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Are The Avalanches releasing new music?

Charlotte Treadaway
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Are The Avalanches releasing new music?
This would be the band’s first new release since their cover of Judy Garland’s Get Happy in 2013, which was for the Australian stage version of King Kong. A new album would be their first since Since I Left You in 2000. The image shows a gold butterfly on black material. It can be viewed on the...

This would be the band’s first new release since their cover of Judy Garland’s Get Happy in 2013, which was for the Australian stage version of King Kong. A new album would be their first since Since I Left You in 2000.

The image shows a gold butterfly on black material. It can be viewed on their Facebook, Twitter and their new Instagram page.

Listen to Frontier Psychiatrist here:

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

 

Reviewed! Lush, Oslo, London, April 11, 2016

Michael Bonner
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Reviewed! Lush, Oslo, London, April 11, 2016
“Fucking hell, this is exhausting,” says Miki Berenyi, four songs into Lush’s first gig for almost 20 years. This is, perhaps, not the most auspicious way to celebrate her band’s comeback; but, then, there was always something a little self-deprecating about Lush. During the band’s heyday ...

“Fucking hell, this is exhausting,” says Miki Berenyi, four songs into Lush’s first gig for almost 20 years. This is, perhaps, not the most auspicious way to celebrate her band’s comeback; but, then, there was always something a little self-deprecating about Lush. During the band’s heyday in the late Eighties/early Nineties, Berenyi – along with her co-conspirators, Emma Anderson, drummer Chris Acland and bassist Phil King – carried themselves in a likable, slightly larkish manner. They made sparkling, opulent records; but behaved as if they couldn’t quite believe the were among the hottest bands of the period. There was an ineffable, held-together-with-gaffer-tape charm to Lush which, it seems, still remains two decades since they last played together.

That Lush have returned at all seems partly a pragmatic decision, partly an emotional one. They can’t help but have noticed the recent success enjoyed by contemporaries Slowdive and Ride, who reformed in 2014 and 2015. But it also seems likely that they are keen to honour the memory of Acland, who committed suicide in October 1996. You suspect there is some trepidation – residual or otherwise – in playing this material for the first time without him. As it transpires, former Elastica drummer Justin Welch acquits himself well.

In the years since Lush formally announced their split – in February 1997 – the individual members have had different degrees of involvement in music. Guitarist/vocalist Anderson played in Sing Sing for ten years while King has juggled his commitments as picture researcher for Uncut with duties in the Jesus And Mary Chain. His predecessor, Steve Rippon, appears to have entirely retired from music. Berenyi, meanwhile, disappeared from the spotlight. Considering such circumstances, they are in commendably excellent shape. Gathered before a supportive audience at Oslo – a 300-capacity bar/eaterie/venue in Hackney – for a warm-up show ahead of this weekend’s Coachella festival, their set reminds us of their distinct charms.

Lush occupied a hazy middle-ground that was neither straight pop nor as experimental as some of their fellow 4AD signings. The sheets of feedback that dominated their early recordings – and is evident tonight on “Deluxe”, “Breeze” and “Scarlet” – were always complimentary to Berenyi and Anderson’s serene vocal harmonies. Lush were never as harsh or idiosyncratic as, say, the Cocteau Twins, or as dense and amorphous as Slowdive.

Instead, many of their best songs – “Thoughtforms”, “Sweetness And Light”, both of which are standouts at Oslo – were built around cascading melodies that motored them forward. It’s easy to forget how strong their forays into ‘proper’ songs are, too. Tonight’s tremendous, propulsive version of “Ladykillers” presents a tantalizing what if? scenario, where it is possible to speculate how successful they might have been had not Britpop swaggered along and, to all intents and purposes, spoilt the party for Lush and many of their peers. The new song, “Out Of Control“, meanwhile, sounds satisfyingly like the band picking up from where they left off.

Berenyi is still a confident stage presence, whether mock-apologising for no longer having trademark red hair or responding to good humoured audience banter. Despite having barely been on stage for the last 20 years, she seems remarkably unphased by tonight. Anderson, meanwhile, is a more stoical presence; silent save for singing harmonies. Contrarily, they don’t play “Single Girl” – their joint biggest chart hit – but instead their encore climaxes with the harsh squall of “Leaves Me Cold” and the dreamy refrain of “Monochrome”. Both represent the dual qualities of Lush: a fine return, then.

Oslo, April 11, 2016 set list:
De-Luxe
Breeze
Kiss Chase
Hypocrite
Lovelife
Thoughtforms
Light From A Dead Star
Untogether
Lit up
Etherial
Scarlet
For Love
Out Of Control
Ladykillers
Downer
Sweetness And Light

Encore:
Stray
Desire Lines
Leaves Me Cold
Monochrome

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

Photo: Stuart Jones

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Introducing our Rolling Stones Ultimate Music Guide

John Mulvey
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Introducing our Rolling Stones Ultimate Music Guide
Plenty been going on while I've been away on holiday, it seems, not least the auspicious opening of the Rolling Stones' Exhibitionism show that Michael reviewed last week. In the second room of the show at London's Saatchi Gallery, Michael reports, "The history of the Stones is played out across 72 ...

Plenty been going on while I’ve been away on holiday, it seems, not least the auspicious opening of the Rolling Stones’ Exhibitionism show that Michael reviewed last week. In the second room of the show at London’s Saatchi Gallery, Michael reports, “The history of the Stones is played out across 72 screens. The footage begins and ends with fans screaming. It hits the familiar beats: drugs bust, Brian, Altamont. ‘First you shock them, then they put you in a museum,’ says the young Jagger, with one eye firmly on the future.”

A good time, then, for us to produce one of our deluxe Ultimate Music Guides, with a lavish update of the volume dedicated to The Rolling Stones. The mag goes on sale in the UK this Thursday, but you’ll be able to order our Stones Ultimate Music Guide from our online shop sooner. In it, you’ll find a definitive survey of the band’s storied career, told with the aid of in-depth reviews of every Stones album and a wealth of interviews from the archives of NME, Melody Maker and Uncut. “At the moment and for the next 10 years I’m happy,” Keith Richard (as he was known then) announces in 1964. “Whether it will last, I don’t know.”

Our 148 pages act as testament to the fact that the Stones did what no-one, 50 years ago, thought was possible: make an engrossing lifelong career out of the uncertain, possibly ephemeral business of being in a rock’n’roll band. That this music has been sustained for so long – become embedded in our culture, even – is due, in an enormous amount, to The Rolling Stones. It’s not just the excellence of their music, or their business genius. No, The Rolling Stones set a template for rock’n’roll that was much bigger than music. Rock’n’roll was inexorably hooked up with sex and drugs. It articulated adolescent rage, rebellion, boredom and pettiness better than any other art form. It at least pretended to be dirty, provocative, confusing, not a little menacing.

