstripped digital album downloads last week for the first time ever.
The figures provided by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), which revealed that more money had been spent on vinyl albums than on digital albums downloads last week.
As The Vinyl Factory reports, ERA have provided figures that show that, in week 48 of 2016, £2.4m was spent on vinyl, while only £2.1m was spent on the digital download of albums. The figures significantly contrast with the statistics that were recorded at this time last year, when only £1.2m was spent on vinyl albums while digital downloads racked up an eye-watering £4.4m worth of sales.
The ERA have suggested the swing in sales compared to last year could be attributed to factors such as the recent Record Store Day Black Friday, the increasing popularity of vinyl as a Christmas gift, and the greater number of retailers – which now includes supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s and Tesco – who now stock vinyl.
Back in May, it was reported that sales of vinyl in the UK had increased for the eighth year in a row. 2015 saw 2.1 million vinyl albums sold in UK, generating sales that topped £25.1m.
If he wasn’t confounding us and contradicting himself, well, he wouldn’t be Neil Young. On the face of it, Peace Trail – his 37th, maybe 38th studio album, if you’re counting, and his second album of 2016 following the excellent mutant live set, Earth – seems simple enough: stripped down, ...
If he wasn’t confounding us and contradicting himself, well, he wouldn’t be Neil Young. On the face of it, Peace Trail – his 37th, maybe 38th studio album, if you’re counting, and his second album of 2016 following the excellent mutant live set, Earth – seems simple enough: stripped down, recorded fast, and sounding like it.
Even before you start listening to these songs, though – even before the Auto-Tune comes out – it’s a record that has already defied expectations. Over the past year, audiences have been thrilling to the deepening relationship between Young and his current live band, Promise Of The Real, the unit led by Willie Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah. They first provided backing for 2015’s underrated The Monsanto Years, but it was when they took it on the road that transmogrification occurred. With Young digging deep and the locked stone jams spreading beyond the horizon, they’ve found an expansive chemistry that has had fans whispering comparisons to Crazy Horse, while Young seems visibly energised by the partnership.
So, just when we’re primed to hear what a new album with that group might sound like, Young heads into the studio without them. For Peace Trail, he’s brought in only two other musicians: Paul Bushnell, a session player he heard playing bass on Micah Nelson’s upcoming solo album, and the great veteran drummer Jim Keltner.
With just a couple of exceptions, Young confines himself to acoustic guitar, but Peace Trail is a far more jagged and rusty affair than this setup might suggest. Across the album, which was recorded over four days, Bushnell provides that perfect kind of bass you barely notice. Keltner’s percussion is a different story. Captured mostly in first or second takes, he doesn’t so much keep the beat as respond to what Young is doing, an improvised interplay of odd, shaggy patterns. The record often becomes a duet between Young and Keltner. On “Indian Givers”, the first track released, Keltner’s percussion is essentially the lead instrument.
That song, a shuffling broadside declaring solidarity with the Native American demonstrators struggling to stop the expansion of the Dakota Access oil pipeline across their territorial ground, sets Peace Trail up as another of Young’s protest albums (it also features one of the record’s signature sounds: Young’s blasting, distorted harmonica, overdriven to the point of disintegration).
But while his abiding environmental concerns are to the fore – “John Oaks” is the ballad of an eco-activist shot down by trigger-happy police – this isn’t a single-issue collection in the mould of Monsanto. The net is cast wider.
On “Terrorist Suicide Hangliders”, a sad, menacing satire built around a memory of the melody of “Oh Yoko”, Young adopts the paranoid perspective of a Trump-fuelled xenophobe: “I think I know who to blame, it’s all those people with funny names, moving into our neighbourhood.” Elsewhere, “Texas Rangers” observes Rangers in silver pick-ups mopping up runaways along the borderline, American violence recorded on mobile phones. A fractured, ominous piece of near-jazz, it’s the strangest tune he’s recorded since the days he was hanging out with Devo. At least it is until you get to the album’s bonkers little closer, “My New Robot”, featuring an unexpected choir of Neils, and the old Trans vocoder.
Alongside the state-of-the-nation observations, however, are more personal statements – more than once, Young references his colour blindness, and the wear and tear that comes with age. However, arriving on a riff reminiscent of “Down By The River” and the raddled voice of On The Beach, “Can’t Stop Working” is a simple declaration that Young is, if anything, speeding up as he enters his seventies. “Can’t stop working…it’s bad for the body but it’s good for the soul.”
A similar affirmation of faith in his future underlies “Peace Trail” itself: “Don’t think I’ll cash it in yet… something new is growing.” The opener, this title track is the album’s most purely gorgeous tune, as Young lays aside the acoustic to plug in Old Black, ripping off shards that threaten to catch fire. It’s also the first appearance of the Auto-Tune that comes into play again later, on the record’s greatest song, “My Pledge”.
