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The Velvet Underground to release The Complete Matrix Tapes

Michael Bonner
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The Velvet Underground to release The Complete Matrix Tapes
The Velvet Underground – The Complete Matrix Tapes, is a four-CD, 42-track box due for release on November 20 by Polydor/Universal Music Catalogue(UMC). The material was recorded on November 26 and 27, 1969 at The Matrix club in North Beach, San Francisco, during the band's lengthy residency at t...

The Velvet Underground – The Complete Matrix Tapes, is a four-CD, 42-track box due for release on November 20 by Polydor/Universal Music Catalogue(UMC).

The material was recorded on November 26 and 27, 1969 at The Matrix club in North Beach, San Francisco, during the band’s lengthy residency at the club.

The band features Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker and Doug Yule.

Some versions of these performances were first issued in 1974 by Mercury Records as part of a double LP, 1969: The Velvet Underground Live, others appeared on The Quine Tapes – cassette recordings made by future Lou Reed guitarist, Bob Quine – while 18 tracks featured on the Super Deluxe Edition of the Velvets’ third album, released last year.

The Complete Matrix Tapes features 42 recordings that have been mixed down directly from the original in-house multi-tracks, including nine previously unreleased performances, marking the first time all the available tapes will be released commercially.

Set One includes previously unreleased versions of “Some Kinda Love” and “Sweet Jane”, while Set Two’s rarities include performances of “There She Goes Again”, “After Hours” and “We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together”.

Rare live takes of “Venus in Furs” (one on Set One, the other Set Two) and Set One’s “The Black Angel’s Death Song” are also notable for their inclusion here.

Track Listing:

SET ONE
1. I’M WAITING FOR THE MAN (Version 1) (14:06) ***
2. WHAT GOES ON (Version 1) (8:58) **
3. SOME KINDA LOVE (Version 1) (4:59) *
4. HEROIN (Version 1) (8:13) ***
5. THE BLACK ANGEL’S DEATH SONG (6:20) ***
6. VENUS IN FURS (Version 1) (4:38) +
7. THERE SHE GOES AGAIN (Version 1) (3:08) +
8. WE’RE GONNA HAVE A REAL GOOD TIME TOGETHER (Version 1) (3:16) **
9. OVER YOU (Version 1) (2:24) **
10. SWEET JANE (Version 1) (5:12) *
11. PALE BLUE EYES (6:08) +
12. AFTER HOURS (Version 1) (2:58) +

SET TWO
1. I’M WAITING FOR THE MAN (Version 2) (6:38) **
2. VENUS IN FURS (Version 2) (5:16) ***
3. I CAN’T STAND IT (Version 1) (7:54) **
4. THERE SHE GOES AGAIN (Version 2) (2:54) *
5. SOME KINDA LOVE (Version 2) (4:12) + / **
6. OVER YOU (Version 2) (3:07) +
7. AFTER HOURS (Version 2) (2:37) *
8. WE’RE GONNA HAVE A REAL GOOD TIME TOGETHER (Version 2) (3:42) *
9. SWEET BONNIE BROWN/TOO MUCH (7:54) **
10. HEROIN (Version 2) (10:08) **
11. WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT (Version 1) (9:30) ***
12. I’M SET FREE (4.48) +

SET THREE
1. WE’RE GONNA HAVE A REAL GOOD TIME TOGETHER (Version 3) (3:18) *
2. SOME KINDA LOVE (Version 3) (4:40) *
3. THERE SHE GOES AGAIN (Version 3) (3:02) *
4. HEROIN (Version 3) (8:34) **
5. OCEAN (11:03) **
6. SISTER RAY (37.08) + / ***

SET FOUR
1. I’M WAITING FOR THE MAN (Version 3) (5:31) +
2. WHAT GOES ON (Version 2) (4:34) +
3. SOME KINDA LOVE (Version 4) (4:46) *
4. WE’RE GONNA HAVE A REAL GOOD TIME TOGETHER (Version 4) (3:26) +
5. BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT (5:42) + / **
6. LISA SAYS (6:05) + / **
7. NEW AGE (6:41) **
8. ROCK AND ROLL (6.58) + / ** / ***
9. I CAN’T STAND IT (Version 2) (6:54) +
10. HEROIN (Version 4) (8:18) +
11. WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT (Version 2) (8:45) + / **
12. SWEET JANE (Version 2) (4:20) + / **

All mixes previously unreleased, except +
+ appears on The Velvet Underground (3rd album) Super Deluxe Edition
* previously unreleased performance
** performance appears on 1969: The Velvet Underground Live
*** performance appears on The Quine Tapes Box Set

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, Julian Cope, Otis Redding, John Grant, The Doors, Harmonia, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Gahan, John Cooper Clarke and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Yo La Tengo – Stuff Like That There

Tom Pinnock
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Yo La Tengo – Stuff Like That There
Three-quarters of the way through one of their finest albums, 1997’s I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, Yo La Tengo cut from the breezy bossa-nova of “Center Of Gravity” and move straight into “Spec Bebob”, a borderline-unlistenable 10-minute jam between drums and distorted organ. It’s...

Three-quarters of the way through one of their finest albums, 1997’s I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, Yo La Tengo cut from the breezy bossa-nova of “Center Of Gravity” and move straight into “Spec Bebob”, a borderline-unlistenable 10-minute jam between drums and distorted organ. It’s a typical spin between extremes for a group who have often found it hard to keep things simple.

So far, the only moment on record where they’ve resisted the urge to demonstrate their full – and admittedly thrilling – range is 1990’s Fakebook, their mainly acoustic fourth album. With Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan joined by Dave Schramm on electric guitar and Al Greller on double bass, the record is still a low-key delight, a fan favourite more intimate and warm than anything else the group have produced.

Developed by Kaplan and Hubley during stripped-down radio sessions promoting the previous year’s President Yo La Tengo album, Fakebook included adept covers of songs by the likes of Cat Stevens, John Cale and The Kinks, reworked versions of older YLT songs such as “Barnaby, Hardly Working” and a handful of brand new tracks, including the effortless, sublime opener “Can’t Forget”. A follow-up to the album, then – a Fakebook 2, if you like – is a surprising, though very welcome move for Yo La Tengo to make 25 years later.

Stuff Like That There mimics its forebear in nearly every way, welcoming back Dave Schramm on guitar, though this time alongside longtime YLT bassist James McNew. Throughout, Schramm’s playing is a delight, his electric guitar swathed in delay and tremolo on “Deeper Into Movies”, and his slide achingly quicksilver on a cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”.

The gorgeous version of Great Plains’ “Before We Stopped To Think”, sung by Kaplan, is a sure high-point, but the most affecting, heartbreaking songs on Stuff are all sung by Hubley, whose voice seems to have grown richer and more melancholy with each passing year of the last quarter-century. On the evidence of her performances here on Darlene McCrea’s country ballad “My Heart’s Not In It”, Antietam’s stately “Naples” and especially “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”, she’s stealthily become one of America’s most quietly impressive vocalists. A hushed take on “Deeper Into Movies”, originally a fuzzy highlight of I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, even utilises the classic Yo La Tengo trick of having Kaplan and Hubley harmonise, except with the guitarist taking the higher part and Hubley the lower.

Of the two new songs, “Rickety” is almost acoustic motorik – on a more orthodox Yo La Tengo album, it would perhaps end up as a close relation of Summer Sun’s “Little Eyes” – while “Awhileaway” is a pretty, waltzing ballad that would have sat well on 2000’s tender And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out.

Not all of the songs work, however – the band’s take on The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love” sticks out as a little too predictable and rushed among its more subtle neighbours. Indeed, as seems to be the case with most sequels, Stuff Like That There can’t quite match up to Fakebook. For all the album’s strengths, something – novelty, most likely – is often lost when a trick is repeated, no matter how successful it was the first time around.

Yet these are minor gripes – on the majority of Stuff Like That There, Yo La Tengo are able to recapture the magic of those sessions a quarter of a century ago, and introduce us to some more underrated classics. Alone with its stylistic predecessor in their catalogue, Stuff is a comforting listen, startlingly consistent in mood and featuring some of Yo La Tengo’s – and especially Georgia Hubley’s – most touching moments. Frankly, it would be churlish to refuse a second helping.

