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Will Sergeant – My Life In Music

Sam Richards
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Will Sergeant – My Life In Music
The Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist on his distinctly un-punk inspirations: “What can I say, I love prog rock!” ORDER NOW: Sly Stone is on the cover of the latest UNCUT LED ZEPPELIN Led Zeppelin IV ATLANTIC, 1971 There was a bloke over the road who had loads of records: Jethro Tull, T...

The Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist on his distinctly un-punk inspirations: “What can I say, I love prog rock!”

LED ZEPPELIN
Led Zeppelin IV
ATLANTIC, 1971
There was a bloke over the road who had loads of records: Jethro Tull, Taste, Cream, all the leftfield bands of the day. But it was Led Zeppelin that really stuck out to me. I’d heard all their other albums, but Led Zeppelin IV was something else. The cover as well, the knocked-down house and the picture of that geezer with the sticks on his back. The thing about Led Zeppelin, they didn’t seem like any other band – they didn’t put singles out, they weren’t trying to be pop, they were quite underground at that point. So there was a mystique involved. I sewed them symbols on the back of me Wrangler jacket, all that stuff.

ROXY MUSIC
For Your Pleasure
ISLAND, 1973
I went to see them when Eno was still in ’em. There was just something about them, wasn’t there? They were different: they were glam, but they weren’t the Sweet or Mud, they were a different kettle of fish. They had that art-school attachment to them which I liked. I think the first album’s amazing, but is my favourite: “In Every Dream Home A Heartache”, “Editions Of You”… I was left to me own devices a lot at home when I was a kid. My big brother and sister had scarpered and me Dad was in the pub every night, so I was watching all the weird films on BBC2 that they used to have. I think that influenced me a lot.

THE DOORS
Strange Days
ELEKTRA, 1967
I was staying at me brother’s house – he’d moved to Pinner on the outskirts of London – and he had Strange Days. I’d never heard of The Doors, even though Jim had only died a few years earlier. They didn’t seem to be a big thing in Britain, even though I know they played the Isle Of Wight festival. But I just love Strange Days. It was otherworldly, and it had that great cover. After that I started buying all the Doors records, it was a bit of an obsession for a while. The others didn’t really like The Doors when we started out. I’d be playing the tapes in the van and they were like, ‘Not this again’. But because I was playing them so often, it kind of seeped in.

TELEVISION
Marquee Moon
ELEKTRA, 1977
It was during all that punk stuff, but it just seemed better than the rest of it. It wasn’t just angry shouting. The way the guitars weaved in and out of each other… It was very simple as well, not a lot going on: two guitars, bass, drums and singing, that’s it. There’s no extra bits or synthesisers flying all over the place. I liked the cut of their jib and the way they looked, they had a mysterious vibe to them as well. I tried to nick their style. He [Tom Verlaine] does this weird thing where he wobbles his finger – duuung, duuung – and I do that quite a bit. To me they were like gods, the ultimate coolest band ever.

DAVID BOWIE
Low
RCA, 1977
It was just so different, wasn’t it? A lot of the songs were vocalisations without words, and I thought that was great. It’s another extremely dark record – there’s quite a few Bowie fans don’t like that one, but I love it. We did a tour with Bowie in 1996 and I split me ale all over him. He came to our dressing room to say ‘good luck’. I opened the door and Bowie’s stood there. My hand stopped working and the glass fell on the floor and smashed, and all the beer went up his purple jumpsuit that he was about to go on stage in. Mac was laughing his head off: ‘You just bottled Bowie!’ The next day I went to say sorry and he was dead sound.

PINK FLOYD
Meddle
HARVEST, 1971
What can I say, I love prog rock! I still play Yes and ELP if I feel like it. I kept it quiet during the punk thing, I just tucked ’em away between me Wire records or whatever. Pink Floyd were a big band for me from right early on. I loved the whole Syd Barrett thing, I liked Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma, but Meddle was the one I played the most. It’s another one that had no writing on the cover, which made it more like a work of art. They were still underground at that point. All these bands that are massive now, they were the freaks and weirdos at the time. It wasn’t like when people go and see The Wall now and it’s some sort of corporate event.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968
SIRE, 1976
I got the reissue, on Sire. In Eric’s, they played The Strangeloves or 13th Floor Elevators. Norman [Killon] the DJ would pop in a few things like that amongst Penetration or Eater or whoever, so we got to know it all. Then I got into collecting all the psych compilations: Rubble, Pebbles, Chocolate Soup For Diabetics… it was almost like the worse-sounding recording you could find the better! It was more real somehow. That scabby garage-band sound was interesting to me. These bands might have done albums at the time but they only had one or two tracks that were any good – the rest of them were a bit ordinary. But Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction” and things like that are just amazing.

THE LAZY EYES
Songbook
SELF-RELEASED, 2022
It’s a terrible cover, but you should check ’em out. They’re really good and they’re only kids. When I saw them in Liverpool, they didn’t even have anyone mixing them – what you heard came off the stage, but it sounded great. They’re psych merchants with a real dreamy vocal style, but they’re tight as hell. The way they play, it’s almost like it’s sampled. They go in for quite a lot of guitar effects, or they’ll all start playing really quietly and then come back in, all that dynamic kind of stuff – dead good. “Where’s My Brain???” is a good one. And they’ve got one called “Cheesy Love Song” which is a bit of a cheesy love song.

Will Sergeant’s Echoes: A Memoir Continued is out now, published by Constable

Uncut’s New Music Playlist for October 2023

Sam Richards
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Uncut’s New Music Playlist for October 2023
Today is one of those days where it might be advisable to mute the news feed and listen to something genuinely inspiring instead. Here then, is our latest round-up of vital new tunes, heralding forthcoming albums from the likes of Gruff Rhys, Bill Ryder-Jones, Sleater-Kinney, Sufjan Stevens and Sara...

Today is one of those days where it might be advisable to mute the news feed and listen to something genuinely inspiring instead. Here then, is our latest round-up of vital new tunes, heralding forthcoming albums from the likes of Gruff Rhys, Bill Ryder-Jones, Sleater-Kinney, Sufjan Stevens and Sarah Davachi. From what we’ve heard so far, they all deliver.

ORDER NOW: The Who are on the cover of the latest UNCUT

As for promising newer artists, we’re quite excited about John Francis Flynn, Titanic, Niecy Blues, Connie Lovatt and Brown Horse, to name just a few – expect to read more about them all in Uncut over the coming months. There’s also an intriguing new project from White Denim’s James Petralli, a fruitful one-off collaboration between Bruce Springsteen and Bryce Dessner, Beth Orton covering Leonard Cohen – and Underworld going a cappella, to stunning effect…

GRUFF RHYS
“Celestial Candyfloss”
(Rough Trade)

SUFJAN STEVENS
“A Running Start”
(Asthmatic Kitty)

UNDERWORLD
“Denver Luna (acappella)”
(Virgin)

NIECY BLUES
“Violently Rooted”
(Kranky)

SKINNY PELEMBE
“Who By Fire (feat. Beth Orton)”
(Partisan)

JOHN FRANCIS FLYNN
“Mole In The Ground”
(River Lea)

BROWN HORSE
“Sunfisher”
(Loose Music)

BILL RYDER-JONES
“This Can’t Go On”
(Domino)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & PATTI SCIALFA
“Addicted To Romance”
(Columbia)