And it found its purest embodiment in their skinny, uptight white bodies. The Beatles might have been charming, easier to assimilate and, perhaps, musically superior. But the Stones were far more successful at capitalising on the principle of a counterculture. They were A Threat. Five young men who were taken to court for urinating in the street, who were regarded with fear and despair by right-thinking parents and who, with the canny assistance of their manager until 1967, Andrew Loog Oldham, made nastiness marketable. What could be easier to pull off and yet so radical, so appealing and so lucrative?

“I always imagined The Rolling Stones lasting, one was just not aware of in which form,” Oldham told me in 2002, from his home in Bogota, Colombia. “They were very professional and dedicated from the first moment. I told them who they were and they became it. They wore the bad boy tag like a suit of armour, and drew a veil over how professional they really were.”

It’s strange how a desire to do whatever you want can pan out. One of the most radical innovations of The Rolling Stones is that, with every day of their continuing existence, they force us to look at ageing in a new light: they aren’t merely dallying with the affectations of youth, they’re staying loyal to the tenets of a youth culture – a look-at-me decadence, a rebel theatre, an idiosyncratic style – that they helped to invent. As Exhibitionism draws attention to them once again, plenty of people will call The Rolling Stones a travesty of their former selves. But really, they’re perpetuating their legend, not debasing it. For if one of their principles is that rock’n’roll is innate, a calling, then it’s necessary for them to be seen to pursue it until the absolute end. They’re the proof that this music refuses to fade away, in spite of how transient it has appeared at times over the past 50 years.

They’re a band that demand analysis – and God knows we’re offering you plenty of that in our Ultimate Music Guide – but simultaneously transcend it: there’s only so much you can intellectualise about something so immediate and, still, exhilarating.

“It’s ‘orrible to be the Grand Old Men,” Jagger told Melody Maker in, yes, 1972. “If all this talk gets any worse I’ll be getting another band…”

Margo Price – Midwest Farmer’s Daughter

Laura Snapes
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Margo Price – Midwest Farmer’s Daughter
In 2015, country music had an identity crisis. Stetson or snapback? 'Authentic' or 'real'? Were breakthrough artists like Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton and Kacey Musgraves even country, or Americana? What was Americana, actually? An industry consultant called female artists the unwanted 'tomatoe...

In 2015, country music had an identity crisis. Stetson or snapback? ‘Authentic’ or ‘real’? Were breakthrough artists like Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton and Kacey Musgraves even country, or Americana? What was Americana, actually? An industry consultant called female artists the unwanted ‘tomatoes’ of country radio’s ‘salad’; were you pro-lettuce or pro-tomato? If the latter, did you prefer bad girls, good girls or burnouts? And at its most basic, what did the critical distinction between ‘good country’ and ‘bad country’ real boil down to? Art, or a nastier comment on class?

Margo Price is the first country artist to sign to Jack White‘s Third Man Records, a starry indie precedent that will definitely stoke this tedious debate. “Margo is here to save us all from the Starbucking of America,” the label declared, provocatively. Based in Nashville, Third Man are credited with restoring the city’s reputation for rock, although White’s country credentials are well enshrined: he was inducted into the city’s Walk of Fame last summer alongside former collaborator Loretta Lynn, and his love of female country voices was obvious from 2001, when The White Stripes covered Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. What does it mean that this relative newcomer, situated 1.5 miles from the city’s famed Music Row, is now brewing the local malt?

Price’s excellent debut wastes absolutely no energy trying to address her place in the country music ecosystem, and gets right to telling us who she is, rather than who she ain’t (a dispiriting trope in the genre’s identity wars). The title of Midwest Farmer’s Daughter evokes Lynn’s proud Coal Miner’s Daughter appellation, and is a plainspoken nod to Price’s own origins. It’s backed up by opener “Hands Of Time”, a capsule retelling of her hardscrabble life, which sounds almost improbably like the subject of a country song. She was born in small town Illinois; her dad lost the family farm when she was two, and went to work in a prison. Price quit college for Nashville, got exploited by sleazy managers, fell in with the wrong crowd and went to jail more than once. She worked humdrum jobs and eventually met her husband, who was already married. They formed the roots band Buffalo Clover, made a few albums, toured Britain and the US; they would routinely sell their possessions and try to leave town on tour (or otherwise), only to wind up back there again. Once settled, they had twins, but the firstborn died of a rare heart defect, and Price self-medicated to cope.

“Hands Of Time” is immensely graceful and stoic: Price recounts her story over tentative stand-up bass and subtle, shifting beds of strings and Fender Rhodes. Then the chorus hits, and she lets rip like her former bandmate Sturgill Simpson on “The Promise”, pushing her high, twangy voice to its fullest cinematic potential as she faces the future. “’Cause all I wanna do is make my own path/’Cause I know what I am, I know what I have/I wanna buy back the farm/And bring my mama home some wine/And turn back the clock on the cruel hands of time.” Her fortitude sets the tone for Midwest, which seldom wallows. There are a couple of ballads, and a few rounds of heavy sorrow-drowning, but their vibe is mostly, “well, your loss.” Instead, Price establishes that she knows the dignity a little money can bring, but very quickly makes clear that she cherishes her self-worth too much to trade it for success.

There’s some country music insider baseball here, though it’s not bitter; more pitying of an exploitative industry’s silly games and how they pale next to everything else Price has been through. “You wouldn’t know class if it bit you in the ass,” she sings at some bigwig on “About To Find Out”, an intoxicating slice of woozy honky-tonk. She ups the pace and adopts Dolly-style flair to twist the knife on “This Town Gets Around”, which exposes Nashville’s corrupt power structures: “It’s not who you know, but it’s who you blow that’ll put you in the show/And if that’s not the case, I hear you pay ’em,” she sings, upping the ante of Kacey Musgraves’ “Good Old Boys’ Club”. “But I don’t come easy and I’m flat broke/So I guess it’s me that gets the joke.”

Price is a comic lyricist who does a fine flipped country cliché: “Maybe I’d be smarter if I played dumb,” she sings on “This Town”, and on the yawping, boozy romp “Hurtin’ (On The Bottle)”, she observes, “You’re never too old to learn to crawl.” But most of the infectious fun of Midwest comes from the festive arrangements and Price’s almighty delivery. She and her sizeable band recorded at Memphis’ Sun Studios, and Midwest brings verve to tradition, inhabiting ballads and gritty ragers with striking, supple arrangements. “Tennessee Song” has the woozy outlaw feel of recent Hiss Golden Messenger, while the flinching “How The Mighty Have Fallen” sounds like the work of a regal ’60s girl group. “Weekender” is the least distinctive song musically, but Price’s account of mayhem at the county jail is spirited and unapologetic.

