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James Bond villain actor Richard ‘Jaws’ Kiel dies at 74

Charlotte Treadaway
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James Bond villain actor Richard ‘Jaws’ Kiel dies at 74

James Bond star Richard Kiel, who played 007’s iconic foe Jaws, has died aged 74. The actor had broken his leg and was being treated in hospital in California where he died on Wednesday afternoon. According to TMZ the cause of death has not yet been revealed. The imposing actor stood over seven feet tall and appeared opposite Roger Moore in the 1977 James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me. Due to his popularity Jaws returned as a more sympathetic character in 1979’s Moonraker. His face-offs with Bond were among the spy series’ most memorable. Leading the tributes to Kiel, Roger Moore posted on Twitter: "I am totally distraught to learn of my dear friend Richard Kiel's passing. We were on a radio programme together just a week ago. Distraught." On the BBC Radio 4 programme The Reunion, which aired on Sunday, Kiel talked with Moore about the role. “I was very put off by the description of the character and I thought, 'Well, they don't really need an actor, he's more a monster part,'" he said. "So I tried to change that view of it... I said if I were to play the part, I want to give the character some human characteristics, like perseverance, frustration." Kiel got his break on American television in 1959 appearing as the alien Kanamit in The Twilight Zone. He also starred with Adam Sandler in the 1996 golfing comedy Happy Gilmore and voiced Vlad in the 2010 Disney film Tangled. The creation of Jaws for the 10th Bond film was inspired by a character named Horror who reveals his steel-capped teeth in Ian Fleming’s novel The Spy Who Loved Me.

James Bond star Richard Kiel, who played 007’s iconic foe Jaws, has died aged 74.

The actor had broken his leg and was being treated in hospital in California where he died on Wednesday afternoon.

According to TMZ the cause of death has not yet been revealed.

The imposing actor stood over seven feet tall and appeared opposite Roger Moore in the 1977 James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me. Due to his popularity Jaws returned as a more sympathetic character in 1979’s Moonraker. His face-offs with Bond were among the spy series’ most memorable.

Leading the tributes to Kiel, Roger Moore posted on Twitter: “I am totally distraught to learn of my dear friend Richard Kiel’s passing. We were on a radio programme together just a week ago. Distraught.”

On the BBC Radio 4 programme The Reunion, which aired on Sunday, Kiel talked with Moore about the role. “I was very put off by the description of the character and I thought, ‘Well, they don’t really need an actor, he’s more a monster part,'” he said. “So I tried to change that view of it… I said if I were to play the part, I want to give the character some human characteristics, like perseverance, frustration.”

Kiel got his break on American television in 1959 appearing as the alien Kanamit in The Twilight Zone. He also starred with Adam Sandler in the 1996 golfing comedy Happy Gilmore and voiced Vlad in the 2010 Disney film Tangled.

The creation of Jaws for the 10th Bond film was inspired by a character named Horror who reveals his steel-capped teeth in Ian Fleming’s novel The Spy Who Loved Me.

PJ Harvey receives honorary degree from Goldsmiths University

Charlotte Treadaway
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0
PJ Harvey receives honorary degree from Goldsmiths University

PJ Harvey has received an honorary degree from Goldsmiths University. The singer, who was appointed an MBE last year, accepted the accolade from the London institution earlier today (September 10), alongside human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and journalist Neal Ascherson. Goldsmiths University's musical alumnus includes Blur – who played their first gig in the Students Union bar – John Cale, Katy B and Rob Da Bank. Jools Holland, Columbia Records chairman Rob Stringer and Placebo frontman Brian Molko are among the musical figures who have been honoured with Goldsmiths degrees in previous years. "Our honorands this year are a remarkable group of people," Liz Bromley, Registrar and Secretary of Goldsmiths, said. "They have changed communities through their inspiring architectural designs. They have pointed out the ridiculous in the news and made us laugh. They have inspired us with their words, their music, and their art. They have fought for our rights. And they have helped us to understand who we are now by looking to the past." In December 2013, PJ Harvey guest edited BBC Radio 4's flagship current affairs programme Today, where she commissioned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to deliver a special 'Thought For The Day', along with features from journalist John Pilger and former Archbishop Of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Actor Ralph Fiennes read the poems 'Austerities' by Charles Simic and 'They Fight For Peace' by Shaker Aamer and the show also featured extracts from works by Tom Waits and Joan Baez. Musically, PJ Harvey has been quiet since the release of a single track last year – her first new song since releasing her eighth album 'Let England Shake' in 2011. The track, 'Shaker Aamer', is a protest song designed to raise attention to the plight of a British resident imprisoned by the US in Guantanamo Bay since 2002. 'Let England Shake' received widespread critical acclaim and was named NME's Album Of The Year and won the Mercury Prize in 2011.

PJ Harvey has received an honorary degree from Goldsmiths University.

The singer, who was appointed an MBE last year, accepted the accolade from the London institution earlier today (September 10), alongside human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and journalist Neal Ascherson.

Goldsmiths University’s musical alumnus includes Blur – who played their first gig in the Students Union bar – John Cale, Katy B and Rob Da Bank. Jools Holland, Columbia Records chairman Rob Stringer and Placebo frontman Brian Molko are among the musical figures who have been honoured with Goldsmiths degrees in previous years.

“Our honorands this year are a remarkable group of people,” Liz Bromley, Registrar and Secretary of Goldsmiths, said. “They have changed communities through their inspiring architectural designs. They have pointed out the ridiculous in the news and made us laugh. They have inspired us with their words, their music, and their art. They have fought for our rights. And they have helped us to understand who we are now by looking to the past.”

In December 2013, PJ Harvey guest edited BBC Radio 4’s flagship current affairs programme Today, where she commissioned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to deliver a special ‘Thought For The Day’, along with features from journalist John Pilger and former Archbishop Of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Actor Ralph Fiennes read the poems ‘Austerities’ by Charles Simic and ‘They Fight For Peace’ by Shaker Aamer and the show also featured extracts from works by Tom Waits and Joan Baez.

Musically, PJ Harvey has been quiet since the release of a single track last year – her first new song since releasing her eighth album ‘Let England Shake’ in 2011. The track, ‘Shaker Aamer’, is a protest song designed to raise attention to the plight of a British resident imprisoned by the US in Guantanamo Bay since 2002.

‘Let England Shake’ received widespread critical acclaim and was named NME’s Album Of The Year and won the Mercury Prize in 2011.

Liam Gallager and Tim Burgess pay tribute to former Primal Scream guitatist Robert ‘Throb’ Young

Charlotte Treadaway
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0
Liam Gallager and Tim Burgess pay tribute to former Primal Scream guitatist Robert ‘Throb’ Young

Former Primal Scream guitarist Robert 'Throb' Young has died, according to reports. As yet, there has been no official statement regarding the circumstances of Young's death, but several figures close to the musician have posted messages of condolences on Twitter. Young, who met Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie when the two attended secondary school in Glasgow, was a pivotal member of the band and played on classic albums including 1991's 'Screamadelica' and 2000's 'XTRMNTR'. He left the band to go on sabbatical in 2006. Former Oasis members Liam Gallagher and Paul Arthurs (Bonehead) both paid tribute to Young on Twitter. "RIP Robert Young AKA 'Throb'. Live Forever LG x," wrote Gallagher, with Bonehead stating: "RIP Throb. A true Rock n Roller." Beady Eye's Andy Bell said: "Rest In Peace Robert Young of @ScreamOfficial. That big power chord in Loaded is ringing out on the other side now." Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh also paid tribute, writing: "RIP Robert Young. One of the best, the most beautiful, who WAS rock n roll. Big love bro, give them it big time over the other side. #Throb" Tim Burgess, meanwhile, said: "So sad to hear of the death of Rob 'Throb' Young … A real good un." More to follow.

Former Primal Scream guitarist Robert ‘Throb’ Young has died, according to reports.

As yet, there has been no official statement regarding the circumstances of Young’s death, but several figures close to the musician have posted messages of condolences on Twitter.

Young, who met Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie when the two attended secondary school in Glasgow, was a pivotal member of the band and played on classic albums including 1991’s ‘Screamadelica’ and 2000’s ‘XTRMNTR’. He left the band to go on sabbatical in 2006.

Former Oasis members Liam Gallagher and Paul Arthurs (Bonehead) both paid tribute to Young on Twitter. “RIP Robert Young AKA ‘Throb’. Live Forever LG x,” wrote Gallagher, with Bonehead stating: “RIP Throb. A true Rock n Roller.”

Beady Eye’s Andy Bell said: “Rest In Peace Robert Young of @ScreamOfficial. That big power chord in Loaded is ringing out on the other side now.” Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh also paid tribute, writing: “RIP Robert Young. One of the best, the most beautiful, who WAS rock n roll. Big love bro, give them it big time over the other side. #Throb”

Tim Burgess, meanwhile, said: “So sad to hear of the death of Rob ‘Throb’ Young … A real good un.”

More to follow.

