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Brittany Howard – What Now

Sharon O'Connell
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Brittany Howard – What Now

Following the release of their second album, Sound & Color, Alabama Shakes were slated to scale even greater heights than a US Number One album and four Grammy Awards. However, Brittany Howard had reached a crossroads. Her decision to step away in 2018 wasn’t a move against the band – “incredible” is how she described the Shakes’ achievements to Uncut – but rather towards creative and personal fulfilment. The wisdom of that move was borne out by Jaime, her 2019 solo debut, which landed as a tour de force of funk, jazzy R&B, soul and blues-edged rock, corralled into songs about everything from racism to a childhood crush on an older girl.

Following the release of their second album, Sound & Color, Alabama Shakes were slated to scale even greater heights than a US Number One album and four Grammy Awards. However, Brittany Howard had reached a crossroads. Her decision to step away in 2018 wasn’t a move against the band – “incredible” is how she described the Shakes’ achievements to Uncut – but rather towards creative and personal fulfilment. The wisdom of that move was borne out by Jaime, her 2019 solo debut, which landed as a tour de force of funk, jazzy R&B, soul and blues-edged rock, corralled into songs about everything from racism to a childhood crush on an older girl.

TALKING HEADS ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

If that stylistic departure both surprised and impressed, Howard has trumped it with the follow-up, a Jaime 2.0 likely to secure her status as an auteur in terms of both conception and execution. It’s a bigger, freer-thinking and more dynamically audacious record; one which uses lessons learned from her debut – chiefly, to forget any fear and trust herself – while uniting her disparate musical loves and, with long-term collaborator Shawn Everett, being more adventurous in arrangements and production. Howard took a relaxed approach, so much so that when she first started writing, in March 2020, she didn’t really know she was making an album. As she tells Uncut, “I was just day-to-day recording music in this little room in a house I’d rented in Nashville, just going in there and kind of journaling my thoughts and feelings.” It was August 2022 when she went into the studio with a batch of demos, and around three months later What Now was finished. Most of the recording was done at Nashville’s Sound Emporium, with players including the Shakes’ Zac Cockrell on bass and drummer Nate Smith, both returnees from Jaime. Clearly, there’s no bad blood there, and though it’s been more than eight years since the Shakes’ last LP, officially they’re on hold rather than disbanded.

The album’s title is intriguingly slippery: it seems to echo our widespread collective despair and exasperation born of the current global hellscape – what else could possibly happen? – yet lacks the question mark that would indicate righteous ire. At the same time, it’s a kind of rallying cry: we must do something, pronto – but what? In fact, the title track tells of a love that’s died and is a brutally honest, borderline venomous declaration of disengagement: “I surrender, let me go/I don’t have love to give you more,” sings Howard, in her thrillingly powerful growl. “You’re sucking up my energy/I told the truth, so set me free.” That statement, referring not to one particular partner but a situationship the singer found herself in again and again, is set to an infectiously juddering, synth-soul backing. It’s both typical of the self-interrogation at the heart of this record and a strong argument for how much more effective a song may be if the mood contradicts the emotions expressed. It’s a juxtaposition Howard enjoys, having grown up listening to girl groups like The Supremes and The Marvelettes and later picking up on the same, bittersweet interplay in Latine music.

What Now airs less obvious socio-political comment than Jaime: these new songs focus heavily on love and the singer’s behavioural patterns in relationships, her self-exploration the result of “for the first time being able to feel my feelings and look around” during the 2020 lockdown. Meditation, counselling and alternative therapies, including sound baths, also played a part. The exception is “Another Day”, though its message, like that of the brief “Interlude”, which features a clip of Maya Angelou reading from her poem “A Brave And Startling Truth”, is more humanitarian than political. In it Howard, a queer, mixed-race woman, declares her faith in a future where unity and understanding have displaced divisiveness and intolerance: “I believe in a world where we can go outside and/Be who we want and see who we like/And love each other through this wild ride”.

While her ground-level emotions give the songs viability, it’s Howard’s artistry that sends them off on an invigoratingly fresh course, switching between currents of Southern soul, R&B, astral jazz, psychedelic funk, doo-wop, garage blues and rap, while her voice is variously mellow and tender, a belting force of nature, sweetly reassuring and degraded. The hypnotic tones of crystal singing bowls (played by two of her friends) act as a mood reset in between each track, while cardboard boxes, forks and an empty jug are used as instruments. On “Samson”, the otherworldly sounds of the Cristal Baschet can be heard. Opening the set is “Earth Sign”, where in a soaring, multi-tracked vocal Howard manifests her desire for new love in a way that’s more spiritual than carnal or romantic. “I Don’t” follows, reading like an ode to our post-pandemic existential malaise and carried by a sweet mix of doo-wop and vintage R&B given warm, deep-space production. There’s a woozy cocktail of synth soundscaping and cosmic soul on “Red Flags”, which sees Howard admit to a habit of charging headfirst into love while ignoring all warning signs, her voice rising to a sky-scraping falsetto before dropping suddenly to a choral chant, then drifting off into wordless vocables.

On the other side of “Interlude” sits the thumping “Prove It To You”, in which mid-period Prince (Howard’s voice sounds strikingly similar) is recontextualised for loved-up clubbers via broken beats, a tinkling keys motif and clouds of blissed-out synth. “Samson”, the longest track here at just over five minutes, follows. Moody, sensual and effortlessly light on its jazz-soul feet, it features Fender Rhodes and a forlorn, blues-soaked trumpet in a missive about summoning the courage to leave a relationship when, mentally, emotionally and psychically, you’ve already checked out. There’s a radical switch with “Power To Undo”, where high-wattage falsetto, flashes of dirty, buzzing guitar and cardboard-box beats recall a mix of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Prince and Jack White.

Howard exits with the beautifully bruised “Every Color In Blue”, addressing the depression that’s dogged her since childhood in a voice like an anguished angel, with plaintive trumpet accompaniment. “Here comes that feeling we don’t talk about,” she sings, “that dull cloud coming in on the horizon/I feel the rain but it’s all out of rainbows.” As album closers go, it strikes an unusually sombre note, but the singer told Uncut that she “didn’t want to wrap it up tidily. I didn’t want to end it like everything’s okay, because I don’t think that’s realistic.” As a child she didn’t talk about her feelings, “just never did. I always felt this shame around it. Like, you can’t tell anyone how sad you are.” Emotional truth-telling, broken taboos and myriad questions about how best to live her life in music that thrillingly expands Howard’s artistry, rather than treads old ground. Which begs another question: where might she go next?

Pearl Jam: “10 million records, that’s such a crazy number”

Nick Hasted
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Pearl Jam: “10 million records, that’s such a crazy number”

With news that Pearl Jam are releasing Dark Matter, their 12th studio album, on April 19, we dip back into the Uncut archives for this Album By Album feature from Take 109, from June 2006.

With news that Pearl Jam are releasing Dark Matter, their 12th studio album, on April 19, we dip back into the Uncut archives for this Album By Album feature from Take 109, from June 2006.

Pearl Jam are, along with Mudhoney, grunge’s great survivors. Guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament were in the Seattle genre’s first band, Green River, then Mother Love Bone, whose singer Andy Wood, in what would become a Seattle disease, fatally overdosed on heroin on the verge of success. But when charismatic, beautiful, tortured singer Eddie Vedder joined the pair in 1990, alongside co-guitarist Mike McCready and a succession of drummers (Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron took the seat with 2000’s Binaural), Pearl Jam swiftly became America’s biggest rock band. Sometimes sneered at in the UK for perceived self-pity, in the US Vedder’s sympathetic lyrics of teen sufferation made him a generational figurehead second only to Kurt Cobain. Later refusal to release singles, videos or even tour for a time shed millions of fans. But their albums have actually improved, seeing them bloom into a classic, morally concerned, spiritually questing American band.

When Uncut visits them at their Seattle office, founders Gossard and Ament pair up, then McCready and Cameron. Vedder sits alone in a shadowy, candle-lit alcove, his dog at his feet, and talks warmly in his sonorous voice of the grunge days, Kurt’s death, and how and why Pearl Jam are still here.

TALKING HEADS ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

TEN

Epic, 1991

Released in Nevermind’s wake, the more traditional hard rock of Pearl Jam’s debut was initially derided by Cobain (he later retracted). But teen suicide smash ìJeremyî, a triumphant Lollapalooza slot and a cameo in Cameron Crowe’s Seattle movie Singles helped shift 10 million

AMENT: The first week that we played with Ed, we knew it was on. It was like a second chance. Because up to that point, I was in limbo, man. I was thinking that somebody had some big plan for me, and that Andy dying was part of the plan. When Ed turned up and we started playing those songs, it was like, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do.’

GOSSARD: We went from playing two Seattle clubs a year in front of 50 people to touring with the Chilli Peppers in front of 2000 people every night, and actually having magazines wanting to talk to us. There’s 11, 12 years before that where if any one of those things had happened it would have been the greatest year of your life. But I was just thinking, we’ve gotta hold it together, with the stress of knowing what happened to Mother Love Bone. I didn’t enjoy it until recently.

McCREADY: It was all very exciting, all the band’s cylinders were firing. This is what I’d been dreaming about since I was 11 years old and I got into Kiss. It was brand new. We were just beginning.

CAMERON: Ten was exploding in the charts. The grunge phenomenon was something we’d never anticipated in Seattle. Suddenly there were cultural ramifications to what we were doing, which we didn’t feel within ourselves. Once Nirvana started to take over, it became a post-Nevermind world. No-one wanted to be left in the dust. There was this unspoken competition.

VEDDER: Any phenomenon that extreme is going to have positives and negatives. How much rich food can you eat? The first two mouthfuls taste great, then you’re vomiting for days. It had a global effect which in the end I think we’re all proud of. I think Kris [Novoselic] and Dave [Grohl] are absolutely proud of it. I liked the idea that women were going to clubs with tattered sweaters that allowed them to be who they were, and not with bustiers and leather pants. There wasn’t a mandate, I don’t think. There was just this natural evolution into self-expression and independence and self-worth, based on people understanding their isolation, and being able to share it through the music. I think what was interesting about that first year is how quickly the feeling of excitement changed. It went from going downhill, and thinking, ‘Oh, this is great, we’re finally getting some speed, to – we’re gonna fuckin’ die.’