Her voice is the record’s real star: controlled, infectious, and rich with enviable natural twang. On “Four Years Of Chances”, Stevie Wonder-indebted Rhodes underpins Price’s shift from cool suspicion towards an ex who didn’t recognise what he had, to belting admonishment. She wavers at the start of acoustic closer “World’s Greatest Loser”, but quickly finds herself as a tremulous, lonesome balladeer a la Karen Dalton. Whichever mode, she absolutely sells every word, whether sung from the top of the world, the bottom of the bottle or the hard-won half-full spot in between. Midwest Farmer’s Daughter is never preachy, and outside of its obvious villains, is uninterested in questions of good or bad. Just like the genre she inhabits, Price is too resilient and timeless to get bogged down in that stuff. As she sings over the sleepy walking bass of “Since You Put Me Down”, “Even if I fall from grace, I’m gonna land back on the ground.”

Q&A
MARGO PRICE
When did music become your calling?
I got my first guitar after middle school graduation and started to pick out songs. Around 18, 19, I really started to practice every day, writing my own stuff. When I was about to enrol for my third year of college I ended up dropping out and moving to Nashville.

Why the move?
I came down for Spring Break. I loved it so much that I began looking for an apartment. I started going to the writers’ rounds and the clubs. I had maybe planned on going back to school and doing something with songwriting, but after I got here, I realised that I was getting a good education through real life experiences.

But soon people start screwing you over…
I was trying to figure out how to make money. I met a gentleman who seemed very well connected – he worked with the Dixie Chicks. He had a huge studio, so I went up there. He put something in my drink. It became really frightening. I was really lucky I got out without getting hurt.

Didn’t you move to Colorado to live in a tent?
Yes. My husband and I had been floundering, working lots of dead-end jobs. We felt really defeated by Nashville, so we sold everything and decided to try another city. He knew of this abandoned road you could camp on for free. We would busk until we had enough money for food and wine, then start again the next day. You tire of showering at the YMCA, and it started getting cold, so we came back to Nashville. It was a good adventure. We stayed about a month and a half.

Is that what “Tennessee Song” is about?
Less that time, but we had left a couple other times as well. It’s this long-running joke that no matter what we do, if we try to leave, we end up back in Nashville. There’s a love-hate I think that goes along with it, especially when you’re failing in the music business.

You sing about a jail spell in “Weekender”. What did you do?
I’ve been to jail more than once, but when I wrote that song it was just a weekend – I wrote it there. To protect my grandmother, I’ll say no comment. I was running around with the wrong people late at night, acting a little recklessly.

How long did it take to make this album?
For several years I had wanted to make a country record. I had the songs but not the financial means. The time came that I knew I had to get them out, about three years ago.

You’ve described it as a concept album about your life.
I decided to write very honestly, and then when I looked at all of the songs, I realised how personal they were. It was really strange to realise that I had done that on accident. I’m glad I did.

You’ve said before that it’s hard for you to be that vulnerable. What drew it out?
There’s other people who have had some of the same struggles I have had: I know other musicians who can relate to being pushed around; and regarding losing my son, and how that affected me. I wanna be able to give back.

Which albums did that for you?
I love Willie Nelson’s Phases And Stages, there’s so many songs from The Band and Bob Dylan that have gotten me through hard times, like “Tears Of Rage”. I love Karen Dalton’s In My Own Time, and Skip James.

What took you to Memphis to record?
I had recorded at so many different Nashville studios, and I think it goes back to me feeling like I didn’t belong here. We happened to be travelling through Memphis on our way to Texas and stopped to do Sun’s guided tour. I really felt the magic.

Do you still feel like an outcast in Nashville?
Not really. I feel like people respect what I’m doing. That’s a really nice feeling. I’ve found my home: Third Man is just a little ways off Music Row – not a great part of town, but everything about it feels right.

You’ve said they didn’t want you to change anything about the record. Did other labels want to mould you?
One label wanted to add more rock and soul. I had just done that with a band, it wasn’t working for me. A couple really large labels had me in. I would meet these women who seemed completely perplexed by what I was doing: “You’re not a hillbilly, but you play real country music?” Third Man were really happy that it was recorded at Sun, that it was analogue.

You have your Opry debut soon. What does that mean to you?
I’ve dreamed about this my whole life, it’s pretty surreal. I’m really glad my grandmothers are around and will get to witness it. They both instilled a huge love of country music in me.

INTERVIEW: LAURA SNAPES

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Brian Wilson announces new autobiography

Michael Bonner
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Brian Wilson announces new autobiography
Brian Wilson has announced details of his new autobiography. I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir will be published on October 11 by De Capo Press. This is Wilson's second I autobiography following 1991's Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story. The book was written in collaboration with Ben Greenman who has pr...

Brian Wilson has announced details of his new autobiography.

I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir will be published on October 11 by De Capo Press.

This is Wilson’s second I autobiography following 1991’s Wouldn’t It Be Nice: My Own Story.

The book was written in collaboration with Ben Greenman who has previously worked with George Clinton and Questlove of the Roots on their memoirs.

You can read Uncut’s exclusive interview with Brian Wilson in our new issue, available in UK stores and to buy digitally

An excerpt of the book was released to Pitchfork, in it he says:

“Other people can talk about my life. Sometimes they’ll get it right and sometimes they’ll get it wrong. For me, when I think back across my own life, there are so many things that are painful. Sometimes I don’t like discussing them. Sometimes I don’t even like remembering them. But as I get older, the shape of that pain has changed. Sometimes memories come back to me when I least expect them.”

“Maybe that’s the only way it works when you’ve lived the life I’ve lived: starting a band with my brothers that was managed by my father, watching my father become difficult and then impossible, watching myself become difficult and then impossible, watching women I loved come and go, watching children come into the world, watching my brothers get older, watching them pass out of the world.”

Brian Wilson will be touring the UK with his Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary tour. Capital/UMe will be releasing the album as a deluxe reissue on June 10.

The Beach Boys: The Ultimate Music Guide is in UK shops now and available to buy online: click here for more details

Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary tour dates are:

May 15 – Bristol Colston Hall
May 17 – Birmingham Symphony Hall
May 18 – Cardiff St Davids Hall
May 20-21 – The London Palladium
May 24 – Manchester O2 Apollo
May 26 – Edinburgh Usher Hall
May 27 – Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
May 29 – Gateshead Sage
May 31 – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
June 1 – Nottingham Royal Concert Hall

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Hear The National, Grizzly Bear members cover The Grateful Dead’s “Terrapin Station (Suite)”

Michael Bonner
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Hear The National, Grizzly Bear members cover The Grateful Dead’s “Terrapin Station (Suite)”
Members of The National and Grizzly Bear have revealed their cover of the Grateful Dead's track, "Terrapin Station (Suite)". The song was premiered on SiriusXM’s Grateful Dead Channel by The National members Aaron Dessner and Scott Devendorf (April 10). For the new version of the song, the Dessn...