The Replacements play classic track ‘Alex Chilton’ on ‘The Tonight Show’

Charlotte Treadaway
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0
The Replacements play classic track ‘Alex Chilton’ on ‘The Tonight Show’

The Replacements appeared on The Tonight Show last night (September 9). The cult alt rock band performed 'Alex Chilton' from their fifth album, 1987's 'Pleased to Meet Me', on the Jimmy Fallon hosted show. The performance comes 30 years after the group were banned from 'The Tonight Show' studio at 30 Rockefeller Center, New York after a chaotic performance on Saturday Night Live. Click above to watch their performance. The band are currently on tour in North America, and will play Austin City Limits festival next month. Billie Joe Armstrong joined The Replacements for their performance at the opening day of Coachella festival's second weekend in California earlier this year. The Green Day frontman appeared with the Minneapolis band as their own frontman Paul Westerberg played most of the set sitting on a sofa, having suffered a back injury. Armstrong, whose own music was heavily influenced by The Replacements, quipped at one point during the set: "Dreams really do come true!" The Replacements played live for the first time in 22 years at the Toronto leg of alt-rock roadshow Riot Fest in August 2013. Founding members Westerberg and Tommy Stinson have been joined in the reunion line-up by well-known session musicians Josh Freese and Dave Minehan. The Replacements formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1979 and went on to release seven studio albums, the most successful of which, 1989's 'Don't Tell A Soul', peaked at Number 59 on the US albums chart. The band played their final live show before breaking up in Chicago on July 21, 1991 and have since been hailed as an influence by Billie Joe Armstrong, who said attending a Replacements gig "changed my whole life", as well as by The Cribs, The Goo Goo Dolls and They Might Be Giants. The band's original lead guitarist Bob Stinson, older brother of Tommy, passed away in 1995.

The Replacements appeared on The Tonight Show last night (September 9).

The cult alt rock band performed ‘Alex Chilton’ from their fifth album, 1987’s ‘Pleased to Meet Me’, on the Jimmy Fallon hosted show. The performance comes 30 years after the group were banned from ‘The Tonight Show’ studio at 30 Rockefeller Center, New York after a chaotic performance on Saturday Night Live. Click above to watch their performance. The band are currently on tour in North America, and will play Austin City Limits festival next month.

Billie Joe Armstrong joined The Replacements for their performance at the opening day of Coachella festival’s second weekend in California earlier this year. The Green Day frontman appeared with the Minneapolis band as their own frontman Paul Westerberg played most of the set sitting on a sofa, having suffered a back injury. Armstrong, whose own music was heavily influenced by The Replacements, quipped at one point during the set: “Dreams really do come true!”

The Replacements played live for the first time in 22 years at the Toronto leg of alt-rock roadshow Riot Fest in August 2013. Founding members Westerberg and Tommy Stinson have been joined in the reunion line-up by well-known session musicians Josh Freese and Dave Minehan.

The Replacements formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1979 and went on to release seven studio albums, the most successful of which, 1989’s ‘Don’t Tell A Soul’, peaked at Number 59 on the US albums chart.

The band played their final live show before breaking up in Chicago on July 21, 1991 and have since been hailed as an influence by Billie Joe Armstrong, who said attending a Replacements gig “changed my whole life”, as well as by The Cribs, The Goo Goo Dolls and They Might Be Giants. The band’s original lead guitarist Bob Stinson, older brother of Tommy, passed away in 1995.

Swans announce biggest ever UK headline show

Charlotte Treadaway
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0
Swans announce biggest ever UK headline show

Swans have announced plans for their biggest ever UK headline show. The experimental rock band will play London's Roundhouse on May 21, 2015. The band released their most recent album 'To Be Kind' earlier this year. Produced by Swans' own Michael Gira, it has a running time of over two hours and features appearances from St Vincent, Cold Specks, Little Annie and Bill Rieflin. Swans latest album was funded by fans following a campaign by Gira in 2013 which saw the frontman offer to write a personalised song for anybody willing to contribute money toward the recording. The majority of the money arrived primarily through the sale of 2013 live album 'Not Here/Not Now'. The band, who reformed in 2010, have also spoken about their next project, with Gira telling Nowness: "I want to make it into a total, wipeout sonic event, performed in classical music venues. The problem is the volume; they're not able to allow the amount of decibels that we excrete." Swans' current label Mute will reissue the band's debut LP, 1983's 'Filth', on October 27. Swans play: London Roundhouse (May 21, 2015) For tickets, click here.

Swans have announced plans for their biggest ever UK headline show.

The experimental rock band will play London’s Roundhouse on May 21, 2015. The band released their most recent album ‘To Be Kind’ earlier this year. Produced by Swans’ own Michael Gira, it has a running time of over two hours and features appearances from St Vincent, Cold Specks, Little Annie and Bill Rieflin.

Swans latest album was funded by fans following a campaign by Gira in 2013 which saw the frontman offer to write a personalised song for anybody willing to contribute money toward the recording. The majority of the money arrived primarily through the sale of 2013 live album ‘Not Here/Not Now’.

The band, who reformed in 2010, have also spoken about their next project, with Gira telling Nowness: “I want to make it into a total, wipeout sonic event, performed in classical music venues. The problem is the volume; they’re not able to allow the amount of decibels that we excrete.”

Swans’ current label Mute will reissue the band’s debut LP, 1983’s ‘Filth’, on October 27.

Swans play:

London Roundhouse (May 21, 2015)

For tickets, click here.

Ty Segall – Manipulator

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Ty Segall – Manipulator

California's noisy, ever-changing adventurer crafts a double al;bum consolidation of his sounds... To date, the records of Ty Segall have darted around as if in open defiance of the importance of the definitive statement. The cherubic Californian, 27 years old this year, evidently sees virtue in covering a lot of ground, and quick. From the sun-baked songcraft of 2011’s Goodbye Bread to the Satanic Hawkwind space-rock of the Ty Segall Band’s 2012 LP Slaughterhouse to the depressive acoustic balladry of last year’s Sleeper - no two of his releases feel quite the same in either sound, influence, or vibe. You might well question the wisdom of this approach, but it’s hard to deny that Ty’s quicksilver muse is a good fit for his abundant work rate. Even if you’ve picked up the lion’s share of his albums to date, you still don’t yet feel like you won’t have space for another. Manipulator might be the point when all this changes. Ty’s seventh solo album in seven years, it’s a double LP and 17 tracks long, clocking in just shy of an hour. It’s an album that feels quintessentially – perhaps definitively – Ty, touching on aspects of all his previous records: the volatile fuzz guitar, the gleefully villainous beat group pop, the noble string orchestration, the sweetly sardonic lyricism. But in contravention of the familiar rules of the double LP, Manipulator is neither a sprawling and chaotic thing, nor constructed along boldly conceptual lines. No song here exceeds the five-minute mark, and each one feels finely honed, melodically generous, and designed to penetrate your consciousness. As ever, Ty’s music feels wise to rock history, but wickedly playful in the manner he chooses to use it; he’s not so much out to exhume corpses as make them stand up and dance. On Manipulator, Arthur Lee’s Love is an evident touchstone – most notably on “The Clock”, with its spry, flamenco-like guitar runs and genteel swoons of violin. “Feel” channels the beefier end of Nuggets garage, the likes of The Chocolate Watch Band and The Mystery Trend, with visionary-paranoid lyrics (“Feel the creeps in the sky/Let them live in each other’s eyes”) and a heroic percussion breakdown that tips back into a sea of fuzz. Strings get another outing on the glorious “The Singer”, a falsetto-flirting waltz reminiscent of the more Lennon-tinged material from last year’s Sleeper, but with a decidedly sprightlier footing. But whereas Sleeper found Ty exploring his acoustic side, Manipulator is every inch an electric record, and we often find its diverse styles are often merely a rocky atoll from which Ty can trigger a variety of extravagant guitar detonations. The glammy Bolan shimmy of “Tall Man Skinny Lady” would be a perfectly loveable song in its own right, even before it’s caked in burnt-amp fuzz, squalls of top-of-the-fretboard shred, and a fade-out in which we hear dead strings thrashed without mercy. A careful mix ensures that the songs themselves keep their integrity even during such roughhouse treatment – although live, of course, we can fully expect them to fry like bacon. As a symbol of Manipulator’s consistency, much of its goodies crop up towards the tail end. The febrile hippy balladry of “Don’t You Want To Know? (Sue)” ushers you gently towards the vitriolic Fuzz War churn of “The Crawler”. Here, too, there’s space for Ty’s introspective side to fan out, as on “The Feels”. “And when I look into your eyes/I realise/You’re the same as me/You’ll never be free,” he sings. A sobering thought: if a figure as flighty as Ty Segall feels chained down, what hope is there for the rest of us? So it’s over to the growing cohort of Ty aficionados to quibble over whether Manipulator is their hero’s definitive statement to date. It lacks, for instance, the sustained punk-rock dementia of Slaughterhouse, or the thematic fullness of Goodbye Bread, with its visions of Californian paradise gone rotten on the vine. But to consider it from another direction: are we going to turn our noses up at a record that comes on, in its spirited catchiness and daring scope, like the Greatest Hits of Ty Segall? No, we’re not. Louis Pattison Q&A Ty Segall Your records often focus in on one particular area. But Manipulator feels broad, all-encompassing. I definitely wanted to make a record that had a little bit of every sound I have worked with in the past, and hopefully to expand on these sounds. It was wild to do, and it definitely only really glued together fully in the studio. I wanted to go as far down the writing rabbit hole that I could go... Your records sometimes feel like they pick up from unfinished moments in pop history – that weird space between folk, glam and psych in that period of Rex and Bowie… These are huge influences of mine... I definitely like pulling sounds from things I like and putting them in different places or contexts and seeing how they exist in that place, and that was a definite thing we went for. Like, glam drums in a punk song. The guitar sounds on Manipulator are particularly hot. What's the secret? [Engineer] Chris Woodhouse, my amp and the ol’ Fuzz War pedal. But if I told you the secret I would have to kill you. INTERVIEW BY LOUIS PATTISON

California’s noisy, ever-changing adventurer crafts a double al;bum consolidation of his sounds…

To date, the records of Ty Segall have darted around as if in open defiance of the importance of the definitive statement. The cherubic Californian, 27 years old this year, evidently sees virtue in covering a lot of ground, and quick. From the sun-baked songcraft of 2011’s Goodbye Bread to the Satanic Hawkwind space-rock of the Ty Segall Band’s 2012 LP Slaughterhouse to the depressive acoustic balladry of last year’s Sleeper – no two of his releases feel quite the same in either sound, influence, or vibe. You might well question the wisdom of this approach, but it’s hard to deny that Ty’s quicksilver muse is a good fit for his abundant work rate. Even if you’ve picked up the lion’s share of his albums to date, you still don’t yet feel like you won’t have space for another.