Q&A
Ira Kaplan
Why did you decide to revisit Fakebook as a concept after 25 years?
We often play acoustically and we do lots of covers anyway, so I think we’d circled around [the idea] and gotten kind of near it almost constantly. Then the idea came up and it felt right. We didn’t really question it much more deeply than that. But I think for a while we felt the need to establish that we were not that band, that even when we made Fakebook that was a side of us but not the whole band. Even at the time, Fakebook wasn’t a plan or a strategy, it just seemed to make sense in the moment.

How did you go about choosing the covers?
There’s a number that we have done fairly steadily over the years, then once we knew this was what we were gonna do, a bunch of new ideas just flooded into us – The Parliaments song, the Darlene McCrea song… We also did a Sun City Girls song that didn’t end up on the record.

Georgia’s voice is getting richer as time goes on.
Very quickly it became apparent to all of us that we wanted her to sing more on this record than she’s ever sung. I mean, she’s definitely carrying the singing. With something like “Naples”, she did more than in the past to make sure she was singing in a key that she felt comfortable in – we do it in a different key than Antietam did. In the first song, when I hear her sing “my heart’s not in it”, my heart just melts.
INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, Julian Cope, Otis Redding, John Grant, The Doors, Harmonia, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Gahan, John Cooper Clarke and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

The story behind Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home cover revealed!

Michael Bonner
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The story behind Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home cover revealed!
The sleeve art for Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home is the subject of a new documentary, which you can watch below. The documentary has been made by PopSpots, who explore locations where interesting events in the history of Pop Culture took place; this new film anticipates the release of Dylan...

The sleeve art for Bob Dylan‘s Bringing It All Back Home is the subject of a new documentary, which you can watch below.

The documentary has been made by PopSpots, who explore locations where interesting events in the history of Pop Culture took place; this new film anticipates the release of Dylan’s upcoming The Cutting Edge 1965–1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12, which contains material from the album.

The documentary features an interview with photographer Daniel Kramer, who shot the sleeve at the house of Albert Grossman, Dylan’s manager.

Rolling Stone reports that this documentary will be followed by films focussing on the artwork for the other albums included in this latest installment of Dylan’s Bootleg series – Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde.

The deluxe six-CD anthology The Cutting Edge 1965–1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12 – which can be pre-ordered from Amazon.co.uk by clicking here – will be released by Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings on November 6, and features previously unheard songs, outtakes, rehearsal tracks and alternate versions from the sessions. All the recordings have been mixed from the original studio tracking tapes. The set includes an annotated book featuring rare and previously unseen photographs, memorabilia and new essays written by Bill Flanagan and Sean Wilentz.

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, Julian Cope, Otis Redding, John Grant, The Doors, Harmonia, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Gahan, John Cooper Clarke and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Peter Buck announces new album featuring Jeff Tweedy and Krist Novoselic

Michael Bonner
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Peter Buck announces new album featuring Jeff Tweedy and Krist Novoselic
Peter Buck has announced a new solo album, Warzone Earth. The album will be released on vinyl on October 16 by Little Axe Records. According to a report on Stereogum, guests on the album include Jeff Tweedy, Krist Novoselic, Scott McCaughey, Bill Rieflin, Kurt Bloch, Chris Slusarenko, Annalisa Tor...

Peter Buck has announced a new solo album, Warzone Earth.

The album will be released on vinyl on October 16 by Little Axe Records.

According to a report on Stereogum, guests on the album include Jeff Tweedy, Krist Novoselic, Scott McCaughey, Bill Rieflin, Kurt Bloch, Chris Slusarenko, Annalisa Tornfelt, Chloe Johnson and Kristin Tornfelt.

Buck announced the album on REM’s website.

“I’ve just had an exciting couple of weeks working with Tucker Martine on the new record by The Jayhawks which is a stunning tour de force. I think it will blow a lot of minds. I spent yesterday with my good friend Mike, who came to town to add some Millsian glamour to the proceedings. And I am pleased to announce this morning my new magnum opus Warzone Earth is now available. The record features two alternate covers by the folk art legend Mingering Mike. I never thought I’d look so good in tights!

“All kidding aside, it’s the best solo record I have made, and I’m excited for it to be out in the world. It’s available through littleaxerecords.com who distributes the record. It should also be available in all the cool independent record stores in your neighborhood, once again, vinyl only, but feel free to make a cassette for your friends.”

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, Julian Cope, Otis Redding, John Grant, The Doors, Harmonia, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Gahan, John Cooper Clarke and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Tom Waits on the mysteries of Stonehenge and laughing at funerals

Michael Bonner
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Tom Waits on the mysteries of Stonehenge and laughing at funerals
A vintage interview with Tom Waits has been animated by PBS as part of their ongoing Blank On Blank series. The PBS’ Blank On Blank series has previously featured animated archival interviews with Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Elliott Smith and Jim Morrison. The interview wi...

A vintage interview with Tom Waits has been animated by PBS as part of their ongoing Blank On Blank series.

The PBS’ Blank On Blank series has previously featured animated archival interviews with Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Elliott Smith and Jim Morrison.

The interview with Waits took place in 1988, around the release of his Big Time album. The interview was conducted for Melody Maker by Chris Roberts, a former Uncut writer.

In the interview, Waits discusses subjects ranging from Stonehenge to showbusiness and laughing at funerals.

“I’ve never been to Stonehenge,” he admits. “There are moles in Stonehenge… the most elaborate systems of mole catacombs is in Stonehenge. There are more moles at Stonehenge than there are anywhere in the world. In the community, they reward moles that have the courage to tunnel beneath great rivers, it takes an understanding of physics and engineering, that type of thing.”

On showbusiness, he said: “When I first got into show business, my stepfather bought me a wild shirt, which said more about what he thought show business was than what I thought it was. It was like this lime green shirt, with like seven different kinds of fabrics and textures on it, with wooden buttons, like a Hawaiian nightmare.

“He gave it to me, he was very serious when he gave it to me, it was like he was giving me a sword to go out into the world of show business, and ‘kill some dragons, pal, and bring us back the skins.’ And I looked at that shirt and I went ‘goddamn.’”

On laughing at funerals, Waits admitted, “I was always laughing in church. There’s nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you’re not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I’m the worst. I’m the worst at that.”

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, Julian Cope, Otis Redding, John Grant, The Doors, Harmonia, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Gahan, John Cooper Clarke and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Budget supermarket chain launches new music streaming service…

Michael Bonner
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Budget supermarket chain launches new music streaming service…
Budget supermarket chain Aldi have teamed up with Napster to launch their own music streaming service. Music Week reports that users will have access to Napster's catalogue for €7.99 per month, €2 cheapper than Napster itself. At the moment the service - Aldi Life Musik - is only available in ...

Budget supermarket chain Aldi have teamed up with Napster to launch their own music streaming service.

Music Week reports that users will have access to Napster’s catalogue for €7.99 per month, €2 cheapper than Napster itself.

At the moment the service – Aldi Life Musik – is only available in Aldi’s native Germany.

It’s not yet confirmed whether this service will be available in the UK.

The service will be available in apps for Android, iOS, Windows and desktops, and will include access to 4,000 radio stations as well as 10,000 audiobooks.

Recent statistics from Germany’s Federal Music Industry Association showed a 87 per cent increase in online streaming from the previous year. Streaming revenue now accounts for 12.8 per cent of all music sales in the country.

“Digital business is the driving force in the German market,” said Philip Ginthör, CEO Sony Music GSA. “The music industry will achieve sustainable growth if we continue to focus on investing in talent and fair digital revenue models.”

BVMI Managing Director Dr Florian Drücke told Billboard of the news, “The 87 percent increase in music streaming even exceeds the forecast contained in the streaming study we published back in March. With regard to current discussions about copyright amendments, it’s important we don’t forget that the digital licensing business needs reliable conditions to function effectively, and this requires involving creatives and their partners in the revenues generated by the platforms to the appropriate degree.”