Young pointedly employed Auto-Tune on Earth as a metaphor for genetic modification. Here he uses it to different ends, not satirical, more experimental. Repeating Young’s lines, his ethereal Auto-Tuned voice becomes a melancholy echo of himself, a future ghost; the most unaccountably moving moment is a glitch when the inhuman voice sings a line – “I knew I’d seen her somewhere” – before “real” Neil gets to it. Hazing strangely from the Mayflower to today, the song is a fragile, stubborn, heartfelt declaration of Young’s intention to stand his ground while feeling “lost in this new generation, left behind” surrounded by smart-phone addicts “alone with their heads looking in their hands”.
It’s a great piece of Neil Young, the one you keep coming back to. It’s also a paradox. Mainstream media long ignored the struggle of the protestors documented in “Indian Givers”: “I wish somebody would spread the news,” Young sings. But word of their fight has been spread, by online activists using social media, people with their heads looking in their hands. If he didn’t contradict himself, though, he wouldn’t be Neil Young.
Frank Zappa – “musician, filmmaker, independent thinker” – meant to many things to many people. Foul-mouthed moustachioed freak; serious composer of classical symphonies; vehement opponent of censorship; Czechoslovakia’s Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism. It has ...
Frank Zappa – “musician, filmmaker, independent thinker” – meant to many things to many people. Foul-mouthed moustachioed freak; serious composer of classical symphonies; vehement opponent of censorship; Czechoslovakia’s Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism. It has taken an outsider – German filmmaker, Thorsten Schütte – to reconcile all these disparate strands of Zappa’s career, though there is inevitably a longer film struggling to escape this slender 90 minute running time.
Eat That Question consists of pre-existing interview footage and live performances, cut together in largely chronological order. It helps that Zappa is an articulate, witty interview – indeed, some might find it a more rewarding experience to watch him being interviewed on late night US TV shows than listen to his music. Of that, there is plenty. The best is black and white footage from October, 1968 of the original Mothers Of Invention on French television, looking like a California death cult and playing jazz-tinged but psychedelically playful sounds.
Elsewhere, Schütte loops through an incident in Berlin that same year where the Mothers are caught up in student riots, the cancellation three years later of an Albert Hall show on the grounds of obscenity. “It is a matter of survival, rather than success,” Zappa wryly notes. Yet he is visibly moved on touching down at Prague airport to find scenes of almost Beatlesesque devotion – he was a figurehead among the dissident population under Communism. The meatiest section of the film comes towards the end as Zappa takes on the PMRC, accusing their attempts to label obscene lyrics as the first step toward an Orwellian theocracy. It is here, perhaps, that Zappa does his best work.
The problems inherent in this kind of film mean that there is no contextualizing, no room for an alternate viewpoint. Super 8 footage of Zappa and Captain Beefheart larking about on the bus during the Bongo Fury tour screams out for some kind of obliging comment about their relationship. The conspicuously high turnover of Zappa’s band members and also the progressive multi-racial composition of later band line-ups are not discussed. Asked to reflect on his achievements during one of his final TV interviews, shortly before he died from prostate cancer in 1993, telling NBC’s Jamie Gangel, “Give a guy a big nose and some weird hair, and he’s capable of anything.”
Many genuine thanks for all the nice messages in response to my favourite albums of 2016 post yesterday. A couple of releases from Scissor Tail, here, that would’ve made the cut if I’d heard them earlier. But mostly we’re charging towards 2017 now, soundtracked by new stuff from Laura Marling ...
Many genuine thanks for all the nice messages in response to my favourite albums of 2016 post yesterday. A couple of releases from Scissor Tail, here, that would’ve made the cut if I’d heard them earlier. But mostly we’re charging towards 2017 now, soundtracked by new stuff from Laura Marling (very much moving through the Joni Mitchell catalogue with grace and good taste) and Nadia Reid. Please also note a new Christmas song from Low, and a terrific cover of Grant McLennan’s “Easy Come Easy Go” by Teenage Fanclub. Again; anything you think I’ve missed – please let me know.
Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey
1 Low – Drone Not Drones (Live At Rock The Garden 2013)
2 Various Artists – New Orleans Funk Volume 4 (Soul Jazz)
3 A Tribe Called Quest – We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service (Epic)
4 Rob Noyes – The Feudal Spirit (Poon Village)
5 Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia – Keystone Companions: The Complete 1973 Fantasy Recordings (Fantasy)
6 Laura Marling – Semper Femina (More Alarming/Kobalt)
7 Trappist Afterland – God’s Good Earth (BAndcamp)
8 The Necks – Unfold (Ideologic Organ/Editions Mego)
9 Lawrence English – Cruel Optimism (Room40)
10 Brian Eno – Reflection (Warp)
11 Various Artists – New Order Presents: Be Music (Factory Benelux)
12 Nadia Reid – Preservation (Basin Rock)
13 Psychic Temple – III (Asthmatic Kitty)
14 Dear Nora – Mountain Rock (Orindal)
15 Israel Nash – Live From Plum Creek Sound (www.ISRAELNASH.com)
16 Wes Tirey – Black Wind (Scissor Tail)
17 Earthen Sea – An Act Of Love (Kranky)
18 75 Dollar Bill – Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock (Thin Wrist)
19 Low – Some Hearts (At Christmas Time) (Sub Pop)
20 Pick A Piper – Geographically Opposed (Tin Angel)
Dead & Company - who feature Grateful Dead members Micky Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bob Weir - are heading out on the road in 2017.