ZOOEY CELESTE
“Cosmic Being”
(ATO)

CONNIE LOVATT
“Zodiac”
(Enchanté)

BIXIGA 70
“Na Quarta-Feira”
(Glitterbeat)

SLEATER-KINNEY
“Hell”
(Loma Vista)

SLEAFORD MODS
“Big Pharma”
(Rough Trade)

RAZE REGAL & WHITE DENIM INC
“Dislocation”
(Bella Union)

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD
“Theia / The Silver Cord / Set”
(KGLW)

TITANIC
“Cielo Falso”
(Unheard Of Hope)

ANENON
“Moons Melt Milk Light”
(Tonal Union)

SARAH DAVACHI
“Long Gradus (strings): Part IV”
(Late Music)

Long-lost Gram Parsons’ sci-fi film rediscovered

Michael Bonner
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Long-lost Gram Parsons’ sci-fi film rediscovered
A long-lost sci-fi film starring Gram Parsons is the subject of a new book. Called Saturation 70, the project also starred Julian Jones-Leitch, son of Rolling Stone Brian Jones, Michelle Phillips, tailor Nudie Cohn and Prince Stanislas Klossowski De Rola, the aristocrat and Stones' confidant. The mu...

A long-lost sci-fi film starring Gram Parsons is the subject of a new book. Called Saturation 70, the project also starred Julian Jones-Leitch, son of Rolling Stone Brian Jones, Michelle Phillips, tailor Nudie Cohn and Prince Stanislas Klossowski De Rola, the aristocrat and Stones’ confidant. The music was by Parsons and Roger McGuinn while the film’s special effects were due to be handled by Douglas Trumbull, who’d then just completed Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

You can read more about this astonishing story below, while a Kickstarter page here provides more information about the book.

You can watch a trailer for the book here:

The project began life in 1969, when writer-director Anthony Foutz was prepping a film written in collaboration with playwright Sam Shepard, called Maxagasm, intended as a vehicle for the Rolling Stones.

Foutz attended a UFO convention in the desert at Giant Rock, near Joshua Tree with a group of friends, including Parsons, Phillips, and 5-year-old Julian Jones-Leitch, to film test footage for Maxagasm; however, the footage gave rise instead to another film: Saturation 70.

According to the Kickstarter page for the book, the plot for Saturation 70 was this.

“A Victorian star child (Julian Jones-Leitch) who falls through a wormhole into smog-ridden, dystopian, present day Los Angeles, is compelled to embark on a hazardous quest to reunite with his mother (Marsia Holzer). He is helped in this endeavor by a Nudie-suit wearing Fairy Godmother (Ida Random), Nudie Cohn himself, and a group of aliens in hazmat suits: the Kosmic Kiddies (Gram Parsons, Michelle Phillips, Andee Nathanson, and Stash Klossowski de Rola), who have landed on Earth with a mission: to rid it of poisonous toxins and pollution.”

The film was shot but never completed after financing fell apart. Most of the footage subsequently disappeared. The full story for Saturation 70 – and Maxagasm – has now been documented in a new book, Saturation 70: A Vision Past of the Future Foretold, by Chris Campion, which features never-before-seen imagery, on-set photographs, production stills and script fragments.

Send us your questions for Shirley Collins!

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Shirley Collins!
The term 'national treasure' is overused these days, but there are few more genuinely treasurable than Shirley Collins. As a key pillar of the British folk revival of the 1960s, Collins recorded numerous essential albums with Davy Graham, The Albion Country Band and her sister Dolly. Now 88, her...

The term ‘national treasure’ is overused these days, but there are few more genuinely treasurable than Shirley Collins.

As a key pillar of the British folk revival of the 1960s, Collins recorded numerous essential albums with Davy Graham, The Albion Country Band and her sister Dolly. Now 88, her passion for folk music remains undimmed.

  • ORDER NOW: The Who are on the cover of the latest UNCUT

    • Since returning to singing in 2014, she’s made three acclaimed albums with her Lodestar band, the latest being this year’s Archangel Hill – a name that her stepfather gave to Mount Caburn near her home in Lewes. Affirming Collins’ lifelong mission of keeping these traditional songs alive, the album features a new version of “Hares Of The Mountain” created especially for Bridget Christie’s excellent Channel 4 series, The Change.

    And now she’s kindly agreed to consider your queries for Uncut’s next Audience With feature. So what do you want to ask a British folk legend? Send you questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Wednesday (October 11) and Shirley will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

    The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1970s…Ranked!

    John Robinson
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    The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1970s…Ranked!
    I’m delighted to re-open the account of our Archive Collection series with this new issue: the 500 Greatest Albums of the 1970s…Ranked! You can get yours here Inside you’ll find 500 albums reviewed. An interview with Ken Scott about his time in the studio with Bowie and other legends of the...

    I’m delighted to re-open the account of our Archive Collection series with this new issue: the 500 Greatest Albums of the 1970s…Ranked! You can get yours here

    Inside you’ll find 500 albums reviewed. An interview with Ken Scott about his time in the studio with Bowie and other legends of the 1970s. Not to mention a classic audience with Mick Jagger: “I don’t want to be rude,” Mick begins, as he opens a can of lager in 1972 and casts a withering critical eye over the rock and pop landscape…

    Unbelievably, it’s nearly 50 years since our senior colleagues in the weekly music press first started running retrospective lists of great albums. Primed no doubt by local nostalgia events like the London Rock ‘n’ Roll Show (Wembley Stadium, 1972) and films like George Lucas’s American Graffiti (cinemas nationwide, 1973), by the mid-1970s it seemed permissible to look back to the first sparks of rock ‘n’ roll and indulge in a little history.

    Why they did it is one thing. But has critical opinion changed much in 50 years? Quality rock clearly stood out then as it does still – even today we wouldn’t disagree with key choices on The Rolling Stones, The Who or Led Zeppelin – but it does speak to the dominance of white guitar artists.

    Alongside that, however, the 1970s was such a boom time for music production and sales that we’ve been spending the years since trying to make sense of its riches. Reggae and dub. The widescreen take on what originated as “soul” music, now made epic in the hands of auteurs like Curtis Mayfield, the Temptations and Stevie Wonder. The new music from Germany, made by Can, Kraftwerk and Neu! Brazilian singer-songwriters. British innovators like Bowie, Fripp and Eno…

    Impossible to make sense of otherwise, democracy has allowed us see how the years have acted on 1970s music. Clearly we now listen to a lot more jazz, and music from other countries. It’s also good to note that there’s been a changing of the guard. In a time when the 50th anniversary reissue of //Dark Side Of The Moon// offers no more surprises than the kind of box it comes in, I’m relieved that the big hitters of our Top 20 aren’t solely the albums you’d have found stacked in every older brother’s bedroom in 1974.

    Here instead are artistic breakthroughs; albums to rally a cause, or mobilise a generation, and at least five which dismantle music to rebuild it from the ground up. All are worth your deep consideration because they have made it this far, and seem unlikely to be going anywhere. These are why me make charts. And why, even when we’re surrounded by great new music, we still can’t resist looking back for more.

    It’s in the shops on Thursday but you can get one on the way to you today, direct from us, here.

