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Watch Björk’s trailer for her forthcoming exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art

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Watch Björk’s trailer for her forthcoming exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art

The exhibition will run from March 8 to June 7 at the New York venue... Björk has teased her upcoming exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art by releasing a trailer for "Black Lake". "Black Lake" is "an immersive 10-minute music and film experience" by director Andrew Thomas Huang which runs alongside the song of the same name from her new album Vulnicura and is a main part of the exhibition. Simply titled Björk, the retrospective dedicated to her career will will use "sound, film, visuals, instruments, objects, costumes, and performance" to detail Björk's career, reads a statement from the museum. "The installation will present a narrative, both biographical and imaginatively fictitious, co-written by Björk and the acclaimed Icelandic writer Sjón," continues the press release. The exhibition will run from March 8 to June 7 and begin at the same time as the artist's series of live dates in New York. Vulnicura was released in January, two months early, as it had been unofficially leaked. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiXQ5qaUGDI The Icelandic singer will perform two shows at New York's Carnegie Hall and a further four at the City Center venue between March 7 and April 4 this year. In addition to the new album and exhibition, the singer will also release a career retrospective book in March titled Björk: Archives. The book, which features contributions from directors Chris Cunningham and Spike Jonze, will chart the singer's career through a mixture of poetry, academic analysis, philosophical texts and photographs. Björk will play: New York Carnegie Hall (March 3, 14) New York City Center (March 25, 28, April 1, 4)

The exhibition will run from March 8 to June 7 at the New York venue…

Björk has teased her upcoming exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art by releasing a trailer for “Black Lake”.

“Black Lake” is “an immersive 10-minute music and film experience” by director Andrew Thomas Huang which runs alongside the song of the same name from her new album Vulnicura and is a main part of the exhibition. Simply titled Björk, the retrospective dedicated to her career will will use “sound, film, visuals, instruments, objects, costumes, and performance” to detail Björk’s career, reads a statement from the museum.

“The installation will present a narrative, both biographical and imaginatively fictitious, co-written by Björk and the acclaimed Icelandic writer Sjón,” continues the press release. The exhibition will run from March 8 to June 7 and begin at the same time as the artist’s series of live dates in New York. Vulnicura was released in January, two months early, as it had been unofficially leaked.

The Icelandic singer will perform two shows at New York’s Carnegie Hall and a further four at the City Center venue between March 7 and April 4 this year.

In addition to the new album and exhibition, the singer will also release a career retrospective book in March titled Björk: Archives. The book, which features contributions from directors Chris Cunningham and Spike Jonze, will chart the singer’s career through a mixture of poetry, academic analysis, philosophical texts and photographs.

Björk will play:

New York Carnegie Hall (March 3, 14)

New York City Center (March 25, 28, April 1, 4)

Ian Curtis’ former home up for sale

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Ian Curtis’ former home up for sale
The two bed Macclesfield property has an asking price of £115,000... The former home of Joy Division's Ian Curtis is up for sale. The two bedroom property at 77 Barton Street, Macclesfield is featured on Rightmove. The listing reads: "Situated in a popular and central location, this double fronte...

The two bed Macclesfield property has an asking price of £115,000…

The former home of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis is up for sale.

The two bedroom property at 77 Barton Street, Macclesfield is featured on Rightmove. The listing reads: “Situated in a popular and central location, this double fronted character cottage offers spacious accommodation with two reception rooms, two double bedrooms, a good size kitchen and a shared courtyard garden.”

The house has an asking price of £115,000. The property was on the market for £64,950 in 2002. The house was used as a location in the 2007 Anton Corbijn-directed film Control. Curtis took his own life in the property on May 18 1980 at the age of 23, days before the band were due to undertake a US tour.

Joy Division’s debut EP An Ideal For Living was released for last year’s Record Store Day. The record was made in 1978, shortly after the band dropped their original name Warsaw. The new version was remastered at Abbey Road Studios in London by the band’s longtime engineer, Frank Arkwright.

Slint’s David Pajo recovering from suspected suicide bid

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Slint’s David Pajo recovering from suspected suicide bid

The musician has also played with Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol... Slint guitarist David Pajo is recovering from a suspected suicide bid. The musician [pictured, right] was taken from his New Jersey home by emergency services to a local hospital, reports Pitchfork. Pajo has since posted a picture on Instagram of himself in his hospital bed. A message posted on his official Facebook page earlier today (February 13) reads: "There will be things said about our friend David in the press these coming days and he'll need our love and support. Feel free to comment here. Thank you." As well as playing with Slint, the prolific Pajo has performed with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, Tortoise, Stereolab and Zwan, as well as Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Royal Trux, releasing solo records under a range of aliases, including Pajo, Papa M, Aerial M, and M.

The musician has also played with Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol…

Slint guitarist David Pajo is recovering from a suspected suicide bid.

The musician [pictured, right] was taken from his New Jersey home by emergency services to a local hospital, reports Pitchfork. Pajo has since posted a picture on Instagram of himself in his hospital bed.

A message posted on his official Facebook page earlier today (February 13) reads: “There will be things said about our friend David in the press these coming days and he’ll need our love and support. Feel free to comment here. Thank you.”

As well as playing with Slint, the prolific Pajo has performed with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, Tortoise, Stereolab and Zwan, as well as Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Royal Trux, releasing solo records under a range of aliases, including Pajo, Papa M, Aerial M, and M.

AC/DC confirm drummer Chris Slade will replace Phil Rudd on 2015 tour

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AC/DC confirm drummer Chris Slade will replace Phil Rudd on 2015 tour

Slade played with band during their Grammy performance last week... AC/DC have confirmed that Chris Slade will replace Phil Rudd on their 2015 tour. "Chris Slade will be on drums for the upcoming Rock or Bust world tour," the band announced in a statement. Slade, who was AC/DC's drummer between 1989 and 1994, played with the band during their performance at the Grammy Awards last week. He was standing in for estranged drummer Rudd, who is at home in New Zealand awaiting trial on charges of threatening to kill and possession of methamphetamine and cannabis. Last month, Rudd's AC/DC band mates Brian Johnson and Malcolm Young both addressed the problem their band is facing. While Young said that the band have yet to "resolve" whether Rudd is still a member of AC/DC, Johnson suggested Rudd would not performing on the 2015 tour. Slade, who played on album The Razor’s Edge wrote on his Facebook page, "This is an amazing opportunity for me, after all most people don’t ever get to play with their favourite band once, let alone twice!" I would like to thank everyone for the overwhelming support I have been shown personally, on the Facebook page and other social media, not one comment has gone unread, and it has been very humbling, thanks so much." Slade added: "We apologise for the secrecy, please understand this was for all the right reasons."

Slade played with band during their Grammy performance last week…

AC/DC have confirmed that Chris Slade will replace Phil Rudd on their 2015 tour.

“Chris Slade will be on drums for the upcoming Rock or Bust world tour,” the band announced in a statement.

Slade, who was AC/DC’s drummer between 1989 and 1994, played with the band during their performance at the Grammy Awards last week. He was standing in for estranged drummer Rudd, who is at home in New Zealand awaiting trial on charges of threatening to kill and possession of methamphetamine and cannabis.

Last month, Rudd’s AC/DC band mates Brian Johnson and Malcolm Young both addressed the problem their band is facing. While Young said that the band have yet to “resolve” whether Rudd is still a member of AC/DC, Johnson suggested Rudd would not performing on the 2015 tour.

Slade, who played on album The Razor’s Edge wrote on his Facebook page, “This is an amazing opportunity for me, after all most people don’t ever get to play with their favourite band once, let alone twice!” I would like to thank everyone for the overwhelming support I have been shown personally, on the Facebook page and other social media, not one comment has gone unread, and it has been very humbling, thanks so much.”

Slade added: “We apologise for the secrecy, please understand this was for all the right reasons.”