Vs.

Epic, 1993

This sold a million in its first week, five times Nirvana’s In Utero, and sharp punk punches like “Animal” improved on their debut. But Vedder agonised about the staggering scale of success on stage, cutting a graceless figure to some

McCREADY: We’d had a wave of emotions at selling millions, from gratitude to confusion to fright. The energy of what we’d gone through is on that record. It’s hard-hitting and immediate, on songs like “Go”. There was some pressure, but the songs were so good, we felt like it was going to do okay. Then things just exploded again. I think we had a better hold of it. But maybe not.

AMENT: I think the Vs. era was a pretty dark time. We had all kinds of battles going on at that point.

GOSSARD: It was the transition of Ed asserting himself in the band. In the beginning, Jeff and I put the deal together, we had the relationships in the record business. But Ed was realising, ‘Wow, I’m the centrepiece of this thing that’s sold fucking 10 million records. And I’ve gotta have my hand on the wheel.’

CAMERON: It’s difficult to complain when you’re successful. That’s always been the Seattle perception, that we’re all just a bunch of whiney bitches. We’re the Choke Central city of the world. And to a degree that’s true.

VEDDER: When you’re up there, you fall into things that you think a rock star should be. It was a struggle. But I do think I was reacting to things as a human being. Not like a celebrity non-human, or a prop put up there by the corporate mainstream. Those are difficult situations, especially at that time, to have been graceful in. I mean, putting a gun to your head isn’t graceful either. But that was certainly one approach.

VITALOGY

Epic, 1994

Released a week early on vinyl (also fetishised on “Spin the Black Circle”), this saw Pearl Jam pull free of grunge into a more relaxed rock classicism. Cobain committed suicide soon after its first sessions, on March 4 1994

McCREADY: I think we were on tour when Kurt killed himself. I remember that, because Ed destroyed a hotel room.

VEDDER: It affected me in ways that are just endless. I normally don’t talk about it too much, in respect to Kris and Dave. Because those feelings are still very alive in all of us. The positives and the negatives. It seemed like it was such an extreme act, and moment, and some kind of insane resolution. It seemed like that was just going to change things in the same way that I thought it would when Princess Diana was killed and the paparazzi were involved. It changed music. But it didn’t change the level of understanding about people to artists. I thought it would. We retreated after that, for survival.

AMENT: If you look at Kurt killing himself and not being able to deal with the pressures of what he became, Ed related to that in a big way. In that period I was feeling more for Dave and Kris, because I was more like them. This is crazy, but maybe six months after Kurt died, a friend and I were going snowboarding, and we got in a car wreck. I thought we were dead. I got out, look back, the car’s upside down, it’s smoking, snow’s coming down. And the first person that turned up was Kris, who I hadn’t seen since Kurt died. I was like, ‘I am fucking dead.’ It was like the biggest hallucination I’ve ever had in my life. He pulled up and he goes, [stoner voice] ‘Hey, Jeff – what’s u-up?’ I thought he was up in heaven visiting Kurt. And that that’s where we were.

GOSSARD: Oh my God, I didn’t know that. There was something in the air then. Even lyrically, in one session we wrote “Dead Man Walking”, “Immortality”, “Nothingman” – all three could have resonance with Kurt. It’s because Ed had been through enough to recognise what Kurt felt, in terms of – ‘I’ve got this fucking huge thing going, and I don’t know if I can do it, and it can take you somewhere you don’t want to go, and how do you get off, how do you control it?’ We were still at the stage where we were blind to the potential of the situation we’re at now – that of course, we can just go home. All we’d done was work our asses off for 15 years, and then it happens, and it’s like, wow, nobody seems to be very happy here. It’s all falling apart.

Vitalogy was a real nervous time for me, because Ed starting to write a lot more songs, and I was feeling disconnected from that process. Simplicity scared me when we made it. I wanted more riffs, more complexity, more Zeppelin. I was like, I don’t know if I wanna play someone else’s songs.

McCREADY: I was pretty fucked up then, on drugs, and drinking. I have a real blurry vision of that time – I don’t remember most of it, you know. It’s this weird dark period of my life.

NO CODE

Epic, 1996

Released as the band’s bitter fight with Ticketmaster over their price-inflating near-monopoly on US concert ticketing saw touring grind to a halt, this more contemplative, experimental record felt like an abdication from audience expectations. It would be their last really big seller.

GOSSARD: Ed was pushing us as a band to say, we can be small. A song doesn’t have to have this enormous impact, Ed doesn’t have to scream his head off, it’s about something else than someone might expect from Ten.

VEDDER: When it came to the songs on that record, maybe we were indulgent in a way where we just didn’t give a fuck. If we wanted to keep the momentum of the group going in the context of all the other music that was out there at the time, No Code should’ve been a heavier record. But we had to get it out of our system.

McCREADY: It felt like a left-turn when I wanted to go straight back to rocking. Part of me thought the album cover was better than the album itself. We were all on different wavelengths then. The band were travelling by plane, and Ed was driving around, doing his own radio show after a three-hour gig, cold and sweaty in a van. Which is crazy. I have pictures of four of us getting on a plane – where the hell’s Ed? It got to the point where he got sick, at a free show in Golden Gate Park where 50,000 people showed up. It was a fucking nightmare. Neil Young jammed with us for a few songs, and people were still pissed. We had a big three-hour meeting the next day, and I remember Stone going to Ed, point blank: ëDo you still want to be in this band?’ Fortunately, he did.

BINAURAL

Epic, 2000

Partly inspired by the anti-globalisation riots that flared in Seattle as they recorded it, this re-integrated their rocking and sensitive sides on career highs like “Insignificance”. But nine fans being crushed to death as they played Denmark’s Roskilde Festival on June 30 2000 overshadowed its release.

AMENT: We were in the studio when the riot happened. You could stand out in the sidewalk and hear it going on. At one point, I rode my bike down there, and then the crowd suddenly got big behind me, I was riding my bike through thousands of people, and I ended up getting out of there, because obviously shit was not going right. It was pretty surreal.

VEDDER: Those protests were something we had to think about, they were happening right outside our door. The interesting thing about them was the way they were handled. Why weren’t you able to walk down the streets with signs and singing? Why were there rubber bullets and tear gas from guys in shoulder pads provided by Nike? That was the beginning of realising that free speech in America was not the guaranteed right we thought it was.

McCREADY: Then Roskilde coloured all of our lives, I think. It’s a void, or a terrible tragedy, that I will never forget. I’ve never been through anything like that before, and I never want to again.

CAMERON: It’s the last thing you would ever expect, and we saw it happen. I don’t think we all went into deep depression for a great length of time. We saw it as the tragic accident that it was. But it was always associated with our show by the media, and that wasn’t nice to go through.

PEARL JAM

J, 2006

Partly a continuation of the overtly politicised, post-9/11 Riot Act (2002), anti-war sentiment here alternates with songs like “Big Wave”, where Vedder seems to want to get away from the whole mess. Their hardest rocking set for a decade

GOSSARD: This record has a little bit of AC/DC or the Stones. We can play it top to bottom live, we don’t have to worry about the tabla part. The lyrics seem to run the full gamut. They’re politically engaged and topical, and then ìSevered Handî’s about somebody just indulging themselves to the ultimate degree. You don’t get that out of Ed a lot.

VEDDER: It’s healthy to limit yourself when you can to things that actually concern you. I mean really – this might be dangerous to say – but on a certain level, we could look at the war where it doesn’t affect us one stitch. It’s healthy to step back from that sometimes, to get out in the ocean and surf and clear my head. Life offers you situations where you can’t step back, where your best friend is dying and you have to be living next to the nightmare. On the other hand, it was a gift to be in a studio the day after Bush’s election. It was a mental health issue at that point.

Musically, we know we’re going down roads that have already been cut, by The Who, or Springsteen or The Stooges or Velvet Underground or Talking Heads, or even some of the side-paths cut by Sonic Youth or Fugazi. And I think at this point we are trying to keep that spirit and legacy alive. We want to represent that.

CAMERON: The initial blast of Pearl Jam came at a time when there was a palpable groundswell, there was a real event that happened. People wanted to hear something different, and the band’s association with that initial realism in rock has carried over. Not necessarily in the music industry. They probably think we’re just a bunch of old greaseballs, and I love that. I love that they don’t respect us, and they don’t think we have anything left in our tank. It’s a great feeling that we’re being perceived as underdogs, when we’re still really successful.  

GOSSARD: I think when you sell 10 million records, that’s such a crazy number. I don’t think anyone can keep that going. For Ed to show us that we could actually pull back and take control of the situation was a huge transition. Maybe we’ll end up making another record that people do relate to in a big way like Ten. Or maybe we’ll make some records and they’ll do whatever they do, and we’ll just be a live band.

VEDDER: Did pulling back save my life? I’ve fallen off a number of cliffs since. If they had’ve been higher, I could have died. Yes.

The Making Of “Bra” by Cymande

Sam Richards
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The Making Of “Bra” by Cymande

A key scene in new documentary Getting It Back: The Story Of Cymande shows how DJ Jazzy Jay used to cut between two turntables to extend the exuberant breakdown of “Bra”, sending a Bronx block party into raptures. It’s no surprise that the track became a foundation stone of hip-hop, sampled by Sugarhill Gang, Gang Starr and De La Soul, as well as on Raze’s early house hit “Jack The Groove”.

A key scene in new documentary Getting It Back: The Story Of Cymande shows how DJ Jazzy Jay used to cut between two turntables to extend the exuberant breakdown of “Bra”, sending a Bronx block party into raptures. It’s no surprise that the track became a foundation stone of hip-hop, sampled by Sugarhill Gang, Gang Starr and De La Soul, as well as on Raze’s early house hit “Jack The Groove”.