Along with John Mayer, they’ll be joined by Allman Brothers’ bassist Oteil Burbridge and RatDog keyboard player Jeff Chimenti.
Tour dates:
May 27 Las Vegas, ...
Dead & Company – who feature Grateful Dead members Micky Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bob Weir – are heading out on the road in 2017.
Along with John Mayer, they’ll be joined by Allman Brothers’ bassist Oteil Burbridge and RatDog keyboard player Jeff Chimenti.
Tour dates:
May 27 Las Vegas, NV – MGM Grand Garden Arena
May 28 Phoenix, AZ – Ak-Chin Pavilion
May 31 Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Bowl
June 03-04 Mountain View, CA – Shoreline Amphitheatre
June 07 West Valley City, UT – USANA Amphitheatre
June 09-10 Boulder, CO – Folsom Field
June 13 Atlanta, GA – Lakewood Amphitheatre
June 15 Burgettstown, PA – KeyBank Pavilion
June 17-18 Boston, MA – Fenway Park
June 20 Saratoga Springs, NY – Saratoga Performing Arts Center
June 22 Bristow, VA – Jiffy Lube Live
June 24 New York, NY – Citi Field
June 25 Camden, NJ – BB&T Pavilion
June 28 Cuyahoga Falls, OH – Blossom Music Center
June 30/July 01 Chicago, IL – Wrigley Field
Meanwhile, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band’s debut album, the Grateful Dead will launch a special album reissue series beginning in January that will include two-disc deluxe editions and limited edition vinyl picture disc versions of all the group’s studio and live albums.
These two-disc deluxe editions will include the original album with newly remastered sound, plus a bonus disc of unreleased recordings. The same remastered audio from the original album will also be released as a 12-inch picture disc produced in a limited edition of 10,000 copies.
THE GRATEFUL DEAD: 50th ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION
CD track listing
Disc One: Original Album, Newly Remastered “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)”
“Beat It On Down The Line”
“Good Morning Little School Girl”
“Cold Rain & Snow”
“Sitting On Top Of The World”
“Cream Puff War”
“Morning Dew”
“New, New Minglewood Blues”
“Viola Lee Blues”
Disc Two: P.N.E. Garden Auditorium, Vancouver, BC, Canada 7/29/66 “Standing On The Corner”
“I Know You Rider”
“Next Time You See Me”
“Sitting On Top of The World”
“You Don’t Have To Ask”
“Big Boss Man”
“Stealin’”
“Cardboard Cowboy”
“Baby Blue”
“Cream Puff War”
“Viola Lee Blues”
“Beat It On Down The Line”
“Good Morning Little Schoolgirl”
7/30/66 “Cold, Rain and Snow”
“One Kind Favor”
“Hey Little One”
“New, New Minglewood Blues”
Ride will release their first album in over 20 years in 2017.
The four-piece last released a full-length record, Tarantula, in March 1996. The band broke up later that year.
Ride officially reunited in 2014 for a tour. Speaking to Uncut in early 2015, they discussed the possibility of recording ne...
Ride will release their first album in over 20 years in 2017.
The four-piece last released a full-length record, Tarantula, in March 1996. The band broke up later that year.
Ride officially reunited in 2014 for a tour. Speaking to Uncut in early 2015, they discussed the possibility of recording new music once the tour was completed.
“I think some great things will come out of this [reunion],” said Mark Gardener. “Because I know how good the feeling is. It’s lovely to have a second run like this.”
“I don’t want to spook the horse, I’d like to see where it goes after the gigs,” added Andy Bell.
“With Ride, there were a lot of people that wanted to see us play together again,” said Loz Colbert. “It feels like maybe we didn’t get to fulfill some aspects of some things that we like to do. I hope we get a chance to do that. I’d be disappointed if that was all we did.”
It now appears that the band are working on their first album in over 20 years. DJ Erol Alkan first broke the news – as well as revealing that he would be producing the forthcoming LP – on his Instagram account, posting an in-the-studio picture of the band recording with the caption “Currently in the studio with Ride producing their forthcoming album.”
See Alkan’s post, as well as a picture from the band themselves, below.
In 2009, there was a rumour doing the rounds that The Rolling Stones were considering working on a new album with Jack White. Although it was subsequently debunked, at the time the idea of the Stones collaborating on new music with White seemed a genuinely exciting prospect. In many ways, Blue &...
In 2009, there was a rumour doing the rounds that The Rolling Stones were considering working on a new album with Jack White. Although it was subsequently debunked, at the time the idea of the Stones collaborating on new music with White seemed a genuinely exciting prospect. In many ways, Blue & Lonesome resembles just the kind of album they might have made together: a collection of 11 covers of lesser-known Chicago blues songs that casts the Stones back to the very beginnings of their career on the British R’n’B scene.