Manipulator might be the point when all this changes. Ty’s seventh solo album in seven years, it’s a double LP and 17 tracks long, clocking in just shy of an hour. It’s an album that feels quintessentially – perhaps definitively – Ty, touching on aspects of all his previous records: the volatile fuzz guitar, the gleefully villainous beat group pop, the noble string orchestration, the sweetly sardonic lyricism. But in contravention of the familiar rules of the double LP, Manipulator is neither a sprawling and chaotic thing, nor constructed along boldly conceptual lines. No song here exceeds the five-minute mark, and each one feels finely honed, melodically generous, and designed to penetrate your consciousness.

As ever, Ty’s music feels wise to rock history, but wickedly playful in the manner he chooses to use it; he’s not so much out to exhume corpses as make them stand up and dance. On Manipulator, Arthur Lee’s Love is an evident touchstone – most notably on “The Clock”, with its spry, flamenco-like guitar runs and genteel swoons of violin. “Feel” channels the beefier end of Nuggets garage, the likes of The Chocolate Watch Band and The Mystery Trend, with visionary-paranoid lyrics (“Feel the creeps in the sky/Let them live in each other’s eyes”) and a heroic percussion breakdown that tips back into a sea of fuzz. Strings get another outing on the glorious “The Singer”, a falsetto-flirting waltz reminiscent of the more Lennon-tinged material from last year’s Sleeper, but with a decidedly sprightlier footing.

But whereas Sleeper found Ty exploring his acoustic side, Manipulator is every inch an electric record, and we often find its diverse styles are often merely a rocky atoll from which Ty can trigger a variety of extravagant guitar detonations. The glammy Bolan shimmy of “Tall Man Skinny Lady” would be a perfectly loveable song in its own right, even before it’s caked in burnt-amp fuzz, squalls of top-of-the-fretboard shred, and a fade-out in which we hear dead strings thrashed without mercy. A careful mix ensures that the songs themselves keep their integrity even during such roughhouse treatment – although live, of course, we can fully expect them to fry like bacon.

As a symbol of Manipulator’s consistency, much of its goodies crop up towards the tail end. The febrile hippy balladry of “Don’t You Want To Know? (Sue)” ushers you gently towards the vitriolic Fuzz War churn of “The Crawler”. Here, too, there’s space for Ty’s introspective side to fan out, as on “The Feels”. “And when I look into your eyes/I realise/You’re the same as me/You’ll never be free,” he sings. A sobering thought: if a figure as flighty as Ty Segall feels chained down, what hope is there for the rest of us?

So it’s over to the growing cohort of Ty aficionados to quibble over whether Manipulator is their hero’s definitive statement to date. It lacks, for instance, the sustained punk-rock dementia of Slaughterhouse, or the thematic fullness of Goodbye Bread, with its visions of Californian paradise gone rotten on the vine. But to consider it from another direction: are we going to turn our noses up at a record that comes on, in its spirited catchiness and daring scope, like the Greatest Hits of Ty Segall? No, we’re not.

Louis Pattison

Q&A

Ty Segall

Your records often focus in on one particular area. But Manipulator feels broad, all-encompassing.

I definitely wanted to make a record that had a little bit of every sound I have worked with in the past, and hopefully to expand on these sounds. It was wild to do, and it definitely only really glued together fully in the studio. I wanted to go as far down the writing rabbit hole that I could go…

Your records sometimes feel like they pick up from unfinished moments in pop history – that weird space between folk, glam and psych in that period of Rex and Bowie…

These are huge influences of mine… I definitely like pulling sounds from things I like and putting them in different places or contexts and seeing how they exist in that place, and that was a definite thing we went for. Like, glam drums in a punk song.

The guitar sounds on Manipulator are particularly hot. What’s the secret?

[Engineer] Chris Woodhouse, my amp and the ol’ Fuzz War pedal. But if I told you the secret I would have to kill you.

INTERVIEW BY LOUIS PATTISON

Hear Philip Selway’s new solo single, “It Will End In Tears”

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Hear Philip Selway’s new solo single, “It Will End In Tears”
Philip Selway is streaming his new solo single. "It Will End In Tears" can be heard below and features on his forthcoming solo album, Weatherhouse, which comes out on October 6. Weatherhouse follows Selway's 2010 solo debut, Familial. The new album is a collaboration with Adem Ilhan and Quinta ...

Philip Selway is streaming his new solo single.

“It Will End In Tears” can be heard below and features on his forthcoming solo album, Weatherhouse, which comes out on October 6.

Weatherhouse follows Selway’s 2010 solo debut, Familial. The new album is a collaboration with Adem Ilhan and Quinta – artists who have previously performed in Selway’s backing band. It was mostly recorded in Radiohead’s studio in Oxfordshire.

“From the outset we wanted the album to be the three of us, and we covered a lot of instruments between us. With a studio full of inspiring gear and a great-sounding desk, we felt like a band. Different musicians stretch you, and I felt stretched on ‘Weatherhouse’, but very enjoyably so,” said Selway in a statement.

Selway recently told NME that Radiohead are set to begin sessions on the follow-up to their 2011 album ‘The King Of Limbs’ this month and said that they felt it was the right time to “start making music” together again. He added that he could not make any predictions as to what a new Radiohead album may end up sounding like. “I have absolutely no idea,” he said. “And that’s what keeps us all there until the end.”

U2 release new album for free

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U2 release new album for free
U2 have released their new album Songs Of Innocence and are giving it away for free. The band announced the release at Apple's iPhone 6 launch in California, where they also performed its first single, "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)". The album will be available through Apple alone until October 13....

U2 have released their new album Songs Of Innocence and are giving it away for free.

The band announced the release at Apple’s iPhone 6 launch in California, where they also performed its first single, “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)”. The album will be available through Apple alone until October 13. Scroll down for a full tracklisting.

Speaking to Rolling Stone about the surprise release, Bono commented: “We wanted to make a very personal album. Let’s try to figure out why we wanted to be in a band, the relationships around the band, our friendships, our lovers, our family. The whole album is first journeys — first journeys geographically, spiritually, sexually. And that’s hard. But we went there.”

It is the band’s first album since 2009’s No Line On The Horizon and was recorded with producers Danger Mouse, Flood, Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder. It features a tribute to The Clash, “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now”, as well as “Iris (Hold Me Close)”, a song about Bono’s mother, who died when he was 14, while “Raised By Wolves” is about a car bombing in Dublin.

Bono has said of the record: “It has a lyrical cohesion that I think is unique amongst U2 albums. I don’t want it to be a concept album, but the songs come from a place. Edge laughed and said this is our Quadrophenia. We could be so lucky.”

The band had previously confirmed that the album would be released in 2014, with a spokesperson telling Rolling Stone: “We’ve always said an album is expected this year.” In February, the band debuted their comeback single “Invisible” during an advert at the Super Bowl, allowing fans to download it for free on iTunes.

The ‘Songs Of Innocence’ tracklisting is:

‘The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)’

‘Every Breaking Wave’

‘California (There Is No End To Love)’

‘Song For Someone’

‘Iris (Hold Me Close)’

‘Volcano’

‘Raised By Wolves’

‘Cedarwood Road’

‘Sleep Like A Baby Tonight’

‘This Is Where You Can Read Me Now’

‘Troubles’

Cat Power announces two London gigs

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Cat Power announces two London gigs
Cat Power will play two London gigs this November. The singer will appear at the Union Chapel on November 10 and 11. Tickets go on sale September 11 and the performances mark Chan Marshall's first headline shows in the UK since she appeared at the Brighton Festival in May of this year. Cat Power w...

Cat Power will play two London gigs this November.

The singer will appear at the Union Chapel on November 10 and 11. Tickets go on sale September 11 and the performances mark Chan Marshall’s first headline shows in the UK since she appeared at the Brighton Festival in May of this year.

Cat Power will play:

London Union Chapel (November 10, 11)

Cat Power recently collaborated with Coldplay’s Chris Martin to record the title song for actor/director Zach Braff’s new film, Wish I Was Here.

Speaking to NPR, Braff said of the track: “Chris had the idea that it would be sung by a woman. I thought that was a genius idea, because one of the things the film is about is a strong woman (Kate Hudson’s character) becoming the matriarch of her family. When Chris and I were talking, we both kind of simultaneously said, ‘Cat Power.’ I reached out to Chan Marshall and she and I met and really clicked. I set her up to watch the film in her apartment. The whole time she was watching she kept texting me all the different parts she was loving. She said yes the instant it was over.”