Some thoughts on Kim Gordon’s memoir, Girl In A Band

Michael Bonner
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Some thoughts on Kim Gordon’s memoir, Girl In A Band

Not just about a girl in a band... There is plenty of talk about music in Kim Gordon's memoir, but its animating force is disappointment. The book opens with Sonic Youth's final performance; in November 2011 at the SWU Music & Arts Festival in São Paulo, Brazil. By then, Gordon and her husband and bandmate Thurston Moore are estranged after 30 years together; he has been unfaithful and she reflects on “a life’s work now inextricable from heartbreak”. Indeed, much of Girl As A Band is overshadowed by her relationship with Moore. But curiously, the book is often at its most interesting when discussing neither music nor Moore. In her 1979 collection of essays, The White Album, Joan Didion noted, “A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.” Didion was the sharp-eyed observer of cultural values and experiences in California during the 1960s and Seventies; a period, incidentally, which Kim Gordon knows very well. Didion is clearly an influence on Gordon - like Didion, Gordon's writing is precise, her tone unsentimental, and her eye for detail sharp. Although born in Rochester, New York, Gordon moved to California when she was five years old when her father accepted a professorship at UCLA. This was 1958, and much of the early part of her excellent memoir subsequently finds Gordon staking out California, much as Didion had done before her. “LA in the late Sixties had a desolation about it, a disquiet,” she writes. “More than anything, that had to do with a feeling, one that you still find in parts of the San Fernando Valley. There was a sense of apocalyptic expanse, of sidewalks and houses centipeding over mountains and going on forever, combined with a shrugging kind of anchorlessness. Growing up I was always aware of LA’s diffuseness, its lack of an attachment to anything other than its own good reflection in the mirror.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPytYrYqDbA In some ways, Girl In A Band is a self-deprecating title – evidently, Gordon is much more than that – but it is also an extremely limiting one. Any one expecting this to be a definitive biography of Sonic Youth, for instance, will be disappointed. Inevitably, Sonic Youth play a critical part in this book; but this is much more than just an account of life in a band. In fact, the strongest parts of Girl In A Band are Gordon’s observations of California during the dissonance of the Sixties. “Back then, there were lots of eccentric bearded guys dressed in white roaming round LA,” she notes; indeed, her brother, Keller, is invited up to “the ranch” by Manson acolyte Bobby Beausoleil, while one of Keller’s ex girlfriends is abducted and later found stabbed to death. Although Gordon’s parents were both liberal intellectuals – jazz, “Venice beatnik guys” and documentary filmmakers figure highly in the early chapters -– the dominant figure during her childhood was Keller, a “sadistic, arrogant” figure who is later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Gradually, Gordon’s artistic temperament surfaces; she enrolls at Santa Monica College in 1972 and moves to Venice where her landlord is a former CSNY roadie. She becomes friendly with Bruce Berry, a relative of Jan Berry from Jan and Dean, and she finds herself in “Jan’s house high in the hills, a cheesy contemporary glass box on a tacky hilltop in a would-be neighbourhood, surrounded by nothing. Cocaine was prevalent, heroin more under-the-table, but I wasn’t into that stuff. I do remember being there one morning at around 8am watching a topless girl float through the living room playing a violin.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7TuWdHNsYY If the early part of Girl In A Band is concerned with depicting California’s post-60s malady, the book is equally strong in capturing downtown Manhattan in the 1980s, where Gordon moves to pursue a career in art. “In 1980 New York was near bankruptcy, with garbage strikes every month, it seemed, and a crumbling, weedy infrastructure. These days, it gleams and towers in ways most people I know hate and can’t understand.” She documents the art scene on the Lower East Side with a kind of casual aloofness; Basquiat, Warhol, Jeff Koons all drift through. It is here, of course, that she finally meets Thurston Moore, and Sonic Youth come together. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f_bb7iVfak The band stuff is all fillet, no fat. Gordon zones in on a specific memories for each album. About Sister, for instance, she explains that “Pacific Coast Highway” was “a direct pull from the fears of my teenage years when I was focused on the lore surrounding Charles Manson”. Such insights are accompanied by colourful vignettes – cooking dinner for Neil Young while he tunes the sound of a cow mooing for his electric train set. She writes eloquently about Kurt Cobain; evidently a loss she still feels to this day. Additionally, the cast list includes Danny Elfman, Larry Gagosian, Gerhard Richter, Courtney Love, Marc Jacobs, Sofia Coppola, Tony Oursler and Julie Cafritz (a staunch friend in troubled times). The final section takes place in Northampton, Massachusetts where the density of alt-rock royalty – Gordon and Moore, J Mascis and his wife, Cafritz and her husband – assumes an unintentionally amusing quality, like a real life Stellar Street. In this bohemian enclave, Gordon and Moore raise their daughter, Coco: but “I’ve never had any domestic talents or hobbies,” admits Gordon. They struggle to adapt, despite the good neighbours. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y21VecIIdBI Finally, Gordon returns to California, to work on art projects. “The older I get, the smaller the world seems,” she muses. She works on an exhibition in the basement of a house in Lauren Canyon, close to Mulholland Drive. She writes about hearing “fire engines, helicopters, and traffic zooming up and down the canyon” before linking it back to “the favoured route of the Manson family for crosstown travel and creepy crawling exploits from their place near Calabasas to Hollywood.” In truth, however far Kim Gordon has come – figuratively, creatively, literally – it is hard to completely shake of the past. Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner. Girl In A Band is published on February 24 by Faber & Faber

Not just about a girl in a band…

There is plenty of talk about music in Kim Gordon‘s memoir, but its animating force is disappointment. The book opens with Sonic Youth’s final performance; in November 2011 at the SWU Music & Arts Festival in São Paulo, Brazil. By then, Gordon and her husband and bandmate Thurston Moore are estranged after 30 years together; he has been unfaithful and she reflects on “a life’s work now inextricable from heartbreak”. Indeed, much of Girl As A Band is overshadowed by her relationship with Moore. But curiously, the book is often at its most interesting when discussing neither music nor Moore.

In her 1979 collection of essays, The White Album, Joan Didion noted, “A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.” Didion was the sharp-eyed observer of cultural values and experiences in California during the 1960s and Seventies; a period, incidentally, which Kim Gordon knows very well.

Didion is clearly an influence on Gordon – like Didion, Gordon’s writing is precise, her tone unsentimental, and her eye for detail sharp. Although born in Rochester, New York, Gordon moved to California when she was five years old when her father accepted a professorship at UCLA. This was 1958, and much of the early part of her excellent memoir subsequently finds Gordon staking out California, much as Didion had done before her. “LA in the late Sixties had a desolation about it, a disquiet,” she writes. “More than anything, that had to do with a feeling, one that you still find in parts of the San Fernando Valley. There was a sense of apocalyptic expanse, of sidewalks and houses centipeding over mountains and going on forever, combined with a shrugging kind of anchorlessness. Growing up I was always aware of LA’s diffuseness, its lack of an attachment to anything other than its own good reflection in the mirror.”

In some ways, Girl In A Band is a self-deprecating title – evidently, Gordon is much more than that – but it is also an extremely limiting one. Any one expecting this to be a definitive biography of Sonic Youth, for instance, will be disappointed. Inevitably, Sonic Youth play a critical part in this book; but this is much more than just an account of life in a band. In fact, the strongest parts of Girl In A Band are Gordon’s observations of California during the dissonance of the Sixties. “Back then, there were lots of eccentric bearded guys dressed in white roaming round LA,” she notes; indeed, her brother, Keller, is invited up to “the ranch” by Manson acolyte Bobby Beausoleil, while one of Keller’s ex girlfriends is abducted and later found stabbed to death.

Although Gordon’s parents were both liberal intellectuals – jazz, “Venice beatnik guys” and documentary filmmakers figure highly in the early chapters -– the dominant figure during her childhood was Keller, a “sadistic, arrogant” figure who is later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Gradually, Gordon’s artistic temperament surfaces; she enrolls at Santa Monica College in 1972 and moves to Venice where her landlord is a former CSNY roadie. She becomes friendly with Bruce Berry, a relative of Jan Berry from Jan and Dean, and she finds herself in “Jan’s house high in the hills, a cheesy contemporary glass box on a tacky hilltop in a would-be neighbourhood, surrounded by nothing. Cocaine was prevalent, heroin more under-the-table, but I wasn’t into that stuff. I do remember being there one morning at around 8am watching a topless girl float through the living room playing a violin.”

If the early part of Girl In A Band is concerned with depicting California’s post-60s malady, the book is equally strong in capturing downtown Manhattan in the 1980s, where Gordon moves to pursue a career in art. “In 1980 New York was near bankruptcy, with garbage strikes every month, it seemed, and a crumbling, weedy infrastructure. These days, it gleams and towers in ways most people I know hate and can’t understand.” She documents the art scene on the Lower East Side with a kind of casual aloofness; Basquiat, Warhol, Jeff Koons all drift through. It is here, of course, that she finally meets Thurston Moore, and Sonic Youth come together.