Although the Stones came in with the blues, look what happened a little later. They rejected the conservative orthodoxy represented by Chris Barber, Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, instead moving on to Aftermath, “… Satisfaction”, country rock, Nellcôte and beyond. Since then, they have occasionally returned to the blues – but then strictly on their own terms. “Love In Vain”, “Ventilator Blues”, “Midnight Rambler”. You could be forgiven for thinking, then, that Blue & Lonesome is a little like trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
But such intellectual considerations are not entirely the point here. Blue & Lonesome took three days to record – the Stones working instinctively, seizing a brief window of opportunity without questioning it. For a group operating at their level, accustomed to spending several months working on an album, it seems emboldened with drama and risk. Among their peers, only Neil Young moves at such a clip – and even then, his new album Peace Trail was recorded in a comparatively leisurely four days.
At its best, Blue & Lonesome finds the Stones fired up. The album opens with “Just Your Fool” – one of four songs on the album written by Little Walter. A Muddy Waters cohort, Walter was a fiery, preternaturally gifted harmonica player. Consequently, Mick Jagger’s harp playing is one of the album’s defining features: diving and swooping through Keith and Ron’s guitar lines, alternating between the raucous (“Just Like I Treat You”) and more sultry, soulful tones (“Blue And Lonesome”). Jagger’s delivery, too, is forceful and direct, a reminder of how astute an interpreter of blues songs he can be. On Howlin’ Wolf’s “Commit A Crime”, he is the aggrieved lover, disdainfully spitting out lines like “You put poison in my coffee instead of milk and cream”. On Magic Sam’s “All Of Your Love”, he is lovestruck and remorseful, pleading, “I hate to be the one/The one you left behind”.
If Blue & Lonesome is a return to the kind of music the Stones started out playing, then it seems apt that they explicitly connect to the band’s earliest days. One of the songs here, Eddie Taylor’s “Ride ’Em On Down”, appeared in the setlist for their very first gig, on July 12, 1962 at the Marquee; meanwhile, sprightly takes on Little Walter’s “I Gotta Go” and Howlin’ Wolf’s “Just Like I Treat You” wouldn’t sound out of place on their debut album. Keith Richards remembered recording that on a “two-track Revox in a room insulated with egg cartons”. On this occasion, holed up in Mark Knopfler’s British Grove Studios, they worked on a valve-driven desk as old as the band itself – one of EMI’s vintage REDD consoles, the same model used by, of all people, The Beatles.
The Stones are joined by Eric Clapton – another player who travelled far beyond his blues roots – for two tracks: Little Johnny Taylor’s “Everybody Knows About My Good Thing” and Otis Rush’s “I Can’t Quit You Baby”. Clapton’s slide on both tracks is clear and pristine; dutifully serving the songs and complimenting Richards and Wood’s gritty rhythm lines.
The work done by the two guitarists on Blue & Lonesome is essentially to bring swing and character to the songs. Aside from Clapton’s contributions, there are very few guitar solos on the album – the heavy lifting, so to speak, is done in the sympathetic interweaving between Richards and Wood’s playing. “Hate To See You Go”, for instance, finds them locked in a playful call-and-response between a cyclical riff and a four-chord rhythm sequence. “Hoo Doo Blues”, meanwhile, strikes a harmonious balance between pedal steel, Jagger’s harp and spiraling riffs. Throughout, Charlie Watts provides – as ever – unshowy yet powerful backing. His nimble percussion on “All Of Your Love” or the cymbal crash that animates the second half of “Commit A Crime” are every bit as characterful as the work done upfront by the guitars.
The highpoint is their version of Jimmy Reed’s “Little Rain”. Seeped in reverb, it is full of swampy menace. The guitars circle and loop predatorily around Jagger’s wailing harp, generating an air of inchoate, sinister dread as a subdued Jagger sings of loving his girl “underneath the shinin’ moon”.
For some bands, the idea of making an album of formative influences might be considered a mere stop-gap – a minor addition to the canon to keep the wolf from the door. Intriguingly, Blue & Lonesome feels like a major reassessment from a band – returning to the source and in doing so reminding us why they mattered in the first place. Where do the Stones go from here?
Hopefully, by now, you'll be well acquainted with our end of year Uncut, with The Rolling Stones on the cover, and our extensive Best Of 2016 charts. To complement those thorough lists compiled by 40-odd Uncut contributors, I've put together a personal list, stretching to 164 albums (it should proba...
Hopefully, by now, you’ll be well acquainted with our end of year Uncut, with The Rolling Stones on the cover, and our extensive Best Of 2016 charts. To complement those thorough lists compiled by 40-odd Uncut contributors, I’ve put together a personal list, stretching to 164 albums (it should probably now be 165, given how much I enjoyed the new Childish Gambino album this morning).