Tickets are available here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH6CD8evPso

Classic Tom Waits animated video set for restoration

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Classic Tom Waits animated video set for restoration

An animated Tom Waits music video is set to be restored for its 35th anniversary. Tom Waits For No One was made in 1979 and featured rotoscoping technology to capture the singer's movements before they were animated. In the video - which sees the singer performing his track "The One That Got Away" from his 1976 album Small Change - the cartoon Waits is seduced on a Hollywood street by a female dancer. It was directed by John Lamb. Scroll down to watch the original video. A Kickstarter appeal will launch later this month in order to help raise funds for the restoration of the video for an exhibition in Los Angeles in March 2015. Funds will go towards the transfer of "the original live action footage of Tom Waits and the video pencil test to a contemporary format to be projected throughout the gallery; restoration and framing of original animation cels for display; and restoration of the Lyon Lamb Video Rotoscope used in the film’s production." For more information on the project, visit tomwaitsfornoone.squarespace.com. Meanwhile, Uncut's Ultimate Music Guide to Tom Waits is in shops now. You can find more information about it here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCNDZY4vXPs

An animated Tom Waits music video is set to be restored for its 35th anniversary.

Tom Waits For No One was made in 1979 and featured rotoscoping technology to capture the singer’s movements before they were animated. In the video – which sees the singer performing his track “The One That Got Away” from his 1976 album Small Change – the cartoon Waits is seduced on a Hollywood street by a female dancer. It was directed by John Lamb. Scroll down to watch the original video.

A Kickstarter appeal will launch later this month in order to help raise funds for the restoration of the video for an exhibition in Los Angeles in March 2015. Funds will go towards the transfer of “the original live action footage of Tom Waits and the video pencil test to a contemporary format to be projected throughout the gallery; restoration and framing of original animation cels for display; and restoration of the Lyon Lamb Video Rotoscope used in the film’s production.” For more information on the project, visit tomwaitsfornoone.squarespace.com.

Meanwhile, Uncut’s Ultimate Music Guide to Tom Waits is in shops now. You can find more information about it here.

Keith Richards hints at June 2015 release for solo record

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Keith Richards hints at June 2015 release for solo record
Keith Richards has spoken about a forthcoming solo album, suggesting the record could be released in June 2015. Stating that the record is already "finished", the guitarist goes on to say that he "doesn't want to put it out while The [Rolling] Stones are still working", slating a tentative June 201...

Keith Richards has spoken about a forthcoming solo album, suggesting the record could be released in June 2015.

Stating that the record is already “finished”, the guitarist goes on to say that he “doesn’t want to put it out while The [Rolling] Stones are still working”, slating a tentative June 2015 date for the release.

The record would be Richards’ first solo effort since 1992 album Main Offender.

In the interview with Billboard, Richards also talks about plans for the band, who will tour Australia and New Zealand throughout October and November.

When asked if they will continue to tour after these dates, Richard replies, “They’ve got South America lined up in February, Buenos Aires, Peru. And after that, I know what the Stones tours are like, they tend to get extended.” Richards also said it “sounds like that” when questioned as to whether The Rolling Stones could potentially tour throughout 2015.

As well as working on a solo record, Richards opens up about Gus & Me: The Story Of My Granddad And My First Guitar – his children’s book released today (September 9).

Speaking about the decision to write the book, his second after 2010 memoir Life, Richards admitted, “The initial idea did come from the publishers, so you know, ‘Maybe Keith can sell a few more books.’ That’s their business after all. Nine times out of 10 I would have said forget about it. I’m not going there. But because of the circumstances and having another grandchild, everything was sort of falling into place. I said, ‘Damn it. Go for it.'”

On the subject of writing a follow-up to Life, Richards says he will “save it for later”. “There’s been plenty of talk about doing volume two [to Life] because a lot of stuff got left out. I may save that for a little later,” he begins. “I had no intention of doing Life, but they kept bugging me, ‘C’mon, you’ve got to tell the story. Here’s a lot of money.’ OK, twist my arm. And I found out I could articulate things pretty well [and] tell a good story.”

Various Artists – Front Line: Sounds Of Reality

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Various Artists – Front Line: Sounds Of Reality
Five CD, 91 track bonanza from reggae’s golden age... In February 1978 the Punky Reggae Party that Bob Marley would shortly celebrate in song was just getting going. To help fuel it came a mission to Jamaica comprised of several London faces; Sex Pistols’ frontman John Lydon, DJ and film maker ...

Five CD, 91 track bonanza from reggae’s golden age…

In February 1978 the Punky Reggae Party that Bob Marley would shortly celebrate in song was just getting going. To help fuel it came a mission to Jamaica comprised of several London faces; Sex Pistols’ frontman John Lydon, DJ and film maker Don Letts, photographer Dennis Morris and journalist Vivien Goldman, a quartet met at Kingston airport by Virgin boss Richard Branson in a vintage Rolls Royce to carry them to the Sheraton hotel, where Branson had booked an entire floor. The mission statement was simple; to sign up as much of the island’s musical talent as possible. For the next fortnight the Sheraton was besieged by singers and players eager for a contract.

Such was the birth of Virgin’s Front Line label, launched that summer with a torrent of albums by some of reggae’s finest acts; harmony trios like Culture, The Mighty Diamonds and The Gladiators, ‘toasters’ like U Roy, I Roy, Tapper Zukie and Prince Far I, and singers like Gregory Isaacs and Johnny Clarke, augmented by UK acts like Linton Johnson and Delroy Washington.

To gather so much talent was an astonishing coup, and to market it with a pizazz reserved for rock and soul acts almost as remarkable (although Island records had already overseen the ascent of Bob Marley to superstardom). The Front Line logo of a hand clenching barbed wire was a debatable calling card – the music was more often about the spiritual aspirations of Rasta or plain old romance than political struggle – but punk and reggae shared a mood of fevered, exhilarating revolution.

The five CDs here do a commendable job of sampling what Branson’s sack of cash purchased, while the accompanying booklet includes evocative photos, press clips, capsule profiles of the acts and a funny, gracious foreword from Lydon: “It was all so inspiring. I loved it and Jamaica became part of me”.

The sheer profusion of names that were signed meant an inevitably uneven quality. Amo the most enduring tracks are those by The Gladiators, who, like others, recut old hits anew that gained in clarity and force from the originals. “Looks Is Deceiving” and “Chatty Chatty Mouth” remain tough expressions of Rasta righteousness, tinged with mystery and the millennial mood of the era when the “Two Sevens Clash” (ie1977) as Culture put it. That particular track isn’t here, but the latter trio’s anthem “Natty Never Get Weary” is still brightly engaging. The brilliance and purity of the singing on display here is often breathtaking. Jamaica had inherited its vocal tastes from the likes of Marvin Gaye and harmony groups like The Impressions, and the island became the repository of the ‘soul’ tradition. The languid tones of Gregory ‘Cool Ruler’ Isaacs are emblematic – his “Let’s Dance” and “Soon Forward” are here – but the falsetto of Johnny Clarke is similarly seductive, and the purity and agility of Norman Grant, lead voice with The Twinkle Brothers was effective whether on a love call like “Don’t Want To Be Lonely” or a militant side like “Africa”.

At the other end of the vocal scale is the concrete mixer delivery of Prince Far I, one of several ‘talk-over’ DJs present. More expressive than Far I are U Roy, the pioneer of the style, and Big Youth, whose “The Upful One” lives up to its title, and the idiosyncratic Tapper Zukie, whose “She Want A Phensic” is a barbed sexual jibe. Rapping before hip-hop made its appearance, the ‘DJs’ were true traiblazers.

Rastafari’s utopian vision of Africa was often fanciful and came mixed up with biblical prophecy, but reggae’s championship of the stuggle against apartheid in South Africa was unflagging – see The Abyssinians’ “South Africa Enlistment” or Zukie’s “Tribute To Steve Biko”.

Not everything on Front Line was rightous and rootsical. The label’s biggest hit was “Uptown Top Ranking” by Althea and Donna, two uptown girls on a lark, who have a couple of likewise lightweight cuts here. Amid a sprinkling of single selections in the mix a stand-out is the smoky “Cairo” by Joyella Blade, combining passionate vocals with early synth; another in a boxful of great voices.
Neil Spencer

Q&A
DON LETTS
What was your role on that trip?
To lend moral support, because at home John was Public Enemy Number One. It was an escape from the media frenzy. Contrary to the ‘Roxy Club DJ turned white people onto reggae’ line, John already knew the music. I had never been to Jamaica. It remains the most remarkable journey of my life.

In what way?
Meeting people who were mythic, romanticised names, and finding they were people begging us for food and drink. John and I went on forays round the island, to U Roy’s sound system for example, where we got so blitzed we crashed through the whole event. Or going to Lee Perry’s studio and watching him record “Holidays In The Sun” and ”Belsen Was A Gas’ – those tapes exist somewhere!

Any other encounters?
Meeting Tapper Zukie in Reema, a dangerous area. When John asked ‘Where all these guns then?’ his posse pulled them out. It was election time, and we were told, ’Don’t hire a green or red car’ – don’t show allegaiance. Also through the late Dicky Jobson we visited Joni Mitchell, who had a house there, and she played us some music which John asked her to take off. ’What is that shit? ‘Oh That’s my latest album’- the first time I saw John turm red.