TALKING HEADS ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME



So who were the impossibly funky crew behind it? Surely they were from Harlem or New Orleans? Or maybe Kingston or Lagos? Nope. “Bra”’s co-writers Patrick Patterson and Steve Scipio grew up on the same street in Balham, south London, after their families emigrated to the UK from Guyana when they were kids. Coming of age in the late ’60s, they envisioned a band that would capture the spirit of the times – black pride, peace and love – while celebrating their Caribbean heritage. Their name came from a popular calypso about “a dove and pigeon fighting over a piece of pepper” – Cymande was the dove – and they recruited band members from south London’s Caribbean diaspora.

With lyrics that encouraged its listeners not to abandon the struggle (“But it’s alright/We can still go on”) “Bra” made a decent splash on its US release in 1973, following Cymande’s debut single “The Message” into the R&B charts and winning the band a support tour with Al Green. But back in the UK, the glass ceiling descended. Dispirited with the lack of opportunities for black British groups, Cymande disbanded in late 1974.

Patterson and Scipio eventually both studied law, going on to take up important positions in the governments of various Caribbean nations. As such, they were oblivious to Cymande’s second life as hip-hop progenitors. But word eventually reached them of their popularity amongst a new generation of crate-diggers, and Cymande reformed to jubilant scenes in 2014 with most of their original lineup intact. A new album is currently in the works, to follow the reissue of their original three albums.

“I had no idea,” says drummer Sam Kelly of Cymande’s miraculous rebirth. “One of the things that blows my mind is that we played in Brazil, we went to Croatia, all these places. My partner and I went to Australia a couple of years ago – we’d go out to a restaurant and hear our music being played in Melbourne, 12,000 miles away. It still puts a shiver down my spine.”

PATTERSON: I came to London in 1958, Steve came in ’63. And since then we’ve been together. Our street was full of people, many of whom came from our country, and we were all in the same community. So we carried our Caribbean culture with us. [In the late ’60s] we had a jazz group called Metre, which was the genesis of Cymande. We used to do Miles Davis’s “Footprints”, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, things like that. We liked to play in different time signatures. Looking back on it now, we were very inventive.

SCIPIO: For seven or eight months before we started to put Cymande together, we also played with a Nigerian band called Ginger Johnson And His African Drummers. Ginger was a well-known performer, he played with The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park.

PATTERSON: All of it contributed to where we were as musicians, directing us towards our future musical style.

KELLY: We started in the basement of my family house on Crawshay Road in Brixton. The main thing they emphasised is that, come hell or high water, they wanted to do original material. I wasn’t playing an instrument at all before I joined Cymande, but I used to listen to everything from James Brown to Hendrix, Sam & Dave to Pink Floyd. I was a blank canvas – I didn’t want to sound like any other drummer. The person that had the most influence on my playing was Steve. He didn’t play bass rhythmically, he played it lyrically. I was just trying to complement what he was playing.

PATTERSON: The support for black bands like ours was from places like Upstairs At Ronnie Scott’s, The 100 Club, the Pheasantry, Café Des Artistes. Small venues. We played the Croydon Greyhound with Edgar Broughton.

SCIPIO: We started doing some shows outside London, in some of the northern clubs. But I don’t think we were what they were expecting! In some of them, it didn’t go down very well…

PATTERSON: [adopts bolshie northern accent] “Do you know any Bill Haley? Come on!”

KELLY: Obviously we came across problems when we were trying to get record deals. They’d say, “You’re an all-black band, you should try to sound like the Americans – Otis Redding or Curtis Mayfield.” But we didn’t want to sound like that.

SCIPIO: There’s so many versions about how we connected with [producer] John Schroeder. John says he was in Soho, was passing this club and heard this racket going on. But my recollection is that our booking agent brought John Schroeder to us. In those days, John was a cool fella! Long blond hair and a big white Roller.

KELLY: He liked what he heard and thought he could work with us as a producer, which is a bit strange in a way, because the people that he had produced before – Cliff Richard or Helen Shapiro – were a million miles away from what Cymande was going for. But he let us just do what we did.

PATTERSON: We always give him credit for his commitment to the band. He liked what he heard and wanted to capture that, not to produce it or turn it into something else.

SCIPIO: Most of the first album was already written because those were the songs we were using on the road – they got perfected while we were gigging. For “Bra”, the bass was the genesis. How we were writing at the time is that the bass was used melodically. I’d go to Patrick with an idea and often he’d start putting stuff on top of that. In some songs, the vocals were the last thing to be developed. Normally it’s the other way around.

PATTERSON: When I was laying things on top, I was just thinking about patterns to fit. I’m a touch player, not a heavyweight player, so I’m bouncing off Steve rather than setting a thing myself.

KELLY: Unlike a lot of rhythm sections who are trying to lock in, we’re all playing individual things, so you’ve got this mixture going on.

SCIPIO: “Bra” was one of the popular songs at gigs. The middle break with just the bass and drums, as recognised in the documentary, people appreciated that even then.

KELLY: I’m playing four-to-the-bar on the bass drum. We were just trying to think how we could join the middle of the song to the end section. But the DJs turned this into a whole new record – amazing.

PATTERSON: When we came up, it was the time of “Say It Loud, I’m Black And I’m Proud”. You had the Black Panthers, you had the Black Liberation Front, you had artists who were articulating a black position and trying to make sure that black people recognised the importance of working together. The lyrics of “Bra” reflected that time.

SCIPIO: “Bra” is slang for brother. Within our community, everybody knew what it meant. It was only when we went to the States that you might have people saying, “Why are they singing about brassières?”

PATTERSON: Joey Dee was a talented, brilliant singer. He had a wonderful range, so we could put anything before him and he could sing it. And he had a good presence too. The voice was an instrument in Cymande, but it still gave him scope for demonstrating his talents.

SCIPIO: De Lane Lea was a wonderful studio because it was used for recording movie soundtracks as well as bands. Everyone had their little compartment to control the spillage and we just performed as if we were doing a live gig. We were young people, uninhibited! We didn’t have responsibilities, so when we went in the studio it was just pure enjoyment. A lot of producers want to put their stamp on the music, but John wanted the raw element of what he heard.

PATTERSON: And he produced it well. You could hear every instrument in its own space. Working with John was easy.

SCIPIO: It was very exciting to see our records on the charts in America. John wanted us over there as soon as possible to ride on the wave. It was like going to the centre of music, the Mecca.

KELLY: In England, we were playing relatively small venues. To then be suddenly supporting Al Green on these huge stages… I was half a mile away from Patrick and Steve! But Al Green’s drummer was amazing. For the first week, he would stand by the side of the stage and watch me play, and afterwards he’d come over and give me some advice. I’ll forever be grateful for that.

SCIPIO: The Apollo [in Harlem] had a reputation for not tolerating below-par performances – and the crowd would let you know! So I think some of us had some apprehension about it, but the week we did there was fantastic. We had Jerry Butler coming in and shaking our hands.

KELLY: The Apollo was a real pit, to be honest! The paintwork was crumbling, it smelt… but there was so much black music history oozing out of those walls. It was a great experience.

SCIPIO: It was very frustrating to have your music appreciated by that number of people and then to come back here and there being no-one at the airport, not even one reporter asking about how the tour went. No interest, no articles, nothing.

PATTERSON: It was demoralising. We were entitled to some recognition. So you come back and you find nothing… It says a lot about the industry and how it deals with us as black musicians. There was little or no promotion here, and no airplay.

SCIPIO: [After a while] we all recognised that performing in front of 40,000 and then doing gigs to 300 people, that’s not where we should be.

PATTERSON: We can’t go backwards in that sense. Who does it help? It doesn’t help black musicians or the aspirations we might have to achieve things in music. So let’s take a rest and see where we go.

SCIPIO: I joined Mike [‘Bami’ Rose, Cymande flute/sax player] in a South African band called Jabula. I played with them for maybe five years, but I wasn’t satisfied with just being a squad member in somebody else’s project. I started my law degree, and that was the last time I played any live music until Cymande came back together. I moved to Anguilla to work in the attorney general’s chambers.

PATTERSON: After Cymande, I was musical director for the Black Theatre of Brixton, then I went back to my law studies. I practised in chambers in England, then I worked for the government of Dominica.

SCIPIO: I certainly wasn’t aware of what was going on [with “Bra”’s use
by hip-hop DJs]. The documentary was an eye-opener for me!

KELLY: Myself and Bami Rose kept playing professionally. I’d be somewhere setting up or packing away my drums and I’d hear “Bra” or “The Message” being played, which was really satisfying. But I didn’t have any idea what the DJs in the States were doing. It wasn’t ’til the film came out that I found out people had taken our tracks and remixed them. Watching these DJs talk about Cymande’s music in such reverent terms was just amazing.

SCIPIO: I’m happy people see something in our music that’s influential. To listen to something and appreciate it is one thing, but for it to impact on you in such a way that you take elements of that thing and make it part of your own, that’s on an entirely different level.

KELLY: We had unfinished business, but I didn’t know it was going to take 40 years!

SCIPIO: When we came off the road in the ’70s, it was never intended to be a disbanding, just a hiatus. But the renewed interest in us provided the opportunity to put into effect the plans we had when we first decided to call it a day.

PATTERSON: It was very exciting to see that we had, if you like, travelled through time. We were now faced with a bunch of young people appreciating our music.

SCIPIO: We’ve just completed a tour of Canada and the US, and at the end we took three or four days off and said, “We’ll do a couple of tracks.” And they went well.

PATTERSON: We recorded at a great studio in LA. It suited us, because we still cut live. This will be quite an important album, I think. The aspiration has to be consistent with what we have already created.

SCIPIO: The spirit of the performance should still be recognisably Cymande. Not like a load of old doddery guys just going through the motions!