Usual caveats apply: numerical order gets pretty arbitrary pretty quickly, so please don’t assume too much significance/quality difference in what is listed at 132, and what comes in at 133 (the whole ordering concept gets dafter to me with each passing year, but I’m still a sucker for this sort of thing). I know 164 is a crazy number of albums, but I’ve genuinely enjoyed all of these, to some degree, and, given the usefulness of these end-of-year lists as a tool of discovery, it seems to me best to go long and inclusive rather than limiting the process to a Top 20 or whatever.
I’ve avoided embedding tracks this year, so that the page will actually load, but I have updated the list from when I first posted it a couple of weeks ago. Now you’ll find links to reviews written by myself and my Uncut colleagues, and to plenty of selections from Youtube, Souncloud and Bandcamp, so that you can get a better sense of what this weight of music actually sounds like.
Hope that all makes sense. Thanks, as ever, for your indulgence.
Since forming in a sleepy corner of Bedfordshire nearly 10 years ago, Wolf People have been exceptionally deft when it comes to pilfering sounds and repurposing inspirations drawn from a huge range of musical sources, many of them as quintessentially British as Morris dancing and boiled parsnips. Bu...
Since forming in a sleepy corner of Bedfordshire nearly 10 years ago, Wolf People have been exceptionally deft when it comes to pilfering sounds and repurposing inspirations drawn from a huge range of musical sources, many of them as quintessentially British as Morris dancing and boiled parsnips. But given some listeners’ wariness of bands who excel at bricolage, it may be wise for Wolf People to open their stunning third album with lyrics that were once used as an incantation for burglars seeking supernatural protection as they went about their nefarious business.
“Oh Hand of Glory shed thy light,” sings frontman Jack Sharp, “direct us to our spoils tonight.” The Hand of Glory was a talisman made from the pickled hand of a hanged man and equipped with a candle ideally made from the same corpse’s fat. “It’s pretty grim,” Sharp notes, explaining to Uncut that he found the verses in a Readers Digest encyclopedia of English magic and folklore.
Even though the words are a few hundred years old, the fact that Sharp’s silvery voice is smeared with distortion is one indication that Wolf People are more at home in the 21st century than the 18th. The same is true of the song’s other thunderous components, whether it’s the Television-as-acid-rock twin-guitar attack of Sharp and Joe Hollock, or the hard, fat beat provided by drummer Tom Watt.
The latter is a further sign that Wolf People’s first loves were funk and hip-hop rather than the beardier reference points their music has often suggested on the group’s first three releases: Tidings (2010), a compilation of early singles and embryonic recordings, plus the studio albums Steeple (2010) and Wain (2013). Indeed, on the best moments, the quartet maintained a low-end swagger as they flitted across a span of folk, prog, psych and proto-metal. They could be as gentle as Pentangle and The Incredible String Band or as burly as early Jethro Tull and Iron Claw. But when things truly took flight – like on Fain’s “When The Fire Is Dead In The Grate” – it was if Rick Rubin had a go at punching up Fairport Convention’s “A Sailor’s Life” for a Def Jam 12-inch.
That track now feels like a launch pad for Ruins. Songs that may have risked seeming overly fey or mannered – always a danger for deep dives into the freakier depths of the English pastoral – instead boast maximum force thanks to the pummelling yet adroit rhythm section of Watts and bassist Dan Davies, and to Sharp and Hollock’s nimble shifts between delicate bouts of interplay and crunchy riffage.
Whereas past efforts were sometimes blighted by a weakness for jammy indulgence, the songs on Ruins are sharply focused and blessedly heavy. Named after the Soviet women aviators who terrorised German forces in WWII, “Night Witch” uses Sharp’s keening vocal melody as the calm eye in a storm of howling fuzz and fury. One of several songs written from the perspective of the natural world as it prepares to reclaim the land from the people who’ve buggered things up so badly, “Thistles” is an equally powerful demonstration of how Wolf People synthesize their assorted early-‘70s reference points into a uniquely muscular and modern brand of psych-rock, one that aligns them with such friends and peers as Dungen, Black Mountain and Heron Oblivion.
Most impressive of all is “Kingfisher”, Ruins’ seven-minute magnum opus, nine if you count the two instrumental reprises. Inspired by the sight of a titular bird going unnoticed by busy humanfolk, Sharp’s lyrics lament our indifference to the wonders that surround us – thankfully, his writing’s acerbic edge prevents any excess of drippiness. Augmented by ghostly wisps of flute and eerie synth, the song gradually intensifies as Sharp and Hollock’s guitar lines begin to intertwine and catch fire, the result this time suggesting what Liege & Lief might have been if Richard Thompson had been joined by Tom Verlaine.
Here again, there’s a firm sense that all the signposts of the past have been successfully thrust into the present. Mind you, that present is a deeply troubled place, judging by how much Sharp’s songs despair over civilisation’s decline and Mother Earth’s possible hunger for vengeance. Ruins sees Wolf People harness that turmoil and turbulence in order to cast a light of their own.