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, Julian Cope, Otis Redding, John Grant, The Doors, Harmonia, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Gahan, John Cooper Clarke and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Watch Jenny Lewis and St Vincent cover “Groove Is In The Heart”

Michael Bonner
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0
Watch Jenny Lewis and St Vincent cover “Groove Is In The Heart”
Jenny Lewis performed at the Trans-Pecos Music Festival of Music and Love in Marfa, Texas last week. During the course of her set, Consequence Of Sound reports, she was joined by special guest, St Vincent's Annie Clark. The pair performed a new Jenny Lewis song, “Girl On Girl” (with Clark on g...

Jenny Lewis performed at the Trans-Pecos Music Festival of Music and Love in Marfa, Texas last week.

During the course of her set, Consequence Of Sound reports, she was joined by special guest, St Vincent‘s Annie Clark.

The pair performed a new Jenny Lewis song, “Girl On Girl” (with Clark on guitar), while Clarke also played drums on “Just One of the Guys”, fromm Lewis’ album The Voyager and her own “Cheerleader”.

They also covered Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is in the Heart” with Austin-based musician, David Garza.

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, Julian Cope, Otis Redding, John Grant, The Doors, Harmonia, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Gahan, John Cooper Clarke and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Beck, Cat Power, Jakob Dylan and more cover Sixties’ folk rock classics for tribute album and concert

Michael Bonner
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0
Beck, Cat Power, Jakob Dylan and more cover Sixties’ folk rock classics for tribute album and concert
Beck, Cat Power, Jakob Dylan and Fiona Apple are among the artists taking part in Echoes In The Canyon, a special event designed to mark the 50th anniversary of the birth of Southern Californian folk rock. Pitchfork reports that Echoes In The Canyon will take place in Los Angeles' Orpheum Theatre o...

Beck, Cat Power, Jakob Dylan and Fiona Apple are among the artists taking part in Echoes In The Canyon, a special event designed to mark the 50th anniversary of the birth of Southern Californian folk rock.

Pitchfork reports that Echoes In The Canyon will take place in Los Angeles’ Orpheum Theatre on October 12.

The show will see contemporary artists covering songs by the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Mamas & the Papas, the Turtles, the Association, Buffalo Springfield and more.

The concert will be followed by a covers album – which is due to be released next year – which will featuring the artists who will appear at the event.

Below, you can hear Cat Power and Jakob Dylan cover the Turtles’ “You Showed Me“, which was written by the Byrds’ Gene Clark and Roger McGuinn.

https://soundcloud.com/echointhecanyon/you-showed-me-feat-jakob-dylan-cat-power

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, Julian Cope, Otis Redding, John Grant, The Doors, Harmonia, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Gahan, John Cooper Clarke and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Beach House – Depression Cherry

Jason Anderson
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Beach House – Depression Cherry
At no point on Beach House’s last two albums, Teen Dream (2010) and Bloom (2012), do Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally overcomplicate matters – for instance, none of the songs require the services of a symphony orchestra or a guest appearance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And yet, as their pop...

At no point on Beach House’s last two albums, Teen Dream (2010) and Bloom (2012), do Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally overcomplicate matters – for instance, none of the songs require the services of a symphony orchestra or a guest appearance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

And yet, as their popularity grew with those albums, the Baltimore duo sometimes seemed to struggle to preserve the feeling of intimacy that was so enchanting on their self-titled 2006 debut and its follow-up, 2008’s Devotion. Their beguiling, languid dream-pop, born out of wee-hours bedroom recording, by necessity swelled into something that was large enough to fill concert halls and festival fields; a journey that took Beach House and its music to “a place farther from our natural tendencies”, as the two have collectively admitted.

With fifth album Depression Cherry, then, they head back to square one, stripping away the layers of guitars, keyboards, effects and vocals that made up Bloom’s wall of sound. In their place comes simpler, sparer arrangements and a whole lot more room to breathe. On the album’s most spectral moments, Legrand doesn’t seem to sing the songs so much as exhale them. With its spoken intro and signature coo, the mesmerising “PPP” even evokes the narcoleptic girl-group pop of Phil Spector’s eeriest early hit, the Paris Sisters’ “I Love How You Love Me”.

Crucially, this simplification process has meant dusting off the drum machines that supplied the rudimentary rhythms on their early works. The songs on Depression Cherry are very much designed to be about everything but the beat, which is a good thing given the skeletal click-track-like template underpinning the songs. It might seem unlikely that this kind of no-frills structural support would be sufficient for something as sumptuous as “Beyond Love”, but it in fact enhances the song’s other parts. And since the percussive and rhythmic components get so much less emphasis than they do on the majority of contemporary music, the boldest songs gain their force from other elements, like Scally’s thicket of fuzz guitar in “Sparks” or the cascading keyboard notes in “Space Song”.

Of course, this sort of well-intentioned return-to-first-principles move is often stymied by the fact that it’s not so easy to forget all the lessons and habits that have been learned in the interim. Thankfully, it’s to Depression Cherry’s great advantage that Legrand and Scally are able to incorporate Bloom’s level of songwriting sophistication and strong understanding of dynamics into their original, sparser template. As a result, by reducing the scope and rediscovering the value of nuance, Beach House end up sounding bigger and better than ever before.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the songs that bookend the album. In “Levitation”, the looping swirls of guitar and endlessly sustained organ notes foster an intoxicating feeling of suspension. Yet whereas some of the duo’s other songs succumb to inertia, this one keeps surging forward. Legrand’s fragmentary lyrics ponder the fleeting nature of even our most ardent passions, yet as forlorn as her voice can sound, she once again emphasises the need to celebrate the moments at hand. “There is no right time,” she sings.

What with that carpe-diem attitude, a less sensitive group may very well have been tempted to enlist a children’s choir for “Days Of Candy”, a ghostly closer that suggests what The Beach Boys’ “Our Prayer” might have sounded like if Cocteau Twins had covered it on Treasure. Again, the canny arrangement of carefully selected elements – multi-tracked voices, plaintive piano notes, a guitar filigree and churchy organ chords – creates an unexpected grandeur. There’s also a feeling of delicacy, something that could have easily been overwhelmed had there been a conventional amount of low-end ballast. However chintzy it may initially seem, the Bontempi-style rhythm track is exactly what’s needed.

And, as Legrand murmurs in the song’s climactic stages, “Just like that, it’s gone.” Together with her Beach House partner, she’s always excelled at holding onto those temporary moments of transcendence and preserving them in amber. But rarely before have the pair achieved that with this much grace and finesse.

SLEEVENOTES
Recorded at: Studio In The Country in Bogalusa, Louisiana
Produced by: Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally with Chris Coady
Personnel: Victoria Legrand (vocals, keyboards, organ, piano), Alex Scally (guitars, bass, keyboards, organ, piano)

Q&A
Alex Scally
Why the decision to pare down the Beach House sound and get back to the drum machines?
It was a really natural process for us – it wasn’t necessarily so much about intellectual decisions. We were yearning to put a certain level of communication and depth into the music. Drums make everybody turn up and I think sometimes turning up leads to a certain feeling and that feeling is not necessarily the right feeling. Victoria and I can feel like we can’t be ourselves if there are drums in the room because it makes you sing hard and you don’t hear the subtlety of a guitar part – you have to play something simpler and clearer because there’s all this noise.

Were you also curious about what these rudimentary rhythm tracks would create?
Drums are such a complicated thing so this has been a huge thought for us. I was listening to the Sly And The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On. Funk and soul have always been rooted in the drums, but he was like, “I don’t want drums – I want this drum machine.” There’s this other thing that’s really mystical that the drum machine creates, and it’s all over that record.

So you weren’t necessarily trying to escape the tyranny of all that is big and beaty in modern music?
I definitely don’t think we are a reaction to anything today. But maybe it is because this weird sound of computer quantisation is so domineering. Everything gets made on this crazy grid so you feel that grid constantly when you hear music on the radio. Then again, I think that’s what people like now. I remember we were at this show a couple years ago and there was this band playing and it was all electronic – you could really feel that grid. The whole crowd was pulsing and excited. Then the next band was this rock band with just guitar and drums and it was all loose and baggy and human and everyone just sat down! I thought, “Damn, these are the times we’re in.”
INTERVIEW: JASON ANDERSON

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, Julian Cope, Otis Redding, John Grant, The Doors, Harmonia, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Gahan, John Cooper Clarke and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Reviewed! Dave Heumann, GospelbeacH, Duane Pitre, Ballaké Sissoko/Vincent Segal

John Mulvey
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Reviewed! Dave Heumann, GospelbeacH, Duane Pitre, Ballaké Sissoko/Vincent Segal
One band that have kept me pretty well sustained these past few years have been Baltimore's Arbouretum, along with frontman Dave Heumann's auxiliary projects like Human Bell and Coil Sea. Among a bunch of fine records being released in the next few weeks, there's "Here In The Deep", ostensibly Heuma...