The band stuff is all fillet, no fat. Gordon zones in on a specific memories for each album. About Sister, for instance, she explains that “Pacific Coast Highway” was “a direct pull from the fears of my teenage years when I was focused on the lore surrounding Charles Manson”. Such insights are accompanied by colourful vignettes – cooking dinner for Neil Young while he tunes the sound of a cow mooing for his electric train set. She writes eloquently about Kurt Cobain; evidently a loss she still feels to this day. Additionally, the cast list includes Danny Elfman, Larry Gagosian, Gerhard Richter, Courtney Love, Marc Jacobs, Sofia Coppola, Tony Oursler and Julie Cafritz (a staunch friend in troubled times). The final section takes place in Northampton, Massachusetts where the density of alt-rock royalty – Gordon and Moore, J Mascis and his wife, Cafritz and her husband – assumes an unintentionally amusing quality, like a real life Stellar Street. In this bohemian enclave, Gordon and Moore raise their daughter, Coco: but “I’ve never had any domestic talents or hobbies,” admits Gordon. They struggle to adapt, despite the good neighbours.

Finally, Gordon returns to California, to work on art projects. “The older I get, the smaller the world seems,” she muses. She works on an exhibition in the basement of a house in Lauren Canyon, close to Mulholland Drive. She writes about hearing “fire engines, helicopters, and traffic zooming up and down the canyon” before linking it back to “the favoured route of the Manson family for crosstown travel and creepy crawling exploits from their place near Calabasas to Hollywood.” In truth, however far Kim Gordon has come – figuratively, creatively, literally – it is hard to completely shake of the past.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.

Girl In A Band is published on February 24 by Faber & Faber

Hear music from Jimmy Page’s new Sound Tracks box set

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Hear music from Jimmy Page’s new Sound Tracks box set

Quadruple boxset will feature unheard archive material... Jimmy Page has announced details of a special edition box set bringing together his compositions for the films Lucifer Rising and Death Wish II along with additional archive material. Scroll down to hear clips from the box set, which will be released on March 6, 2015 and is available to pre-order now. Lucifer Rising: The Second Coming and Death Wish II: Expansion will both include rare, never-before-heard tracks. Three versions of Sound Tracks are available to pre-order on Page’s official website, including a CD or Vinyl edition, each comprising four discs, or a £400 limited Deluxe Edition, signed by Jimmy Page. Page first told Uncut last year that this project was underway. He told us, "There’s something coming out which I’m really excited about. It's the mix that I did [of Lucifer Rising] but I’m leaving the guitar on it, it’s got a 12 string that is the guide guitar showing me where I’m going to do the overdub. This isn’t what goes to [director] Kenneth Anger, because I didn’t want hardly any guitar at all. The mix is really really superb, I’m really proud of it. And I’ve got some experimental music that was done with bow and Theremin which is like, hang on to your seats, because it really, really is something else, it’s disturbing. I’ve got some home stuff that I did at the same studio or equipment that I did Lucifer Rising on, with sort of that whole guitar textures and overdubs. I think people want to hear that." Page has uploaded short clips of some of the tracks to his SoundCloud. You can pre-order the Sound Tracks here.

Quadruple boxset will feature unheard archive material…

Jimmy Page has announced details of a special edition box set bringing together his compositions for the films Lucifer Rising and Death Wish II along with additional archive material.

Scroll down to hear clips from the box set, which will be released on March 6, 2015 and is available to pre-order now.

Lucifer Rising: The Second Coming and Death Wish II: Expansion will both include rare, never-before-heard tracks.

Three versions of Sound Tracks are available to pre-order on Page’s official website, including a CD or Vinyl edition, each comprising four discs, or a £400 limited Deluxe Edition, signed by Jimmy Page.

Page first told Uncut last year that this project was underway. He told us, “There’s something coming out which I’m really excited about. It’s the mix that I did [of Lucifer Rising] but I’m leaving the guitar on it, it’s got a 12 string that is the guide guitar showing me where I’m going to do the overdub. This isn’t what goes to [director] Kenneth Anger, because I didn’t want hardly any guitar at all. The mix is really really superb, I’m really proud of it. And I’ve got some experimental music that was done with bow and Theremin which is like, hang on to your seats, because it really, really is something else, it’s disturbing. I’ve got some home stuff that I did at the same studio or equipment that I did Lucifer Rising on, with sort of that whole guitar textures and overdubs. I think people want to hear that.”

Page has uploaded short clips of some of the tracks to his SoundCloud.

You can pre-order the Sound Tracks here.

Visage singer Steve Strange dies aged 55

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Visage singer Steve Strange dies aged 55
Steve Strange, the lead singer of 80s pop outfit Visage, has passed away. The news was confirmed today by BBC News, with Strange reported to have suffered a heart attack. Strange died in hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt on Thursday (February 12). In December 2014, Strange had been admitted to ho...

Steve Strange, the lead singer of 80s pop outfit Visage, has passed away.

The news was confirmed today by BBC News, with Strange reported to have suffered a heart attack. Strange died in hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt on Thursday (February 12).

In December 2014, Strange had been admitted to hospital in Wales after suffering “breathing difficulties”. Reports at the time cited a “bronchial infection and an intestinal blockage”.

Strange’s agent, Pete Bassett, has released a statement, describing the Welsh musician as “a hard-working, very amusing and lovable individual who always was at the forefront of fashion trends”.

Bassett added: “Up until last year he was putting together a book of fashion styles based on the New Romantic movement and it comes as a great shock. We understood that he had certain health problems but nothing we knew was life threatening. His friends and family are totally shocked, we had no idea anything like this was likely to happen.”

Tributes have poured in from Strange’s music peers, with Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon tweeting that Strange was “the leading edge of New Romantic”. Billy Idol, meanwhile, tweeted: “Very sad to hear of my friend Steve Strange passing, RIP mate.”

Strange was born Steven John Harrington in Monmouthshire, Wales in 1959. He’s best known for his hit single “Fade To Grey“.

Photo credit: Fin Costello/Redferns

Ask Ian Anderson!

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Ask Ian Anderson!

With a 40th anniversary edition of Minstrel In The Gallery coming on May 4, Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular An Audience With… feature. So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the legendary flute-playing frontman? Why the flute? What are his thoughts now about performing at the Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus? What does he remember of Tony Iommi's time in Jethro Tull? Send up your questions by noon, Monday, February 23 to uncutaudiencewith@timeinc.com. The best questions, and Ian's answers, will be published in a future edition of Uncut magazine. Please include your name and location with your question.

With a 40th anniversary edition of Minstrel In The Gallery coming on May 4, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular An Audience With… feature.

So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the legendary flute-playing frontman?

Why the flute?

What are his thoughts now about performing at the Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus?

What does he remember of Tony Iommi’s time in Jethro Tull?

Send up your questions by noon, Monday, February 23 to uncutaudiencewith@timeinc.com. The best questions, and Ian’s answers, will be published in a future edition of Uncut magazine. Please include your name and location with your question.

Hear Beck and Beyoncé mash-up, “Single Loser (Put A Beck On It)”

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Hear Beck and Beyoncé mash-up, “Single Loser (Put A Beck On It)”

Hear the mix of "Loser" and "Single Ladies" now... A Soundcloud user has mashed up Beck's 1993 hit "Loser" with Beyoncé's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)". The track comes following an incident that occurred at the 2015 Grammy Awards over the weekend when Beck's latest album Morning Phase beat Beyoncé's self-titled album to the Album Of The Year prize. Kanye West pretended to interrupt Beck's Album Of The Year acceptance speech. Listen to "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" now below. Speaking after the event, West had been quoted as calling Beck's Album of the Year win "disrespectful to inspiration" and that it was "diminishing art". However, he later claimed that he was criticising the Grammy judges rather than Beck himself. West told reporters: "I wasn't saying Beck, I said the Grammys. Beck knows Beyoncé should have won." He continued: "I love Beck, but he didn't have the album of the year." Meanwhile, Beck seemed to agree with Kanye's initial sentiments, laughing off West's behaviour by saying: "I was just so excited he was coming up. He deserves to be on stage as much as anybody. How many great records has he put out in the last five years, right?" Beck even went as far as agreeing that Beyoncé should have beaten him: "Absolutely. I thought she was going to win. Come on, she's Beyoncé!"

Hear the mix of “Loser” and “Single Ladies” now…

A Soundcloud user has mashed up Beck‘s 1993 hit “Loser” with Beyoncé‘s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”.

The track comes following an incident that occurred at the 2015 Grammy Awards over the weekend when Beck’s latest album Morning Phase beat Beyoncé’s self-titled album to the Album Of The Year prize.