Members of The National and Grizzly Bear have revealed their cover of the Grateful Dead‘s track, “Terrapin Station (Suite)“.

The song was premiered on SiriusXM’s Grateful Dead Channel by The National members Aaron Dessner and Scott Devendorf (April 10).

For the new version of the song, the Dessner brothers collaborated with Daniel Rossen and Christopher Bear of Grizzly Bear. They also enlisted the help of Josh Kaufman, Conrad Doucette and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

The song is from the compilation album, Day Of The Dead, which is a tribute to the Grateful Dead. Proceeds from the album are benefitting the Red Hot Organisation, helping fight against AIDS/HIV and related issues around the world.

You can read more about this amazing project in the new issue of Uncut, on sale now

The album, Day of the Dead, will be released on May 20. Music from the album will be played at the second annual Eaux Claires Festival on August 12-13 in Eaux Claire, Wisconsin.

Listen to “Terrapin Station (Suite)” here:

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Radiohead reportedly filmed new music video with Paul Thomas Anderson

Charlotte Treadaway
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Radiohead reportedly filmed new music video with Paul Thomas Anderson
Radiohead have reportedly shot a new music video with director Paul Thomas Anderson. According to author and stand-up comedienne Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, the band filmed part of the new video at her house in Los Angeles. According to Fact, she revealed this in a new episode of podcast For Crying Out...

Radiohead have reportedly shot a new music video with director Paul Thomas Anderson. According to author and stand-up comedienne Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, the band filmed part of the new video at her house in Los Angeles.

According to Fact, she revealed this in a new episode of podcast For Crying Out Loud, “So I’m at home and there’s a knock at the door… there’s a guy with a clipboard. I came to the door with a scowl on my face and the guy says, ‘hey, we’re in the neighbourhood, we’re going to be shooting a music video.’… Then the guy goes – ‘it’s Radiohead!’ I can’t tell you anything about it.” She goes on to say she met Anderson the following day after he visited her house.

Anderson has worked with Jonny Greenwood previously on the soundtracks for There Will Be Blood, The Master and Inherent Vice.

Radiohead will be going on tour in support of their upcoming ninth album. They will play the following dates:

May 20-21 – Amsterdam: Heineken Music Hall
May 23-24 – Paris: Le Zenith
May 26-28 – London: The Roundhouse
July 26-27 – New York: Madison Square Garden
August 4, 8 – Los Angeles: Shrine Auditorium
October 3-4 – Mexico City: Palacio De Los Deportes

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

David Bowie’s signed sheet music to be auctioned off for charity

Charlotte Treadaway
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David Bowie’s signed sheet music to be auctioned off for charity
Sheet music signed by David Bowie for the song Blue Jean is currently up for auction online. The item comes in a display frame alongside two photographs of Bowie. You can bid for the sheet music and photographs via new online charity auction website eSolidar. The auction is live for three weeks. ...

Sheet music signed by David Bowie for the song Blue Jean is currently up for auction online.

The item comes in a display frame alongside two photographs of Bowie.

You can bid for the sheet music and photographs via new online charity auction website eSolidar.

The auction is live for three weeks.

This online auction is designed to help promote , Rumble in the Jumble, a celebrity jumble sale that takes place on May 9 at Oval Space in East London.

Proceeds from the auction will go towards establishing gender equality in Myanmar, heralded by Oxfam. Other items on sale include a pair of Elton John’s sunglasses.

Organisers The Music Circle are part of Annie Lennox’s The Circle, a charity working alongside Oxfam to bring about change in society in Myanmar and increasing women’s political representation in the region.

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Richmond Fontaine – You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To

Allan Jones
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Richmond Fontaine – You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To
Richmond Fontaine did the orphaned Americana thing better than anyone on 2004’s Post To Wire, an album that visited the unlit places where people end up when they’re abandoned and adrift. You’d be inclined call it a career high if the records that followed weren’t just as good. The Fitzgeral...

Richmond Fontaine did the orphaned Americana thing better than anyone on 2004’s Post To Wire, an album that visited the unlit places where people end up when they’re abandoned and adrift. You’d be inclined call it a career high if the records that followed weren’t just as good. The Fitzgerald (2005), Thirteen Cities (2007) and We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River (2009) were similarly vivid examples of the brilliantly pared-down storytelling that had become songwriter Willy Vlautin’s speciality, his songs across these albums unflinching narratives about the washed-up, lonely and hopeless.

Willy’s world in these songs was full of suicidal drunks, beat-up wives, teenage runaways, down-at-heel drifters, degenerate gamblers on endless losing streaks, threadbare hustlers. The kind of people, in other words, who have to check their own pulse from time to time to make sure they’re not dead, whose lives or what’s left of them have become as stricken as the kind of country songs no-one wants to hear anymore because nobody wants to feel that sad.

The band’s hot streak only cooled with 2011’s The High Country, an austere song-cycle whose bleak outlook carried with it a hint of finality, the sense that Willy had reached the end of a particular road with Richmond Fontaine. Willy was a prize-winning novelist by then, his books carrying eye-catching endorsements from George Pelecanos and Donna Tartt. A new career as a full-time writer plausibly beckoned.

Instead, Vlautin formed a new band, The Delines, the songs on their 2014 album, Colfax, written as a showcase for the terrific voice of Amy Boone, singer with Austin’s The Damnations. Willy’s own frail voice is a limited thing, marvellous on a certain kind of song, and writing for a more dynamic and versatile singer he seemed revitalised. The album was the richest and most diverse collection of songs he’d composed to date. The stalwart country rock of so many great Richmond Fontaine tracks was largely intact, but there were glorious country soul excursions that Boone essayed with a panache way beyond Vlautin’s faltering range.

Talking to Uncut when the album came out, Willy was adamant, however, that we hadn’t heard the last of Richmond Fontaine, that he’d written a new batch of songs for the band, who were even then rehearsing them. Which brings us to You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To, whose release has been preceded by the news that it will be their last. As such, it’s a more poignant epitaph to their fine career than the dour and sometimes impenetrable The High Country. There’s a lot of familiar heartache here on songs like “Wake Up Ray”, about a marriage coming desperately apart in a small Montana town that might be a prequel to the tale of the young wife making a run for it on “The Oil Rigs At Night”, a highlight of Colfax. We also immediately recognise the abject runaways of “Three Brothers Rolled Into Town”, the flat-broke cowboys of “Whitey And Me”, the hell-bent drunks of “Let’s Hit One More Place” and the desperate husband of “A Night In The City”, whose fevered instrumental climax recalls “4 Walls” from Thirteen Cities.