    The Runaways – Neon Angels On The Road To Ruin 1976–1978

    Sharon O'Connell
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    The Runaways – Neon Angels On The Road To Ruin 1976–1978
    Despite the attitude, of which they exhibited a ton, by Joan Jett’s own admission The Runaways were not a punk band. When they formed in 1975, Legs McNeil had yet to popularise the term and “Blitzkrieg Bop” was a year away from release. The five were “just a rock’n’roll band”, inspired...

    Despite the attitude, of which they exhibited a ton, by Joan Jett’s own admission The Runaways were not a punk band. When they formed in 1975, Legs McNeil had yet to popularise the term and “Blitzkrieg Bop” was a year away from release. The five were “just a rock’n’roll band”, inspired by Sabbath, T.Rex, Alice Cooper and Suzi Quatro and, rather than embodying a zeitgeist, were committed to writing about their own experience in their music language of choice. Rebellion is in the eye of the beholder, but The Runaways clearly signposted it with their name – a pack of “bad girls” out of control (every twitchy conservative’s nightmare/fantasy) – and their calling card, “Cherry Bomb”. That risqué title, the sneering taunts of 15-year-old singer Cherie Currie and suggestive backing moans made a neat package of teasing and affront.

    Looming over The Runaways is the predatory spectre of Kim Fowley. Though there’s a strong argument for erasing him from their story and returning its full ownership to the band, the fact is that as producer, manager/hypeman and co-writer of many of their songs he was, until they parted ways in 1977, a significant player. The obligation is to recognise The Runaways’ talent independent of Fowley and irrespective of their gender, which is something this boxset, comprising their four studio LPs and a live album recorded in Japan, serves.

    Birtha and Fanny were forerunners of The Runaways, as well as Quatro, but still their debut blows in on a blast of singularly audacious air – the short, swaggering “Cherry Bomb”. Written by Jett and Fowley during Currie’s audition for the band, it shows a middle finger to female behavioural convention and is driven by a brutal rhythmic chug with Lita Ford’s guitar solo the pivot. Her chops are also central to “Is It Day Or Night”, which moves with a bluesy, Deep Purple-ish thrust, while Lou Reed’s “Rock & Roll” homage is made over with power chords and plenty of cowbell. Both “You Drive Me Wild” and “Thunder” are indebted to glam: the first to “Ride A White Swan”, the latter to “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” (a cover of which appears on And Now… The Runaways). If the inappropriately unsubtle “Lovers” comes on like a simplified Thin Lizzy and “Blackmail” is a hard rock revision of “Johnny B Goode”, then “Dead End Justice” is the set’s musical bookend to “Cherry Bomb”. Conceptually, though, it’s a different beast, a lengthy narrative about “dead-end kids in the danger zone” with Jett and Currie plotting to bust out of “a cheap, run-down teenage jail”. If The Runaways hit headlines, however, that didn’t translate into sales – the first album just scraped into the Billboard 200.

    For 1977’s Queens Of Noise, Sparks guitarist Earle Mankey signed up as co-producer, charged with delivering a more radio-friendly sound. It’s most evident on “Midnight Music”, which cheekily bites the Cass Elliot hit “Make Your Own Kind Of Music” and sees Currie singing in a radically different voice, with chiming guitar accompaniment. Jett’s “I Love Playin’ With Fire” is a more familiar hybrid of Alice Cooper and Free that accelerates madly toward the fade-out, but the Ford/Fowley closing epic, “Johnny Guitar”, is almost unrecognisable as The Runaways. A showcase for Ford’s guitar prowess, it starts as a slow, swampy and degraded blues number before easing into a Hendrix-style solo that runs over the three-minute mark. Queens Of Noise impresses with its stylistic range, songwriting development and more imaginative production, but chart success eluded it too.

    Originally not released in the US or UK, Live In Japan probably has as much or as little value in this set as a listener’s rating of live albums in general determines, though it is a document – both of The Runaways’ Beatlemania-like popularity there and the last recordings with Cherie Currie and Jackie Fox. It draws from three shows, the highlights being a blues-boogie iteration of “You Drive Me Wild”, a cheerfully swinging cover of “Wild Thing” and “Gettin’ Hot”, a tough, Hendrix/Sabbath hybrid that doubles as a flamethrower.

    There’s no denying that the last two albums in this set are disappointing retreads, though they’re also records of a different kind – of the band’s recovery from burn-out, drug addiction, personality clashes and membership changes (Jett moved to lead vocals; Fox was replaced first by Vicki Blue, then Ford). Waitin’ For The Night was their third LP of 1977 and Fowley’s last with the band as producer. Their playing is ferociously on-point, but the songs are composites of hard-rock tropes, the barrage of power chords numbing where it once thrilled, though there’s glee in Jett’s “You’re Too Possessive”, with Ford’s solos throwing to Sunset Strip rock. There’s even less left in the tank come 1978’s And Now… The Runaways, which the band initially decided not to release. It features a perverse choice of covers in the sluggish “Eight Days A Week” (with organ) and Steve Jones/Paul Cook’s unremarkable “Black Leather”.

    Nonetheless, The Runaways’ legacy stands, secured by the indomitable spirit that became an exemplar for the likes of Vixen, L7, Babes In Toyland and The Donnas, and the invincible rock’n’roll noise of their first two records.

    Hear Bruce Springsteen and Bryce Dessner’s new track, “Addicted To Romance”

    Michael Bonner
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    Hear Bruce Springsteen and Bryce Dessner’s new track, “Addicted To Romance”
    Bruce Springsteen has release a new track, "Addicted To Romance", which was co-produced and orchestrated by The National's Bryce Dessner alongside Springsteen's regular producer Ron Aniello. The track was recorded for director Rebecca Miller's new film She Came To Me. The song also features vocal...

    Bruce Springsteen has release a new track, “Addicted To Romance“, which was co-produced and orchestrated by The National‘s Bryce Dessner alongside Springsteen’s regular producer Ron Aniello.

    The track was recorded for director Rebecca Miller‘s new film She Came To Me. The song also features vocals from Patti Scialfa and contributions from The National’s touring members Benjamin Lanz (trombone) and Kyle Resnick (trumpet).

    Here’s the track:

    Springsteen is currently on hiatus while he recovers from a peptic ulcer disease and will resume his current E Street Band tour in 2024.

    Wilco – Cousin

    Tom Pinnock
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    Wilco – Cousin
    Featuring Kurt Vile, Low, Courtney Barnett, Sharon Van Etten, Ryley Walker and more, the Wilcovered tribute album was given away with Uncut in 2019 and has since had a second life with various vinyl pressings. It would be unfair to pick a favourite from it; and yet it seems clear which cover the ban...

    Featuring Kurt Vile, Low, Courtney Barnett, Sharon Van Etten, Ryley Walker and more, the Wilcovered tribute album was given away with Uncut in 2019 and has since had a second life with various vinyl pressings. It would be unfair to pick a favourite from it; and yet it seems clear which cover the band were most into. Not only did they choose Cate Le Bon’s take on A Ghost Is Born’s “Company In My Back” to open the compilation and trail the release online, but Jeff Tweedy had already asked the Welsh singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist to produce their next album.

    The fruits of this collaboration are appearing now, four years later, after Covid and then 2022’s Cruel Country pushed it into the sidelines. Whereas Cruel Country made a virtue of its organic nature – Wilco’s first proper ‘country’ album, recorded live in a room – Cousin is the mangled art-rock record they’ve been talking up for a while. This is the return of the experimental, noisy, future-facing Wilco, last heard on 2015’s Star Wars.