Kanye West pretended to interrupt Beck’s Album Of The Year acceptance speech.

Listen to “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” now below.

Speaking after the event, West had been quoted as calling Beck’s Album of the Year win “disrespectful to inspiration” and that it was “diminishing art”. However, he later claimed that he was criticising the Grammy judges rather than Beck himself.

West told reporters: “I wasn’t saying Beck, I said the Grammys. Beck knows Beyoncé should have won.” He continued: “I love Beck, but he didn’t have the album of the year.”

Meanwhile, Beck seemed to agree with Kanye’s initial sentiments, laughing off West’s behaviour by saying: “I was just so excited he was coming up. He deserves to be on stage as much as anybody. How many great records has he put out in the last five years, right?”

Beck even went as far as agreeing that Beyoncé should have beaten him: “Absolutely. I thought she was going to win. Come on, she’s Beyoncé!”

Bon Iver, Sharon Van Etten and more collaborate on track for new live compilation – listen

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Bon Iver, Sharon Van Etten and more collaborate on track for new live compilation – listen

Sufjan Stevens, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors and others also contribute to the release... MusicNOW, the festival set up by The National's Bryce Dessner, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, marking the occasion with the release of a new compilation album. The record, titled 'MusicNOW - 10 Years', features live recordings of performances from the past 10 years. It includes contributions from Sufjan Stevens, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, Owen Pallett, Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and others. The album will be released on March 10 via Brassland, ahead of this year's festival, which runs in Cincinnati, Ohio between March 11-15. You can hear the opening track of the album from supergroup Sounds of the South below. "Trials, Troubles, Tribulations" is a cover of a gospel song by Justin Vernon, Sharon Van Etten, Matthew E White, Megafaun and Fight The Big Bull. The 'MusicNOW - 10 Years' tracklist is below: Sounds of the South - 'Trials, Troubles, Tribulations' Robin Pecknold - 'Silver Dagger' Sufjan Stevens - 'The Owl & The Tanager' Eighth Blackbird - 'Omie Wise' My Brightest Diamond - 'I Have Never Loved Someone' Dirty Projectors - 'Emblem Of The World' Tinariwen - 'Imidiwan Ma Tenam' Tim Hecker - 'Chimeras (Live) 2011' Colin Stetson - 'Nobu Take' Owen Pallett - 'E Is For Estranged' Erik Friedlander - 'Airstream Envy' Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - 'Love Comes to Me' Grizzly Bear - 'While You Wait For The Others' The Books with Clogs - 'Classy Penguin' Andrew Bird - 'Section 8 City' Justin Vernon - 'Love More'

Sufjan Stevens, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors and others also contribute to the release…

MusicNOW, the festival set up by The National’s Bryce Dessner, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, marking the occasion with the release of a new compilation album.

The record, titled ‘MusicNOW – 10 Years’, features live recordings of performances from the past 10 years. It includes contributions from Sufjan Stevens, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, Owen Pallett, Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and others.

The album will be released on March 10 via Brassland, ahead of this year’s festival, which runs in Cincinnati, Ohio between March 11-15.

You can hear the opening track of the album from supergroup Sounds of the South below. “Trials, Troubles, Tribulations” is a cover of a gospel song by Justin Vernon, Sharon Van Etten, Matthew E White, Megafaun and Fight The Big Bull.

The ‘MusicNOW – 10 Years’ tracklist is below:

Sounds of the South – ‘Trials, Troubles, Tribulations’

Robin Pecknold – ‘Silver Dagger’

Sufjan Stevens – ‘The Owl & The Tanager’

Eighth Blackbird – ‘Omie Wise’

My Brightest Diamond – ‘I Have Never Loved Someone’

Dirty Projectors – ‘Emblem Of The World’

Tinariwen – ‘Imidiwan Ma Tenam’

Tim Hecker – ‘Chimeras (Live) 2011’

Colin Stetson – ‘Nobu Take’

Owen Pallett – ‘E Is For Estranged’

Erik Friedlander – ‘Airstream Envy’

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – ‘Love Comes to Me’

Grizzly Bear – ‘While You Wait For The Others’

The Books with Clogs – ‘Classy Penguin’

Andrew Bird – ‘Section 8 City’

Justin Vernon – ‘Love More’

Steve Earle on his best albums

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Steve Earle on his best albums
Playwright, novelist, activist, actor… when Steve Earle has found a moment over the past couple of decades, he has also managed to string together a superb, genre-confounding series of albums. He’s embraced rebel country, rockabilly, protest folk, orthodox bluegrass and blues, and even modern be...

Playwright, novelist, activist, actor… when Steve Earle has found a moment over the past couple of decades, he has also managed to string together a superb, genre-confounding series of albums. He’s embraced rebel country, rockabilly, protest folk, orthodox bluegrass and blues, and even modern beats. It’s a CV that looks even more impressive when you consider the proportion of the early ’90s he spent stoned, imprisoned or in rehab. In this feature from the archives (Uncut’s December 2007 issue, Take 127), he’s in fine form, and as unstoppably garrulous as ever… Interview: Andrew Mueller

____________________

GUITAR TOWN
(MCA, 1986)
Sharp lyrics and smoky, folky blue-collar country marked his long-overdue elevation from jobbing Nashville songwriter to “overnight” success

Steve Earle: “It’s almost embarrassing how much I still listen to my old records, but it’s harder for me to listen to those first three or four – the way they sound is tough for me now. It was the ’80s, and those are all digital records. I was 31 when this came out, and it was a big deal for me – I’d given up on it happening, several times, and then it happened by accident. I started a rockabilly band, then the Stray Cats broke, and all of a sudden people were running around Nashville looking for a rockabilly band, and that got people looking at me seriously as a recording artist for the first time.

“There was a point at which I’d totally lost confidence in myself as a songwriter. Seeing the [Bruce Springsteen] Born In The USA tour really focused me. I wrote ‘Guitar Town’ to open the record and open the show – a real first-person song, stating where I was at. I didn’t think it was a great song, but I knew ‘My Old Friend The Blues’ was a great song. I don’t recall exactly, but I know it took less than a day to write. And I gave myself the rest of that day off.”

____________________

COPPERHEAD ROAD
(MCA, 1988)
His third album, and his first certifiable classic, featuring firebrand roots-rock, heartfelt politics – and The Pogues!

“There’s things about Copperhead Road I really love, but… there’s all these records where the drums are way too loud in Nashville now which are kind of my fault. Well, mine and Hank Williams Jr’s. So I have a certain amount of guilt about the way it sounds.

“It’s a very, very, very political record, and it got me identified with Springsteen, Mellencamp… songwriters like that. It was politics on a real personal basis, how economics – which are politics – affect regular people. But Copperhead Road is about Vietnam. It’s my post-Vietnam record. My generation was shaped by Vietnam more than anything else, and it’s me finally regurgitating that. We were all delayed in doing it – there was a certain amount of post-traumatic stress affecting the nation. My friends that served had only started talking about it. There’s a reason why Platoon appeared when it did, why all this stuff appeared late.

“I never felt politically constrained by being a country singer, but then I never saw myself as a country singer in the sense of… well, there was a moment where I thought that maybe I could save country music, but better people than me had tried, and anyway country music didn’t want to be saved. It’s an environment totally hostile to singer-songwriters. They hadn’t wanted anything to do with Hank Williams, and every ounce of their energy has gone into making sure another one never happens, because they can’t control it.

“I wrote ‘The Devil’s Right Hand’ in 1977. It’s the only song I’ve recorded more than once, and now I’ve recorded it three times and I’ve finally got it right – the version on the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack. I came so close to having a Johnny Cash cut so many times, and he finally recorded ‘The Devil’s Right Hand’, and it ended up on Unearthed. The Highwaymen [Cash’s supergroup with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson] recorded it before that. Waylon Jennings did it before that. And, you know, Johnny and Waylon and Emmylou Harris were the only people who wrote me when I was locked up. It’s a huge honour to hear a song of mine sung by those kind of people. The people who mattered to me in Nashville knew how good I was.

“The thing with The Pogues – ‘Johnny Come Lately’ – happened because I was in London, touring with Green On Red. I was a huge fan, and I was asked if I wanted to go to Abbey Road to meet The Pogues, where they were recording demos for If I Should Fall From Grace With God. After that, we’d start bumping into each other around the world. Copperhead Road was pretty much done, but I’d written ‘Johnny Come Lately’, and I flew to London to record it. The rehearsal was four nights on stage at what was then the Town & Country club, and we recorded it on St Patrick’s Day. I went back to the States the next morning. The Pogues were playing again that night, and at the moment that was normally my spot in the show, Terry Woods introduced me. I was halfway across the ocean.”