Everyone in these songs is afraid, scared of the pasts that haunt them, fearful of a future that holds nothing but woe, frightened on the outstanding “Don’t Skip Out On Me” of being abandoned, left behind, waking up and finding everyone gone, dead or disappeared, in one sense or another departed, leaving nothing behind apart from an anguished vacancy. Pedal steel, electric guitar and keyboards mesh plaintively here in a forlorn matrix. Elsewhere, there’s the feeling that Vlautin’s used the opportunity of a final outing with Richmond Fontaine to revisit some of the characters from earlier albums.

“I Can’t Black It Out If I Wake Up And Remember” and “I Got Off The Bus”, for instance, could be about the dismal loser who lit out for California on Post To Wire returning now to a largely derelict hometown he no longer recognises, once-familiar buildings burned down or demolished, the family and friends he left behind all gone, every street full of awful, inhospitable memories. “I know what you abandon dies and what you leave leaves you, too,” Vlauntin sings on the latter, a hymn to the lost as good as anything he’s ever written.

Q&A
Willy Vlautin
Why is this Richmond Fontaine’s last record?
When [bassist] Dave Harding moved to Denmark after The High Country, we were stopped in our tracks. We were worn out as well. Dave was gone, we weren’t quite a band anymore and everyone went their own way. But we didn’t want The High Country to be our last record. So when we got back together, we tried as hard as we could and we got lucky. We all feel more than great about it, so it seemed like the right place to stop.

It must have been strange knowing you were writing your last songs for the band.
I wasn’t thinking about that so much at first, but it did sink into the fabric of the songs. A lot of the record is about the age we’re at and how a lot of our harder-living friends are beginning to fall apart. We’re at the age where you start having to pay for the way you’ve lived. I was thinking of all that and also the idea of coming home. When you’ve finished looking around or you fail too many times, you come home.

You also revisit characters from earlier albums.
I think so. The heart of our early songs was in Reno where I grew up. Over the years, the characters in them drifted all over looking for a place to land. Now they’re done drifting and coming home. Maybe there’s nothing left there, but it’s where they started and where they’ll end. That also made sense to me in terms of our career.
INTERVIEW: ALLAN JONES

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Brian May criticises Sacha Baron Cohen over Freddie Mercury biopic

Michael Bonner
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Brian May criticises Sacha Baron Cohen over Freddie Mercury biopic
Brian May has criticised Sacha Baron Cohen over the Freddie Mercury biopic. Cohen was in talks with May and Roger Taylor about playing Mercury in a biopic, but the talks broke down. Cohen subsequently spoke to radio host Howard Stern about his experiences on the project, claiming he left because t...

Brian May has criticised Sacha Baron Cohen over the Freddie Mercury biopic.

Cohen was in talks with May and Roger Taylor about playing Mercury in a biopic, but the talks broke down.

Cohen subsequently spoke to radio host Howard Stern about his experiences on the project, claiming he left because the surviving members of Queen wanted to spent a substantial amount of the film focusing on the band after Mercury’s death.

Cohen said: “A member of the band – I won’t say who – said: ‘You know, this is such a great movie because it’s got such an amazing thing that happens in the middle.’”

“And I go: ‘What happens in the middle of the movie?’ He goes: ‘You know, Freddie dies.’ … I go: ‘What happens in the second half of the movie?’ He goes: ‘We see how the band carries on from strength to strength.’

“I said: ‘Listen, not one person is going to see a movie where the lead character dies from Aids and then you see how the band carries on.’”

Brian May has responded to Cohen’s claims in an interview in the Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine.

“Sacha became an arse,” he said. “We had some nice times with Sacha kicking around ideas, but he went off and told untruths about what happened,” he said.

May says they now hope that Ben Whishaw – most recently seen in the BBC drama London Spy – will play Mercury.

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Howard Marks dies aged 70

Michael Bonner
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Howard Marks dies aged 70
Howard Marks has died aged 70. The former drug smuggler turned author had been diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer last year. Arrested in the America in 1988 after being convicted of smuggling cannabis. He was sentenced to 25 years at Terre Haute prison, Indiana and was released on parole in 199...

Howard Marks has died aged 70.

The former drug smuggler turned author had been diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer last year.

Arrested in the America in 1988 after being convicted of smuggling cannabis.

He was sentenced to 25 years at Terre Haute prison, Indiana and was released on parole in 1995 after serving seven years.

Marks recalled his exploits in a best-selling autobiography, Mr Nice.

Speaking to The Observer in January 2015, Marks revealed he had come to terms with his illness.

“It’s impossible to regret any part of my life when I feel happy and I am happy now,” he said. “So I don’t have any regrets and have not had any for a very long time.

“Smuggling cannabis was a wonderful way of living – perpetual culture shock, absurd amounts of money, and the comforting knowledge of getting so many people stoned.”

Ater appearing on the Super Furry Animals’ 1996 song “Hangin’ With Howard Marks”, Marks ran a record label Bothered and also DJed.

Marks stood for election in four parliamentary constituencies on the issue of cannabis legalisation during the 1997 general election.

A statement said: “In the early hours of 10th April 2016, Howard Marks died peacefully in his sleep surrounded by his four loving children.

“He fought the illness with grace and humour.

“His death was 21 years to the day since his release from prison in the United States, his second bout of imprisonment for cannabis smuggling since his miraculous acquittal at the Old Bailey in 1980.

“One of his last acts was to set up the Mr Nice foundation, to ensure the causes dear to him continue to receive his support.”

A film of Mr Nice, starring Rhys Ifans, was released in 2010.

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Tom Waits: “I always thought songs lived in the air”

Andy Gill
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Tom Waits: “I always thought songs lived in the air”
What is a fiasco? How do you steal someone’s thunder? What connects Keith Richards and the US Army? Why should you take a mallet into a hardware store? And what’s the secret of a great tomato sauce? Uncut is whisked away to Petaluma, California, for an exclusive and mind-boggling audience with t...

What is a fiasco? How do you steal someone’s thunder? What connects Keith Richards and the US Army? Why should you take a mallet into a hardware store? And what’s the secret of a great tomato sauce? Uncut is whisked away to Petaluma, California, for an exclusive and mind-boggling audience with the great TOM WAITS. “What kind of a fucking world,” he points out, “are we living in? Words: Andy Gill. Originally published in Uncut’s December 2011 issue (Take 175).

________________________

The last I see of Tom Waits as I pull out of the parking lot, he is crouched down among some bushes, taking a photograph of a cow’s arse in the adjoining field. Waits has a sharp, enquiring mind and a range of interesting pursuits, but this is unexpected even by his standards.