Q&A
Jack Sharp
How did Wolf People find room for beats and breaks next to folk and prog?
Me and Tom [Watt] grew up in the same town playing in different bands as teenagers. It was the time of Britpop and eventually we felt like, “Forget this, we’re going to be hip-hop producers!” So we got deep into making beats and collecting and sampling records. Playing music again really came out of us finding all these amazing blues and folk and psych records and realizing that we wanted to play this music instead.
Why do you think it’s unusual for a band to brandish such unabashedly British influences?
I think with people who make music in this country, there may be a little bit of embarrassment about ourselves. Maybe it’s something to do with Britpop being too recent in people’s minds or maybe they don’t want to celebrate these kinds of English traditions or roots due to the political climate – people don’t want to shout about that stuff too much in case it gets misinterpreted. But I think it is possible to celebrate those things without being nationalist or right-wing about it.
Did you feel any reluctance to including more flute on Ruins even after attracting comparisons to Jethro Tull?
No, I just think, “Well, fuck it.” I love the sound of flute on rock records. How that basically started was we had a friend who played flute really well and started turning up at rehearsals. I didn’t really know anything about Jethro Tull then. After people were telling me about it, I finally listened to some early Jethro Tull and really liked it. Maybe they went too far down the progressive road later on and got a bit bloated but yeah, I’m not bothered by that – I wanted the flute!
INTERVIEW: JASON ANDERSON
Bob Dylan skipped President Obama’s White House meeting with American Nobel Prize winners, according to The Hill.
“Unfortunately, Bob Dylan will not be at the White House today. So everyone can relax,” Obama’s spokesman Josh Earnest, told reporters.
Obama had previously publicly offered hi...
Bob Dylan skipped President Obama’s White House meeting with American Nobel Prize winners, according to The Hill.
“Unfortunately, Bob Dylan will not be at the White House today. So everyone can relax,” Obama’s spokesman Josh Earnest, told reporters.
Obama had previously publicly offered his congratulations to Dylan on winning the Nobel Prize for literature.
Congratulations to one of my favorite poets, Bob Dylan, on a well-deserved Nobel. https://t.co/c9cnANWPCS
Dylan has kept a low profile since the award was announced. AP reports that Dylan won’t be visiting Stockholm to pick up his 2016 Nobel Prize for literature at the ceremony on December 10, telling the Academy that “he wishes he could receive the prize personally, but other commitments make it unfortunately impossible.”
The Lincoln Center in New York is to host a tribute to Leonard Cohen, who died on November 7.
The event - dubbed an 'informal gathering' - is due to take place between 12pm and 4pm outside the venue in Hearst Plaza.
The event will feature recordings of Cohen's vast body of work, chosen by friends ...
The Lincoln Center in New York is to host a tribute to Leonard Cohen, who died on November 7.
The event – dubbed an ‘informal gathering’ – is due to take place between 12pm and 4pm outside the venue in Hearst Plaza.
The event will feature recordings of Cohen’s vast body of work, chosen by friends and fans. There are no speakers or live performances.
This celebration has been organized by Lincoln Center’s Public Programming Department and producer Hal Willner.
Meanwhile, Rolling Stone reports that last week, Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” entered Billboard’s Hot 100 for the first time in the single’s history, 32 years after it was first released.
Paul Simon has released a new song, "Stranger".
The track is produced by Nico Segal (formerly known as Donnie Trumpet) and Nate Fox - who are members of Chance the Rapper's frequent collaborators, the Social Experiment.
"Stranger" blends elements of "The Werewolf" and "The Clock", which both appea...
Paul Simon has released a new song, “Stranger“.
The track is produced by Nico Segal (formerly known as Donnie Trumpet) and Nate Fox – who are members of Chance the Rapper’s frequent collaborators, the Social Experiment.
“Stranger” blends elements of “The Werewolf” and “The Clock“, which both appeared on Simon’s most recent studio album, Stranger To Stranger.
The Cure began the UK leg of their European tour with a lengthy show at Manchester Arena last night (November 29).
The set totalled 23 songs and included three encores and consisted principally on their classic run of singles, including "In Between Days", "Pictures Of You", "Lovesong", "Just Like H...
The Cure began the UK leg of their European tour with a lengthy show at Manchester Arena last night (November 29).
The set totalled 23 songs and included three encores and consisted principally on their classic run of singles, including “In Between Days“, “Pictures Of You“, “Lovesong“, “Just Like Heaven“, “Primary“, “A Forest“, “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Close To Me“.
The Cure’s remaining UK tour dates see them perform three nights at London’s SSE Wembley Arena from December 1-3.
The set list: Shake Dog Shake A Night Like This The Walk Push In Between Days Sinking Pictures Of You High Lovesong Just Like Heaven Primary Want The Hungry Ghost From the Edge Of The Deep Green Sea One Hundred Years Give Me It
Encore: A Forest
Encore 2: Burn
Encore 3: Lullaby Friday I’m In Love Boys Don’t Cry Close To Me Why Can’t I Be You?