____________________

EL CORAZON
(Warners, 1997)
After the smack, the jail stretch and the rehab, a return to brilliant songwriting. By turns intensely personal and political, it’s the sound of Earle bravely casting out his early-’90s demons…

“After getting out of jail and rehab, I’d made Train A-Comin [1995], an acoustic record, something I’d always wanted to do and MCA wouldn’t ever let me do. And I Feel Alright [1996] was about half-written at that point. By El Corazón, the band had solidified somewhat, the recording version of it anyway, and it was the first record that was made where pre-production consisted of banging out songs at soundchecks, because we were touring so much.

“‘Christmas In Washington’ was written watching the election returns the second time Clinton was elected, and starting to realise how badly we’d been had. And as political as the song is, it’s also one of the most intensely personal songs I’ve ever written. That song is about heartbreak. And I was busy trying to stay alive. I was trying not to shoot dope, and it was still really hard. I mean, I still have to go to meetings and call my sponsor, 13 years after I stopped, but then all that was relatively new. I had less than three years clean.”

____________________

THE MOUNTAIN
(Grapevine, 1999)
On the search for that high lonesome sound – a righteous collaboration with bluegrass kingpin Del McCoury and his legendary band

“I was sitting in with Del McCoury at the Station Inn in Nashville one night, and I just asked him, straight out: ‘If I wrote a record of bluegrass songs, would you guys accompany me?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ Eleven months later, I had the songs ready.

“Looking back now, I think it’s a weird album. It’s a bluegrass record recorded like a rock record, every bit as heavily compressed as all the other records I made in that period – there’s lots of low end, lots of bass, which you don’t hear on bluegrass records.

“Bluegrass had always been a part of what I did. El Corazon was a long tour, we were out for a year and a half, and whenever I was back in Nashville for two or three weeks I’d hang out at the Station Inn, listening to a lot of bluegrass. It’s my favourite kind of music. I can’t ever inhabit it – I’m not a good enough musician.

“But I did, I think, make a credible bluegrass record. There are people in bluegrass who don’t think so, but they’re wrong, and there are plenty of people I respect in bluegrass who do think it’s credible.”

____________________

TRANSCENDENTAL BLUES
(Artemis, 2000)
A lovesick Earle cuts his “chick song” album – a softer record, tinged with a baleful Irishness…

“I was spending more time in Ireland. I spent about four winters in a row in Galway. It was great. All the musicians were in, and all the Riverdance companies had shut down for the winter. The Waterboys had released Fisherman’s Blues, and that record… well, I think I’m more an influence on The Waterboys than The Waterboys are on me. Or, rather, that we’re influenced by the same things. But I was a huge Waterboys fan.

“I’d fallen for a girl in a big way, and this was written in a period in which I was really in love. I wouldn’t be a girl that had to live with me, because there’s a certain amount of debris that she has to step over every show I do. The woman that I’m married to [Earle wed Allison Moorer – his seventh marriage – in 2005; they separated in 2014] is a performer herself, and we tour together, because we want to stay married. So I have to play all those songs with her standing on the side of the stage every night.

“But you can’t worry about that too much. I can’t be responsible for what anyone wants to read into the songs. That’s why they’re called records – it’s where you were at a particular time.”

____________________

JERUSALEM
(Artemis, 2002)
A provocative reinvention of the protest song for the War on Terror, with “John Walker’s Blues” – about Californian Taliban wannabe John Walker Lindh – prompting some entertaining foaming from the US media…

“‘John Walker’s Blues’ is one of the best songs I’ve ever written. My connection to John Walker Lindh’s story was fatherhood – my son is the same age. John Walker’s father introduced himself to me about a year ago in San Francisco and shook my hand, and said it was appreciated, and that made it all worth it, so fuck everyone else. I was empathising with Frank Lindh. It leaked a month before the record came out, and all hell broke loose.

“The guy that wrote the story [the New York Post’s front-page lead screamed the headline ‘Twisted Ballad Honours Tali-Rat’] wasn’t right-wing at all. He was just a stringer who wrote for the Post, and he knew what he had to write, so he did. And then – because he’s also a songwriter – turned around and sent me a CD.

“The rest of Jerusalem… I wanted us to look at ourselves and the fact that what we were doing and had become was at its core racist, mean, and toxic. But the title track is optimistic. And I am optimistic. If I wasn’t, I’d just write chick songs and make a lot more money.”

____________________

THE REVOLUTION STARTS… NOW
(E-Squared, 2004)
A blisteringly downbeat State of the Union address, delivered with utter, angry conviction

“I believe our constitution is an accident. It’s a much hipper document than its framers intended it to be. It wasn’t about a revolution – it was written by rich English farmers who didn’t want to pay taxes. But I do believe it’s what we will be remembered for. I’m a socialist first and foremost. I don’t have a nationalist bone in my body, period. My ideal world doesn’t have any lines on the map, at all. But as long as we have countries, sometimes you have to draw lines – you just have to keep in mind that really powerful people don’t see those lines, and never have, and cross them at will.

“I’m not becoming more radical on this and Jerusalem, because my politics never could have got any further to the left. What ebbed and flowed was what I did about it. I don’t believe that there’s ever going to be a socialist revolution in the US. That’s what separates me from [US journalist, bolshevik activist and subject of the film Reds] John Reed. And I think the lesson of Reed was that he was more effective as an artist than a politician, and that’s why he ended up buried in the Kremlin wall rather than making much difference in the long run.”

____________________

WASHINGTON SQUARE SERENADE
(New West, 2007)
Earle’s latest is a surprisingly beat-driven hymn of devotion to the new missus, and a new home in NYC

“I moved to New York two years ago. And I tested positive for ProTools, finally. I bought a computer, loaded it up with software, brought a couple of microphones from home, and started messing around with that. I’ve always been interested in hip-hop – there was a point at which, because of where I had to go to get drugs, it was pretty much all I heard.

“I put it away for a while to work on my new novel, and the record got to be more New York, and folkier. ‘Satellite Radio’ is arguably the most commercial song on it, but no commercial station will play it because they’re terrified of satellite radio! ‘Sparkle & Shine’ – I was standing in this gorgeous venue, watching my wife perform, had half of it written in my head, wrote the rest when I got home.

“Ultimately, it’s the way my experiences are the same as anyone else’s that affords me any success. That’s where it comes from. It’s not because I’m a heroin addict, or people think I’m a badass. That’s not what people identify with. It’s that being lonely’s lonely, travelling’s long, and love hurts.”

Photo: Ted Barron

David Byrne to curate this year’s Meltdown Festival

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David Byrne to curate this year’s Meltdown Festival

Festival runs in London during August... David Byrne has been announced as the curator of this year's Meltdown Festival. The festival runs from August 17 – 28 at London's Southbank Centre. The festival, now in its 22nd year, finds Byrne following in the footsteps of previous directors that include Jarvis Cocker, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Ray Davies and Ornette Coleman. "This is going to be exciting!" Said Byrne. "I plan to invite performers I've seen – and I do get out – and others I've missed or have dreamed of seeing. It's going to be a bit of fun puzzle-solving I imagine – seeing who's interested, who is available and what venues at Southbank Centre are appropriate. I really hope to find things that take this beyond sit-down concerts as well – but of course I'm speaking way too early as I'm still working on my wish list. “Hoping that I get to stay in the Room For London, on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof, for the whole time, but suspect that might expecting too much." The full line-up for Meltdown will be announced in the coming months.

Festival runs in London during August…

David Byrne has been announced as the curator of this year’s Meltdown Festival.

The festival runs from August 17 – 28 at London’s Southbank Centre.

The festival, now in its 22nd year, finds Byrne following in the footsteps of previous directors that include Jarvis Cocker, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Ray Davies and Ornette Coleman.

“This is going to be exciting!” Said Byrne. “I plan to invite performers I’ve seen – and I do get out – and others I’ve missed or have dreamed of seeing. It’s going to be a bit of fun puzzle-solving I imagine – seeing who’s interested, who is available and what venues at Southbank Centre are appropriate. I really hope to find things that take this beyond sit-down concerts as well – but of course I’m speaking way too early as I’m still working on my wish list.

“Hoping that I get to stay in the Room For London, on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof, for the whole time, but suspect that might expecting too much.”

The full line-up for Meltdown will be announced in the coming months.

The Rolling Stones to tour this summer..?