What about the music you brought back?
It’s very special, the last golden moments of roots reggae.

Any favourites?
I can’t separete them, roots and rudie. People say Jamaica is double-edged, for some a paradise, for others a pair of dice. What reggae got
from it was exposure, and it went on to colonise the planet.
INTERVIEW: NEIL SPENCER

Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Roger Daltrey confirmed for Paul McCartney tribute album

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Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Roger Daltrey confirmed for Paul McCartney tribute album
Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson and Roger Daltrey are among the artists confirmed as having recorded songs for a Paul McCartney tribute album. The Art Of McCartney contains 42 tracks, with backing provided by McCartney’s long time band. Dylan has covered "Things We Said Today" and Wilson has recorded a ...

Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson and Roger Daltrey are among the artists confirmed as having recorded songs for a Paul McCartney tribute album.

The Art Of McCartney contains 42 tracks, with backing provided by McCartney’s long time band.

Dylan has covered “Things We Said Today” and Wilson has recorded a version of “Wanderlust”, while elsewhere the album also contains Willie Nelson’s “Yesterday”, Roger Daltrey’s “Helter Skelter”, B.B. King’s “On The Way” and The Cure’s “Hello Goodbye”.

The album is released on November 17 and is available in a variety of formats.

A limited run of 1,000 Deluxe Boxsets will include two pieces of specially commissioned artwork, a bespoke Höfner guitar USB with FLAC files of 34 tracks, a collectors edition DVD, and audio documentary, a 64-page 12″ hardback book, 4 black and white art cards, a triple CD and 4 x 12″ coloured vinyl. It comes with a hand-numbered certificate of authenticity.

A Strictly Limited Vinyl Boxset, featuring 4 x 12″ coloured vinyl and a 12” bound book.

A Triple Gatefold Vinyl, with 34 tracks across three 12″ albums.

A CD Casebook, with a 34 track double CD, 16-page hardback book and the Making of The Art Of McCartney DVD.

It will also be released on CD, a digital album, and an iTunes album.

Tracklisting for The Art Of McCartney is:

1. Maybe I’m Amazed – Billy Joel

2. Things We Said Today – Bob Dylan

3. Band On The Run – Heart

4. Junior’s Farm – Steve Miller

5. The Long and Winding Road – Yusuf / Cat Stevens

6. My Love – Harry Connick, Jr.

7. Wanderlust – Brian Wilson

8. Bluebird – Corinne Bailey Rae

9. Yesterday – Willie Nelson

10. Junk – Jeff Lynne

11. When I’m 64 – Barry Gibb

12. Every Night – Jamie Cullum

13. Venus and Mars/ Rock Show – KISS

14. Let Me Roll It – Paul Rodgers

15. Helter Skelter – Roger Daltrey

16. Helen Wheels – Def Leppard

17. Hello Goodbye – The Cure ft James McCartney

18. Live And Let Die – Billy Joel

19. Let It Be – Chrissie Hynde

20. Jet – Robin Zander & Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick

21. Hi Hi Hi – Joe Elliott

22. Letting Go – Heart

23. Hey Jude – Steve Miller

24. Listen To What The Man Said – Owl City

25. Got To Get You Into My Life – Perry Farrell

26. Drive My Car – Dion

27. Lady Madonna – Allen Toussaint

28. Let ‘Em In – Dr. John

29. So Bad – Smokey Robinson

30. No More Lonely Nights – The Airborne Toxic Event

31. Eleanor Rigby – Alice Cooper

32. Come And Get It – Toots Hibbert with Sly & Robbie

33. On The Way – B. B. King

34. Birthday – Sammy Hagar

The limited edition vinyl boxset and deluxe boxset features the following eight extra tracks;

1. C Moon – Robert Smith

2. Can’t Buy Me Love – Booker T. Jones

3. P.S. I Love You – Ronnie Spector

4. All My Loving – Darlene Love

5. For No One – Ian McCulloch

6. Put It There – Peter, Bjorn & John

7. Run Devil Run – Wanda Jackson

8. Smile Away – Alice Cooper

“One way to make a duck salute!” An enigma returns…

John Mulvey
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0
“One way to make a duck salute!” An enigma returns…

I received an email last week from an old college friend, with a link to the Souncloud page of Liam Hayes & Plush, and an amused/irate message along the lines of, "One of your two jobs in life was meant to be to flag me when he releases anything/makes any move out of his lair." There have been times, actually, when it's felt that I've been the only person writing about this sometimes brilliant and just as frequently elusive Chicago musician. Twenty years ago, Plush put out a debut single on Domino and Drag City called "Three Quarters Blind Eyes". It was pretty fine, a little like Big Star at their most distrait, but the b-side was something else entirely: a song called "Found A Little Baby" that marooned Hayes in a heady orchestral swirl, sounding for all the world like Dennis Wilson. I made it Single Of The Week in NME, and it still remains one of my favourite songs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdii-nWkjaI At this point Hayes, who had previously guested on a couple of Will Oldham and Royal Trux records, became something of an obsession, a state of affairs amplified by him revealed as a kind of obscure perfectionist, and not exactly one to immediately capitalise on a bit of low-level music press hype (two decades on, this seems to be still the case). Stories of an extravagant album circulated, but nothing turned up until 1998, when that long-awaited longplayer, "More You Becomes You", turned out to be a bunch of candlelit piano ballads. If you've ever seen the movie version of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, you can spot Hayes playing one of those songs in the background of a scene (that film's scriptwriter, DV DeVincentis, turned up at a Plush show at Highbury Garage while he was researching the book's original setting of Holloway Road, as I dimly recall). Later, I ended up interviewing Hayes in a Putney park, where he spent at least ten minutes failing to tell me his age. It didn’t turn out to be one of my more incisive pieces. Anyway, Hayes' career has proceeded in this kind of obtuse, stop-start way ever since, a great yarn from the rock underground, rendered more poignant and strange by the ambitious vision that underpinned much of his music. Sometime in 2002, I convinced Uncut’s then-Reviews Ed to let me write a lead review of a CD I’d just bought online from a record label in Japan. According to the press release which accompanied the belated UK release for the same album in 2008, I wrote that Plush's "Fed" was “The dazzling masterpiece he [Hayes, Plush’s sole constant member] always threatened to produce.” Evidently not enough of a “dazzling masterpiece” for it to merit a UK release for six whole years. "Fed" had cost Hayes so much to make, it transpired, only a Japanese label, After Hours, could afford to initially release it (Drag City ended up putting out the stripped-back, substantially cheaper - I assume - demos as "Underfed"). Its expansive vision had taken years to realise, and involved Earth Wind & Fire’s horn arranger, amongst other deluxe personnel. At the time, I mentioned Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb, perhaps his early ‘70s records like “Land’s End” with those looming, portentous orchestrations, as well as some of the ambitious soul of that same period. “Having It All”, for instance, began as a diffident cousin of Marvin Gaye’s “Save The Children” - though Hayes was far too awkward a singer and songwriter to pass himself off as a conventional soulman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz9QZTuMeMA The story continues in that vein. "Bright Penny" came out on the same tiny British label, Broken Horse, in 2009, and somehow managed to feature the same horn arranger, Tom Tom MMLXXXIV, Morris Jennings (Curtis Mayfield’s old drummer), Bernard Reed (Jackie Wilson’s bassist), Brian Wilson’s rhythm section, John Stirratt and Pat Sansone from Wilco and so on. Often, it was easy to imagine you were listening to some overlooked artefact from the ‘70s, some collection of flamboyant gestures corralled into an album: “White Telescope” dangled precariously between sounding like a great lost Boyce & Hart song, and resembling something from some sub-Godspell children’s musical. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OjiIYnUz-g Despite some killer fragile ballads (“I Sing Silence”, and its airy nod to the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love?”; or the ravishing "The Goose Is Out", when Hayes urges, "Let's watch the stars in my auditorium"), it was a much more upbeat, celebratory record than Hayes had made before, perhaps because it often seemed engaged with what he’d managed to do, against the odds. The unfeasibly perky “So Much Music”, especially, emerged as a kind of defiant manifesto, noting how music “almost drove me crazy” before Hayes asserted, “No I’m never gonna give up”, then hired a host of backing singers to ram the point home. Last year, a clutch of Plush songs, old and new, turned up on the soundtrack album to a Roman Coppola movie, A Glimpse Inside The Mind Of Charles Swan III, alongside the movie’s star, Charlie Sheen, singing Jobim’s “Aguas De Marco”. A new Plush album was pronounced imminent; it even had a title, "Korp Sole Roller", and some of the songs earmarked for it - notably the Lennonish “Cried A Thousand Times” - sounded excellent, if not exactly zeitgeist-embracing commercial breakthroughs. (he did get interviewed by The New Statesman, mind…) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQMnJXsR79w It is "Korp Sole Roller" that has now arrived, somewhat stealthily, on Bandcamp, a state of affairs that makes it look as if Hayes' career remains on an inadvertently hapless trajectory, however strong these sweet, occasionally slightly glammy songs might be ("Glimpse" has been described by one of my colleagues, Junkshop Glam Man, as sounding a little like Pilot). The sound is more streamlined, less ornate, and produced by Pat Sansone, though still possessing that slightly sun-warped take on classic pop, that odd trick of performing upbeat songs in an enigmatically mournful way. I've often spoken of Hayes as Bacharach to Will Oldham's Dylan, and that comparison remains pertinent on this generally lovely record. But playing it again today, “Cried A Thousand Times” even sounds like the closest he's come to the epiphanies of "Found A Little Baby"; have a listen... There does appear to be some further good news. In spite of the impression given by "Korp Sole Roller"'s release, Hayes appears to be moving towards a relatively unprecedented level of prominence, thanks to a new deal with the Fat Possum label. Another new album, "Slurrup", is being promised for January and, though Plush tasters have proved frankly premature in the past, there's a new song to take in. It's called "One Way Out", and it kind of rocks, excellently: "One way to make a duck salute!" Again, let me know what you think. I reckon it might be a bit premature to start plugging Hayes as an unexpected star of 2015, but nevertheless, it'd be great if a few more people got to hear him: one of the most charismatic and eccentric cult pop craftsmen of the past 20 years, you could say. Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey Picture: Jim Newberry

I received an email last week from an old college friend, with a link to the Souncloud page of Liam Hayes & Plush, and an amused/irate message along the lines of, “One of your two jobs in life was meant to be to flag me when he releases anything/makes any move out of his lair.”