We’ve just spent a leisurely couple of hours chatting in the Washoe House, an antique roadhouse in the area near his Northern California home. Legend has it that during the Civil War, a bunch of Union soldiers from down the road in Petaluma set off north, intent on kicking Confederate butt in nearby Santa Rosa. They got as far as the Washoe House, stopped for a few beers, and several hours later the idea of fighting didn’t seem quite as compelling, so they went home. The place has been delaying travellers ever since, their presence confirmed by literally thousands of signed dollar bills pinned to the walls and ceiling, which flutter like a flock of roosting songbirds every time the door opens. One bill, over by a rear door, bears the inscription, incarnadine red, “BLOOD MONEY”.

This area of California, up in Sonoma County, seems a natural fit for someone of Tom Waits’ relaxed, open-minded but private sensibilities. There’s none of the intensity of Los Angeles or even San Francisco, some 50 miles down the freeway. Downtown Santa Rosa, for instance, seems to have more than its fair share of superannuated hippies, their flaxen white, freak-flag hair and whiskers still flying proudly as they shuffle about among the street-corner statues of Peanuts characters which memorialise the town’s most famous former resident, Charles M Schulz.
The local freesheet is called The Bohemian, and this week’s cover-story about the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is written by Tom Hayden, liberal-left activist and one-time partner of Jane Fonda, back when she was Hanoi Jane and not pimping for wrinkle-cream. Petaluma was also once home to Harry Partch, the composer whose idiosyncratic instruments had such a profound effect on Waits’ approach to music. It’s as if the warm beatnik/hippy spirit of San Francisco’s North Beach and Haight-Ashbury had drifted slowly north over the past few decades, and settled over this area.

Waits is toting an attaché case when we meet, one of the old-style kind which expands outwards at the bottom. From this he pulls a sheaf of papers and notebooks which are deposited on the table alongside the tea and coffee cups, as if this is a meeting between counsellor and client. At one point in the conversation he says, “OK, I’ll throw some stuff at you,” and proceeds to regale me with various little fragments of weirdness, riddles, bits of lexicographical flotsam and jetsam he’s chanced upon, the kind of stuff that featured in the Tom Tales bonus disc of the Glitter And Doom Live set.

“In 1976 a woman in Los Angeles married a 50 pound rock,” he says. “And 125 people came to her wedding! What kind of a fucking world are we living in?”

That’s one step up from a pet rock…

“Apparently, that’s how they started. It was just a pet, and then one day they looked at each other and said, ‘Y’know, you’re the one!’ It was a glacial thing that slowly built… We’ve come a long way. Lepers used to have to wear a bell, y’know, and they used to have to carry a stick so they could point to shit…

“I have some origins of words here: the word ‘sabotage’ comes from the French industrial revolution. If you were working in a factory and were let go, fired, sometimes the worker would take off his shoe, his sabot, and drop it into the machine, until it ground to a halt.

“‘Pumpernickel’, the German bread? Napoleon was famous for feeding his horses better than he fed his men, and pumpernickel was a special bread that he had made for his horse, whose name was Nicole. Here’s another one, ‘fiasco’: glass-blowers in Italy, if they were creating something really elaborate, and there was a flaw in it, a bubble or a crack, they would have to junk it. What they’d do instead was say, ‘We could always turn this into a water-glass.’ Which is a fiasco. It’s like a kid making something in ceramics and it turns out wrong, he says, ‘Well, I could always turn it into an ashtray for my dad.’

“And ‘bedlam’ comes from ‘St Mary Of Bethlehem’, a religious organisation which ran a hospital for the indigent, and over time it came to refer to any kind of pandemonium.”

Which is itself a great word. Sounds like a funfair ride.

“Or an animal on a pump-organ.”

NWA will not perform live at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Charlotte Treadaway
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NWA will not perform live at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Ice Cube has confirmed that although NWA will attend the 2016 Rock And Roll Hall of Fame tonight (April 8), they will not perform. The rapper told The New York Times: “I guess we really didn’t feel like we were supported enough to do the best show we could put on.” When asked about the lack o...

Ice Cube has confirmed that although NWA will attend the 2016 Rock And Roll Hall of Fame tonight (April 8), they will not perform.

The rapper told The New York Times: “I guess we really didn’t feel like we were supported enough to do the best show we could put on.” When asked about the lack of support from organisers of the event, he said: “Pretty much, yeah. We wanted to do it on a whole other level, and that just couldn’t happen.”

Tonight’s event will see NWA inducted alongside Steve Miller, Deep Purple, Cheap Trick and Chicago.

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

PJ Harvey releases new song, “The Orange Monkey”

Charlotte Treadaway
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PJ Harvey releases new song, “The Orange Monkey”
PJ Harvey has premiered a new track, ‘The Orange Monkey’ on Beats 1. It is the third cut from her new album The Hope Six Demolition Project. This follows the releases of ‘The Wheel’ and ‘The Community of Hope’. The album was recorded during open recording sessions at London’s Somerse...

PJ Harvey has premiered a new track, ‘The Orange Monkey’ on Beats 1.

It is the third cut from her new album The Hope Six Demolition Project. This follows the releases of ‘The Wheel’ and ‘The Community of Hope’.

The album was recorded during open recording sessions at London’s Somerset House, in which members of the public could attend.

The Hope Six Demolition Project is due for release on 15 April on Island. PJ Harvey will perform at several festivals this year, including Glastonbury.

Listen to ‘The Orange Monkey’ here.

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

David Lynch tribute concert album to be released

Charlotte Treadaway
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David Lynch tribute concert album to be released
The David Lynch tribute concert that took place at the Ace Hotel, LA last year is being released as a double LP. The show consisted of artists playing a number of songs from the soundtracks to a number of Lynch’s productions, including ‘Twin Peaks’ and ‘Blue Velvet’. Notable performances...

The David Lynch tribute concert that took place at the Ace Hotel, LA last year is being released as a double LP.

The show consisted of artists playing a number of songs from the soundtracks to a number of Lynch’s productions, including ‘Twin Peaks’ and ‘Blue Velvet’.

Notable performances include Donovan taking on Elvis Presley’s ‘Love Me Tender’ and Duran Duran’s finale of ‘The Chauffeur’, ‘Ordinary World’ and ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’. Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd and Lynch’s long-time collaborator Angelo Badalamenti also performed on the night.

It was held to honour the 10th anniversary of Lynch’s non-profit organisation, The David Lynch Foundation, which aims to teach transcendental meditation to people suffering from trauma. They specifically target the homeless, veterans and children.