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The Rolling Stones to tour this summer..?

Ron Wood says band are in discussions to make their live return... The Rolling Stones will return to playing live with live dates in America set to take place this summer. Guitarist Ron Wood let the information slip while speaking to Billboard. Quizzed on the possibility of seeing the band live again, Wood is quoted as saying: "Yeah, we had a meeting in New York with the boys and we're gonna come [to] North America again in the summer." No dates or cities have yet been confirmed for the gigs, which will be the band's first since the death of saxophone player Bobby Keys, who dies in December 2014 following an ongoing battle with cirrhosis of the liver.

Ron Wood says band are in discussions to make their live return…

The Rolling Stones will return to playing live with live dates in America set to take place this summer.

Guitarist Ron Wood let the information slip while speaking to Billboard.

Quizzed on the possibility of seeing the band live again, Wood is quoted as saying: “Yeah, we had a meeting in New York with the boys and we’re gonna come [to] North America again in the summer.”

No dates or cities have yet been confirmed for the gigs, which will be the band’s first since the death of saxophone player Bobby Keys, who dies in December 2014 following an ongoing battle with cirrhosis of the liver.

Leonard Cohen – Live In Dublin

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Leonard Cohen – Live In Dublin

Wah-wah scatting, grandad-dancing and fedoras... three hours in the presence of a legend... There's a lovely moment, midway through "Tower Of Song", when Leonard Cohen finishes picking his way through that song's stumbling electric piano break, and the audience bursts into applause. As the band vamps quietly behind him, Cohen regards the crowd with a wry smile and asks, "Are you humouring me?", immediately adding, "I accept it, thank you. If these are the crumbs of compassion that you offer to the elderly, I am grateful." It's another variant of a line he's been using for a few years now, but it's such a sweet sentiment, and so elegantly phrased, emblematic both of the mutual fondness radiating between performer and audience, and the shared degree of politesse assumed by both parties. And of course, the crowd responds with a massive cheer when he gets to the line about having been "born with the gift of a golden voice". He may be "a lazy bastard living in a suit", as acknowledged in another well-received line from "Going Home", but as he sails into his eighties, Leonard Cohen still puts in a serious shift: a generous 30 songs, spread over three hours, drawn from all but a few corners of his career, shot in gorgeous high definition on September 12, 2013. And while several of his musicians play seated, Cohen's on his feet the entire time, save for the moments where he drops to his knees in supplication, beseeching the audience, or urging a player to greater heights of artistry. He runs on stage, clutches the mic like an alkie's bottle, supping its emotional draught through opener "Dance Me To The End Of Love", and even manages to skip gaily off the stage at the end of each set, as if confirming that the older one gets, the more one reverts to childhood. His band are all dressed like Cohen, a legion of Leonards in grey suits and fedoras; but the colour is all in his imagery, and in their playing, particularly the rhapsodic violin of Alexandru Bublitchi and the exotic textures of Javier Mas. The latter's brief but telling bandurria flourish accompanying the line in "Everybody Knows" about there being "so many people you just had to meet without your clothes" is typical of the expressive fluency involved - it's like a little raise of eyebrows at the joke, no more, but wittily effective. And the tremulous archilaud solo that serves as an overture to "Who By Fire" is quite devastating, as befits this elegant valediction. Elsewhere, guitarist Mitch Watkins inserts a deftly sensitive blues solo into "Bird On The Wire", while keyboardist Neil Larsen furnishes the backing tones for Cohen's recitation of the poem "For Those Who Greeted Me", an ongoing rumination that was the root source of "A Thousand Kisses Deep". Drummer Rafael Gayol, meanwhile, steals the band solos section in "I Tried To Leave You" by halting momentarily mid-solo, leaning towards the camera and blowing us a kiss, before coming back in smack on the beat. The show is studded with moments like that, tiny gestures or musical flourishes that decorate the measured poise of the performance. These songs don't need a dazzling light-show or pyrotechnics to impress, and it would be perverse to expect more complex choreography than the sedate steps back and forth of backing singers Sharon Robinson and The Webb Sisters, generously accorded solo spots with "Alexandra Leaving" and "If It Be Your Will" respectively Apart from his jaunty departures, Cohen himself restricts his physical output to a subdued grooving, a grandad-dancing shuffle on the spot, punctuated by the occasional sink to his knees. He acts with his eyes, keeping them tightly shut, then opening them wide for lines like those in "The Future" about murder and repentance, like some blazing-eyed preacher castigating his flock. That song's mordantly-delivered cynicism about the declining moral certainties of modern life now seems like the seed of those concerns addressed in more recent albums; and although the concert pre-dates Popular Problems, the Old Ideas songs included here, such as "Amen" (kneeling, of course) and "Darkness" (for which Cohen indulges in weird wah-wah scat-singing) stand up well alongside classics like "First We Take Manhattan", "Hallelujah" and "Suzanne", the latter sounding as much like a hymn as any of the more overtly religious themed pieces. "Famous Blue Raincoat" ushers in a tranche of encores, culminating in a charming singalong cover of "Save The Last Dance For Me". It's a fitting conclusion to a beautiful union of souls, a concert with the warmth and fraternal devotion evident in Cohen's sweetly caring salutation, the kind of sentiment that just wouldn't occur to less zen-conscious performers: "May you be surrounded by family and friends all your life; but if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude". EXTRAS: Performances of "Show Me The Place", "Anyhow" and "Different Sides" from Canadian shows. Andy Gill

Wah-wah scatting, grandad-dancing and fedoras… three hours in the presence of a legend…

There’s a lovely moment, midway through “Tower Of Song”, when Leonard Cohen finishes picking his way through that song’s stumbling electric piano break, and the audience bursts into applause. As the band vamps quietly behind him, Cohen regards the crowd with a wry smile and asks, “Are you humouring me?”, immediately adding, “I accept it, thank you. If these are the crumbs of compassion that you offer to the elderly, I am grateful.” It’s another variant of a line he’s been using for a few years now, but it’s such a sweet sentiment, and so elegantly phrased, emblematic both of the mutual fondness radiating between performer and audience, and the shared degree of politesse assumed by both parties. And of course, the crowd responds with a massive cheer when he gets to the line about having been “born with the gift of a golden voice”.

He may be “a lazy bastard living in a suit”, as acknowledged in another well-received line from “Going Home“, but as he sails into his eighties, Leonard Cohen still puts in a serious shift: a generous 30 songs, spread over three hours, drawn from all but a few corners of his career, shot in gorgeous high definition on September 12, 2013. And while several of his musicians play seated, Cohen’s on his feet the entire time, save for the moments where he drops to his knees in supplication, beseeching the audience, or urging a player to greater heights of artistry. He runs on stage, clutches the mic like an alkie’s bottle, supping its emotional draught through opener “Dance Me To The End Of Love”, and even manages to skip gaily off the stage at the end of each set, as if confirming that the older one gets, the more one reverts to childhood.

His band are all dressed like Cohen, a legion of Leonards in grey suits and fedoras; but the colour is all in his imagery, and in their playing, particularly the rhapsodic violin of Alexandru Bublitchi and the exotic textures of Javier Mas. The latter’s brief but telling bandurria flourish accompanying the line in “Everybody Knows” about there being “so many people you just had to meet without your clothes” is typical of the expressive fluency involved – it’s like a little raise of eyebrows at the joke, no more, but wittily effective. And the tremulous archilaud solo that serves as an overture to “Who By Fire” is quite devastating, as befits this elegant valediction.

Elsewhere, guitarist Mitch Watkins inserts a deftly sensitive blues solo into “Bird On The Wire“, while keyboardist Neil Larsen furnishes the backing tones for Cohen’s recitation of the poem “For Those Who Greeted Me”, an ongoing rumination that was the root source of “A Thousand Kisses Deep”. Drummer Rafael Gayol, meanwhile, steals the band solos section in “I Tried To Leave You” by halting momentarily mid-solo, leaning towards the camera and blowing us a kiss, before coming back in smack on the beat. The show is studded with moments like that, tiny gestures or musical flourishes that decorate the measured poise of the performance. These songs don’t need a dazzling light-show or pyrotechnics to impress, and it would be perverse to expect more complex choreography than the sedate steps back and forth of backing singers Sharon Robinson and The Webb Sisters, generously accorded solo spots with “Alexandra Leaving” and “If It Be Your Will” respectively

Apart from his jaunty departures, Cohen himself restricts his physical output to a subdued grooving, a grandad-dancing shuffle on the spot, punctuated by the occasional sink to his knees. He acts with his eyes, keeping them tightly shut, then opening them wide for lines like those in “The Future” about murder and repentance, like some blazing-eyed preacher castigating his flock. That song’s mordantly-delivered cynicism about the declining moral certainties of modern life now seems like the seed of those concerns addressed in more recent albums; and although the concert pre-dates Popular Problems, the Old Ideas songs included here, such as “Amen” (kneeling, of course) and “Darkness” (for which Cohen indulges in weird wah-wah scat-singing) stand up well alongside classics like “First We Take Manhattan”, “Hallelujah” and “Suzanne”, the latter sounding as much like a hymn as any of the more overtly religious themed pieces.