There have been times, actually, when it’s felt that I’ve been the only person writing about this sometimes brilliant and just as frequently elusive Chicago musician. Twenty years ago, Plush put out a debut single on Domino and Drag City called “Three Quarters Blind Eyes”. It was pretty fine, a little like Big Star at their most distrait, but the b-side was something else entirely: a song called “Found A Little Baby” that marooned Hayes in a heady orchestral swirl, sounding for all the world like Dennis Wilson. I made it Single Of The Week in NME, and it still remains one of my favourite songs.

At this point Hayes, who had previously guested on a couple of Will Oldham and Royal Trux records, became something of an obsession, a state of affairs amplified by him revealed as a kind of obscure perfectionist, and not exactly one to immediately capitalise on a bit of low-level music press hype (two decades on, this seems to be still the case). Stories of an extravagant album circulated, but nothing turned up until 1998, when that long-awaited longplayer, “More You Becomes You”, turned out to be a bunch of candlelit piano ballads. If you’ve ever seen the movie version of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, you can spot Hayes playing one of those songs in the background of a scene (that film’s scriptwriter, DV DeVincentis, turned up at a Plush show at Highbury Garage while he was researching the book’s original setting of Holloway Road, as I dimly recall). Later, I ended up interviewing Hayes in a Putney park, where he spent at least ten minutes failing to tell me his age. It didn’t turn out to be one of my more incisive pieces.

Anyway, Hayes’ career has proceeded in this kind of obtuse, stop-start way ever since, a great yarn from the rock underground, rendered more poignant and strange by the ambitious vision that underpinned much of his music. Sometime in 2002, I convinced Uncut’s then-Reviews Ed to let me write a lead review of a CD I’d just bought online from a record label in Japan. According to the press release which accompanied the belated UK release for the same album in 2008, I wrote that Plush’s “Fed” was “The dazzling masterpiece he [Hayes, Plush’s sole constant member] always threatened to produce.” Evidently not enough of a “dazzling masterpiece” for it to merit a UK release for six whole years.

“Fed” had cost Hayes so much to make, it transpired, only a Japanese label, After Hours, could afford to initially release it (Drag City ended up putting out the stripped-back, substantially cheaper – I assume – demos as “Underfed”). Its expansive vision had taken years to realise, and involved Earth Wind & Fire’s horn arranger, amongst other deluxe personnel. At the time, I mentioned Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb, perhaps his early ‘70s records like “Land’s End” with those looming, portentous orchestrations, as well as some of the ambitious soul of that same period. “Having It All”, for instance, began as a diffident cousin of Marvin Gaye’s “Save The Children” – though Hayes was far too awkward a singer and songwriter to pass himself off as a conventional soulman.

The story continues in that vein. “Bright Penny” came out on the same tiny British label, Broken Horse, in 2009, and somehow managed to feature the same horn arranger, Tom Tom MMLXXXIV, Morris Jennings (Curtis Mayfield’s old drummer), Bernard Reed (Jackie Wilson’s bassist), Brian Wilson’s rhythm section, John Stirratt and Pat Sansone from Wilco and so on. Often, it was easy to imagine you were listening to some overlooked artefact from the ‘70s, some collection of flamboyant gestures corralled into an album: “White Telescope” dangled precariously between sounding like a great lost Boyce & Hart song, and resembling something from some sub-Godspell children’s musical.

Despite some killer fragile ballads (“I Sing Silence”, and its airy nod to the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love?”; or the ravishing “The Goose Is Out”, when Hayes urges, “Let’s watch the stars in my auditorium”), it was a much more upbeat, celebratory record than Hayes had made before, perhaps because it often seemed engaged with what he’d managed to do, against the odds. The unfeasibly perky “So Much Music”, especially, emerged as a kind of defiant manifesto, noting how music “almost drove me crazy” before Hayes asserted, “No I’m never gonna give up”, then hired a host of backing singers to ram the point home.

Last year, a clutch of Plush songs, old and new, turned up on the soundtrack album to a Roman Coppola movie, A Glimpse Inside The Mind Of Charles Swan III, alongside the movie’s star, Charlie Sheen, singing Jobim’s “Aguas De Marco”. A new Plush album was pronounced imminent; it even had a title, “Korp Sole Roller”, and some of the songs earmarked for it – notably the Lennonish “Cried A Thousand Times” – sounded excellent, if not exactly zeitgeist-embracing commercial breakthroughs. (he did get interviewed by The New Statesman, mind…)

It is “Korp Sole Roller” that has now arrived, somewhat stealthily, on Bandcamp, a state of affairs that makes it look as if Hayes’ career remains on an inadvertently hapless trajectory, however strong these sweet, occasionally slightly glammy songs might be (“Glimpse” has been described by one of my colleagues, Junkshop Glam Man, as sounding a little like Pilot). The sound is more streamlined, less ornate, and produced by Pat Sansone, though still possessing that slightly sun-warped take on classic pop, that odd trick of performing upbeat songs in an enigmatically mournful way. I’ve often spoken of Hayes as Bacharach to Will Oldham’s Dylan, and that comparison remains pertinent on this generally lovely record. But playing it again today, “Cried A Thousand Times” even sounds like the closest he’s come to the epiphanies of “Found A Little Baby”; have a listen…

There does appear to be some further good news. In spite of the impression given by “Korp Sole Roller”‘s release, Hayes appears to be moving towards a relatively unprecedented level of prominence, thanks to a new deal with the Fat Possum label. Another new album, “Slurrup”, is being promised for January and, though Plush tasters have proved frankly premature in the past, there’s a new song to take in. It’s called “One Way Out”, and it kind of rocks, excellently: “One way to make a duck salute!”

Again, let me know what you think. I reckon it might be a bit premature to start plugging Hayes as an unexpected star of 2015, but nevertheless, it’d be great if a few more people got to hear him: one of the most charismatic and eccentric cult pop craftsmen of the past 20 years, you could say.

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

Picture: Jim Newberry

Robert Plant rolls out Led Zeppelin classics and showcases new album at iTunes Festival show

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Robert Plant rolls out Led Zeppelin classics and showcases new album at iTunes Festival show
Robert Plant launched his new album lullaby and…The Ceaseless Roar with a show that also featured five Led Zeppelin classics at London’s Roundhouse as part of iTunes Festival on Monday (September 8). Plant’s 85-minute set featured four songs from his new album plus Zeppelin tracks "Thank You"...

Robert Plant launched his new album lullaby and…The Ceaseless Roar with a show that also featured five Led Zeppelin classics at London’s Roundhouse as part of iTunes Festival on Monday (September 8).

Plant’s 85-minute set featured four songs from his new album plus Zeppelin tracks “Thank You”, “Black Dog”, “Going To California”, “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” and “Whole Lotta Love”. The 12 song-set was rounded out with the title track of No Quarter – the 1994 album Plant made with Jimmy Page – plus Bukka White’s “Fixin’ To Die Blues” from his 2002 album Dreamland and a cover of Willie Dixon’s blues standard “Spoonful”.

Dressed in paisley shirt and maroon trousers, Plant began the show with “Turn It Up” from his new album before announcing: “Let’s see what happens now” and moving into “Thank You” from Led Zeppelin II. The following track, “Spoonful”, was the first of several songs in which Plant played a handheld drum.

Plant was backed by The Sensational Space Shifters, his six-piece band who also feature on lullaby and…The Ceaseless Roar. They include multi-instrumentalists Juldeh Camara and Justin Adams, guitarist Liam ‘Skin’ Tyson, bassist Billy Fuller, drummer Dave Smith and keyboardist John Baggott.

Introducing recent single “Rainbow”, Plant recalled how Led Zeppelin played their first London show at The Roundhouse in 1968. “Time really moves on,” said Plant. “It’s just short of 46 years since I first played here. I don’t like giving my age away like that. I’m not like Tom Jones, who loves telling people how old he is: ‘Really, Tom?’ I think that should be kept under your hat. Or under your helmet, at least… In the old days, this was what was known as ‘a single’.”

In a good mood throughout the show, Plant joked with the crowd for not singing along to the call-and-response vocals on an acoustic version of “Going To California”, which originally featured on Led Zeppelin IV. Gradually singing his parts louder as encouragement, Plant jokily shouted: “Fucking hell!” at the audience’s muted response. He then described new song “Pocketful Of Golden” as: “This is the pensive side of us. It’s all pensive, really.”