Neil Young & Crazy Horse announce album and tour dates

Michael Bonner
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Neil Young & Crazy Horse announce album and tour dates

The tour and FU##IN' UP are both due in April

The tour and FU##IN’ UP are both due in April

Neil Young & Crazy Horse are back on tour in April and May this year, with an album called FU##IN’ UP due as well.

TALKING HEADS ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

The 16-date Love Earth tour begins in San Diego. The line-up features Young, Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot with presumably Micah Nelson once again deputising for Nils Lofren, who’ll be fulfilling his E Street Band duties with Bruce Springsteen at that time.

Wednesday, April 24 – San Diego, CA – Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre
Thursday, April 25 – San Diego, CA – Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre
Saturday, April 27 – Phoenix, AZ – Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
Wednesday, May 01 – Austin, TX – Germania Insurance Amphitheater
Thursday, May 02 – Dallas, TX – Dos Equis Pavilion
Sunday, May 05 – Huntsville, AL – Orion Amphitheater
Tuesday, May 07 – Atlanta, GA – Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
Wednesday, May 08 – Franklin, TN – FirstBank Amphitheater
Saturday, May 11 – Bristow, VA – Jiffy Lube Live
Sunday, May 12 – Camden, NJ – Freedom Mortgage Pavilion
Tuesday, May 14 – Queens, NY – Forest Hills Stadium
Friday, May 17 – Mansfield, MA – Xfinity Center
Saturday, May 18 – Bridgeport, CT – Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater
Monday, May 20 – Toronto, ON – Budweiser Stage
Wednesday, May 22 – Clarkston, MI – Pine Knob Music Theatre
Thursday, May 23 – Chicago, IL – Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island

Tickets will be available starting with a Neil Young Archives pre-sale beginning on Tuesday, February 13 at 10 AM PT. Additional pre-sales will run throughout the week ahead of the general onsale beginning on Friday, February 16 at 10am local time at LiveNation.com. At time of purchase, fans can opt in to receive a physical CD of FU##IN’ UP included with their tickets for no additional cost.

The provenance of FU##IN’ UP is slightly less clear at this point. According to an email received bt Young’s Archives subscribers:

Neil and The Horse have played together for over 50 years and the performances of these familiar songs, recorded in 2023, is a true highlight. As Neil explains, “In the spirit it’s offered…made this for the Horse lovers. I can’t stop it. The horse is runnin’. What a ride we have. I don’t want to mess with the vibe. I am so happy to have this to share.” FU##IN’ UP contains 9 songs on 2 LPs. The album will be released in limited edition color vinyl pressing on Record Store Day April 20 with a wider, all format release starting April 26.

According to rumours, it might well be a recording from a private performance at The Rivoli, Toronto on November 3, 2023.

Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets annouce new tour dates

Michael Bonner
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Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets annouce new tour dates

Set the controls!

Set the controls!

Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets will head out on a new UK tour later this year, including a show at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

TALKING HEADS ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

This is the Saucers first UK tour since their May 2022 Echoes Tour. Since then, they have since played extensively through America and Europe.

Their stop-off at the Royal Albert Hall is significant: The Pink Floyd first played there on December 12, 1966, as part of an Oxfam benefit evening. They subsequently returned to the venue in 1967, 1969 and 1970. Meanwhile, Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets made their Royal Albert Hall debut in 2022.

Says Mason, “Six years ago when I got behind the drums again and we started playing the early Pink Floyd material, it was a real pleasure on so many levels. Many of the tracks had never actually been played live, so to have performed them all over the world has been something we’ve all enjoyed immensely. To get the opportunity to come back to the UK for another tour is something the band and I had been hoping we would be able to do, so to say ‘we’re back’ feels good!”

Aside from Mason, the Saucers’ line-up includes Gary Kemp, Guy Pratt, Lee Harris and Dom Beken.

Tickets for the tour go on sale from Friday, February 16 at 11am from www.myticket.co.uk.

The tour dates are:

Tuesday, June 11 – Stoke, Victoria Hall

Wednesday, June 12 – York, Barbican

Thursday, June 13 – Nottingham, Royal Concert Hall

Saturday, June 15 – Oxford, New Theatre

Monday, June 17 – Bristol, Beacon

Tuesday, June 18 – Birmingham, Symphony Hall

Wednesday, June 19 – Manchester, O2 Apollo

Friday, June 21 – Glasgow, SEC Armadillo

Saturday, June 22 – Gateshead, The Glasshouse

Monday, June 24 – Cardiff, Wales Millenium Centre

Tuesday, June 25 – Poole, Lighthouse

Wednesday, June 26 – Brighton, Dome

Friday, June 28 – Ipswich, Regent Theatre

Saturday, June 29 – London, Royal Albert Hall

The band have already announced a brace of European shows:

Thursday, July 18 – Teatro Arcimboldi, Milan

Friday, July 19 – Piazza Dei Signori, Vicenza

Saturday, July 20 – Sequoie Music Park, Bologna

Sunday, July 21 – Cavea, Rome

Tuesday, July 23 – Belvedere San Leucio, Caserta

Wednesaday, July 24 – Teatro Il Castello, Roccella Ionica

July 28 – Herzberg Festival, Germany

Inside this month’s free Uncut CD

Tom Pinnock
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Inside this month’s free Uncut CD

Julia Holter, Phosphorescent, The Jesus And Mary Chain and more appear on our Real Live Wire compilation

Julia Holter, Phosphorescent, The Jesus And Mary Chain and more appear on our Real Live Wire compilation

All copies of the March 2024 issue of Uncut come with a free, 15-track CD – Real Live Wire – that showcases the wealth of great new music on offer this month, from The Jesus And Mary Chain, Julia Holter and Phosphorescent to Rosali, Sam Lee and Dean McPhee. Now dive in…

TALKING HEADS ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

1 ROSALI
Rewind
On her fourth album, Bite Down, Rosali Middleman has created one of the first great LPs of 2024, a wildly inventive breakup record. Head to page 54, where we catch up with the singer-songwriter in her new home of North Carolina.

2 SHEER MAG
Moonstruck
After years on their own label, the Philly gang have signed to Third Man for their new album, Playing Favorites. As our lead review reveals, on page 22, it’s an eclectic, bounding journey of a record, with Tina Halladay in fine voice over the group’s garagey amalgamations of punk, country and disco.

3 THE HANGING STARS
Disbelieving
Straight from Edwyn Collins’ studio in the Highlands comes the latest from this London country group, On A Golden Shore. There’s a cosmic element to these rootsy laments, thanks to Richard Olson’s shimmering songwriting and Joe Harvey-Whyte’s pedal steel. Potent stuff.

4 THE BEVIS FROND
Wrong Way Round
Nick Saloman has been making records as The Bevis Frond for decades now, but new LP Focus On Nature still knocks it out of the park with his psych-tinged indie-rock. On this track, the Neil Young of Walthamstow launches off into flights of kraut-fringed fancy.

5 JULIA HOLTER
Spinning
Something In The Room She Moves, our Album Of The Month on page 18, finds Holter subsuming her past records into a stellar new work: gone is the thorny tangle of 2018’s Aviary, replaced by liquid fretless bass, divine and floating keyboard textures and some of her most indelible and unexpected melodies.

6 DEAN McPHEE
Lunar Fire
A concept album united by space, aliens and the unknown, the latest from West Yorkshire’s interstellar guitar wrangler, Astral Gold, contains some of McPhee’s most transportative soundscapes yet. Teleport yourself to page 34 for a full review and Q&A.

7 THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN
JAMCOD
Jim and William Reid are back 40 years after their debut single, their love for fuzz gloriously unabated. Here’s a highlight from their new album Glasgow Eyes, a reassuringly caustic slab of distorted motorik.

8 PHOSPHORESCENT
Revelator
This is the title track of Matthew Houck’s latest album, the long-awaited follow-up to 2018’s C’est La Vie, crafted at his own Spirit Sounds studio in Nashville. Uncut joins him there on page 80 to discuss songs, sadness and toilet walls.

9 FRANCIS PLAGNE
Here Is Dull Earth (Edit)
This Melbourne-based musician, better known for his experimental work, ventures into out-there song on his new LP, Into Closed Air. Here’s an exclusive edit of one of its mammoth tracks, coursing with the spirit and melancholy of prime Canterbury Scene sounds,

10 CHARLES MOOTHART
One Wish
The LA multi-instrumentalist is releasing his first album under his own name, though you’ll recognise him from his work with Fuzz, CFM and Ty Segall. Inspired by experiments with a sampler, Black Holes Don’t Choke is a forward-thinking, playful rock record, dipping into genres at will.

11 SHEHERAZAAD
Mashoor
‘Produced by Arooj Aftab’ should be enough to prick up most ears, and deservedly so here: much like Aftab’s work, Sheherazaad’s brief debut album Qasr is a brilliantly modern meshing of Asian and Western music. Read our review on page 35.

12 HIGH LLAMAS
Toriafan
Sean O’Hagan has painted with various styles throughout his career, but the Llamas’ new album Hey Panda brings him bang up to date, with bit-crushing, Auto-Tune and the most current of beats. On paper it seems like a risk, but the reality, as “Toriafan” shows, is sublime.

13 WHITELANDS
Now Here’s The Weather
Shoegaze is bigger than ever these days – just ask anyone on TikTok, if you dare – and here’s a great young London group worshiping at the shrine of Slowdive and Ride. Night-Bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day is almost slavish in its reverence, but with tracks as mighty as this, it’s a pleasure not a problem.

14 SAM LEE
Meeting Is A Pleasant Place
On his fourth album, song-finder (and former wilderness survival expert) Lee continues his voyage into traditional song. Bernard Butler is back on production duties, and the result is resiliently modern, deeply textured and moving.

15 ADRIANNE LENKER
Sadness As A Gift
Whether Lenker is writing for her own projects or for Big Thief, her albums become little worlds, as endless in their scope and power as her well of songs can sometimes appear to be. Bright Future is no different, as this deep, generous ballad proves.