    Le Bon is the perfect producer to help them with this. Her own records have always sounded so unusual, so full of personality, and over the last decade that seemed to naturally lead to production work with H Hawkline, Tim Presley, Deerhunter, John Grant and now Devendra Banhart. The results haven’t necessarily been these artists’ most commercial or accessible records, but they’ve often been their most interesting, so it’s unsurprising that Wilco wanted to tap into a bit of that here.

    If there’s any criticism to be levelled at Le Bon’s production work, it’s that her fingerprints are often audibly all over the albums she produces. However, that’s not the case here: Cousin is deliciously weird and intoxicatingly angular, but it still sounds like a Wilco album, not a Le Bon collaboration. There are crisp drums, bone-dry guitars and woozy synths – of course – but as always with Wilco the material is the thing. No matter how strange they get, these songs could all be played on acoustic guitar, and indeed Tweedy’s acoustic does feature prominently on a number of these tracks. “Pittsburgh”, for instance, is a finger-picked ballad, yet it opens with huge slabs of distorted synths and plummeting guitar. In one sense Wilco have never sounded like this; in another they always have.

    “Ten Dead” is another classically Wilco song: a languid, Beatles-esque ballad that finds Tweedy waking up to terrible news: “Turn on the radio, this is what they said/No more, no more than ten dead”. As it reaches its middle section, the circular riffs turn eerier and drones mass as the narrator becomes increasingly disconnected amid the horror of the everyday. The following “When The Levee Is Fake” is similar, with its baroque guitar arpeggios, a little Smiths, a little Radiohead’s “Knives Out”. Tweedy is at his best here, even if the words are few: “Why worry about the rain and the wind/When I know it comes from within…” His delivery is vacant, distant, a perfect encapsulation of our modern malaise. “A Bowl And A Pudding” is another crystalline gem, vaguely reminiscent of Tweedy and Glenn Kotche’s work with Loose Fur. “Not saying anything”, he mutters as the music grows unsteady, “says a lot”.

    Elsewhere, Le Bon’s influence is closer to the surface. “Sunlight Ends” is based around ragged drum machine and an echoed tangle of notes, their origin hard to identify. The title track, too, is stiff, jerky new wave of the kind that Le Bon mastered so well on 2016’s Crab Day; lyrically it’s dark, almost cut up, with mentions of “walking round an empty grave” and the dead awaking “in waves”.

    As the album nears it end it returns to melody and – almost – positivity. “Soldier Child” is a kind of power-pop song, two lilting chords see-sawing back and forth until it reaches a classic chorus, with the narrator returning home after a period away: “I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to be this tired…” Despite its easy charm, it always shies away from the obvious or the cheesy, just as Wilco do on Cousin’s closing track, “Meant To Be”, a galloping new wave track, its strummed acoustic and tight beat reminiscent of XTC, The Cure or Echo & The Bunnymen. As with the rest of Cousin, though, weirdness scratches at the edges, here in the form of discordant touches and feedbacked drones.

    The real highlight, however, is the opener. Almost six minutes long, “Infinite Surprise” is one of the bravest and most infectious songs Wilco have created. It cuts straight in with a clipped beat and guitar abstractions, then builds masterfully as instruments join, fall away and return changed. At its heart it’s an accessible, deeply melodic folk song about the sad mysteries of life and death (“It’s good to be alive/It’s good to know we die”), but it’s dressed in wondrous experimental finery. It ends untethered, exploding into crackles and rattles, an avant-garde fanfare for its makers: (still) the greatest American rock group of the last 30 years.

    Hear Peter Gabriel’s new single, “This Is Home”

    Michael Bonner
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    Hear Peter Gabriel’s new single, “This Is Home”
    Peter Gabriel has released a new track, "This Is Home". The Dark-Side Mix coincides with this month's full moon. ORDER NOW: The Who are on the cover of the latest UNCUT https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=fuZqsCM9CSWqmXKj&v=UH5gPE0ALEY&feature=youtu.be "This Is Home" is the tenth track from...

    Peter Gabriel has released a new track, “This Is Home“. The Dark-Side Mix coincides with this month’s full moon.

    “This Is Home” is the tenth track from his upcoming album, i/o.

    Written and produced by Peter Gabriel, the track is, he says, ‘a love song.’

    “It began with inspiration from some of the great Tamla Motown rhythm sections so we’re trying to recreate that in a modern way, complete with the tambourine and handclaps. The groove I like a lot, Tony Levin does a great bass part there.

    “I did an unusual thing for me in that I tried doing this low voice / high voice thing, so you get this almost conversational voice at the beginning and the second part is a higher, more emotional voice. I thought that would be both intimate and emotive to put the two side by side.”

    This Is Home comes with differing mix approaches from Tchad Blake (Dark-Side Mix), released on September 29, and also Mark ‘Spike’ Stent (Bright-Side Mix) and Hans-Martin Buff’s Atmos mix (In-Side Mix), released in mid-October on the next new moon.

    Hear The Rolling Stones’ “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven”

    Michael Bonner
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    Hear The Rolling Stones’ “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven”
    Those British bad boys The Rolling Stones have released a new track, "Sweet Sounds Of Heaven", from their forthcoming album, Hackney Diamonds. You can hear it below. ORDER NOW: The Who are on the cover of the latest UNCUT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYhIXwWn9TQ Following "Angry"...

    Those British bad boys The Rolling Stones have released a new track, “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven“, from their forthcoming album, Hackney Diamonds.

    You can hear it below.

    Following “Angry“, which they released earlier this month, “Sweet Sound Of Heaven” channels the Gospel soul favoured by the band earlier in their career – especially “Shine A Light” from Exile On Main Street. The song features Lady Gaga on vocals and, on Rhodes, piano and Moog, Stevie Wonder.

    Hackney Diamonds is released by Universal on October 20.

    You can pre-order the album here.

    Watch Ty Segall’s video for new track, “Eggman”

    Michael Bonner
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    Watch Ty Segall’s video for new track, “Eggman”
    Ty Segall is back with another new track, "Eggman". It follows "Void", which he released last month. You can watch the video for "Eggman" below. If you don't like boiled eggs, turn away now... ORDER NOW: The Who are on the cover of the latest UNCUT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu1...

    Ty Segall is back with another new track, “Eggman“. It follows “Void“, which he released last month.

    You can watch the video for “Eggman” below. If you don’t like boiled eggs, turn away now…

    “Eggman” was co-written by Ty and Denée Segall. The track is available to buy on Segall’s Bandcamp page.

    Segall has also announced a slew of live dates in the States for next year.