Introducing “Fixin’ To Die Blues”, originally recorded in 1940 by Bukka White, Plant recalled how he was introduced to blues music after “hanging out with beatniks” as a teenager. He said: “I was lucky enough to see guys like Son House, John Estes and Sonny Boy Williamson when they came through Europe. They couldn’t believe the reception they got, as it was like they were being rediscovered. The guy who really did it for me was Bukka White – you can check him out on YouTube.” Seemingly referring to Led Zeppelin’s one-off reunion at London’s O2 in 2007, Plant added: “This is a song we’ll always play, until we split up and get back together again.”

Although the new songs were warmly received, the night’s biggest response was saved for “Whole Lotta Love” from Led Zeppelin II, which brought fans in the seats on the balcony to their feet. It closed the main set, before a one-song encore of “Little Maggie” from the new album, as fans clapped along enthusiastically.

Released on Monday (September 8), lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar is Plant’s tenth solo album and will be accompanied by a 13-date UK and Ireland tour in November, including a return to The Roundhouse on November 12 and a homecoming show at Wolverhampton Civic Hall on November 21.

iTunes Festival runs throughout September, with previous shows this month having included Beck. Remaining iTunes Festival gigs include Elbow and Ryan Adams.

You can read our cover story interview with Robert Plant here.

Robert Plant played:

‘Turn It Up’

‘Thank You’

‘Spoonful’

‘Black Dog’

‘Rainbow’

‘Going To California’

‘No Quarter’

‘Pocketful Of Golden’

‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’

‘Fixin’ To Die Blues’

‘Whole Lotta Love’

‘Little Maggie’

Robert Plant will play:

Newport Centre (November 9)

Bournemouth O2 Academy (10)

London Roundhouse (12)

Hull City Hall (14)

Glasgow O2 Academy (15)

Leeds O2 Academy (17)

Newcastle O2 Academy (18)

Cambridge Corn Exchange (20)

Wolverhampton Civic Hall (21)

Belfast Ulster Hall (23)

Dublin Olympia (24)

Blackpool Tower (26)

Llandudno Venue Cymru Arena (27)

David Bowie announces new 8-minute single to accompany career spanning compilation

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David Bowie announces new 8-minute single to accompany career spanning compilation
David Bowie will release career-spanning greatest hits album Nothing Has Changed in November, with a brand new song "Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)" included on the tracklist. The new song - which has a running time of 7 minutes and 40 seconds - was recorded this year and produced by Tony Visconti. ...

David Bowie will release career-spanning greatest hits album Nothing Has Changed in November, with a brand new song “Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)” included on the tracklist.

The new song – which has a running time of 7 minutes and 40 seconds – was recorded this year and produced by Tony Visconti. It is the only new material to be included on Nothing Has Changed, which begins with Bowie’s first single “Liza Jane” and includes material from the subsequent decades, including “Life On Mars?”, “Fashion” and “Let’s Dance”.

“Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)“, will be released as a limited edition 10″ single and digital download on November 17, the same day as the album.

The 10” will also feature another exclusive 2014 recording on the B-side: “Tis A Pity She’s A Whore“.

Nothing Has Changed also features the previously unreleased “Let Me Sleep Beside You” from the Toy album sessions. The download only “Your Turn To Drive” will also be making its debut on CD for Nothing Has Changed alongside a 2001 re-recording of the 1971 outtake, “Shadow Man“.

The tracklist to the album is.

3CD Deluxe Edition/ Digital Download

CD 1:

‘Sue (or In A Season Of Crime)’

‘Where Are We Now?’

‘Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix by James Murphy for the DFA Edit)’

‘The Stars (Are Out Tonight)’

‘New Killer Star (radio edit)’

‘Everyone Says ‘Hi’ (edit)’

‘Slow Burn (radio edit)’

‘Let Me Sleep Beside You’

‘Your Turn To Drive’

‘Shadow Man’

‘Seven (Marius De Vries mix)’

‘Survive (Marius De Vries mix)’

‘Thursday’s Child (radio edit)’

‘I’m Afraid Of Americans (V1) (clean edit)’

‘Little Wonder (edit)’

‘Hallo Spaceboy (PSB Remix) (with The Pet Shop Boys)’

‘Heart’s Filthy Lesson (radio edit)’

‘Strangers When We Meet (single version)’

CD 2:

‘Buddha Of Suburbia’

‘Jump They Say (radio edit)’

‘Time Will Crawl’ (MM remix)

‘Absolute Beginners (single version) (5.35)

‘Dancing In The Street’ (with Mick Jagger)

‘Loving The Alien (single remix)’

‘This Is Not America’ (with The Pat Metheny Group)

‘Blue Jean’

‘Modern Love (single version)’

‘China Girl (single version)’

‘Let’s Dance (single version)’

‘Fashion (single version)’

‘Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (single version)’

‘Ashes To Ashes (single version)’

‘Under Pressure (with Queen)’

‘Boys Keep Swinging’

”Heroes’ (single version)’

‘Sound And Vision’

‘Golden Years (single version)’

‘Wild Is The Wind (2010 Harry Maslin Mix)’

CD 3:

‘Fame’

‘Young Americans (2007 Tony Visconti mix single edit)’

‘Diamond Dogs’

‘Rebel Rebel’

‘Sorrow’

‘Drive-In Saturday’

‘All The Young Dudes’

‘The Jean Genie (original single mix)’

‘Moonage Daydream’

‘Ziggy Stardust’

‘Starman (original single mix)’

‘Life On Mars? (2003 Ken Scott Mix)’

‘Oh! You Pretty Things’

‘Changes’

‘The Man Who Sold The World’

‘Space Oddity’

‘In The Heat Of The Morning’

‘Silly Boy Blue’

‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’

‘You’ve Got A Habit Of Leaving’

‘Liza Jane’

2CD Edition/ Digital Download

CD 1:

‘Space Oddity’

‘The Man Who Sold The World’

‘Changes’

‘Oh! You Pretty Things’

‘Life On Mars?’

‘Starman (original single mix)’

‘Ziggy Stardust’

‘Moonage Daydream’

‘The Jean Genie (original single mix)’

‘All The Young Dudes’

‘Drive-In Saturday’

‘Sorrow’

‘Rebel Rebel’

‘Young Americans (original single edit)’

‘Fame’

‘Golden Years (single version)’

‘Sound And Vision’

”Heroes’ (single version)’

‘Boys Keep Swinging’

‘Fashion (single version)’

‘Ashes To Ashes (single version)’

CD 2:

‘Under Pressure’ (with Queen)

‘Let’s Dance (single version)’

‘China Girl (single version)’

‘Modern Love (single version)’

‘Blue Jean’

‘This Is Not America’ (with The Pat Metheny Group)

‘Dancing In The Street’ (with Mick Jagger)

‘Absolute Beginners (edit)’

‘Jump They Say (radio edit)’

‘Hallo Spaceboy’ (Pet Shop Boys remix) (with The Pet Shop Boys)

‘Little Wonder (edit)’

‘I’m Afraid Of Americans V1 (clean edit)’

‘Thursday’s Child (radio edit)’

‘Everyone Says ‘Hi’ ‘

‘New Killer Star (radio edit)’

‘Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix by James Murphy for the DFA Edit)’

‘Where Are We Now?’

‘Sue (or In A Season Of Crime)’

Robyn Hitchcock – The Man Upstairs

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Robyn Hitchcock – The Man Upstairs