“Famous Blue Raincoat” ushers in a tranche of encores, culminating in a charming singalong cover of “Save The Last Dance For Me”. It’s a fitting conclusion to a beautiful union of souls, a concert with the warmth and fraternal devotion evident in Cohen’s sweetly caring salutation, the kind of sentiment that just wouldn’t occur to less zen-conscious performers: “May you be surrounded by family and friends all your life; but if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude”.

EXTRAS: Performances of “Show Me The Place”, “Anyhow” and “Different Sides” from Canadian shows.

Andy Gill

Thom Yorke: government guilt of “staggering hypocrisy” over tax avoidance

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Thom Yorke: government guilt of “staggering hypocrisy” over tax avoidance

Documentary scored by Yorke and Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja will air on TV later this month... The first clip of an upcoming documentary on tax avoidance in the UK, featuring music by Thom Yorke, has been revealed. Scroll down to watch now. The UK Gold will be broadcast later this month and was scored by Yorke and Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja. The full film soundtrack also features contributions from Guy Garvey, Rose Elinor Dougall and former Libertines member Anthony Rossomando and was mixed by Oscar nominated Banksy collaborator Jim Carey. The film, which explores the history of tax avoidance, is directed by Mark Donne and narrated by actor Dominic West. In the clip below, Channel 4 News host Jon Snow discusses the UK tax haven network. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Gm8rEkkf8 In an exclusive comment given to NME, Thom Yorke questions the goverment and their motives in allowing tax havens to exist under their rule. "For all the current governments talk of standards in the Financial Industry it comes as no surprise perhaps that the reality beneath reveals their staggering hypocrisy," Yorke says. He continues: "Now is the time to reveal the revolving doors between government and the City that has bred lies and corruption for so long, siphoning money through our tax havens for the global super rich, while now preaching that we the people must pay our taxes and suffer austerity. Just who does our government work for?" UK Gold airs on London Live on February 25.

Documentary scored by Yorke and Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja will air on TV later this month…

The first clip of an upcoming documentary on tax avoidance in the UK, featuring music by Thom Yorke, has been revealed. Scroll down to watch now.

The UK Gold will be broadcast later this month and was scored by Yorke and Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja. The full film soundtrack also features contributions from Guy Garvey, Rose Elinor Dougall and former Libertines member Anthony Rossomando and was mixed by Oscar nominated Banksy collaborator Jim Carey.

The film, which explores the history of tax avoidance, is directed by Mark Donne and narrated by actor Dominic West. In the clip below, Channel 4 News host Jon Snow discusses the UK tax haven network.

In an exclusive comment given to NME, Thom Yorke questions the goverment and their motives in allowing tax havens to exist under their rule. “For all the current governments talk of standards in the Financial Industry it comes as no surprise perhaps that the reality beneath reveals their staggering hypocrisy,” Yorke says.

He continues: “Now is the time to reveal the revolving doors between government and the City that has bred lies and corruption for so long, siphoning money through our tax havens for the global super rich, while now preaching that we the people must pay our taxes and suffer austerity. Just who does our government work for?”

UK Gold airs on London Live on February 25.

Morrissey criticises “bogus” music awards

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Morrissey criticises “bogus” music awards

Brit awards ceremony take place later this month (February).... Morrissey has criticised the Brit Awards in a lengthy post on fansite True To You, stating that the awards tend to end up being given to undeserving artists and that the event as a whole is "bogus". This year's Brit Awards take place on February 25 and Morrissey has received no nominations. His critical comments follow similar negativity from both Kasabian, and Noel Gallagher who said that the annual awards are "rigged". In his post, Morrissey states that "The object of the Brit Awards is to create the impression of national consensus as they award pop artists of untested stature or value with bogus awards that, it is slyly implied, have been dictated by you, the objective listener". He goes on to add that Taylor Swift, who will perform at this year's ceremony, "has nothing to do with Coventry or Wrexham" and that "it really is your own fault if you believe that this Awards show has any connection to anything other than the junk propaganda of the strongest labels gathering to share out awards for their own artists whom they plan to heavily promote in 2015". Don't forget: the current issue of Uncut carries a major retrospective on the making of The Smiths' Meat Is Murder album Morrissey tours the UK next month. The short outing begins at Nottingham's Capital FM Arena on March 13, taking in dates in Bournemouth, Cardiff, Leeds and Glasgow before wrapping up at Birmingham's Barclaycard Arena on March 27. Morrissey's 2014 tour – which the singer described as "what I may risk calling our best tour ever" – included just one UK date, at London's O2 Arena. The performer listed the London date as his favourite gig of the year in an end-of-tour message. Morrissey will play: Nottingham Capital FM Arena (March 13) Bournemouth International Centre (14) Cardiff Motorpoint Arena (18) Leeds First Direct Arena (20) Glasgow SSE Hydro (21) Birmingham Barclaycard Arena (27)

Brit awards ceremony take place later this month (February)….

Morrissey has criticised the Brit Awards in a lengthy post on fansite True To You, stating that the awards tend to end up being given to undeserving artists and that the event as a whole is “bogus”.

This year’s Brit Awards take place on February 25 and Morrissey has received no nominations. His critical comments follow similar negativity from both Kasabian, and Noel Gallagher who said that the annual awards are “rigged”.

In his post, Morrissey states that “The object of the Brit Awards is to create the impression of national consensus as they award pop artists of untested stature or value with bogus awards that, it is slyly implied, have been dictated by you, the objective listener”.

He goes on to add that Taylor Swift, who will perform at this year’s ceremony, “has nothing to do with Coventry or Wrexham” and that “it really is your own fault if you believe that this Awards show has any connection to anything other than the junk propaganda of the strongest labels gathering to share out awards for their own artists whom they plan to heavily promote in 2015”.

Don’t forget: the current issue of Uncut carries a major retrospective on the making of The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder album

Morrissey tours the UK next month. The short outing begins at Nottingham’s Capital FM Arena on March 13, taking in dates in Bournemouth, Cardiff, Leeds and Glasgow before wrapping up at Birmingham’s Barclaycard Arena on March 27.

Morrissey’s 2014 tour – which the singer described as “what I may risk calling our best tour ever” – included just one UK date, at London’s O2 Arena. The performer listed the London date as his favourite gig of the year in an end-of-tour message.

Morrissey will play:

Nottingham Capital FM Arena (March 13)

Bournemouth International Centre (14)

Cardiff Motorpoint Arena (18)

Leeds First Direct Arena (20)

Glasgow SSE Hydro (21)

Birmingham Barclaycard Arena (27)

Hear Jack White’s new track, “Blue Light, Red Light (Someone’s There)”

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Hear Jack White’s new track, “Blue Light, Red Light (Someone’s There)”

The 'That Black Bat Licorice' b-side is a Harry Connick, Jr cover... Jack White has shared a new track, "Blue Light, Red Light (Someone's There)". Scroll down to listen to the song - a Harry Connick, Jr cover - that appears as the b-side to the 7" release of "That Black Bat Licorice", which comes out on White's own Third Man Records label on February 17. White recently shared an audio recording of his January 30 Madison Square Garden concert in New York. The show was his first at the venue since he performed there with The White Stripes in 2007. White played a 23-song set that included work from his two solo records, as well as songs from The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. White's concert was streamed live on the Pandora website, and a full recording is available here. Uncut is now available as a digital edition! Download here on your iPad/iPhone and here on your Kindle Fire or Nook.

The ‘That Black Bat Licorice’ b-side is a Harry Connick, Jr cover…

Jack White has shared a new track, “Blue Light, Red Light (Someone’s There)“.

Scroll down to listen to the song – a Harry Connick, Jr cover – that appears as the b-side to the 7” release of “That Black Bat Licorice“, which comes out on White’s own Third Man Records label on February 17.