An Audience With Damo Suzuki

Sam Richards
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An Audience With Damo Suzuki

*This feature originally appeared in the May 2019 issue of Uncut.

*This feature originally appeared in the May 2019 issue of Uncut.

Kenji ‘Damo’ Suzuki is a performer so dedicated to the art of improvisation, you could even say he’s improvised his own life. Leaving Japan at the age of 18 to pursue the hippie dream in Europe, he landed – via Sweden and rural Ireland – in Germany, where he was spotted busking in his own inimitable style on the streets of Munich by Holger Czukay, who instantly recruited him to replace vocalist Malcolm Mooney in Can.

Suzuki’s stint with the krautrock legends ushered in their imperial phase, yielding experimental rock touchtones Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi and Future Days, but he left Can after just three years citing spiritual differences – he soon became a Jehovah’s Witness, quitting music and taking a job laying pavements. Yet his free-spirited nature couldn’t be suppressed forever. In the 1980s, he joined Dunkelziffer before forming The Damo Suzuki Band with ex-Can colleague Jaki Liebezeit. Eventually he rejected the idea of performing with a regular band altogether, embarking on a ‘never-ending tour’ in which he turns up alone at each venue, improvising a set of new material on the spot with a group of ‘Sound Carriers’ that he has sometimes only just met. 

For a while it looked as if Suzuki’s never-ending tour might be permanently derailed by a life-threatening bout of colon cancer, but he has recovered to the point where he’s regularly back out on the road, even if his “quite strong” medication has limited his ability to wander at will. Instead, Suzuki estimates he has about 10,000 books, “500 of which are about cooking”. Not that he consults them for recipes. In fact, Suzuki’s approach to preparing a meal is not dissimilar to his approach to making music. “I don’t have a plan,” he explains. “My girlfriend buys something, mainly organic food, and I just improvise. My life is like this! I don’t take any kind of information, only football. If I have so much information in my head then creativity is not flexible. If you don’t have any plan you can get more from time.”

What was it like to leave home on a one-way ticket to Europe at such a young age? Lucy Harminster, Sheffield

For me it was quite necessary and important to have a kind of adventure. Things were not so much possible in Japan, so if I stay in Japan I must go the same way as other people – go to university and get employed in a good company or something. Not very interesting. So that’s why I went out. The situation was quite different because at that time if people went outside the country maybe they don’t come back again. Now you’ve got airports everywhere and cheap flights. Why I bought a one-way ticket is because I didn’t have much money to buy both ways. But I cannot really remember the feeling, it’s more than 50 years ago!

I’m fascinated by your strategy of ad-hoc backing bands. What do you do if they turn out to be rubbish? Mark Thompson, Deal

Rubbish or not rubbish depends on the perspective. And I like every kind of sensation, so maybe there are no rubbish things if you make music in this way. Things that happen by accident can be a very special moment. That’s why I say nothing is rubbish, just the opposite: everything is beautiful. And if somebody experiences a rubbish concert, I think it’s quite interesting too – to know what is their meaning of rubbish! Because I don’t know the meaning of it. But when [the musicians] start playing a Can song, that’s not so good. I really don’t like if somebody is forcing me to do something. It destroys my curiosity. It’s horrible! It’s better people playing with me don’t have any information in their head and don’t think I was once a singer of Can, because the answer is already there. I don’t like to have any kind of answer. 

What do you miss most about playing with Jaki Liebezeit? Karim Mouvedi, via email

He’s a special drummer and he had his own style. When he played together with Damo Suzuki Band, for me, that was his best time. He played really much more wild. Also this band was only four people, there was no bass; it was his dream to play without a bassist. Jaki was quite a hard person, so everybody had sometimes a problem with him. But mainly he was right! 

Do you still have the half-pink/half-red velvet jumpsuit your wore at Can’s 1972 ‘Free Concert’? Alistair Morton, Whitchurch, Shropshire

No! Many people are asking me to buy it but I don’t have any fancy dress from that time any more. I don’t know what happened to it. Some rock music museum in Germany, they were asking for this one too. But I’m quite easy to say goodbye to any kind of thing, so I don’t have any stuff from old times. I designed it myself but I had a special tailor to make it. She usually designed only for ladies. I brought her my ideas and some textiles and she made it. It wasn’t so comfortable to wear! It was quite tight and I didn’t really think of how to go to the toilet. I had quite a few such things: trousers with many butterflies, long scarves, orange-coloured dresses, silver trousers, many things. But the material was quite expensive, so it wasn’t so great when I was smoking a cigarette and the ashes dropped down. It was quite an expensive hobby. 

What did you think of The Fall’s song about you? And what did you talk about with Mark E Smith when you met? Lee Phelps, Wigan

It was a strange moment! I didn’t know the band and suddenly they made this piece. Actually first I thought maybe there is another Damo Suzuki. But it was also funny to me. I think it’s good. 

Some people said I must make a song about Mark E Smith, but I didn’t, so… I understand him changing quite often the band. If you are travelling with people together for a long time, opinions can be totally different: where to go, where to eat. So changing a member is not such a bad thing. You need a fresh moment sometimes, it keeps creativity more fresh.

You ran a Kinks fan club at school. What did you prefer about them over The Beatles and The Stones? Andy Clough, Kingston-Upon-Thames

The Kinks were my favourite at that time because The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were already mainstream and everybody listened to them. But The Kinks were special for me because they made interesting things with simple chords, and their melodies fitted together with me – sometimes very sentimental. I think The Kinks are true British rock. The Rolling Stones played almost only American ideas; Beatles is a kind of schlager music, from the Germans. The Beatles are like Abba, they are everybody’s darlings. So The Kinks is the only band from that time I could follow. 

I read that the making of Ege Bamyasi was delayed by the fact that you and Irmin Schmidt were obsessed with playing chess. Who won the most games? Vincent Jaunes, Montpelier, France

I feel like I won. But he’ll say a different answer, I’m sure! We both got quite into chess. At that time we liked to play chess more than music, so we were in trouble with Holger. Strategy? No. I improvise always. Every good chess player already has ideas for maybe 15 moves but I think that’s quite boring. If you are too good, it’s not so interesting for me. It’s like a too-good guitarist, playing so quick – there is no space I can get into.

Is it true you once painted your bedroom completely black? Dave Franklyn, via email

Yes! Black was good because I wanted to have it without any information. If you have some colours, it’s already information or direction for you. If you are in a dark place, you don’t know if it’s a really small space or really huge. I like to have this moment when you are hanging on the air, or something like that. Every time I went into that room I felt different. That was a thing I needed at that time.

Do you ever have the urge to write and record a more traditional pop song? Alex Hinton, Newmarket

Not really, I never thought about this. Melodies come sometimes and I think, it could be a good pop song. But I never think why I should make this kind of stuff. I’m not rich, but I have enough things. Plus I’m already quite old, next year I’m 70. So why would I make a pop song? Pop music is like a hamburger – easy to eat but without any substance. It’s not too good for spiritual things if you eat this kind of food all the time, you get really like a lobotomy. 

When was the last time you cried with joy on stage? Alisha Jones, via email

This happens sometimes because I’m really sensitive about having these special moments and I can share this with other people. If you share your music with other people you have much more feeling. It’s difficult to remember exactly the last time – maybe I’m too much on the medication! Once after a concert a girl came to me and she was really crying because she was so thankful. I’m happy that I can have these beautiful moments sometimes.

Fantastic Voyage: New Sounds For The European Canon 1977-1981

Jon Dale
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Fantastic Voyage: New Sounds For The European Canon 1977-1981

Bowie goes Berlin, music quakes – here’s the fall-out

Bowie goes Berlin, music quakes – here’s the fall-out

The concept behind Fantastic Voyage, compiled by Bob Stanley of St Etienne and Jason Wood from the British Film Institute, is simple: tracking the two-way flow of influence between David Bowie’s Berlin-era albums and the German electronic and avant-rock that informed Bowie’s thinking at the time. It’s a smart conceit for a compilation, something that Stanley in particular has become exceptionally good at over the past decade. Indeed, the recent string of collections he’s pulled together for Ace Records are often sensitive mappings of discrete cultural scenes or imagined aesthetic collisions; while 2020’s Cafe Exil: New Adventures In European Music 1972-1980 pieced together what Bowie and Iggy might have been listening to in their favourite Kreuzberg haunt.

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It’s not hard to see the ways that Fantastic Voyage’s remit can be stretched, massaged and morphed. Some of the names here are to be expected – Holger Czukay, Cabaret Voltaire, The Associates – but some may land, initially, as quite a surprise: Daryl Hall, Peter Gabriel. It’s the latter inclusions that make Fantastic Voyage more valuable than a predictable hipster’s selection of ‘the right records’. Treating the Bowie-Berlin creative nexus as pliable material, Stanley and Wood offer other ways of thinking about how electronic music and rock went mutually mutant in the early ’80s.

The Hall contribution is one of the compilation’s most gorgeous moments: “The Farther Away I Am” is a late-night hymn, an intimist’s dream of a song, taken from his album Sacred Songs. Recorded in 1977 but not released until 1980, Sacred Songs is Hall’s masterpiece, made in collaboration with Robert Fripp. Indeed, Fripp understandably hovers over Fantastic Voyage as a kind of éminence grise: the taut and itchy “Exposure”, from Fripp’s album of the same name, is also included here, and he turns up on guitar on Peter Gabriel’s tortured “No Self Control”.

Gabriel’s contribution precedes the song that feels like Fantastic Voyage’s core, The Walker Brothers’ “Nite Flights”. The moment where Scott Walker truly unshackles himself from the brothers’ lush, brooding balladry and goes fully existential, it’s still startling, 40 years on, a stealthy machine of a song, a warped hybrid of krautrock’s rhythmic monotony and stylised art-rock. Bowie’s “Heroes” was a reference point for Walker while recording his contributions to “Nite Flights”’s attendant album, and Bowie would repay the favour, decades later, covering it on 1993’s Black Tie White Noise.