One band that have kept me pretty well sustained these past few years have been Baltimore’s Arbouretum, along with frontman Dave Heumann’s auxiliary projects like Human Bell and Coil Sea. Among a bunch of fine records being released in the next few weeks, there’s “Here In The Deep”, ostensibly Heumann’s first solo album.

For all their heavy psychedelic groupthink, Arbouretum have often looked from a distance like a vehicle for Heumann’s own vision, and the correlation between
“Here In The Deep” and what has preceded it implicitly confirms as much. Arbouretum’s thicker drones are sometimes replaced by more dappled textures that privilege the folk-rock formalism that has long underpinned much of Heumann’s music, with the lovely “Ides Of Summer” chiming in a way reminiscent of REM’s “Green Grow The Rushes”.

An incantatory churn through the traditional “Greenwood Side”, though, would’ve sat neatly enough on Arbouretum’s last set, “Coming Out Of The Fog” (2013). And it’s fitting that the album pivots on a ruminative jam, “Ends Of The Earth”, on which Heumann, in elevated Richard Thompson-esque form, is joined by his regular bandmates.

Moving on, Brent Rademaker’s diligent preservation of a certain LA country-rock sound has seen him pilot some handy groups, notably The Beachwood Sparks. The typographically awkward GospelbeacH is Rademaker’s latest band, and one which stays true to the aesthetic that’s sustained him for around two decades. Gram love proliferates, then, along with a hint of early ’70s Grateful Dead – due, perhaps, to the presence of guitarist Neal Casal (away from the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, he composed interval music for the Dead’s recent farewell gigs).

Casal’s virtuosity also means that while GospelbeacH’s California good vibes may sometimes err on cheesiness, they avoid the indie spindliness of some Rademaker projects; the hectic “Nashville West”-style fluency of “Mick Jones” being an outstanding case in point.

I’ve been listening to a fair bit of drone of late, especially when I get into the office early. One favourite has been Byron Westbrook’s “Precipice”, on the Root Strata label, but I keep coming back to a tremendous new album on Important by New Orleans’ Duane Pitre. Pitre’s recent run of albums – “Feel Free” (2012), “Bridges” (2013) and now “Bayou Electric” – have pushed him discreetly to the forefront of contemporary drone music.

If that genre often seems chilly and academic, Pitre’s slow and graceful arcs have substantially more emotional heft. “Bayou Electric”, in particular, is earthed in place and memory, its sustained organ and string tones augmented by field recordings made on long-held family land in Louisiana, as massed crickets resonate down the generations. The obligatory Eno comparison would be to “Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks”, but maybe think of this is an accidental adjunct to the “Ambient” series: not “Music For Airports”, but “Music For Bayous”.

Finally this week, nine heavenly face-offs between kora and cello. Over the past few years, the kora has found a home in western salons as well as world music festivals, its serene and rarefied tone given a classical gloss on albums like Toumani Diabaté’s “Mandé Variations”. Ballaké Sissoko and Vincent Segal’s artfully-titled “Chamber Music” (2009) exploited that connection, pitting the Malian kora master and French cellist in a series of agile duets. “Musique De Nuit” is a quietly ravishing follow-up, recorded in part on Sissoko’s Bamako rooftop; distant city hum can sometimes be detected beneath the pair’s refined jousting. Nimble takes on Malian party music (“Super Etoile”) are inventive additions. Mostly, though, an airy grace predominates, pitching the duo as baroque successors to the seminal Toumani Diabaté/Ali Farka Touré hook-up.

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Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s Derek and Clive albums reassessed…

Michael Bonner
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Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s Derek and Clive albums reassessed…
The enduring image of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore comes from a 1965 sketch routinely trotted out for best of clips shows on TV. It’s the duo in an art gallery: “The sign of a good painting with their backs towards you is if the bottoms follow you around the room.” The sketch underscores the br...

The enduring image of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore comes from a 1965 sketch routinely trotted out for best of clips shows on TV. It’s the duo in an art gallery: “The sign of a good painting with their backs towards you is if the bottoms follow you around the room.” The sketch underscores the brilliance of Cook and Moore’s partnership. Upper-class versus working-class; tall versus short; deadpan versus clowning. But by the time they came to create Derek and Clive, almost a decade later, their careers were diverging. There were solo ventures (Cook’s short-lived chat show Where Do I Sit? and The Rise And Rise Of Michael Rimmer; Moore’s 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia); while Cook’s alcoholism was beginning to nag at their relationship.

At first, Derek (Moore) and Clive (Cook) gave the two men a chance to let off steam in an informal environment. Between performances of their 1973 Broadway revue Beyond The Fridge, they convened at Bell Sound Studios, the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village and with engineer Eddie Kramer at Electric Lady studios on Chris Blackwell’s ticket. Essentially an update of their Pete and Dud characters, Derek and Clive bypassed the wit of their early collaborations in favour of lots of swearing.

Released between 1976 and 1978, the three Derek and Clive studio albums – included here with a ‘greatest hits’ set and a disc of rarities – map the degeneration of Cook and Moore’s professional relationship. It begins as sweary bants between pals over drinks – subjects include retrieving lobsters from Jayne Manfield’s rectum, Winston Churchill’s phlegm, masturbation, sodomy and cottaging. Jokes pivot round Moore’s delivery of the phrase “willy winkie wanky” or hearing Cook tell a yarn involving a “fucking gorilla fucking the arse off my fucking wife”. Blackwell circulated the tapes among his industry pals, engendering a formal release three years later. The Director of Public Prosecution rejected complaints from four police forces who wanted the comics prosecuted for obscenity. Buoyed by the controversy, Cook’s biographer Harry Thompson notes …(Live) sold 100,000 copies.

After the success of …(Live), Cook and Moore were offered a new film project, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, directed by Warhol protégé Paul Morrissey. The film failed; and the pair’s subsequent records develop an increasingly sour tone as they turn their frustrations inward towards each other. As Cook wryly admitted, Come Again is “a stream of obscenities about unpleasant subjects”. Released in 1977 on Virgin, …Come Again outflanked punk in its capacity to shock. Take, for instance, Cook serenading Moore with “My old man’s a dustman, he’s got cancer too/Silly fucking arsehole, he’s got it up the flue”, knowing that his partner had recently lost his own father due to the disease. Elsewhere, Moore considers raping the victims of road traffic accidents and later discusses cutting out his wife’s hymen with an electric carving knife.

Recorded in September 1978, just as Moore’s film career was beginning to take off (10 was barely a year away), Ad Nauseam is even further out there. In one sketch, Cook talks about repeatedly kicking his wife in the vagina. Later, he discusses masturbating over images of the late Pope; another sketch is simply called “Rape, Death And Paralysis”. At one point during the film of the Ad Nauseam sessions, Derek & Clive Get The Horn, Cook’s vitriol becomes unbearable – “Your mother thinks very simply that you’re a cunt” – and Moore temporarily walks out. It is Let It Be without the tunes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17-IDPQEqaw

Critically, while …(Live) was never intended to be heard in public, both …Come Again and Ad Nauseam were recorded for commercial release. As much as it’s possible to interpet the first record as simply the two men gamely trying to out-gross each other as much as possible, the second and third Derek and Clive records are remarkable for their sustained levels of cruelty: the awful misanthropic bleakness of the thing. They are comedy records that aren’t funny, principally. But what they reveal of the bizarre, unraveling relationship between the two comedians is fascinating; and at the very least means they shouldn’t be overlooked.