White recently shared an audio recording of his January 30 Madison Square Garden concert in New York. The show was his first at the venue since he performed there with The White Stripes in 2007. White played a 23-song set that included work from his two solo records, as well as songs from The White Stripes and The Raconteurs.

White’s concert was streamed live on the Pandora website, and a full recording is available here.

Uncut is now available as a digital edition! Download here on your iPad/iPhone and here on your Kindle Fire or Nook.

Bez begins week-long ‘bed-in’ protest against fracking

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Bez begins week-long ‘bed-in’ protest against fracking

He also announces Black Grape reunion concert in April... Bez and his girlfriend Firouzeh Razavi have begun their week-long 'bed-in' protest which intends to raise awareness of the UK anti-fracking movement. The protest, inspired by John Lennon and Yoko Ono's two anti-Vietnam war protests in 1969, has the support of Ono herself. In 2013 she penned the anti-fracking anthem "Don't Frack My Mother", which was performed by her son Sean Lennon. Bez told NME: "We're off to a great start because we've already attracted the attention of the world's media. The fact is that 69 per cent of our land has been licenced for fracking and it's been done without consultation with any of us. We haven't been told about the dangers." Fracking is a controversial process where underground rocks are fractured in order to stimulate oil wells. Critics argue that it often has unintended and severe environmental consequences. Bez took the opportunity to confirm that despite recent problems with the registration of the name of his political party, The Reality Party, he will still be contesting the Salford parliamentary seat at the General Election on May 7. He described the name setback as a "spanner in the works". He also told NME that his former band Black Grape will reform with Shaun Ryder and Kermit for a special concert in support of his campaign at the old Granada Studios in Manchester on April 11. Bez and Razavi will be staying in bed at the Motcalm Hotel at The Brewery in London until February 15, and live-streaming appearances by special guests every night from 9pm-10pm at www.bezinbed.co.uk Photo: Cheryl Atkinson/Press Uncut is now available as a digital edition! Download here on your iPad/iPhone and here on your Kindle Fire or Nook.

He also announces Black Grape reunion concert in April…

Bez and his girlfriend Firouzeh Razavi have begun their week-long ‘bed-in’ protest which intends to raise awareness of the UK anti-fracking movement.

The protest, inspired by John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s two anti-Vietnam war protests in 1969, has the support of Ono herself. In 2013 she penned the anti-fracking anthem “Don’t Frack My Mother“, which was performed by her son Sean Lennon.

Bez told NME: “We’re off to a great start because we’ve already attracted the attention of the world’s media. The fact is that 69 per cent of our land has been licenced for fracking and it’s been done without consultation with any of us. We haven’t been told about the dangers.”

Fracking is a controversial process where underground rocks are fractured in order to stimulate oil wells. Critics argue that it often has unintended and severe environmental consequences.

Bez took the opportunity to confirm that despite recent problems with the registration of the name of his political party, The Reality Party, he will still be contesting the Salford parliamentary seat at the General Election on May 7. He described the name setback as a “spanner in the works”.

He also told NME that his former band Black Grape will reform with Shaun Ryder and Kermit for a special concert in support of his campaign at the old Granada Studios in Manchester on April 11.

Bez and Razavi will be staying in bed at the Motcalm Hotel at The Brewery in London until February 15, and live-streaming appearances by special guests every night from 9pm-10pm at www.bezinbed.co.uk

Photo: Cheryl Atkinson/Press

Uncut is now available as a digital edition! Download here on your iPad/iPhone and here on your Kindle Fire or Nook.

Hear new Paul Weller track + tour dates revealed!

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Hear new Paul Weller track + tour dates revealed!

Saturns Pattern aligns on May 11... Paul Weller has released a video for a track from his new studio album, Saturns Pattern. You can scroll down to watch the video for "White Sky". Saturns Pattern is released on May 11 on his new label Parlophone. Written and recorded at Black Barn Studios in Surrey, Saturns Pattern was produced by Jan “Stan” Kybert and Weller. Musicians on the album Steve Cradock, Andy Crofts, Ben Gordelier and Steve Pilgrim, as well as The Strypes’ Josh McClorey, original Jam guitarist Steve Brookes and members of Syd Arthur. The tracklisting for Saturns Pattern is: White Sky Saturns Pattern Going My Way Long Time Pick It Up I’m Where I Should Be Phoenix In The Car… These City Streets http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vARCtbWH-cE Saturns Pattern will be released as a download and on the following physical formats: Standard CD, special edition CD/DVD, heavyweight 12” vinyl LP (and download card), Deluxe Box Set containing heavyweight 12” coloured vinyl LP, CD (plus bonus tracks), DVD, expanded artwork booklet and poster. Weller will also tour during November and December. He wil play: November Fri 20 – Brighton – Centre Sat 21 – Bournemouth – BIC Sun 22 – Cardiff Motorpoint Arena Tue 24 – Glasgow – The Hydro Wed 25 – Newcastle – Metro Radio Arena Fri 27 – Birmingham – NIA Sat 28 – Manchester – Arena Sun 29 – Leeds – Arena December Fri 4 – London – Eventim Apollo Sat 5 – London – Eventim Apollo Ticket pre-sale starts – Thursday 12th February General on sale from – Saturday 14th February 24hr Ticket Hotline: 0844 338 0000 Online: BookingsDirect.com For more details see www.paulweller.com Uncut is now available as a digital edition! Download here on your iPad/iPhone and here on your Kindle Fire or Nook.

Saturns Pattern aligns on May 11…

Paul Weller has released a video for a track from his new studio album, Saturns Pattern.

You can scroll down to watch the video for “White Sky“.

Saturns Pattern is released on May 11 on his new label Parlophone. Written and recorded at Black Barn Studios in Surrey, Saturns Pattern was produced by Jan “Stan” Kybert and Weller.

Musicians on the album Steve Cradock, Andy Crofts, Ben Gordelier and Steve Pilgrim, as well as The Strypes’ Josh McClorey, original Jam guitarist Steve Brookes and members of Syd Arthur.

The tracklisting for Saturns Pattern is:

White Sky

Saturns Pattern

Going My Way

Long Time

Pick It Up

I’m Where I Should Be

Phoenix

In The Car…

These City Streets

Saturns Pattern will be released as a download and on the following physical formats:

Standard CD, special edition CD/DVD, heavyweight 12” vinyl LP (and download card), Deluxe Box Set containing heavyweight 12” coloured vinyl LP, CD (plus bonus tracks), DVD, expanded artwork booklet and poster.

Weller will also tour during November and December. He wil play:

November

Fri 20 – Brighton – Centre

Sat 21 – Bournemouth – BIC

Sun 22 – Cardiff Motorpoint Arena

Tue 24 – Glasgow – The Hydro

Wed 25 – Newcastle – Metro Radio Arena

Fri 27 – Birmingham – NIA

Sat 28 – Manchester – Arena

Sun 29 – Leeds – Arena

December

Fri 4 – London – Eventim Apollo

Sat 5 – London – Eventim Apollo

Ticket pre-sale starts – Thursday 12th February

General on sale from – Saturday 14th February

24hr Ticket Hotline: 0844 338 0000

Online: BookingsDirect.com

For more details see www.paulweller.com

Uncut is now available as a digital edition! Download here on your iPad/iPhone and here on your Kindle Fire or Nook.

Hear two tracks from the new Alabama Shakes album

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Hear two tracks from the new Alabama Shakes album
Alabama Shakes will release their new album Sound And Color on April 20. The follow-up to 2012's Boys & Girls comprises 12 tracks, including "Future People" and "Don't Wanna Fight", which you can hear below. The album was recorded in Nashville at the Sound Emporium studio, and the band co-produ...

Alabama Shakes will release their new album Sound And Color on April 20.

The follow-up to 2012’s Boys & Girls comprises 12 tracks, including “Future People” and “Don’t Wanna Fight”, which you can hear below. The album was recorded in Nashville at the Sound Emporium studio, and the band co-produced the album with Blake Mills. “We took our time to write this record, and I’m really glad we did,” says Brittany Howard. “We were able to sit down and think about what’s exciting to us. This record is full of genre-bending songs.”

The Sound And Color tracklisting is:

‘Sound and Color’

‘Don’t Wanna Fight’

‘Dunes’

‘Future People’

‘Gimme All Your Love’

‘This Feeling’

‘Guess Who’

‘The Greatest’

‘Shoegaze’

‘Miss You’

‘Gemini’

‘Over My Head’

Uncut is now available as a digital edition! Download here on your iPad/iPhone and here on your Kindle Fire or Nook.

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