The Smiths have announced details of a new 7” single.
According to quasi-official fansite True To You, the single features two previously unreleased tracks: a demo mix of “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” and an unreleased version of “Rubber Ring”.
The sleeve was designed by Morrissey...
The Smiths have announced details of a new 7” single.
According to quasi-official fansite True To You, the single features two previously unreleased tracks: a demo mix of “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” and an unreleased version of “Rubber Ring”.
The sleeve was designed by Morrissey and features a photograph of actor Albert Finney in the theatrical production of Billy Liar.
A release date for the single has not yet been announced.
Hi, this week’s offering from the Uncut publishing empire is a brand new edition of our History Of Rock series; it’s on sale in the UK on Thursday, but you can order a copy now from our online store. This month, the cover star is a compellingly frazzled Nick Cave, at large with The Birthday Part...
Hi, this week’s offering from the Uncut publishing empire is a brand new edition of our History Of Rock series; it’s on sale in the UK on Thursday, but you can order a copy now from our online store. This month, the cover star is a compellingly frazzled Nick Cave, at large with The Birthday Party at a time when the somewhat glossier ranks of New Pop are on the march. An exciting and frictional time for music, which John Robinson is here to introduce below. Before he does, though, a reminder that you can find a wealth of previous History Of Rock volumes in our online shop, stretching back to the 1965 edition. 1968 is the latest one back in stock, if you’re missing that one from your collection.
“Welcome to 1982. ‘It’s all got so serious, hasn’t it?’ says Lemmy, speaking about his interviewer’s employer, the New Musical Express, but also incidentally about the world in general. ‘If I wanted to read about unemployment, I’d buy The Times.’
“The Motorhead frontman is right and he’s wrong. Things have certainly got serious. In addition to the suspicion there will be an imminent nuclear attack, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher now offers the young people of the UK some more concrete worries: high unemployment and a war in the south Atlantic.
“Duly some of the music of 1982 is serious too. Records by the Clash and Robert Wyatt address specifically the violent dramas unfolding at home and on the global stage. The explosive music made by our cover star Nick Cave, and his group the Birthday Party, meanwhile, offers a dramatic and cathartic release to the dissatisfaction of the time.
“Perversely, it is also a time for a flowering of glossy New Pop, which seems actively to represent the Conservative Party’s policy of putting yourself first. Duran Duran are in their imperial phase. On a happier note, The Jam, a vibrant force since punk, decide – at the peak of their powers – to quit before they become as complacent.
“This is the world of The History Of Rock, a monthly magazine which follows each turn of the rock revolution. Whether in sleazy dive or huge arena, passionate and increasingly stylish contemporary reporters were there to chronicle events. This publication reaps the benefits of their understanding for the reader decades later, one year at a time. Missed one? You can find back issues in our online shop.
“In the pages of this 17th edition, dedicated to 1982, you will find verbatim articles from frontline staffers, filed from the thick of the action, wherever it may be.
“That might mean talking with Paul Weller about how not to become ‘a despicable arsehole’. Having a cup of tea with Van Morrison with Kevin Rowland. Even discussing drugs, (and The Slits) with William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
“Perhaps, in such stimulating company, there’s reason to be optimistic. Even an old hand can’t fail to look on the bright side.
“’You could shake things up,’ Lemmy tells NME’s Gavin Martin. ‘You look like a fun-loving lad…’”
As 2016 finally winds to a close, the return of Wes Anderson provides some respite from the gloom of the last 12 months. Funnily enough, it is not with a new movie - though one of those would be most welcome - but, of all things, a Christmas ad.
This is not the first time Anderson has concentrated ...
As 2016 finally winds to a close, the return of Wes Anderson provides some respite from the gloom of the last 12 months. Funnily enough, it is not with a new movie – though one of those would be most welcome – but, of all things, a Christmas ad.
This is not the first time Anderson has concentrated his energies on commercials. He’s previously shot commercials for American Express, AT&T, Hyundai, Stella Artois and SoftBank. Most memorably, perhaps, in 2013, he worked on two films for Prada: Castello Cavalcanti – a short film featuring Jason Schwartzman as an unsuccessful race car driver who crashes his car in an Italian village – and an ad to promote fragrance Prada Candy L’eau, co-directed with Roman Coppolla and starring Lea Seydoux.
For Come Together, Anderson has directed a festive advert for H&M.
The 4-minute short features Anderson’s frequent collaborator Adrien Brody as conductor Ralph, in charge of coach 14 on a Darjeeling Limited-style train – the H&M Lines’ ‘Winter Express’ – as it travels through a snowy landscape on Christmas Eve.
Ralph is unphased by a “terrible inconvenience” – challenging weather conditions conspire with mechanical difficulties to cause a lengthy delay to the journey – and along with his assistant Fritz, he plans a “Christmas brunch” in the dining car.