    Wednesday, September 6 – Topanga Canyon, CA @ Theatricum Botanicum*
    Thursday, September 7 – Topanga Canyon, CA @ Theatricum Botanicum*
    Thursday, October 5 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom^
    Friday, October 6 – Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theatre^
    Saturday, October 7 – Indianapolis, IN @ Deluxe at Old National Centre^
    Thursday, October 26 – Austin, TX @ LEVITATION
    Friday, November 10 – Jersey City, NJ @ White Eagle Hall – Solo Acoustic
    Saturday, November 11 – Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom – Solo Acoustic
    Tuesday, February 20 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
    Wednesday, February 21 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
    Saturday, February 24 – Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up
    Friday, April 19 – Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole
    Saturday, April 20 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sister Bar
    Tuesday, April 23 – Jackson, MS @ Duling Hall
    Wednesday, April 24 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl
    Friday, April 26 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
    Saturday, April 27 – Washington, DC @ Atlantis
    Sunday, April 28 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
    Monday, April 29 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall
    Wednesday, May 1 – Boston, MA @ Royale
    Thursday, May 2 – Montreal, QC @ Club Soda
    Friday, May 3 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall
    Sunday, May 5 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom
    Monday, May 6 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
    Tuesday, May 7 – Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room
    Thursday, May 9 – Englewood, CO @ Gothic Theatre
    Saturday, May 11 – Sacramento, CA @ Harlow’s

    * Acoustic set w/ The Freedom Band
    ^ w/ Axis: Sova

    PG Six – Murmurs And Whispers

    Jon Dale
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    PG Six – Murmurs And Whispers
    A late-’80s Triplett Celtic 34-string harp sits, unyieldingly, at the heart of Murmurs And Whispers, the sixth solo album proper by American singer-songwriter PG Six, aka Pat Gubler. Though he’s played Celtic harp for a good while now, it’s not yet sat quite so comfortably, nor boldly, at the ...

    A late-’80s Triplett Celtic 34-string harp sits, unyieldingly, at the heart of Murmurs And Whispers, the sixth solo album proper by American singer-songwriter PG Six, aka Pat Gubler. Though he’s played Celtic harp for a good while now, it’s not yet sat quite so comfortably, nor boldly, at the centre of Gubler’s richly allusive folk songs. It’s not all there is to the album – Gubler’s lyrical facility on guitar is here, too, as is his lovely voice – but from the opening strains of “Leaves”, the primacy of the Celtic harp is hard to miss.

    Gubler’s history with the Celtic harp goes back to his teens, where he and his brother Steve would both become fascinated with the instrument. “We’d go to concerts by touring artists like Derek Bell (The Chieftains), Kim Robertson, Robin Williamson,” Gubler recalls. His brother bought a Celtic harp in the late ’80s, and Gubler would practise on that instrument, “learning some Irish tunes, ‘Turlough O’Carolan’ and the like, eventually getting one of my own”.

    On Murmurs And Whispers, the Celtic harp seems to take on the guise of the album’s guide, in some ways; it’s there, comfortably beckoning the listener into the album on “Leaves”, one of many co-writes on the album, this one with Alan Davidson, the under-heralded genius behind long-running Scottish psych-folk outfit Kitchen Cynics. Its seeming fragility, which is often deceptive – there’s a sturdiness and richness to the melodious ring of the harp’s strings – forms a security net, of sorts, under Gubler’s voice; minimal electronics shade and tint the song.

    It’s one of many writing collaborations that dot the nine songs of Murmurs And Whispers. Gubler’s long been a willing collaborator; many listeners will first have encountered his songwriting and remarkable musicianship in the multi-headed hydra that was avant-folk gang Tower Recordings, where he worked alongside other artists like Matt Valentine (of MV & EE), Helen Rush (Metal Mountains), Tim Barnes and Dean Roberts. He’d already recorded a few solo albums by Tower’s dissolution; he’d soon follow through with two thrilling sets for Drag City, Slightly Sorry and Starry Mind.

    On those albums, he played with a group featuring, among others, Bob Bannister and Robert Dennis of improv-rock group Tono-Bungay, summoning all the ragged insistence of Richard Thompson-era Fairport Convention, and the mysterious lyricism of Steeleye Span circa Hark The Village Wait. Since that sustained flash of inspiration, he’s released excellent duo albums with the likes of Dan Melchior, and Louise Bock (of Spires That In The Sunset Rise), and worked with Garcia Peoples, Metal Mountains, Weeping Bong Band, Wet Tuna and Stella Kola.

    All of which might explain the 12 years that passed since Starry Mind. What it doesn’t quite explain, though, is the insistent paring back that characterises the nine songs assembled here. There’s rarely more than two or three layers of sound playing out across Murmurs & Whispers; a droning hurdy gurdy in “I Have A House”, which gives the song a medieval lilt, Gubler’s vocal melody circling around three insistently sung notes in beautifully paced consort, such that it takes on the power of incantation, before overloaded electric guitar slices through the drones; or the flickering story-song of “Tell Me Death”, co-written with Sharron Kraus, where Gubler’s Celtic harp helps drive the narrative to its inevitable conclusion.

    “I Have A House” draws its lyrics from a short story, “Iubhdhán’s Fairy House”, found in Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson’s edited collection of prose and poetry from the eighth to 19th century, A Celtic Miscellany. It’s the song that most clearly signals back to archaic forms, but much of the album shares a tone and mood that feels like a kind of reconstruction, or an inhabiting of much earlier folk styles. It’s there, for example, in the gorgeous, spindly acoustic guitar phrases of “Just Begun”, which call back to the playing of Martin Carthy.

    “I Don’t Want To Be Free”, too, signposts these relationships, albeit in a more oblique manner, its tender repetitions for Celtic harp woven tightly around one of Gubler’s most pensive lyrics and deliveries. The trick with Gubler’s writing and performance is that its spontaneous arc belies the deep thinking that goes into its creation; he manages to make these songs and performances sound easy, not off-the-cuff but certainly unforced. And for all his concerns about his singing, Gubler has one of the great modern folk voices, sometimes a ghostly shimmer over the instruments, elsewhere sung-spoken with depth, but no pretension. It’s perfect for songs of such elegant, lyrical boldness.

    Watch PJ Harvey play her first show for six years

    Michael Bonner
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    Watch PJ Harvey play her first show for six years
    PJ Harvey played her first show for six years, opening her latest tour in Dublin last night (September 23). ORDER NOW: The Who are on the cover of the latest UNCUT Harvey the evening by playing her current album, I Inside The Old Year Dying, in full before digging further into her catalogue...

    PJ Harvey played her first show for six years, opening her latest tour in Dublin last night (September 23).

    Harvey the evening by playing her current album, I Inside The Old Year Dying, in full before digging further into her catalogue, for some old favourites including some songs she’d not played for some years.

    Harvey performed “Angelene” from 1998’s Is This Desire? for the first time since 2012, while “The Desperate Kingdom Of Love“, “Dress” and “Man-Size” also got their first live airings for a decade.

    She closed the main set with “Down By The Water” and “To Bring You My Love” before returning for an encore of “C’mon Billy” and “White Chalk“.

    You can watch fan footage below.

    The setlist for PJ Harvey’s Dublin show was:

    Prayer At The Gate
    Autumn Term
    Lwonesome Tonight
    Seem An I
    The Nether-edge
    I Inside The Old Year Dying
    All Souls
    A Child’s Question, August
    I Inside The Old I Dying
    August
    A Child’s Question, July
    A Noiseless Noise
    The Color Of The Earth
    The Glorious Land
    The Words That Maketh Murder
    Angelene
    Send His Love To Me
    The Garden
    The Desperate Kingdom Of Love
    Man-Size
    Dress
    Down By The Water
    To Bring You My Love
    C’mon Billy
    White Chalk

    Watch Bob Dylan’s surprise set with the Heartbreakers at Farm Aid 2023

    Michael Bonner
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    Watch Bob Dylan’s surprise set with the Heartbreakers at Farm Aid 2023
    Bob Dylan made a surprise appearance with members of The Heartbreakers at Farm Aid yesterday [September 23, 2023], report multiple sources including Jambase, the Jokerman podcast, Consequence and Billboard. ORDER NOW: The Who are on the cover of the latest UNCUT Dylan - who helped conceive ...