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The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

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Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Hear Brian Eno deliver the fifth annual John Peel lecture

Michael Bonner
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Hear Brian Eno deliver the fifth annual John Peel lecture
Brian Eno delivered this year's John Peel lecture last night [September 27], speaking at length on the subject of "the ecology of culture." Eno's speech can be heard via BBC 6Music by clicking here. The inaugural lecture was given by Pete Townshend in 2011, with Billy Bragg, Iggy Pop and Charlotte...

Brian Eno delivered this year’s John Peel lecture last night [September 27], speaking at length on the subject of “the ecology of culture.”

Eno’s speech can be heard via BBC 6Music by clicking here.

The inaugural lecture was given by Pete Townshend in 2011, with Billy Bragg, Iggy Pop and Charlotte Church following in subsequent years.

Prior to the talk, the BBC claimed Eno would “show how cultural processes confer essential and important benefits on society”.

Eno has previously said that Peel “had a profound effect on my musical life and indeed my becoming a musician at all”. He added: “His career as a non-musician who altered the course of music has been an inspiration to me and forms the basis of this talk.”

Eno’s lecture took place during the Radio Academy’s Radio Festival at the British Library in London. The speech was broadcast on both BBC 6 Music and BBC Four.

During his speech, The Guardian reports that Eno said art and culture offered “a safe place for you to have quite extreme and rather dangerous feelings”. He said the reason people embraced it was because they knew they could “switch if off”, so art had a role as a “simulator” in people’s lives.

Eno said: “I think we need to rethink how we talk about culture, rethink what we think it does for us, and what it actually is. We have a complete confusion about that. It’s very interesting.”

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

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Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Spacemen 3 soundtrack trip sequence in The Simpsons

Michael Bonner
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Spacemen 3 soundtrack trip sequence in The Simpsons
Spacemen 3's track "Big City (Everybody I Know Can be Found Here)" appeared in The Simpsons. The Wall Street Journal reports that the song was used to soundtrack a trip sequence. In the epsiode - the first in the show's 27th season, which aired in America last night [September 27] - Homer and Marg...

Spacemen 3‘s track “Big City (Everybody I Know Can be Found Here)” appeared in The Simpsons.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the song was used to soundtrack a trip sequence.

In the epsiode – the first in the show’s 27th season, which aired in America last night [September 27] – Homer and Marge go through a trial separation, with Homer finding a new love interest in Candace, a pharmacist voiced by Girls’ star, Lena Dunham.

Halfway through the episode, Candice and Homer mix alcohol with prescription drugs, leading to Homer’s mind-altering experience.

“Everything they take is a prescription drug but not used in the way it’s supposed to,” says “Simpsons” showrunner Al Jean. “[The song] seemed really appropriate.”

According to the band’s Sonic Boom [aka Pete Kember], requests for Spacemen 3 tunes come in fairly steadily, but are frequently turned down.

“When I saw the script I was psyched,” Kember told WSJ. “I couldn’t imagine a sweeter use of that track in this context, and particularly in context of a “trip” scene. [That is] something that’s usually for me a high point of The Simpsons oeuvre. I imagine it is what people in bands secretly, or openly, dream of. Animation is so useful for these sort of stretches of reality.”

The song was chosen by writer J. Stewart Burns. “I would’ve expected this to at some point in the rewriting process somebody would have said “Oh what’s this song?,’” he told the WSJ. “There are safer choices. I was a little surprised that no one ever yanked this one.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMqpxHY2nFs

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

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Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Pere Ubu – Elitism For The People 1975 – 1978

Jim Wirth
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Pere Ubu – Elitism For The People 1975 – 1978
Pere Ubu co-founder Peter Laughner died of chronic pancreatitis, brought on by alcoholism, on June 22, 1977. The golden boy of the fertile Cleveland underground was 24. The response from the band’s lynchpin, David Thomas, who had parted ways with the charismatic Creem magazine stringer a year earl...

Pere Ubu co-founder Peter Laughner died of chronic pancreatitis, brought on by alcoholism, on June 22, 1977. The golden boy of the fertile Cleveland underground was 24. The response from the band’s lynchpin, David Thomas, who had parted ways with the charismatic Creem magazine stringer a year earlier, has lost none of its myth-shattering force.

“What a world, what a world, what a big world, but a world to be drowned in,” he burbles atonally on “Humor Me“, eyeballs rolling at his old cohort’s dumb determination to become the first terminal Lou Reed wannabe. Morose resignation gives way to uncomprehending, sardonic fury. “It’s just a joke, man.”

Laughner’s early demise, and the negative energy generated by the two frighteningly precocious singles he helped Thomas to create – 1975’s double-A-side kamikaze raid “30 Seconds Over Tokyo”/”Heart Of Darkness” and 1976’s Oedipal hate binge “Final Solution” – felt-tipped dark shadows over everything the band created. This superbly retooled box, compiling Ubu’s independent singles, their first two albums proper, and a 1978 New York live set – tells a different and more inspiring story.

Middle-class aesthetes, itching to make the next post-Velvet Underground leap forward, Pere Ubu’s combination of gut-chugging post-Stooges rock and electronic noises evolved from a now-legendary non-starter band, Rocket From The Tombs, who essentially split in two. Cheetah Chrome and Johnny Mandansky left for New York to found punk schlockers the Dead Boys, while Thomas and Laughner stayed in Cleveland, bent on something more idiosyncratic.

The seven-inches they self-released on Thomas’ Hearpen label and 1978’s The Modern Dance created a dirty-bomb formula; a chassis of Nuggets garage rock, plastered with horn honks and machine chatter generated by their in-house Delia Derbyshire, future airline pilot Allen Ravenstine. That first album, however, marked the point when they sweated the filth from Ohio’s industrial cooling towers out of their systems; street-walking cheetahs on “Street Waves” and “Non-Alignment Pact”, free-forming spook noise mavens on “Sentimental Journey” and “Chinese Radiation”. Dark, daunting and peppered with Thomas’ tone-deaf-cockatoo vocals, it is a soundtrack to alienation, but with closing track “Humor Me” – a clear-headed rejection of rock’s dumbest conventions – the slate was wiped clean.

Album number two, released barely nine months later, sounds not so much like the work of another band as another species. “I’ve got these arms and legs that flip flop flip flop,” chirrups Thomas, marvelling at the wonder of existence as he dad-dances his way through Dub Housing‘s opening track, “Navvy”. Wonders rarely cease thereafter.

Smash martians gatecrash a beach party on “On The Surface”, while the title track splices Patti Smith’s “Land” with Roxy Music’s “For Your Pleasure”, Thomas’ narration a further warping of normality. “Hear the sound of the jibberty jungle,” he cries in mock terror. “In the dark, a thousand insect voices chitter-chatter.”

It gets odder still; Thomas reckons Pere Ubu were not crazy dub-heads – the album title was an in-joke about terraced properties on the road in to Baltimore – but “Thriller!” uses every trick in the Lee Perry book and more, all its moving parts slightly out of whack, Tom Herman‘s tiki guitar doodles giving way to a monstrous crunching sound, caterpillars chewing on eardrums.

The seasick feeling returns on “Drinking Wine Spodyody” – title lifted cheekily from a 1947 jump-blues novelty – and “(Pa) Ubu Dance Party”, Thomas gleefully talking through his creative processes: “I went out and stirred the air, my soup was steeped in strange ideas.” Few could have been more uncanny than “Blow Daddy-O”‘s mad juxtaposition of feedback, scampering phased guitar and lumbering aircraft engine noise. And then there’s “Codex”, a song about obsessive love that simultaneously mocks the concept of obsessive love and the concept of songs. “I think about you all the time,” Thomas repeats over a somnambulant forced march – a broken version of “The Song Of The Volga Boatmen” or a chain-gang approximation of Snow White’s “Heigh-Ho”.

“We had been promised the end of the world as children, and we weren’t getting it,” wrote Laughner’s ex-wife Charlotte Pressler, explaining her contemporaries’ dystopic worldview in a 1978 Cleveland scene memoir. Elitism For The People documents Pere Ubu creating their own private musical apocalypse, and then forging on to start the world anew. Not a world to be drowned in, but one to treasure.