Lest Fantastic Voyage come across as an exercise of reinforcing myths, the veneration of a gang of white intellectuals exoticising Berlin’s post-war ruins, Stanley and Wood are careful to bring in other voices. One of the highlights of Fantastic Voyage is the plasmic drift of Brigitte Fontaine and Areski’s “Patriarcat”; another is Isabelle Mayereu’s “On A Trouvé…”, from her chanson curio, Des Mot Étranges…; Grauzone’s “Eisbar” still feels like a beautiful anomaly in the landscape. And that’s the great art of Fantastic Voyage – drawing up new plans that allow different contexts for such strange, glorious architectures.

Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band – Dancing On The Edge

Tyler Wilcox
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Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band – Dancing On The Edge

Sprawl, swagger, poetry and epics

Sprawl, swagger, poetry and epics

It hardly needs saying that we live in an age of ever-shortening attention spans – especially when it comes to music. How dire has the situation got? Well, take the recent New York Times profile of Michael Stipe, wherein The 1975’s Matty Healy tells the ex-REM frontman of an encounter he’d had with a 12-year-old.

“So I said, ‘Well, what songs do you like?’ And he said to me: ‘What full songs?’ That was his response! The decimal point has moved! I didn’t realise that the denomination was now smaller than the song.”

TALKING HEADS ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

In the face of these rapidly diminishing returns, it’s refreshing to sink into a record like Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band’s Dancing On The Edge, a seven-song double LP with a lyric sheet as dense as its striking cover art. With several tunes that creep towards the 10-minute mark, there’s a sprawl and swagger here that not many current songwriters would dare to attempt. And yet Davis isn’t a rambler, really; his songwriting isn’t the stream-of-consciousness blather of a Dylan wannabe or a navel-gazing plumber of the quotidian depths. What’s most impressive about Dancing On The Edge is how he keeps you hanging on every word, savouring his weird wisdom, oddball poetry and wry sense of humour. When one of these humble, vastly entertaining epics comes to a close, you might wish it had gone on even longer.

This is his first album under his own name, but Davis is far from a new kid on the block. The Louisville-based musician released several stellar records under the State Champion moniker; he has played with Tropical Trash and Equipment Pointed Ankh, both well-nigh unclassifiable collectives; he steers the ship at the eclectic Sophomore Lounge label, which has released terrific LPs by Arbor Labor Union, Ned Collette and C Joynes; and in 2010, he co-founded the long-running music festival Cropped Out, bringing a wide array of underground talent to Kentucky over the years. In other words, Davis is a lifer, with a deep well of musical experience and influences to draw upon.

Dancing On The Edge comes five years after State Champion’s Send Flowers, and Davis says that for a while there, he believed he might be done with the sometimes-taxing process of straightforward songwriting, instead focusing on experimental electronic tracks, freeform improvs and visual art. “For the first time in my adult life, I wasn’t thinking about touring or promoting or even any sense of ‘community’ whatsoever,” he reveals. “I just wanted to make new things. Almost obsessively. And the more I sharpened those instinctual tools, the more I slowly started circling back toward the unexpected desire to return to ‘song’ form with a clear and conditioned mind. It certainly didn’t come easy. It was painful, actually.”

That pain has paid off with Davis’ best work so far. And his songwriting sabbatical seems to have provided him with an overarching theme: stasis and the desire to move forward but not knowing how to do so. It’s a portrait of the artist in his late thirties looking wearily down the barrel of middle age. “I’m doing 25-to-life just waiting on a friend to get back from a piss,” Davis sings at the album’s outset. Elsewhere: “I lie awake and I wait quietly for a tax return/To come howling down from the side of a mountain somewhere.” Or, most hilariously, he complains of the purgatory of drinking in a bar where the jukebox “only plays ‘Sultans Of Swing’.”

At first blush, these concerns may not seem like the stuff of a gripping LP, much less a double LP. But the sound that Davis and his collaborators have crafted here gives Dancing On The Edge a buoyancy that carries the listener along beautifully. For example, the album’s 10-minute centrepiece, “Flashes Of Orange”, is a remarkably infectious ride – especially given that it appears to be sung by someone who can’t get out of bed. The alt.country signifiers are here: chiming guitar and piano, pedal steel swells, full-blooded harmonies (provided by fellow Louisvillian Joan Shelley). But the song keeps shifting in unexpected ways, careening into unusual synth breakdowns, left-turning into minor keys, uncovering an almost danceable groove at times. Throughout, Davis comes across like Jay Farrar possessed by the spirit of David Berman. “I’ve seen the sunset, babe, through each and every shade of beer,” our despairing narrator exclaims. “And I can tell you each and every kind of hanging tree that’s native here.” It’s a song that the late, great Berman would’ve been proud to call his own.

Or Kurt Wagner. Or Bill Callahan. Or, hell, even John Prine. Dancing On The Edge is singular and strong enough to put Davis in league with some of the very best American songwriters of the past and present. He’s someone with the originality, wit and ambition to cut through the murk. Someone worth paying attention to.

Can’s Damo Suzuki has died aged 74

Michael Bonner
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Can’s Damo Suzuki has died aged 74

His tenure coincided with the band's most acclaimed releases

His tenure coincided with the band’s most acclaimed releases

Can vocalist Damo Suzuki has died, aged 74.

TALKING HEADS ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

His death was confirmed by the band, who posted on their Instagram today (February 10, 2024):

It is with great sadness that we have to announce the passing of our wonderful friend Damo Suzuki, yesterday, Friday 9th February 2024.
His boundless creative energy has touched so many over the whole world, not just with Can, but also with his all continent spanning Network Tour. Damo’s kind soul and cheeky smile will be forever missed.
He will be joining Michael, Jaki and Holger for a fantastic jam!
Lots of love to his family and children.

Born Kenji Suzuki on January 16, 1950, he left Japan as a teenager, travelling round Europe – where he was spotted busking in Munich by Can’s Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay, who invited him to join them onstage that night.

Suzuki made his debut with Can on “Don’t Turn the Light On, Leave Me Alone” on 1970’s Soundtracks, which also featured two tracks from their recently departed vocalist Malcolm Mooney.

Suzuki went on to appear on the band’s peerless run of early ’70s albums – 1971’s Tago Mago, 1972’s Ege Bamyasi and 1973’s Future Days.

After leaving Can, Suzuki stepped away from music to become a Jehovah’s Witness, returning to music in 1983 with Damo Suzuki’s Network – touring extensively, he would form ad hoc ensembles for each location.

Suzuki’s most recent album Arkaoda was released in 2022. His battle with cancer was the subject of a 2022 documentary, Energy.

Can Live In Paris 1973 is due for release on February 23; it’s the first instalment of the band’s live releases to feature Suzuki on vocals.

Iron & Wine share new track, “You Never Know”

Michael Bonner
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Iron & Wine share new track, “You Never Know”

Sam Beam's new album is coming in April

Sam Beam’s new album is coming in April

Iron & Wine have announced details of a new album, Light Verse, which is due from Sub Pop on April 26.

You can hear a taster for the new album, “You Never Know“, below.

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Light Verse is Sam Beam‘s first full-length Iron & Wine release in over seven years.

The album also features Tyler Chester (keyboards), Sebastian Steinberg (bass), David Garza (guitar), Griffin Goldsmith, Beth Goodfellow, Kyle Crane (all drums/percussion) and Paul Cartwright (strings), while Fiona Apple appears on a duet called “All In Good Time”. 

The tracklisting tor Light Verse is:

You Never Know

Anyone’s Game

All in Good Time (Feat. Fiona Apple)

Cutting It Close

Taken by Surprise

Yellow Jacket

Sweet Talk

Tears that Don’t Matter

Bag of Cats

Angels Go Home

Hear Beth Gibbons’ new track, “Floating On A Moment”

Michael Bonner
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Hear Beth Gibbons’ new track, “Floating On A Moment”

It's taken from her debut solo album, Lives Outgrown

It’s taken from her debut solo album, Lives Outgrown

Beth Gibbons has revealed a new track, “Floating On A Moment”, which you can hear below.

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The song is taken from her debut solo album, Lives Outgrown, which is released by Domino on May 17.

The album was produced by James Ford and Beth Gibbons with additional production by Lee Harris.

The tracklisting for Lives Outgrown is:

Tell Me Who You Are Today 
Floating On A Moment  
Burden Of Life  
Lost Changes  
Rewind  
Reaching Out  
Oceans  
For Sale  
Beyond The Sun  
Whispering Love

Gibbons has also announced a run of tour dates, including three in the UK.

Monday, May 27 – La Salle Pleyel, Paris 
Tuesday, May 28 – Theater 11, Zürich 
Thursday, May 30 – Primavera Sound Festival, Barcelona 
Friday, May 31 – La Bourse Du Travail, Lyon  

Sunday, June 2 – Uber Eats Music Hall, Berlin 
Monday, June 3 – Falkonersalen, Copenhagen 
Wednesday, June 5 – TivoliVredenburg (Main Hall), Utrecht 
Thursday, June 6 – Cirque Royal, Brussels 
Sunday, June 9 – The Barbican Centre, London 
Monday, June 10 – Albert Hall, Manchester 
Tuesday, June 11 – Usher Hall, Edinburgh  

Tickets will be for sale on Friday, February 16, details can be found here.

Aston “Family Man” Barrett dies aged 77

Michael Bonner
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Aston “Family Man” Barrett dies aged 77

We've lost a critical part of the Jamaican reggae scene

We’ve lost a critical part of the Jamaican reggae scene

Aston “Family Man” Barrett, the legendary reggae bass player, has died at the age of 77.

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He died on February 3, in hospital in Florida, after a long medical battle.

Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Barrett was a key figure in the country’s reggae scene. He played in Lee “Scratch” Perry‘s backing band, the Upsetters, before joining Bob Marley and the Wailers, where as bandleader and musical director he played on a string of hits including “Could You Be Loved”, “Get Up Stand Up”, “Jamming”, “No Woman, No Cry” and “I Shot The Sheriff”.