    Bob Dylan made a surprise appearance with members of The Heartbreakers at Farm Aid yesterday [September 23, 2023], report multiple sources including Jambase, the Jokerman podcast, Consequence and Billboard.

    Dylan – who helped conceive Farm Aid in 1985 – played played three songs from 1965: “Maggie’s Farm”, “Positively 4th Street”, and “Ballad of a Thin Man”. Aside from the revelatory nature of the appearance, backing band and setlist, Dylan also played guitar throughout; since 2012, he has played keyboards at this concerts.

    This was the first time Dylan had performed “Maggie’s Farm” since 2011, “Positively 4th Street” since 2013 and “Ballad Of A Thin Man” since 2019.

    A kind soul has posted the full set on Youtube.

    The Heartbreakers line up featured guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, drummer Steve Ferrone, alongside Campbell’s Dirty Knobs bandmates Chris Holt on guitar and Lance Morrison on bass.

    This was Dylan’s first appearance at Farm Aid since its debut in 1985, where he was also backed by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers; Dylan and the band went on to tour together during 1986 and 1987, including the Temples On Flame tour.

    Other artists who appeared at Farm Aid, at the Ruoff Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana, included Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Margo Price, Bob Weir and Allison Russell.

    Angelheaded Hipster: The Songs Of Marc Bolan And T.Rex

    Peter Watts
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    Angelheaded Hipster: The Songs Of Marc Bolan And T.Rex
    Coming somewhere between biography and “making of”, this film by Ethan Silverman uses Hal Willner’s 2020 all-star tribute album as a jumping off point to explore the life and music of Marc Bolan. That includes a thorough rummage through the archive to find old interviews and clips of Bolan in ...

    Coming somewhere between biography and “making of”, this film by Ethan Silverman uses Hal Willner’s 2020 all-star tribute album as a jumping off point to explore the life and music of Marc Bolan. That includes a thorough rummage through the archive to find old interviews and clips of Bolan in performance as well as contributions from contemporary musicians as they cycle through the studio to record with Willner.

    The format allows Silverman to create something more than a simple procedural narrative for the film. We get the biographical basics as well as opportunities to witness musicians in the studio reinterpreting Bolan’s music before going on to discuss different aspects of his appeal – such as his sexiness (Joan Jett, when recording “Jeepster”). Others can recount first-hand memories of Bolan during his heyday, notably Elton John who accompanies U2 on “Get It On”. Other contributions come from Ringo Starr, remembering how dinner with Bolan inspired “Back Off Boogaloo”, and Billy Idol delivering a story about the time he saw Bolan face down a hostile crowd at the Isle Of Wight. Younger musicians talk about their relationships with Bolan’s music, while David Bowie and John Peel chip in from beyond the grave. More personal context comes from Tony Visconti, Gloria Jones, Rolan Bolan and Jeff Dexter.

    In old interview footage, Bolan comes across as articulate and switched-on, helped by a series of interviewers who take him and his music seriously – perhaps more so than you might expect given the way Bolan is often presented as a shallower, tween-friendly version of Bowie. Bowie, though, is the ghost who haunts the film, constantly threatening to overshadow Bolan – even in Bolan’s own film. We hear how they first meet as unknowns, painting Leslie Conn’s office; how they shared a similar vision of music, fashion and gender fluidity; how Bolan made it big but was leapfrogged by Bowie; of Bolan’s jealousy at Bowie’s American success; and finally see the two duetting, not quite as equals, on Bolan’s TV show, Marc, just days before Bolan’s death.

    This Bowie-Bolan rivalry acts as an anchor for some of the film’s best moments – Cameron Crowe describes the way the British rock press had pop stars sniping at each other like “crabs in a bucket” before Bolan is heard taking a catty swipe at musicians who dress like Marlene Dietrich or clowns. Bowie’s own interviews about their relationship are a tad more magnanimous, partly because they are all taken from a time when he could afford to be generous given a) he was a megastar and b) Bolan was dead.

    Meanwhile, Bolan’s music is reimagined by a panoply of stars. It’s not all big names – Nena, of “99 Red Balloons” fame, gets to sing “Metal Guru”, while Rolan Bolan sings “Children Of The Revolution”. These aren’t just the big T.Rex numbers either: Devendra Banhart channels the spirit of “Scenescof”, Father John Misty reinterprets “Main Man” while Beth Orton tackles “Hippy Gumbo”. The all-star band includes Jim White and Pete Thomas on drums, Van Dyke Parks pops up on piano while Wayne Kramer, Marc Ribot and Bill Frisell contribute guitar.

    Nick Cave’s meditative version of “Cosmic Dancer” is the undoubted musical highpoint, as he recasts the song as a slow, earnest The Boatman’s Call-style ballad with beautiful string accompaniment. The non-musical highlight comes from the always excellent and enthusiastic Joe Elliott who spent three weeks lovingly copying out a book of Bolan’s poetry as an 11-year-old – he still has the exercise book, imprinted with Elliott’s own “ex libris” stamp.

    Although it sometimes feels as if it’s geared towards a US audience, the archive footage alone makes this worth watching. Bolan comes across as an intriguing but surprisingly grounded figure and his musical performances still have infectious raucous energy. The film also acts as a tribute to Hal Willner, who died shortly after the album was completed.

    “A beautiful community”: Cate Le Bon on Wilco

    Michael Bonner
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    “A beautiful community”: Cate Le Bon on Wilco
    You'll have hopefully noticed that there's a long interview with Jeff Tweedy in the new Uncut, hooked around Wilco's excellent new album, Cousin. For the piece, I also spoke to the album's producer Cate Le Bon. Long-time Uncut readers will know that LeBon first officially entered Wilco's orbit wi...

    You’ll have hopefully noticed that there’s a long interview with Jeff Tweedy in the new Uncut, hooked around Wilco’s excellent new album, Cousin.

    For the piece, I also spoke to the album’s producer Cate Le Bon. Long-time Uncut readers will know that LeBon first officially entered Wilco’s orbit with her striking cover of “Company In My Back” for our Wilcovered CD back in 2019.

    Anyway, I spoke to Cate for a good 30 minutes for my feature and what appeared in the magazine barely scraped the surface of our chat about her involvement with the band. With Cousin due in shops next week, I thought it would be a good moment to print the full transcript of our interview.

    Lots to dig into here.

    UNCUT: When did you first meet Wilco?
    LE BON: The first I met Jeff at the Solid Sound Festival would have been 2019, I think. We rehearsed a couple of songs with Jeff to sing live. My parents were huge Wilco fans growing up, so I was aware of Wilco and a fan of them. But that’s when I first crossed paths with Jeff and that whole Wilco world – which is a vast world.

    What were your first impressions of Jeff?
    That whole festival, he had an acoustic guitar on him constantly. During the recording of the record, he was never without a guitar or a banjo on him. It’s like an extension of his being, a way to express himself, as a way to communicate. He’s such a generous, such a generous musician. It was a really beautiful experience, having him being in a room with us all rehearsing. He was a little shy and very sweet. We all just loved him.