Q&A
David Thomas
You have said that Pere Ubu fixed rock in this period: how did you think it was broken?
Rock gets broken when it loses its forward drive. When Pere Ubu formed, there were lots of local bands playing the main rock venues who could do covers of Spirit just perfect, and we just thought there was more to it than this. We despaired at the ordinariness of it.

Putting out your own record in 1975 was fairly unusual: what drove that decision?
Rocket From the Tombs ended very badly in the summer of ’75. I wasn’t going to mess with a band anymore – I just wanted to leave something behind. My ambition was to have a record in one of those Salvation Army record bins which somebody could come across in ten years’ time and say: ‘Wow, there was this band in 1975 in Cleveland…’.

Do you feel that you had any genuine peers musically outside Cleveland?
Peter loved Television. Did we see them as peers? I don’t know – I always see everybody as a rival. We were very much aware of what they were doing – but we were also aware of what other people were doing, in Indiana, San Francisco… One of the reasons that I despaired of the punk phenomenon was that it wiped out a whole generation of emerging bands. Punk was the new paradigm. It was the easy thing to copy. In a lot of ways the really great lasting bands from the early ’70s like Television, Pere Ubu, the Residents and Talking Heads were all pre-punk.
INTERVIEW: JIM WIRTH

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Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Lush announce first live show for almost twenty years

Michael Bonner
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Lush announce first live show for almost twenty years
Lush have announced details of their first live show in almost twenty years, playing London’s Roundhouse on Friday, May 6, 2016. Tickets for the show go on sale on Wednesday 30th September 2015 at 9am via www.alt-tickets.co.uk/lush-tickets and are priced at £27.50. More live dates are expected ...

Lush have announced details of their first live show in almost twenty years, playing London’s Roundhouse on Friday, May 6, 2016.

Tickets for the show go on sale on Wednesday 30th September 2015 at 9am via www.alt-tickets.co.uk/lush-tickets and are priced at £27.50.

More live dates are expected to be announced soon.

The band last played live in Tokyo in September 1996.

“The opportunities and practicalities of reforming Lush meant that for 20 years it was an impossible undertaking,” explained vocalist/guitarist Miki Berenyi. “But we all loved what we did, and the time is finally right for us to do it again.”

The band’s UK label, 4AD, are also releasing a vinyl reissue of Lush’s ‘best of’ compilation Ciao! in November, followed by a limited edition box set titled Chorus at the beginning of December.

The box is a five-disc set, comprising the early compilation Gala (1990), the three studio albums Spooky (1992), Split (1994) and Lovelife (1996) and the B-sides collection Topolino (the Canadian version, also 1996), plus B-sides, radio sessions, remixes and demos, some previously unreleased. The artwork is by Chris Bigg.

The line-up for forthcoming live shows is Berenyi, vocalist/guitarist Emma Anderson, bassist Phil King and Justin Welch, formerly of Elastica.

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

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Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

The 33rd Uncut Playlist Of 2015

John Mulvey
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The 33rd Uncut Playlist Of 2015
Few things to highlight this week, not least a mighty Neil Young live set in which he dusts down "Alabama" for the first time (I'm reliably informed; thanks, Mark) in over 40 years. Please have a listen, too, to the Grand Rapids jam, Patrick Higgins, Nadia Reid and Lubomyr Melnyk. Also, I have nothi...

Few things to highlight this week, not least a mighty Neil Young live set in which he dusts down “Alabama” for the first time (I’m reliably informed; thanks, Mark) in over 40 years. Please have a listen, too, to the Grand Rapids jam, Patrick Higgins, Nadia Reid and Lubomyr Melnyk. Also, I have nothing whatsoever of interest to say about the Ryan Adams album.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

1 Duane Pitre – Bayou Electric (Important)

2 Byron Westbrook – Precipice (Root Strata)

3 Neil Young & The Promise Of The Real – Live At Farm Aid

4 Elle Osborne – It’s Not Your Gold Shall Me Entice (House)

5 Ryan Adams – 1989 (Columbia)

6 Kelley Stoltz – In Triangle Time (Castle Face)

7 Kohoutek – Curious Aroma (MIE Music)

8 3 Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts – Manhattan (Rough Trade)

9 Floating Points – Elaenia (Pluto)

10 Grand Banks – Live 9-16-2015 (https://grand-banks.bandcamp.com/album/grand-banks-live-9-16-2015)

11 Glenn Mercer – Incidental Hum (Bar None)

12 Patrick Higgins – Bachanalia (Telegraph Harp)

13 Nadia Reid – Listen To Formation, Look For The Signs (Scissor Tail/Spunk)

14 Van Morrison – Astral Weeks (Rhino)

15 Kurt Stenzel – Jodorowsky’s Dune: Motion Picture Soundtrack (Light In The Attic)

16 Tortoise – Djed/Cliff Dweller Society (Duophonic)

17 Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker – Land Of Plenty (Whistler)

18 Bill Ryder-Jones – West Kirby County Primary (Domino)

19 The Wainwright Sisters – Songs In The Dark (PIAS)

20 Sexwitch – Sexwitch (Echo)

21 Weyes Blood – Cardamom Times (Mexican Summer)

22 Bing & Ruth – City Lake (RVNG INTL)

23 The Chills – Silver Bullet (Fire)

24 The Necks – Vertigo (ReR/Northern Spy)

25 King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Paper Mâché Dream Balloon (Heavenly)

26 Six Organs Of Admittance – Hexadic II (Drag City)

27 Lubomyr Melnyk – Rivers and Streams (Erased Tapes)

Los Lobos on their best albums: “The most painful stuff results in your best work”

Tom Pinnock
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Los Lobos on their best albums: “The most painful stuff results in your best work”
Since self-releasing their 1978 debut, Just Another Band From East LA, Los Lobos have operated outside the mainstream, making consistently brilliant LPs on limited resources. Drummer Louie Pérez, singer/guitarists David Hidalgo and César Rosas, and bass player Conrad Lozano formed the band soon af...

LOS LOBOS
THE RIDE
HOLLYWOOD, 2004

Los Lobos celebrated their 30th anniversary by throwing an extended party at Rosas’ home studio – with the tape rolling.

HIDALGO: What was cool about that was that we got to work with our heroes and friends. The thing that moved me the most about it was that it just took a phone call. We called Elvis [Costello]: “Hey, we’re doin’ an album, do you want to be a part of it?” “Sure.” Same thing with Rubén Blades, Mavis Staples, Richard Thompson, Tom Waits, Dave Alvin – all our heroes and friends. That meant a lot to me. It’s a friendly record.

BERLIN: The first one was Bobby Womack, who sang the crap out of his track [a medley of “Wicked Rain” from Kiko and his own “Across 110th Street”]. Bobby was all cut live, and César overdubbed his vocal, once he got up the courage.

CESAR ROSAS: Just to be in the same room with Bobby Womack was awesome. Thirty seconds after we met, he’s singin’ my song to me, sayin’, “What do ya think about this?” It was remarkable to me ’cause I didn’t really know him, but he hung out, he told stories, we had a meal together. At one point he goes, “Al Green called me and wanted me to be on his record, but I told him I was busy working with you guys.” We’re like, “You turned Al Green down for us?!”

___________________

LOS LOBOS
THE TOWN AND THE CITY
HOLLYWOOD, 2006

The band cooks up a concept album from scratch: an ambitious, emotional song cycle probing the Mexican-American experience.

PEREZ: Some records take on their own lives, and this one sure took on a stubborn-ass life. We had about a month before we were scheduled to go into the studio, so we spent it writing, or attempting to write. We were getting desperate when David came up with “The Valley”, and this atmospheric thing that was going on made it feel like this is the place where everything starts – literally and metaphorically – because all the swirling sounds gave it the feeling of a creation myth or something. At that point, the idea of the lyric started to come – the idea of travel or a journey and finally settling into a place. I imagined indigenous people or migrants coming over a hill and looking down into this valley, and they realise that they’ve finally arrived at a place they can call home. So I wrote it, gave it to David and he said, “Great – let’s cut it.” As David kept giving me new stuff, I started to get an idea of where to take the rest of it, but everything was still a mystery that was unfolding, and I had to just go with it. At that point, we realised that “The Valley” was the beginning of this journey or adventure, and then it finally settles down, and the epilogue is “The Town”, which is about going back to where you started from. It was like it had come from deep inside ourselves. This was the one where we finally decided not to hold anything back.