He also appeared on albums by fellow Waiters Peter Tosh (Legalize It) and Bunny Wailer (Blackheart Man) as well as Burning Spear (Marcus Garvey) and Augustus Pablo (East Of The River Nile).

Barrett and mentored younger musicians including bassist Robbie Shakespeare.

IDLES, Slowdive, Lankum, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and more for End Of The Road Festival 2024

Michael Bonner
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IDLES, Slowdive, Lankum, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and more for End Of The Road Festival 2024

Join Uncut and friends in a field

Join Uncut and friends in a field

End Of The Road Festival have announced the line-up for this year’s festival.

IDLES, Slowdive, Fever Ray and Bonnie “Prince” Billy are revealed as this year’s headliners.

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Joining them at End Of The Road’s home in the Larmer Tree Gardens from August 29 – September 1 are Yo La Tengo, Sleater-Kinney, Lankum, Baxter Dury, Jockstrap, Ty Segall (acoustic), Mdou Moctar, The Lemon Twigs and many more.

This sounds like many of your favourite Uncut artists on one festival bill – so we’re absolutely delighted to once again be partnering with End Of The Road.

If you’ve not already picked up tickets, the good news is that limited tickets are still available for the festival, which you can buy by clicking here.

You can read Uncut’s ultimate End Of The Road round-up from last year’s festival here.

Meanwhile, here’s the line-up for this year’s festival:

Fever Ray
IDLES
Slowdive
Bonnie “Prince” Billy
John Talabot
Sleater-Kinney
Yo La Tengo
CASISDEAD
Lankum
Ty Segall
Cornelius
Baxter Dury
Mdou Moctar
Jockstrap
Nation Of Language
CMAT
Camera Obscura
The Lemon Twigs
Bill Ryder-Jones
Sprints
Snõõper
Militarie Gun
Jalen Ngonda
Lip Critic
Florence Adooni
Ichiko Aoba
Mary Lattimore
Cerys Hafana
Blue Lake

Introducing the latest Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide…the Eagles!

John Robinson
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Introducing the latest Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide…the Eagles!

One thing you can be pretty sure the Eagles never did was to take it easy. Though already veterans of several countrywide late 1960s bands from the tail-end of the country rock boom, as you’ll read in this new Deluxe Edition, by the time the original line-up came together at Doug Weston’s Troubadour Club in Los Angeles, they weren’t so much disheartened by what had gone before, more primed and ready to make their next move. 

One thing you can be pretty sure the Eagles never did was to take it easy. Though already veterans of several countrywide late 1960s bands from the tail-end of the country rock boom, as you’ll read in this new Deluxe Edition, by the time the original line-up came together at Doug Weston’s Troubadour Club in Los Angeles, they weren’t so much disheartened by what had gone before, more primed and ready to make their next move. 

In the band’s circle were other promising artists. Linda Ronstadt, with whom they first performed together. John David Souther, who was in a band with Frey. And Jackson Browne, who, like Souther, contributed material to the new group. “Everyone was coming to California, and in the end that was what they were writing about,” Browne told Uncut in just one of the eye-opening archive interviews you’ll find inside this latest Ultimate Music Guide. “That projected dream of what freedom could be. Vacate your assigned positions in life and be what you fucking want.”

Now in the right place at the right time, the Eagles seized their moment. Ambitious musically as well as personally, they were driven by what some called perfectionism, but might more correctly be identified as a desire to maximise their potential. Over their legendary run of albums in the 1970s – reviewed in-depth on the following pages – the band moved from definitively mellow recordings with contributions from each member, through concept albums, and increasingly to a completely unique and widescreen take on the state of their era. Along the way, they touched on ecology, paranoid relationships, hard rock and disco.    

The fact that the Eagles are still playing in 2024 – now on the “Long Goodbye Tour” –  is down to the strength of music made on that run of 1970s albums. In his most recent meeting with Uncut, the band’s driving force, Don Henley, was circumspect on many aspects of the band’s career – but still couldn’t quite get over their decision to reform in 1994, and just how much Eagles music still means. 

“When the Eagles broke up for 14 years, we didn’t know there were so many people who still wanted to see us play,” Don told Andy Gill. “We were just too angry and fed up with each other: ‘I’m not getting onstage with that guy again, no matter how many people want to see us!’ But when we started touring again, we were just flabbergasted at how many people were turning up.”

Enjoy the magazine, and the shows if you’re going. And take it easy, of course. Get your copy here

Nadine Shah – Filthy Underneath

Daniel Dylan Wray
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Nadine Shah – Filthy Underneath

After a hellish few years, versatile songwriter produces her best work to date

After a hellish few years, versatile songwriter produces her best work to date

To say that Nadine Shah has been through a lot since 2020 would be an understatement. On top of a global pandemic, she lost her mother to cancer, got married, attempted suicide, went to rehab and got divorced. All of which is funnelled directly into her latest record. Although it explores pain, death, mental illness and the dizzying process of coming out of all of that, it’s also a record that contains bundles of beauty, tenderness, humour and even joy.

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Made in collaboration with her long-term writing partner Ben Hillier, it is also musically the most varied and exciting album the pair have made together. The opening “Even Light” is driven by an infectious and bouncing bassline that drills into the core of the song as Shah’s voice floats atop, while subtle electronics bubble away and brass-like synth stabs punctuate. It sets the tone for an album that is leaps and bounds above anything else Shah has done before – a record that’s layered and detailed, coated with beautifully rich production, yet also spacious and considered.

Lead single “Topless Mother” is perhaps the track that feels most in keeping with Shah’s previous work, with a whiff of the PJ Harvey and Bad Seeds influence still hovering around, but the song is somewhat of an anomaly. The flurry of drums, crunchy guitars and animated vocal delivery – which, combined, could easily be mistaken for something by the Swedish psych-rock outfit Goat – soon gives way to an album that winds things down rather than cranks them up.

Any familiarities quickly dissipate: “Food Or Fuel”, for instance, absorbs the influence of the Indian disco-jazz-pop artist Asha Puthli, and turns it into a subtle funk strut that is soothing and hypnotising as it locks into its twisting, pulsing rhythm. Shah leans into singing more than ever here, so her voice feels like a vital instrumental force as well as functioning as an intimate and captivating narrator. This is most perfectly embodied on the sprechgesang track “Sad Lads Anonymous”, which sees Shah lashing out generous helpings of self-deprecating humour. “This was a dumb idea, even for you,” she begins, as a gothic groove locks in, and she recalls tales from “the madhouse” along with a preceding spiralling period. It’s brilliantly direct songwriting that is honest and raw but also goes way above the diary entry confessional. The lyrics are dark and anguished but biting, funny and vivid; it almost feels perverse to extract such pleasure from something so clearly rooted in torment and turbulence, but such dichotomies are what gives the album its flair and punch.   

As a whole, guitars take a backseat role here and are generally utilised for adding texture and atmosphere, while synths are plentiful. Itchy, propulsive post-punk-esque rhythms are largely ditched for a more glacial and unfurling pace that gives Shah’s voice room to breathe and soar. On tracks such as “Greatest Dancer” and “Hyperrealism”, her voice sounds truly remarkable. On the former it wraps itself around immersive electronics and a potently hypnotic beat, while the delicate composition of the latter, merging piano and warm blasts of synth, leaves room for a vocal performance that at one point suggests Nina Simone before gliding into something else, sparkling with pristine and devastatingly beautiful elegance.      

The closing track exists as a perfect embodiment of the album and Shah’s approach to tackling the difficult subject matter. Its title, “French Exit”, uses a phrase that means ducking out of a party without saying goodbye to explore her suicide attempt. “Just a French exit/A quiet little way out/Nothing explicit,” she sings over a gentle yet compelling beat that almost recalls Oneohtrix Point Never as it gently builds. It’s a roomy, expansive song that feels quietly haunting and devastating, perhaps even more so because it leaves such space for genuine contemplation as the album ends. It allows you, forces you even, to reflect on the remarkably hard journey this artist has been through, while soaking up the immense beauty that’s been created in its wake. 

The MC5’s Wayne Kramer has died aged 75

Michael Bonner
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The MC5’s Wayne Kramer has died aged 75

Farewell to the guitarist and political activist

Farewell to the guitarist and political activist

Wayne Kramer has died aged 75.

Kramer’s Instagram page announced the news: “Wayne S. Kramer
“PEACE BE WITH YOU” 🕊️ April 30, 1948 – February 2, 2024”

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A second post confirmed, “Wayne Kramer passed away today peacefully from pancreatic cancer. He will be remembered for starting a revolution in music, culture, and kindness.”

Photo: Jim Newberry

Born Wayne Kambes in Detroit, Kramer and friend Fred “Sonic” Smith formed the Motor City Five, shortened to the MC5, in the mid-’60s. The group eventually solidified around Kramer, Smith and frontman Rob Tyner, drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson and bassist Michael Davis.

Managed by political activist and White Panther Party leader John Sinclair, the MC5 became house band at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom in 1967. The following year, the band took part in an anti-war protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They also signed to Elektra in 1968 and recorded their debut album, Kick Out the Jams, live at the Grande Ballroom on October 30 and 31, 1968.

Broke, harassed and suffering from drug problems, MC5 eventually split up in 1972 – then in 1975, Kramer was convicted of selling drugs to undercover federal agents, and spent four years in prison.

The Clash paid tribute to Kramer’s time inside on “Jail Guitar Doors” – the title of which became the name of a non-profit organisation he co-founded with his wife and manager Margaret Saadi Kramer and Billy Bragg in the mid-2000s.

After his release from prison in 1979, Kramer joined Was (Not Was), but it wasn’t until the 1990s that he emerged as a solo artist, releasing his debut album, The Hard Stuff, in 1995.

Kramer revived the MC5 first in 2018 and again in 2022. He was working on a new MC5 album, which also featured Dennis Thompson, among other guests.