    How did your version of “Company In My Back” for our Wilcovered CD come about?
    They’d always been so kind and communicating. I think when Mark from The Loft reached out and asked me to do that cover, we were playing Pitchfork festival in Chicago. So we were trying to cobble together how we were going to pull it all off. They kindly said we could stay at The Loft, which was very kind of them. Mark bought us all the bedding and everything we needed and made beds in different corners of The Loft. The next morning, we woke up at 7am. Jeff turned up to hang out with us. We recorded, I think, between 7am and noon, we recorded that cover.

    So how did you come to work on Cousin?
    It was very unexpected and sweet. It must have been two years after that, when we were playing Pitchfork in Chicago again, and I emailed Mark to say, do you think we could rehearse at The Loft? He’s hugely generous, you know, of course. We turned up and Jeff came to sit with us. He said, ‘I’ve something to ask you, Cate,’, which is a question I always dread. ‘Oh, God. What is it?’. Usually, you have some idea that those things are on the cards, someone has asked some kind of preliminary questions or whatever. And just in front of everyone, he said, ‘Would you produce the next Wilco record?’ I was so shocked, it made me a little bit emotional. Then we just carried on rehearsing. It was really sweet and gentle and very natural. Often you get asked to do things and you have to differentiate what is flattery, and if you actually really want to do something. But Jeff and I, whatever time we’ve spent together, there’s always been this lovely natural communication we have energies that match one another.

    So what happened next?
    We’d have phone conversations about exactly what it was he wanted from me and why he was bringing me in.

    What did he want from you?
    I think when you bring anybody in, you want to change things up. Often when people say that, when you try and change things they go, ‘What are you doing?’ But for someone who’s been making records for as long as he’s been making them, he still possesses beginner’s mind. He is so exciting and curious. Even being able to sit in discomfort, he sees the value in that.

    What do you mean by that?
    Jeff is at the helm of all the Wilco records. I think when you’ve got someone in to change things up, sometimes there’ll be an element of discomfort – which is great. It’s what I search for when I’m making records. The unknown, not really knowing what something’s going but trusting that in the chaos and in the tearing apart, you will rebuild it in a way that is going to be exciting and surprising. There is a discomfort in that you have to swim with. It’s not everyone who can do that, especially someone who has made hundreds of records. But Jeff is curious, he’s always searching, he wants to change things up.

    So how did it how did it work?
    I was sent folders of songs. I think Jeff hadn’t really found a record to put them on or maybe something wasn’t resolving in them, so they’d always been put to one side. There were maybe 30 or 40 songs and I picked ones that resonated with me that I felt there was something that he and I could work on within them.

    They first started worked on Cousin before the pandemic, but parked it to work on Cruel Country…
    I think there was songs dating back earlier than that. I think some of them are demos, versions or whatever from 10 years ago. I was sent stuff over the end of summer last year, then went to Chicago in December, and stayed there for a couple of month. I worked, me and Jeff solo to begin with just listening and talking about where we were going to take everything, then the band came in. It was a process of figuring out how we were going to do it, surrender to that process. I did a winter in Chicago, which felt like about three years – it’s -36! Then I went back in March and again in May to do the mixing. It all happened pretty quickly, from Pitchfork 2022 in July, then a month later he sent me a folder of songs that hadn’t found a home or were in various states of completion. Then I was in Chicago in December.

    Were the songs he sent you demos – Jeff and an acoustic?
    No, some of them were fully fleshed out. But we reimagined them all. It was listening but with me saying, “This is how I’d respond to this differently…’ or ‘We’d peel back whatever here…’ or ‘This is the part of the song that sings to me most.’ When we were listening back at the end, I think Mark from The Loft said it sounded like Wilco but with a different lighting director. Which is a fair sum up of it. You bring someone in to look at things in a different way and share that with you.

    So when you say ‘reimagined’, you mean that the songs that are on Cousin were recorded from scratch?
    On the most part. There was some that possessed a magic that I don’t think could have been recreated. The old session files were available. So a lot of them we completely stripped back and kept the special moments.

    A small number of people have produced Wilco, it’s really just you and Jim O’Rourke.
    I feel hugely honoured and lucky to have been allowed. It’s a beautiful community and world to be part of. Very generous, very nourishing.

    Do you have a specific memory you can share about the sessions?
    A lot of the time, it was me and Jeff on the sofa, exploring the songs and passing a bass guitar back and forth. It felt there was a beautiful synergy. I don’t think I’ve worked with anyone who is as like-minded as Jeff. There’s a sensibility, an approach to music, a curiosity and willingness to break things apart that we both enjoyed in one another. We’d often finish each other sentences. Working with Nels is magic and Glenn is an exceptional musician, but they all possess beginner’s mind, which is so exciting, to have these musicians who can play anything. Nels can just drone a note for three minutes, if you want and put everything into it and you’ll get the best sound out of that guitar. To have that curiosity after however many records that they’ve made together is, I was blown away by it.

    Cousins is released on September 29 by dBpm Records

    20 minutes with Brian Eno

    Stephen Troussé
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    20 minutes with Brian Eno
    Brian Eno is nothing if not busy. With his soundtrack to the latest - and final - season of Top Boy on sale imminently, he has just announced that a remastered edition of The Ship album will be released ahead of his live shows in October. Here, from Uncut's September 2023 issue, Eno tells us abou...

    Brian Eno is nothing if not busy. With his soundtrack to the latest – and final – season of Top Boy on sale imminently, he has just announced that a remastered edition of The Ship album will be released ahead of his live shows in October.

    Here, from Uncut’s September 2023 issue, Eno tells us about why he’s decided to play live again. Just don’t call it a tour…

    Hi Brian. You recently said you’d rather hammer nails into your own scrotum than go on tour. What changed?
    I wish it wasn’t being presented as my first solo tour because it’s kind of misleading. In fact, I’ve made a decision in the last few days that if I ever play live again, I won’t announce it until about an hour before the concert. People are already asking me four months in advance exactly what I’m going to be doing, and I haven’t really worked it all out yet. So it’s a process; it’s a project in the process of being formed. It started out with the idea of doing as an orchestral piece. And then I woke up last Tuesday to find about a thousand emails and texts from people saying, ‘Oh, you’re going on tour’ and I thought, ‘No, I’m fucking not going on tour!’

    But there’s a list of European dates here…
    There’s a performance of some of my music. And hopefully a new piece as well. And I will be on stage some of the time. But if people think that it’s going to be like a concert with me standing at the microphone with my hair flowing in the wind, they’re wrong. Because I haven’t got any hair for a start!

    Tell us about the orchestra.
    I’m working with the amazing Baltic Sea Philharmonic. They’re distinguished by the fact that the musicians aren’t sitting down the whole time, so it’s an orchestra of people who are actually alive. This is already quite rare. They live and they eat and drink and shit and have sex like the rest of us. Not like people in other orchestras who don’t seem to do any of those things.

    You performed with your brother and your niece in Greece last year. Did you enjoy it so much that you wanted to do more?
    I did enjoy that, yeah. But touring to me, or any kind of live performance, it’s quite inefficient. That concert in Athens took about a month to prepare and then we did one show. The thing is, a lot of my music has never been played live. We normally think of music being played by a group of people sitting down and doing something together. Most of it isn’t constructed like that, it was made in a studio bit by bit, like a painting. In Athens we did five pieces that had never been played. It was actually very nice to know that it could be done and it worked. You see, I don’t go to concerts very much myself. And if I do I generally go to small ones. I’m not really interested in big live music. The size that we’re working at in these shows is about the limit for me – 2000 people, not 10,000 or 80,000.