____________________

LOS LOBOS
TIN CAN TRUST
SHOUT! FACTORY, 2010

On their 14th and most recent studio album, the seasoned East LA músicos still manage to deliver at a remarkably high level.

BERLIN: Tin Can Trust was done outside César’s studio for the first time in three albums and 10 years, which was very healthy for us. Working in a real studio again, funky as it was, put us back in a place where we could just go with the vibe of the room, and it rewarded us greatly just to play together.

It was also evocative for everybody to be back in East LA after 30 years. We weren’t trying to go retro, but it inevitably fell that way by virtue of what we were doing and where we were, and the fact that the songs were unadorned and put together on the spot. That was the shape the record told us it wanted to be. We always put our faith in our muses when we start a record. When we look back on that one, I think we’ll realise that it was miraculous in a way.

HIDALGO: Right in the middle of it, César and I went out on the road with the Experience Hendrix tribute, but we had a deadline and needed to get the album done. So whenever we had a day off somewhere – San Francisco, Denver, Fort Worth, Chicago – Steve would come out and record us in whatever studio he could book. That was a little bit trying, but it still beats working.

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Bob Dylan unveils The Cutting Edge 1965 – 1966: The Bootleg Series Vol 12 box set

Laura Snapes
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Columbia Records have announced details of Bob Dylan's The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Nov. 12. The deluxe six-CD anthology will be released by Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings on November 6, and features previously unheard songs, outtakes, rehearsal tracks and alternate versions fr...

Columbia Records have announced details of Bob Dylan‘s The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Nov. 12. The deluxe six-CD anthology will be released by Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings on November 6, and features previously unheard songs, outtakes, rehearsal tracks and alternate versions from the sessions for Bringing It all Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde. All the recordings have been mixed from the original studio tracking tapes. The set includes an annotated book featuring rare and previously unseen photographs, memorabilia and new essays written by Bill Flanagan and Sean Wilentz.

An “ultra deluxe” 18-CD edition (available exclusively through BobDylan.com) includes every note recorded in the studio during the sessions. It will be limited to 5,000 copies worldwide, and has been mixed from the original studio tracking tapes, eliminating vestiges of the 1960s studio processing. Dylan’s original nine mono 45 RPM singles from the period are also included, packaged in newly created picture sleeves, along with rare hotel room recordings from London’s Savoy Hotel (May 4, 1965), the North British Station Hotel in Glasgow (May 13, 1966) and a Denver, Colorado hotel (March 12, 1966) as well as a strip of original film cels from Don’t Look Back.

Meanwhile a condensed version of the set will be released as The Best Of The Cutting Edge 1965-1966, in 2-CD and 3-LP sets.

Explore the tracklist for the release below, and watch The Story Behind The Cutting Edge.

The Best of The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12

DISC 1

  1. Love Minus Zero/No Limit – Take 2 (1/13/1965) acoustic
  2. I’ll Keep It with Mine – Take 1 (1/13/1965) piano demo
  3. Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream – Take 2 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
  4. She Belongs to Me – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
  5. Subterranean Homesick Blues – Take 1 (1/14/1965) alternate take
  6. Outlaw Blues – Take 2 (1/13/1965) alternate take
  7. On the Road Again – Take 4 (1/14/1965) alternate take
  8. Farewell, Angelina – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
  9. If You Gotta Go, Go Now – Take 2 (1/15/1965) alternate take
  10. You Don’t Have to Do That – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
  11. California – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
  12. Mr. Tambourine Man – Take 3 (1/15/1965) with band, incomplete
  13. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry – Take 8 (6/15/1965) alternate take
  14. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 5 (6/15/1965) rehearsal
  15. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 11 (6/16/1965) alternate take
  16. Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence – Take 2 (6/15/1965) unreleased take
  17. Medicine Sunday – Take 1 (10/5/1965) early version of Temporary Like Achilles
  18. Desolation Row – Take 2 (8/4/1965) piano demo
  19. Desolation Row – Take 1 (8/4/1965) alternate take

DISC 2

  1. Tombstone Blues – Take 1 (7/29/1965) alternate take
  2. Positively 4th Street – Take 5 (7/29/1965) alternate take
  3. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window – Take 1 (7/30/1965) alternate take
  4. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Take 3 (8/2/1965) rehearsal
  5. Highway 61 Revisited – Take 3 (8/2/1965) alternate take
  6. Queen Jane Approximately – Take 5 (8/2/1965) alternate take
  7. Visions of Johanna – Take 5 (11/30/1965) rehearsal
  8. She’s Your Lover Now – Take 6 (1/21/1966) rehearsal
  9. Lunatic Princess – Take 1 (1/27/1966)
  10. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat – Take 8 (2/14/1966) alternate take
  11. One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) – Take 19 (1/25/1966) alternate take
  12. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again – Take 13 (2/17/1966) alternate take
  13. Absolutely Sweet Marie – Take 1 (3/7/1966) alternate take
  14. Just Like a Woman – Take 4 (3/8/1966) alternate take
  15. Pledging My Time – Take 1 (3/8/1966) alternate take
  16. I Want You – Take 4 (3/10/1966) alternate take
  17. Highway 61 Revisited – Take 7 (8/2/1965) false start

All tracks previously unreleased except Disc 1, track 2, Biograph; Disc 1, track 8, The Bootleg Series, Volume 1-3.

The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12

(6-CD Deluxe Edition)

DISC 1:

  1. Love Minus Zero/No Limit – Take 1 (1/13/1965) acoustic, incomplete
  2. Love Minus Zero/No Limit – Take 2 (1/13/1965) acoustic
  3. Love Minus Zero/No Limit – Take 3 remake (1/13/1965) acoustic
  4. Love Minus Zero/No Limit – Take 1 remake (1/14/1965) electric
  5. I’ll Keep It with Mine – Take 1 (1/13/1965) piano demo, previously released on Biograph, 1985
  6. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic, previously released on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7, 2005
  7. Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream – Take 1 (1/13/1965) acoustic, incomplete
  8. Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream – Take 2 (1/13/1965) acoustic
  9. She Belongs to Me – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
  10. She Belongs to Me – Take 2 Remake (1/13/1965) acoustic
  11. She Belongs to Me – Take 1 Remake (1/14/1965) electric
  12. Subterranean Homesick Blues – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic, previously released on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3, 1991
  13. Subterranean Homesick Blues – Take 1 remake (1/14/1965) electric
  14. Outlaw Blues – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
  15. Outlaw Blues – Take 2 Remake (1/13/1965) electric
  16. On the Road Again – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
  17. On the Road Again – Take 4 (1/14/1965) electric
  18. On the Road Again – Take 1 remake (1/15/1965) electric
  19. On the Road Again – Take 7 remake (1/15/1965) electric
  20. Farewell, Angelina – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic, previously released The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3, 1991
  21. If You Gotta Go, Go Now – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
  22. If You Gotta Go, Go Now – Take 2 (1/15/1965) electric
  23. You Don’t Have to Do That – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic, incomplete

DISC 2:

  1. California – Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
  2. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – Take 1 (1/15/1965) acoustic, demo
  3. Mr. Tambourine Man – Takes 1 – 2 (1/15/1965) incomplete, with band
  4. Mr. Tambourine Man – Take 3 (1/15/1965) incomplete, with band
  5. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry – Take 1 (6/15/1965)
  6. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry – Take 8 (6/15/1965)
  7. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry – Take 3 (7/29/1965)
  8. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry – Take 3 remake (7/29/65)
  9. Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence – Take 2 (6/15/1965)
  10. Tombstone Blues – Take 1 (7/29/1965)
  11. Tombstone Blues – Take 9 (7/29/1965) previously released on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7, 2005
  12. Positively 4th Street – Takes 1-3 (7/29/1965)
  13. Positively 4th Street – Take 4 (7/29/1965)
  14. Positively 4th Street – Take 5 (7/29/1965)
  15. Desolation Row – Take 1 (8/4/1965)
  16. Desolation Row – Take 2 (8/4/1965) piano demo
  17. Desolation Row – Take 5 remake (8/2/1965)
  18. From a Buick 6 – Take 1 (7/30/1965)
  19. From a Buick 6 – Take 4 (7/30/1965) released in error on first pressing of Highway 61 Revisited, 1965