“This album continues from where [1971’s] High Time left off, in that I think it’s artists’ responsibility to reflect the times they’re going through,” he told Uncut. “We made an album that is in sync with the challenges we’re facing today, and that carries a positive message.”

As well as his solo and soundtrack work, Kramer wrote a memoir, The Hard Stuff, which was published in 2018.

According to Kramer’s Instagram account, “If you would like to honor Wayne, donations are appreciated to his nonprofit organization, Jail Guitar Doors @jailguitardoorsusa”

Take a look inside the new Uncut

Michael Bonner
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Take a look inside the new Uncut

This must be the place! Talking Heads, Kim Gordon, the Waterboys and Phosphorescent star in our latest issue

This must be the place! Talking Heads, Kim Gordon, the Waterboys and Phosphorescent star in our latest issue

As you’ll have gathered by now, there’s a new issue of Uncut currently in shops, featuring a cavalcade of excellent new interviews and features as well as our definitive reviews section and a free, 15-track CD.

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Here’s a rundown of some highlights from the new issue…

TALKING HEADS

When TALKING HEADS reunited briefly last September, it both reaffirmed their unparalleled status as art-rock pioneers and drew a line under their complicated history. As the band prepare to reissue their influential run of albums, DAVID BYRNE, JERRY HARRISON, TINA WEYMOUTH and CHRIS FRANTZ – accompanied by a handful of collaborators, contemporaries and admirers – talk us through 30 of their greatest songs, charting an innovative musical journey from the twitchy minimalism of their early recordings to the expansive, panglobal alchemy of their imperial phase. “We weren’t going to adopt the traditional rock’n’roll stances,” Byrne tells Sam Richards. “So we thought, in our own modest way, we’ll do something that speaks to us…”

KIM GORDON

With an urgent new album, The Collective, tackling connectivity, communication and consumerism in the modern world, KIM GORDON continues to push her creative boundaries to their limit. But back in her old stomping ground of New York, she takes April Long on a tour of her former neighbourhood – to discover how her earliest musical experiments intersect with her present day adventures. “I never expected to be making music in the first place,” she confides.

PHOSPHORESCENT

Despite finding peace and stability with his young family, Matthew Houck – the creative force behind PHOSPHORESCENT – still agonizes over his intensely melancholic music. As his first album in six years surveys both his hellraising past and becalmed present, Houck guides Uncut round his Nashville haunts in search of answers. “The sign of a good record is that weird panic attack you have once it’s done,” he confesses to Stephen Deusner.

THE WATERBOYS

With This Is The Sea, MIKE SCOTT’s restless musical quest finally came into focus. As a new 6CD box set illuminates the spirit of his Big Music, Scott revisits the inspiration and perfectionism behind THE WATERBOYS’ first great album. Stand by for cameos from Tom Verlaine and Bob Dylan, outdoing U2 and a witch’s book of spells. “I was full with the music,” learns Graeme Thomson.

JOHN FAHEY

65 years on from his trail-blazing debut album Blind Joe Death, JOHN FAHEY’s influence looms larger than ever. From his acoustic voyages to his latter-day noise-rock experiments, he brought a fearless, if often offbeat, sensibility to his music. Here, friends and acolytes help Tom Pinnock uncover the truth behind this contrary artist’s life and career. “Even at his lowest ebb,” we hear, “Fahey found ways to reinvent himself.”

ROSALI

From bluegrass to free improv, power punk and beyond, ROSALI has refused to be pigeonholed. But with a new album, Bite Down, full of country-tinged folk and inventive guitar jams, Brian Howe meets the singer-songwriter in North Carolina to explore her many creative selves. “I know how to do this stuff, because I’ve been doing it forever,” she reveals.

AN AUDIENCE WITH… MICHAEL MOORCOCK

The sci-fi titan and Hawkwind collaborator recalls encounters with Bowie, Siouxsie and a saxplaying, stage-diving frog

Paul McCartney & Wings – Band On The Run “Underdubbed” Mixes Edition

Pete Paphides
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Paul McCartney & Wings – Band On The Run “Underdubbed” Mixes Edition

Fifty years on, Macca’s miracle continues to define his essence

Fifty years on, Macca’s miracle continues to define his essence

Context always matters, but in the case of Band On The Run – celebrating its 50th birthday with this expanded half-speed remaster and a stripped-back companion version – it’s the difference between a great album and a mythical one. Context matters because Band On The Run is an album whose essence is inseparable from the superhuman act of determination to which it owes its existence. The origin story has long passed into rock lore: Paul and Linda McCartney’s decision to utilise an EMI-owned studio in Nigeria that turned out to be only half-built when they arrived; an ominous visit from Fela Kuti who was convinced that Paul and Linda were here to “steal” African music; the knifepoint theft of personal belongings, among them demos and lyrics that forced McCartney to re-create them from memory; and a fainting episode (initially thought to be a heart attack). Indeed, it started before they even boarded the plane – the eleventh-hour withdrawal of drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Henry McCullough meant the version of Wings which made it to Lagos was barely a group, with Denny Laine the only remaining member outside of Paul and Linda. 

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McCartney, of course, responded as only McCartney can, his militant optimism abundant in a title track which exhorts its participants to do little short of shrug off their predicament and revel in the legend being created by their leader in real time: “In the town they’re searching for us everywhere/But we never will be found.” In this moment alone, you can apprehend the measure of McCartney’s determination to show his ex-bandmates just what they were missing, even electing to play the drum parts himself. In a 2009 interview with Dermot O’Leary, McCartney admitted, “I was like, ‘Screw you – I’m gonna make an album you were gonna wish you were on.’”

If this was indeed the mission statement established at the outset of the sessions, no song on Band On The Run authenticates that manifesto quite as exquisitely as “Mamunia”. Ostensibly about the rain in Los Angeles, here’s McCartney leading by example, exhorting us to take succour from the bigger picture: “The rain comes falling from the sky/To fill the stream that fills the sea/And that’s where life began for you and me.”

In 1973, this bloodymindedness was something he could access at will, almost as a party trick. “Picasso’s Last Words” is what happened when a starstruck Dustin Hoffman challenged McCartney to write a song in front of him – and its air of sweet, stoned equanimity extends to two other key songs. The first, “Mrs Vandebilt”, is a zen repudiation of a protagonist who, in his 2021 book The Lyrics, McCartney said personified “the bothersome aspects of being rich”. And while cynics may contend that’s easy for him to say, it’s worth remembering that just three years previously, he’d been a Beatle in exile, assets frozen, living a frugal existence with Linda and their kids in a dilapidated Scottish farmhouse. Every word has been earned.

Then there’s “Bluebird”, on which he exhorts his subject, “Touch your lips with a magic kiss/And you’ll be a bluebird too/And you’ll know what love can do” – and because it’s impossible not to make these comparisons, you can’t help but feel for John Lennon, who not so long ago had been straining every sinew to project the conjugal idyll that Paul achieves here so effortlessly. It’s also Lennon to whom your thoughts turn on “Let Me Roll It”, thanks to that exquisitely crunchy riff and the echo on McCartney’s voice. But here it’s the thermal upswell of Linda’s keyboard that raises the temperature and releases endorphins that make you feel this surely deserved to be more than just a B-side. No disputing the song which was chosen on its A-side, of course: “Jet” is the reason why McCartney is the deity to whom every power pop practitioner in his wake prays. If you’re not already playing American football stadiums when you write a song like that, then it’ll certainly fast-track you to that point.

Which, of course, is exactly the trajectory that opened up for Wings in the years after Band On The Run. It’s a paradoxical record: one where the loss of two members magnifies both their sound and their place in the pop firmament. What this latest iteration of the album drives home is that this was no mere accident. The “underdubbed” versions accompanying this reissue reveal that, before arriving at George Martin’s AIR studios to finish the job, the Lagos sessions weren’t so different to the homespun intimacy of the Wings albums that preceded them. In this sparer setting, the extra space plays to the benefit of McCartney’s loyal co-travellers: “No Words”, which serves reminder just how vital the harmonies of Linda and the song’s co-writer Denny Laine were when it came to defining the Wings sound; Linda’s purring ARP Odyssey and MiniMoog contributions are what suddenly take centrestage on “Jet” and a rollicking vocal-free canter through “Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five”.

Yet, none of that detracts from the primary energy source of Band On The Run. To listen to the album in the wake of Peter Jackson’s Get Back is to be reminded that this is the same man who, when faced with a group floundering despondently in an alien environment, strapped on his guitar and throttled “Get Back” out of it before our disbelieving eyes. In the wake of Denny Laine’s recent passing, one can only imagine what a bittersweet sensation it must be for McCartney to look at the album’s multi-celebrity jailbreak cover and ponder that he and (then British light-heavyweight UK boxing champion) John Conteh are now the sole survivors. And over time, these songs – the bullet points of an entire worldview, no less – will outlive us all. In decades to come, when people wonder what Paul McCartney was actually like, all of the answers can be found on this unassumingly miraculous record.

Hawkwind announce new studio album, Stories From Time And Space

Michael Bonner
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Hawkwind announce new studio album, Stories From Time And Space

It's their 36th studio album

It’s their 36th studio album

Hawkwind have announced details of their 36th studio album – Stories From Time And Space.

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It’s landing on April 5 on double LP, CD, download and on streaming platforms and stars Dave Brock, Richard Chadwick, Magnus Martin, Doug MacKinnon and Tim “Thighpaulsandra” Lewis.

Stories From Time And Space follows their 2023 album The Future Never Waits.

The track listing is: 
Our Lives Can’t Last Forever
The Starship (One Love One Life)
What Are We Going To Do While We’re Here
The Tracker
Eternal Light
Till I Found You
Underwater City
The Night Sky
Traveller of Time & Space
Re-generate
The Black Sea
Frozen In Time
Stargazers

You can read an interview with Hawkwind collaborator Michael Moorcock in the new issue of Uncut – on sale now!

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