    Is there something conceptually interesting about the chance and randomness of a live event?
    I think as everything else becomes easier and more reproducible, that which isn’t reproducible becomes more valuable. You pay more attention. Like everybody else, I have all the distractions of everyday life. This is an amazing era of human existence because there are more brains alive than there ever have been. And there are more connections between them than there ever have been. It’s got to be the formula for a kind of incredible explosion of knowledge! But there are far more distractions as well. I think the increase in distractions overwhelms the increase in connectivity.

    You famously realised your time was up in Roxy Music when you found yourself onstage contemplating your laundry. Is that a risk during the upcoming shows?
    No, I’ve got a washing machine now.

    Brian Eno performs Ships together with Baltic Sea Philharmonic conducted by Kristjan Järvi – plus Leo Abrahams, Peter Chilvers and a cameo appearance by Peter Serafinowicz – at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on October 30

    Send us your questions for Wreckless Eric!

    Sam Richards
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    Send us your questions for Wreckless Eric!
    It's been 46 years now since a young Eric Goulden wandered into the Stiff Records offices brandishing a demo tape containing the song – "Whole Wide World" – that would set him up for life (it's still regularly featured on films and TV commercials, and has been covered by everyone from The Procla...

    It’s been 46 years now since a young Eric Goulden wandered into the Stiff Records offices brandishing a demo tape containing the song – “Whole Wide World” – that would set him up for life (it’s still regularly featured on films and TV commercials, and has been covered by everyone from The Proclaimers to Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong).

    But Goulden never seemed content to just repeat this winning formula. While trying to outrun his punk-era persona, over the years he’s dabbled in everything from raw garage rock (with The Len Bright Combo) to Americana to lo-fi electronic pop. In recent years, Goulden has made his peace with the Wreckless Eric name, and 2023’s Leisureland – a concept album of sorts about the kind of crumbling English seaside town he grew up in – is an understated psych-pop gem, up there with his best.

    He’s scheduled to visit some more English seaside towns – as well the usual big cities – on his upcoming UK tour, which kicks off in Gravesend on October 14 (see the full list of dates and buy tickets here).

    But before that, he’s agreed to consider your queries for Uncut’s next Audience With feature. So what do you want to ask a punk survivor and great English eccentric? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Friday (September 22) and Eric will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

    Neil Young and Crazy Horse play Tonight’s The Night and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in full

    Michael Bonner
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    Neil Young and Crazy Horse play Tonight’s The Night and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in full
    Neil Young and an expanded line-up of Crazy Horse played the first of two shows last night [September 20, 2023] at the Roxy. The two shows are part of a benefit to mark the 50th anniversary of the Los Angeles club – which Young opened with the Santa Monica Flyers. Their shows were recorded and ...

    Neil Young and an expanded line-up of Crazy Horse played the first of two shows last night [September 20, 2023] at the Roxy.

    The two shows are part of a benefit to mark the 50th anniversary of the Los Angeles club – which Young opened with the Santa Monica Flyers. Their shows were recorded and released as the 2018 live album, Roxy: Tonight’s the Night Live.

    The line-up included Micah Nelson, who had originally been brought in to deputise for Nils Lofgren – who was due to be on tour with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. However, since the current leg of the tour has been put on hold while Springsteen is treated for peptic ulcer disease, Logfren was able to play at the Roxy alongside Nelson, Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina.

    Young had previously teased the show on his Instagram page, which includes a snippet of the band rehearsing “Down By The River“.

    The show, meanwhile, found Young and the Horse playing two albums in full: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Tonight’s The Night. The former is the only Crazy Horse album Young recorded with the Danny Whitten-led line-up of the band, while the latter is in part a tribute to Whitten, who died months before the album was recorded in Autumn 1973.

    You can watch fan footage below of some classic Young cuts from the show.

    “Tired Eyes”

    “Cinnamon Girl”

    “Down By The River”

    “Cowgirl In The Sand”

    According to the good people at Sugar Mountain, the full set list for the Roxy, September 20, 2023 was:

    Tonight’s The Night
    Speakin’ Out
    World On A String
    Borrowed Tune
    Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown     (vocals by Micah Nelson)
    Mellow My Mind
    Roll Another Number (For The Road)
    Albuquerque
    New Mama
    Lookout Joe
    Tired Eyes
    Tonight’s The Night
    —
    Cinnamon Girl
    Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
    Round And Round (It Won’t Be Long)*
    Down By The River
    The Losing End
    Running Dry (Requiem For The Rockets)
    Cowgirl In The Sand

    * – song debut

    Hear Bill Ryder-Jones’ new track, “This Can’t Go On”

    Michael Bonner
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    Hear Bill Ryder-Jones’ new track, “This Can’t Go On”
    Bill Ryder-Jones has released a new track, “This Can’t Go On”, which is taken from his forthcoming album, Iechyd Da. You can hear the new track below. ORDER NOW: The Who are on the cover of the latest UNCUT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byUoDKTVEac Iechyd Da is Ryder-Jones...

    Bill Ryder-Jones has released a new track, “This Can’t Go On”, which is taken from his forthcoming album, Iechyd Da.

    You can hear the new track below.

    Iechyd Da is Ryder-Jones’ first new record since Yawn in 2018. “I love this album,” says Ryder-Jones, “I haven’t been this proud of a record since A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart.”

    This exceptional album is released by Domino on January 12. Iechyd Da is available to pre-order from the Domino store on exclusive coloured vinyl (with postcard), a Dinked-edition coloured vinyl (with exclusive Big Softies 7” & signed sleeve), Indies-exclusive coloured vinyl, standard vinyl, CD and digitally.

    The tracklisting for Iechyd Da is:

    I Know That It’s Like This (Baby)
    A Bad Wind Blow In My Heart pt. 3
    If Tomorrow Starts Without Me
    We Don’t Need Them
    I Hold Something In My Hand
    This Can’t Go On
    …And The Sea…
    Nothing To Be Done
    It’s Today Again
    Christinha
    How Beautiful I Am
    Thankfully For Anthony
    Nos Da

    And here’s Ryder-Jones’ upcoming live dates:

    Wednesday 27th September – The Lexington, London

    Then into 2024:

    Tuesday 12th March – Room 2, Glasgow
    Wednesday 13th March – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
    Friday 15th March – The Castle & Falcon, Birmingham
    Saturday 16th March – New Century Hall, Manchester
    Sunday 17th March – Thekla, Bristol
    Tuesday 19th March – CHALK, Brighton
    Wednesday 20th March – Islington Assembly Hall, London
    Thursday 21st March – Content, Liverpool
    Saturday 23rd March – Paradiso, Amsterdam
    Sunday 24th March – Hafenklang, Hamburg
    Monday 25th March – Kantine am Berghain, Berlin
    Wednesday 27th March – Trix Bar, Antwerp
    Thursday 28th March – La Maroquinerie, Paris
    Saturday 30th March – The Workman’s Club, Dublin
    Sunday 31st March – Black Box, Belfast

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