DISC 3:

  1. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 1-3 (6/15/1965)
  2. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 4 (6/15/1965)
  3. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 5 (6/15/1965)
  4. Like a Rolling Stone – Rehearsal (6/16/1965)
  5. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 1 (6/16/1965)
  6. Like a Rolling Stone – Takes 2-3 (6/16/1965)
  7. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 4 (6/16/1965) released on Highway 61 Revisited, 1965
  8. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 5 (6/16/1965)
  9. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 6 (6/16/1965)
  10. Like a Rolling Stone -Take 8 (6/16/1965)
  11. Like a Rolling Stone – Takes 9-10 (6/16/1965)
  12. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 11 (6/16/1965)
  13. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 12 (6/16/1965)
  14. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 13 (6/16/1965)
  15. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 14 (6/16/1965)
  16. Like a Rolling Stone – Take 15 (6/16/1965)
  17. Like a Rolling Stone – Master take – lead guitar isolated track
  18. Like a Rolling Stone – Master take – vocal and guitar isolated track
  19. Like a Rolling Stone – Mast take – drums and organ isolated track
  20. Like a Rolling Stone – Master take – piano and bass isolated track

DISC 4:

  1. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window – Take 1 (7/30/1965)
  2. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window – Take 17 (7/30/1965 released in error on the first pressing of Positively 4th Street single
  3. Highway 61 Revisited – Take 3 (8/2/1965)
  4. Highway 61 Revisited – Take 5 (8/2/1965)
  5. Highway 61 Revisited – Take 7 (8/2/1965)
  6. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Take 1 (8/2/1965)
  7. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Take 3 (8/2/1965)
  8. Just Like Tom Thumb’s blues – Take 13 (8/2/1965)
  9. Queen Jane Approximately – Take 2 (8/2/1965)
  10. Queen Jane Approximately – Take 5 (8/2/1965)
  11. Ballad of a Thin Man – Take 2 (8/2/1965) incomplete
  12. Medicine Sunday – Take 1 (10/5/1965)
  13. Jet Pilot – Take 1 (10/5/1965) Previously released on Biograph, 1985
  14. I Wanna Be Your Lover – Take 1 (10/5/1965)
  15. I Wanna Be Your Lover – Take 6 (10/5/1965)
  16. Unknown Instrumental – Take 2 (10/5/1965)
  17. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window – Takes 5-6 (11/30/1965)
  18. Visions of Johanna – Take 1 (11/30/1965)
  19. Visions of Johanna – Take 5 (11/30/1965)

DISC 5:

  1. Visions of Johanna – Take 7 (11/30/1965)
  2. Visions of Johanna – Take 8 (11/30/1965) previously released on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7, 2005
  3. Visions of Johanna – Take 14 (11/30/1965)
  4. She’s Your Lover Now – Take 1 (1/21/1966)
  5. She’s Your Lover Now – Take 6 (1/21/1966)
  6. She’s Your Lover Now – Take 15 (1/21/1966) previously released on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3, 1991
  7. She’s Your Lover Now – Take 16 (1/21/1966) solo piano
  8. One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) – Take 2 (1/25/1966)
  9. One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) – Take 4 (1/25/1966)
  10. One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) – Take 19 (1/25/1966)
  11. Lunatic Princess – Take 1 (1/27/1966)
  12. Fourth Time Around – Take 11 (2/14/1966)
  13. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat – Take 3 (2/14/1966)
  14. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat – Take 8 (2/14/1966)

DISC 6:

  1. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again – Take 1 (2/17/1966)
  2. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again – Rehearsal (2/17/1966)
  3. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again – Take 5 (2/17/1966) previously released on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7, 2005
  4. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again – Take 13 (2/17/1966)
  5. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again – Take 14 (2/17/1966)
  6. Absolutely Sweet Marie – Take 1 (3/7/1966)
  7. Just Like a Woman – Take 1 (3/8/1966)
  8. Just Like a Woman – Take 4 (3/8/1966)
  9. Just Like a Woman – Take 8 (3/8/1966)
  10. Pledging My Time – Take 1 (3/8/1966)
  11. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine) – Take 1 (3/9/1966)
  12. Temporary Like Achilles – Take 3 (3/9/1966)
  13. Obviously 5 Believers – Take 3 (3/10/1966)
  14. I Want You – Take 4 (3/10/1966)
  15. Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands – Take 1 – (2/16/1966)

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, John Grant, Julian Cope, The Doors, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Gabriel, The Dead Weather, Deerhunter, Otis Redding, Captain Beefheart and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

 

BFI London Film Festival announce music programme

Laura Snapes
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The BFI London Film Festival takes place from October 7 - 18, and features the UK premieres of several music documentaries. Among the highlights is The American Epic Sessions, Jack White and T Bone Burnett's tribute to the Western Electric lathe, which "pioneered the recording of American music." T...

The BFI London Film Festival takes place from October 7 – 18, and features the UK premieres of several music documentaries.

Among the highlights is The American Epic Sessions, Jack White and T Bone Burnett‘s tribute to the Western Electric lathe, which “pioneered the recording of American music.” The film features live performances from Elton John, Nas, Willie Nelson, Alabama Shakes, Steve Martin, Ana Gabriel, Merle Haggard and Taj Mahal among others.

Amy Berg’s Janis Joplin documentary, Janis: Little Girl Blue, also receives its UK premiere, and offers a portrait of “a hugely witty and talented free spirit who rebelled against her own youth in a town populated by bigotry, where she was targeted for her boyish looks and for being pro-integration.”

Elsewhere, there’s Danny Says, Brendan Toller’s film about Ramones manager Danny Fields; Stretch And Bobito: Radio That Saved Lives features the likes of Jay Z, Eminem and Nas paying tribute to the legendary ’90s hip-hop DJs Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Garcia; Fresh Dressed documents the evolution of hip-hop style, and They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Music In Exile captures the tensions between northern Mali musicians and the Islamic Jihadists that took control of the area in 2010, to a soundtrack featuring the Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ Nick Zinner, Khaira Arby, Fadimata ‘Disco’ Walet Oumar, Amkoullel and Moussa Sidi.

Check out the rest of the BFI’s Sonic programme here, and watch more trailers below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gm5OhJszpU

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, John Grant, Julian Cope, The Doors, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Gabriel, The Dead Weather, Deerhunter, Otis Redding, Captain Beefheart and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

John Grant: “I wanted to take away the innocence”

Laura Snapes
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0
In this month's issue, Uncut holds An Audience With... John Grant, as the Iceland-based singer-songwriter prepares to release his third solo album, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure. Responding to questions from readers as well as Elton John, Holly Johnson, Midlake's Eric Pullido and Villagers' Conor O'...

In this month’s issue, Uncut holds An Audience With… John Grant, as the Iceland-based singer-songwriter prepares to release his third solo album, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure.

Responding to questions from readers as well as Elton John, Holly Johnson, Midlake‘s Eric Pullido and Villagers‘ Conor O’Brien, Grant calls Freddie Mercury and The Divinyls’ Christina Amphlett his ideal dinner party companions, and discloses the advice that Sinead O’Connor gave him.

Of his new album cover, in which he appears alongside a pair of ornamental owls with his eyes scratched out, Grant says:

“If I’m honest, I suppose there’s something I don’t want people to see in my eyes. They really are the window to the soul. It looks like a photo that you’d take of a child, maybe through the eyes of David Lynch. And so I wanted to take away the innocence. I was trying to express what was expected of me and what I have become.”

Grey Tickles, Black Pressure is released through Bella Union on October 9. Watch the video for “Disappointing”, featuring Tracey Thorn.

The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.

Meanwhile, the November 2015 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring Rod Stewart, Joanna Newsom, Julian Cope, The Doors, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Gabriel, The Dead Weather, Deerhunter, Otis Redding, Captain Beefheart and more.

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

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