The Music of David Lynch setlist:

Angelo Badalamenti – Laura Palmer’s Theme (from ‘Twin Peaks’)
Donovan – Love Me Tender (from ‘Wild At Heart’)
Chrysta Bell – Swing With Me (from the Lynch-produced album ‘This Train’)
Tennis and Twin Peaks – In Dreams (from ‘Blue Velvet’)
Rebekah Del Rio – Llorando (from ‘Mulholland Drive’)
Sky Ferreira – Blue Velvet (from ‘Blue Velvet’)
Jim James with Jim Bruening – Sycamore Trees (from ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’)
Karen O – Pinky’s Dream (from ‘Crazy Clown Time’)
Angelo Badalamenti –Dance of the Dream Man (from ‘Twin Peaks’)
Angelo Badalamenti and Kinny Landrum – Dark Spanish Symphony (from ‘Wild At Heart’)
Lykke Li – Wicked Game (from ‘Wild At Heart’)
Moby – Go (samples ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme’ from ‘Twin Peaks’)
Moby – The Perfect Life
Zola Jesus – In Heaven (from ‘Eraserhead’)
Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd – Soundscape from ‘Eraserhead’/score from ‘The Elephant Man’
Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd – Lola Jesus
Duran Duran – The Chauffeur
Duran Duran – Ordinary World
Duran Duran – Hungry Like the Wolf

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Jane’s Addiction announce Ritual De Lo Habitual anniversary tour

Michael Bonner
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Jane’s Addiction announce Ritual De Lo Habitual anniversary tour
Jane's Addiction are to head out on tour in support of their 1990 album, Ritual de lo Habitual. The band's Sterling Spoon Anniversary Tour kicks off in Brooklyn on July 15 at the Coney Island Amphitheater and finishes at Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica in Cleveland, Ohio on July 23. They are play Lolla...

Jane’s Addiction are to head out on tour in support of their 1990 album, Ritual de lo Habitual.

The band’s Sterling Spoon Anniversary Tour kicks off in Brooklyn on July 15 at the Coney Island Amphitheater and finishes at Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica in Cleveland, Ohio on July 23.

They are play Lollapalooza on July 30.

Dinosaur Jr. will open on the first two shows, then Living Colour join the tour in Boston on July 19.

Jane’s Addiction Sterling Spoon Anniversary Tour dates are:

July 15 — Brooklyn, NY: Coney Island Amphitheater (with Dinosaur Jr.)
July 16 — Asbury Park, NJ: Stone Pony Summerstage ( with Dinosaur Jr.)
July 19 — Boston, MA: Blue Hills Bank Pavilion (with Dinosaur Jr. and Living Colour)
July 20 — Philadelphia, PA: The Fillmore (with Dinosaur Jr. and Living Colour)
July 22 — Sterling Heights, MI: Freedom Hill Amphitheatre (with Dinosaur Jr. and Living Colour)
July 23 — Cleveland, OH: Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica (with Dinosaur Jr. and Living Colour)

The April 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on the making of Bruce Springsteen’s album The River, Jeff Buckley, Free’s Paul Kossoff, Jeff Lynne, Tame Impala, Underworld, White Denim, Eddie Kramer, Chris Isaak, Miles Davis – The Movie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Dennis Davis, David Bowie’s drummer, has died

Michael Bonner
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Dennis Davis, David Bowie’s drummer, has died
Dennis Davis, best known for his work with David Bowie, has died. Davis started playing drums for Bowie in 1974. He also played on Bowie's 1976 and 1978 world tours as well as Bowie's final tour in 2003. In the studio, he played drums on six of Bowie's albums - Young Americans, Station To Station,...

Dennis Davis, best known for his work with David Bowie, has died.

Davis started playing drums for Bowie in 1974. He also played on Bowie’s 1976 and 1978 world tours as well as Bowie’s final tour in 2003.

In the studio, he played drums on six of Bowie’s albums – Young Americans, Station To Station, Low, “Heroes”, Lodger and Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps).

He also played on Iggy Pop‘s album, The Idiot.

Outside of his work with Bowie, he was a regular member of Roy Ayers band playing on 10 albums between 1973 and 2004.

Davis also played with Stevie Wonder, including the album Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through “The Secret Life of Plants”.

The news of Davis’ death was broken by Tony Visconti on his Facebook page.

Visconti wrote, “Dennis Davis has passed away. He was one of the most creative drummers I have ever worked with. He came into David Bowie’s life when we recorded some extra tracks for Young Americans and stayed with us through Scary Monsters and beyond. He was a disciplined jazz drummer who tore into Rock with a Jazz sensibility. Listen to the drum breaks on Black Out from the Heroes album. He had a conga drum as part of his set up and he made it sound like two musicians were playing drums and congas. By Scary Monsters he was playing parts that were unthinkable but they fit in so perfectly. His sense of humor was wonderful. As an ex member of the US Air Force he told us stories of seeing a crashed UFO first hand by accidentally walking through an unauthorized hanger. There will never be another drummer, human being and friend like Dennis, a magical man.”

According to Bowie fansite Wonderland, Davis “passed away after a long battle with illness”.

In March, it was reported that Davis was in a hospice, having been diagnosed with lung cancer.

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Paul Simon announces new album, Stranger To Stranger; shares single, “Wristband”

Michael Bonner
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Paul Simon announces new album, Stranger To Stranger; shares single, “Wristband”
Paul Simon has announced details of his new solo album. Stranger To Stranger will be released on June 3, 2016 via Virgin EMI. It is Simon's first album since 2011's So Beautiful Or So What and has been produced by Simon and his longtime musical partner Roy Halee. Simon has shared the first single...

Paul Simon has announced details of his new solo album.

Stranger To Stranger will be released on June 3, 2016 via Virgin EMI.

It is Simon’s first album since 2011’s So Beautiful Or So What and has been produced by Simon and his longtime musical partner Roy Halee.

Simon has shared the first single from the album, “Wristband“.

The tracklisting for Stranger To Stranger is:

The Werewolf
Wristband
The Clock
Street Angel
Stranger to Stranger
In a Parade
Proof of Love
In the Garden of Edie
The Riverbank
Cool Papa Bell
Insomniac’s Lullaby

Stranger To Stranger will be available in a range of formats including the 11-track standard edition, a special 16-track deluxe edition (featuring 5-bonus tracks) and 180-gram vinyl edition.