“This story may resonate more than ever at a time in the world where we could all do with giving a stranger a hug,” says Brody in a statement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDinoNRC49c
Come Together is unmistakably the work of Wes Anderson – warm-hearted and charming, with many of the filmmaker’s familiar tropes in evidence.
All in all, it will certainly do until Anderson’s next full-length feature – an animated film, no less, featuring the voices of Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum and Bob Balaban.
“This is a different city now,” says the man from Basin Street Records, midway through Robert Mugge’s deeply humane documentary about the impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 on the musical culture of Crescent City. “Everybody lost something.”
Originally released in 2006 and now available ...
“This is a different city now,” says the man from Basin Street Records, midway through Robert Mugge’s deeply humane documentary about the impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 on the musical culture of Crescent City. “Everybody lost something.”
Originally released in 2006 and now available on Blu-Ray, Mugge’s film is part musical history lesson, part lament, part balm and part rallying cry. Its central thesis is a persuasive one: that New Orleans is the most diverse musical environment in the United States (Cyril Neville claims that it’s not really part of America at all, but is instead “the northernmost point in the Caribbean”). Throbbing with Cajun, zydeco, funk, jazz, R&B and blues, it boasts several venerable music bloodlines, not least the Neville clan. Here, music is not merely a pleasant add-on, but the heartbeat of the city. When Katrina hit, the lifeblood of New Orleans stopped pumping. To get healthy again, the music needed to spark back into life.
Filming in Katrina’s immediate aftermath, Mugge’s empathetic camera finds a city on its knees. The sheer devastation – physical, human, emotional – wreaked by the storm still retains the power to shock. “Like left over footage from Hiroshima,” says Dr John, one of dozens of local luminaries featured. Many are interviewed in exile. One of the most pleasing of the film’s strands tells how the surrounding music communities rally around. Clubs in La Fayette, Austin, Houston and Memphis pick up the slack and give musicians like Cyril Neville and The Iguanas places to play – and often, to stay.
We hear their personal stories of the storm hitting. Many had followed the news while they were on the road, watching from a distance as friends and family evacuate and drop out of contact. One musician is told there is a boat on his roof and another on his lawn. Another returns to his mother’s house to find a car in the swimming pool. His own home is 20 feet from where he’d left it.
Those who stayed behind or quickly returned face profound trauma. Irma Thomas surveys the ruins of her club, the Lion’s Den, which looks like it has suffered a direct strike in a warzone. Her home is even worse, half-eaten by mould. Eddie Bo re-enters the coffee house he owned and finds it unsalvageable. “Just let it go,” he says to his distraught sisters. “Don’t go back in there ever again.”
This is not a starry film. Its primary focus are local musicians, and their supporters and enablers at grass roots level. Mugge drops in on OffBeat magazine, the Times Picayune newspaper, Basin Street Records and Red Cat Jazz Café as they come to terms with the wreckage. Post-Katrina, New Orleans is “an amputee with phantom memory,” says David Freeman from local radio station WWOZ.
At a time when many areas in the city still have no gas, no postal service, no telephones and little hope, focusing on music might seem trivial, but it becomes obvious that it’s a vital part of the recovery of the city. The amount of sheer good will on display is moving, from numerous individual kindnesses to Music Cares providing grants for living expenses and new equipment. Slowly, flyers appear on telegraph poles and venues begin to re-emerge from the rubble. The august Maple Leaf Bar opens its doors despite having no power. It makes do with a generator, fairy lights and beer on ice. More than a thousand people come to dance, and celebrate the first signs that the city is stirring again.
Music In Exile is a little overlong – Mugge clearly wanted to honour as many of these stories as he could – and has odd absences. Allen Toussaint is barely mentioned, and though the lack of a political agenda is perhaps understandable, without one it feels like an important part of the story isn’t being told. The music, however, is glorious – there are affirming live performances from Irma Thomas, Cyril Neville, Dr John, Eddie Bo, Marcia Ball, John Cleary and The Iguanas, among others – and it concludes on a note of cautious optimism. This is a population well accustomed to dancing in the face of death, and the city’s fatalism stands it in good stead. “We’re planning on coming back stronger,” says Dr John. In the decade since he drawled those words, New Orleans has won some battles and stills faces many more. Perhaps a sequel to this fine film is overdue?
Eric Clapton has announced his first tour dates for 2017.
In March, Clapton will play two shows in New York and two in Los Angeles with Gary Clark, Jr. and Jimmie Vaughan as special guests.
These are in addition to three shows at London's Royal Albert Hall, on May 22, 24 and 25.
Eric Clapton 2017...
Eric Clapton has announced his first tour dates for 2017.
In March, Clapton will play two shows in New York and two in Los Angeles with Gary Clark, Jr. and Jimmie Vaughan as special guests.
These are in addition to three shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall, on May 22, 24 and 25.
Eric Clapton 2017 American Tour Dates:
March 19 – Madison Square Garden, New York
March 20 – Madison Square Garden, New York
March 25 – The Forum, Los Angeles
March 26 – The Forum, Los Angeles