Simon has also announced North American tour dates:

April 29 – New Orleans, LA @ Jazz Fest
May 1 – Memphis, TN @ Beale Street Music Festival
May 3 – Atlanta, GA @ Fox Theatre
May 4 – Birmingham, AL @ BJCC Concert Hall
May 6 – Tulsa, OK @ Hard Rock Hotel & Casino – The Joint
May 7 – Thackerville, OK @ WinStar Casino
May 8 – Dallas, TX @ AT&T Performing Arts Center
May 10 – Austin, TX @ Bass Concert Hall
May 11 – Austin, TX @ Bass Concert hall
May 14 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium
May 15 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium
May 18 – Des Moines, IA @ Civic Center
May 19 – Lincoln, NE @ Pinewood Bowl Theater
May 20 – Denver, CO @ Bellco Theatre
May 22 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Maverick Center
May 23 – Boise, ID @ Idaho Botanical Garden
May 25 – Portland, OR @ Schnitzer Concert Hall
May 26 – Vancouver, BC @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre
May 28 – Woodinville, WA @ Chateau Ste. Michelle
May 29 – Woodinville, WA @ Chateau Ste. Michelle
June 1 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
June 3 – Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre
June 4 – Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre
June 5 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl
June 11 – Kansas City, MO @ Starlight
June 12 – St. Louis, MO @ Fox Theatre
June 14 – Minneapolis, MN @ Orpheum Theatre
June 15 – Minneapolis, MN @ Orpheum Theatre
June 18 – Highland Park, IL @ Ravinia Festival Pavilion
June 19 – Rochester Hills, MI @ Meadow Brook
June 21 – Toronto, ON @ Sony Centre
June 22 – Montreal, QC @ Place Des Arts
June 24 – Boston, MA @ Blue Hills Bank Pavilion
June 25 – Philadelphia, PA @ Mann Center for the Performing Arts
June 27 – Vienna, VA @ Filene Center (Wolf Trap Summer Series)
June 28 – Vienna, VA @ Filene Center (Wolf Trap Summer Series)
June 30 – Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Tennis Stadium
July 1 – Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Tennis Stadium

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Bob Dylan reveals tracklisting and sleeve art for new album, Fallen Angels

Michael Bonner
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Bob Dylan reveals tracklisting and sleeve art for new album, Fallen Angels
Bob Dylan has revealed details of his new album, Fallen Angels. The record - Dylan's 37th studio album - is released on May 20 by Columbia Records. Produced by Dylan under his Jack Frost pseudonym, the album is Dylan's first new music since Shadows In The Night, which was released in early 2015. ...

Bob Dylan has revealed details of his new album, Fallen Angels.

The record – Dylan’s 37th studio album – is released on May 20 by Columbia Records.

Produced by Dylan under his Jack Frost pseudonym, the album is Dylan’s first new music since Shadows In The Night, which was released in early 2015.

Earlier today, Dylan released a new song, “Melancholy Mood” taken from the album.

“Melancholy Mood” was written by Vick R. Knight, Sr. and Walter Schumann and recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1939 as the B-side of his very first single, “From the Bottom of My Heart”.

“Melancholy Mood” is available today on iTunes as an Instant Gratification track, and will also be released as part of a four-track 7” EP on April 16 as part of the nationwide Record Store Day.

Fallen Angels is now available for pre-order on iTunes and Amazon.

On Fallen Angels, Dylan has chosen songs from a diverse array of writers such as Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn and Carolyn Leigh to record with his touring band. The album was recorded at Capitol Studios in Hollywood in 2015.

Bob-Dylan-Fallen-Angels-ARTWORK[4]

The complete track listing for Fallen Angels is:

Young At Heart
Maybe You’ll Be There
Polka Dots And Moonbeams
All The Way
Skylark
Nevertheless
All Or Nothing At All
On A Little Street In Singapore
It Had To Be You
Melancholy Mood
That Old Black Magic
Come Rain Or Come Shine

The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Miles Davis, Hank Williams and the current crop of music biopics

Michael Bonner
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Miles Davis, Hank Williams and the current crop of music biopics
Fans of music biopics might be forgiven for thinking that we're currently living through a purple patch. After last year's excellent Brian Wilson film, Love & Mercy, cinema audiences are soon to experience films about Miles Davis and Hank Williams. Good times, right? I'll be reviewing the Hank ...

Fans of music biopics might be forgiven for thinking that we’re currently living through a purple patch. After last year’s excellent Brian Wilson film, Love & Mercy, cinema audiences are soon to experience films about Miles Davis and Hank Williams. Good times, right?

I’ll be reviewing the Hank Williams film, I Saw The Light, for the next issue of Uncut, so I want to keep my powder dry on that. It’s due in UK cinemas a fortnight after Miles Ahead, the film about Miles Davis. As music biopics go, they couldn’t be further apart. I Saw The Light sticks slavishly to facts, dates and details and as a consequence systematically fails to bring Williams to life; Miles Ahead, meanwhile, adopts a more freewheeling approach and has far greater success nailing the ineffable qualities that made Davis so compelling both in the studio and outside of it.

Click here to read our interview with Don Cheadle about Miles Ahead

In the production notes for his Bob Dylan film I’m Not There, the director Todd Haynes recounted a conversation he once had with Dylan’s manager, Jeff Rosen. “I said, ‘This is a big honour! I feel I have to represent Dylan to the world and I want to do it accurately and carefully.’ And Jeff just say, ‘Todd, don’t even this about that. This is your own weird interpretation of Bob Dylan, and that’s all you have to worry about.” You could apply Rosen’s point when discussing Miles Ahead, Don Cheadle’s audacious, prismatic film about Miles Davis. As with Haynes, Cheadle is less concerned with straight biographical detail than the magic of Davis’ wild, elusive spirit.

Miles Ahead is set in the 1970s, during a five-year period where Davis absented himself from both the recording studio and the stage. Here, Cheadle concocts entirely fictional events concerning the efforts of Davis and a tenacious Rolling Stone journalist (Ewan McGregor) to track down a precious reel of new music that have fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous record exec (Michael Stuhlbarg). The tape is a McGuffin, naturally; but its contents provide Cheadle the opportunity to flashback to an earlier part of Davis’ life and his fraught relationship with his first wife, Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi). In this respect, Miles Ahead superficially recalls Love & Mercy, another excellent biopic that ignored a plodding cradle-to-the-grave narrative in favour of settling on two thematically connected periods, decades apart, in the life of Brian Wilson.

In the hairy Seventies, Davis is trying to account for his many losses – both personal and financial – and Cheadle is terrific as Davis, straining to find his place in a time he views with increasing disdain. “A lot of shit goes through your mind when you’re quiet,” he says. For much of these sequences, Davis comes across as unlikable, his moods provoked by writer’s block, depression and drug abuse. At times, the scenes set during the Seventies resemble a ‘70s caper movie, including a car chase and even a gun battle. But these moments of seasoning swing. And why not? As Davis said, “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.”

While there are enough ‘notes’ here – at the recording sessions for Porgy And Bess, getting beaten by a policeman outside Birdland, chasing Taylor from their apartment with a knife – sometimes it is possible for facts to obscure greater truths.

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The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on PJ Harvey’s new album, Brian Wilson, The National’s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

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