Ferry aid: Roxy covers and much more from eternal Soft Boy... “What’s supposed to happen is you get slower and less vivid,” Robyn Hitchcock tells Uncut, matter-of-factly measuring out the career path that awaits all 60-something songwriters. “You get deeper and a bit more boring. Your colours dim and I assume that’s what happening to me.” At 61, Hitchcock’s musical palette is fading, the Hapshash and the Coloured Coat hues of the Soft Boys and the acid brights of his REM-sponsored 80s and 90s pomp giving way to a pleasing silvered tone of late. However, if his 20th solo album, The Man Upstairs, is less excitable than the likes of Underwater Moonlight, Fegmania! and Queen Elvis, it’s a change that many Hitchcock agnostics will welcome. A largely acoustic confection of sombre originals and tastefully-selected covers, The Man Upstairs was ushered into the world by Joe Boyd, the producer who coaxed landmark works from such Hitchcock idols as the Pink Floyd, the Incredible String Band and Nick Drake in their 1960s heyday. Infinitely more Pink Moon than “Arnold Layne”, it is as stark and forbidding a work in its way as 1990’s two-bob Blood On The Tracks, Eye, albeit studiously stripped of Hitchcock’s usual flashes of Spaniard In The Works surrealism and references to seafood. A gloriously demystified version of the Doors’ “The Crystal Ship” is among its highlights, but while Hitchcock continues to see himself as an ambassador from the lost Atlantis of 1960s pop, his spirit guide here is not the leather-trousered Jim Morrison, but the elegantly tailored Bryan Ferry. That reverence is most explicit on Hitchcock’s eviscerated reading of Roxy Music’s “To Turn You On”, which rehydrates the dessicated, studio-tanned original, from 1982’s ne-plus produced Avalon, the singer’s breathless urgency and eagerness to please a captivating counterpoint to Ferry’s weary chaleur. If the gangling Hitchcock could never hope to emulate Ferry’s louche detatchment, he manages to assimilate some of his pensive poise and lovelorn pessimism elsewhere. Romance is transformed into a tense stake-out on the perfectly-chiselled “San Francisco Patrol”, his recurring motif “can’t take my eyes off you” very much the twice-shyness of the once-bitten. Hitchcock’s appraisals of the Psychedelic Furs’ “The Ghost In You” and Norwegian indie-poppers I Was A King’s “Ferries”, are further proof of his unheralded – and entirely Ferryesque - ability to spirit his way inside a song, while the ghost of Bert Jansch walks on “Trouble In Your Blood”. Second person pronouns notwithstanding, it feels very much like a self-portrait of an artist whose work – even at its most exuberant – has always hinted at something naggingly unresolved underneath. “You’ve got a well-constructed shell,” Hitchcock rumbles. “Deep inside, you’re deep in hell.” If a Jerry Hall ever broke Hitchcock’s heart, then he has been discreet enough never to name and shame them, but – as it does on his favourite late-period Roxy Music albums - some spectral, lingering, emotional thundercloud hangs over The Man Upstairs. Painfully slow, and daubed with a harpy warble backing vocal from Anne Lise Frøkedal, closer “Recalling The Truth” harks back to that infinitely distant yet eternally resonant emotional big bang - “a window of bliss, that opens just once for the price of a kiss”. That window may have been slammed in Hitchcock’s face forever ago, but as much as it pines for lost and irretrievable things, The Man Upstairs is another faltering step closer to self-realisation from the man once introduced witheringly in his days as a folk club wannabe as “Cambridge’s answer to music”. “You hide from yourself but you’re tracking you down,” Hitchcock intones with a certain grim certainty on “Recalling The Truth”. The chase is getting slower maybe, with the light fading around him, but those autumn tones may have been what suited him best all along. Jim Wirth Q&A Robyn Hitchcock What was the appeal of making an album with Joe Boyd? Basically it’s the teenage Robyn getting the chance to do what he would have loved to think he was going to do in the future. The idea mixing originals and covers was totally Joe. He said: ‘Why don’t you make a record like Judy Collins did?’ And I thought: ‘Brilliant – let’s do Introducing Robyn Hitchcock - he’s this promising newcomer. He writes a few of his own songs but he knows the classics - here we go with this one from Bryan Ferry.’ You obviously adore Bryan Ferry. I am the opposite of him in so many ways. I feel like a shadow of Bryan Ferry. I have almost unconditional love for Bryan Ferry. I met him once. I poured a cup of tea for him in a hotel in Norway after a festival. Instantly, he is a man you want to genuflect to and pour out a cup of tea for. He said thank you my boy and tipped me a florin. I’ve still got it framed on my wall. Your work has got a lot less cluttered. Is that a conscious thing? I’ve just been chiselled away by life. The acid rain of existence etches you away. My earlier songs were a reaction to the shock of existence; I just couldn’t accept that I was. I’d just look around at my fellow creatures and think: ‘Fuck, this is not working.’ When you’re young and you have your life ahead of you, you can hang your head deep in mourning and look with loathing at the foibles of humanity, but after a certain age you’ve just got to get up and boogie. INTERVIEW BY JIM WIRTH

Ferry aid: Roxy covers and much more from eternal Soft Boy…

“What’s supposed to happen is you get slower and less vivid,” Robyn Hitchcock tells Uncut, matter-of-factly measuring out the career path that awaits all 60-something songwriters. “You get deeper and a bit more boring. Your colours dim and I assume that’s what happening to me.”

At 61, Hitchcock’s musical palette is fading, the Hapshash and the Coloured Coat hues of the Soft Boys and the acid brights of his REM-sponsored 80s and 90s pomp giving way to a pleasing silvered tone of late. However, if his 20th solo album, The Man Upstairs, is less excitable than the likes of Underwater Moonlight, Fegmania! and Queen Elvis, it’s a change that many Hitchcock agnostics will welcome.

A largely acoustic confection of sombre originals and tastefully-selected covers, The Man Upstairs was ushered into the world by Joe Boyd, the producer who coaxed landmark works from such Hitchcock idols as the Pink Floyd, the Incredible String Band and Nick Drake in their 1960s heyday. Infinitely more Pink Moon than “Arnold Layne”, it is as stark and forbidding a work in its way as 1990’s two-bob Blood On The Tracks, Eye, albeit studiously stripped of Hitchcock’s usual flashes of Spaniard In The Works surrealism and references to seafood.

A gloriously demystified version of the Doors’ “The Crystal Ship” is among its highlights, but while Hitchcock continues to see himself as an ambassador from the lost Atlantis of 1960s pop, his spirit guide here is not the leather-trousered Jim Morrison, but the elegantly tailored Bryan Ferry.

That reverence is most explicit on Hitchcock’s eviscerated reading of Roxy Music’s “To Turn You On”, which rehydrates the dessicated, studio-tanned original, from 1982’s ne-plus produced Avalon, the singer’s breathless urgency and eagerness to please a captivating counterpoint to Ferry’s weary chaleur.

If the gangling Hitchcock could never hope to emulate Ferry’s louche detatchment, he manages to assimilate some of his pensive poise and lovelorn pessimism elsewhere. Romance is transformed into a tense stake-out on the perfectly-chiselled “San Francisco Patrol”, his recurring motif “can’t take my eyes off you” very much the twice-shyness of the once-bitten.

Hitchcock’s appraisals of the Psychedelic Furs’ “The Ghost In You” and Norwegian indie-poppers I Was A King’s “Ferries”, are further proof of his unheralded – and entirely Ferryesque – ability to spirit his way inside a song, while the ghost of Bert Jansch walks on “Trouble In Your Blood”. Second person pronouns notwithstanding, it feels very much like a self-portrait of an artist whose work – even at its most exuberant – has always hinted at something naggingly unresolved underneath. “You’ve got a well-constructed shell,” Hitchcock rumbles. “Deep inside, you’re deep in hell.”

If a Jerry Hall ever broke Hitchcock’s heart, then he has been discreet enough never to name and shame them, but – as it does on his favourite late-period Roxy Music albums – some spectral, lingering, emotional thundercloud hangs over The Man Upstairs. Painfully slow, and daubed with a harpy warble backing vocal from Anne Lise Frøkedal, closer “Recalling The Truth” harks back to that infinitely distant yet eternally resonant emotional big bang – “a window of bliss, that opens just once for the price of a kiss”.

That window may have been slammed in Hitchcock’s face forever ago, but as much as it pines for lost and irretrievable things, The Man Upstairs is another faltering step closer to self-realisation from the man once introduced witheringly in his days as a folk club wannabe as “Cambridge’s answer to music”.

“You hide from yourself but you’re tracking you down,” Hitchcock intones with a certain grim certainty on “Recalling The Truth”. The chase is getting slower maybe, with the light fading around him, but those autumn tones may have been what suited him best all along.

Jim Wirth

Q&A

Robyn Hitchcock

What was the appeal of making an album with Joe Boyd?

Basically it’s the teenage Robyn getting the chance to do what he would have loved to think he was going to do in the future. The idea mixing originals and covers was totally Joe. He said: ‘Why don’t you make a record like Judy Collins did?’ And I thought: ‘Brilliant – let’s do Introducing Robyn Hitchcock – he’s this promising newcomer. He writes a few of his own songs but he knows the classics – here we go with this one from Bryan Ferry.’

You obviously adore Bryan Ferry.

I am the opposite of him in so many ways. I feel like a shadow of Bryan Ferry. I have almost unconditional love for Bryan Ferry. I met him once. I poured a cup of tea for him in a hotel in Norway after a festival. Instantly, he is a man you want to genuflect to and pour out a cup of tea for. He said thank you my boy and tipped me a florin. I’ve still got it framed on my wall.

Your work has got a lot less cluttered. Is that a conscious thing?

I’ve just been chiselled away by life. The acid rain of existence etches you away. My earlier songs were a reaction to the shock of existence; I just couldn’t accept that I was. I’d just look around at my fellow creatures and think: ‘Fuck, this is not working.’ When you’re young and you have your life ahead of you, you can hang your head deep in mourning and look with loathing at the foibles of humanity, but after a certain age you’ve just got to get up and boogie.

INTERVIEW BY JIM WIRTH

‘All the old gods are long gone. But still…” An interview with Robert Plant

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‘All the old gods are long gone. But still…” An interview with Robert Plant
Robert Plant's excellent new album lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar goes on sale today [September 8], so it seemed like a good opportunity to post the full text of my Plant cover story from last month's Uncut... Hope you enjoy it. Recently, Robert Plant has been troubled by bees. “I’ve spent ...

There is a man kneeling on the floor next to Robert Plant pulling seaweed from a wooden crate. It’s June 23, and we’re at a small after show drinks reception at Le Bataclan, Paris for Plant and The Sensational Space Shifters. The man on the ground, it transpires, is a friend of Philippe Brix, the French manager who introduced Plant and Justin Adams to the Festival In The Desert in Mali. Brix has arrived at the gig with a crate of homemade wine and a crate full of oysters for Plant and the band. The next morning, Plant arrives in the lobby of his chic hotel wearing a navy blue t-shirt and grey jeans with his hair tied up in a topknot. At our first meeting, Plant hadn’t entirely decided on a title for the new album. Can he now explain what lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar means?
“It’s explanatory of all life,” he begins, sipping a café au lait. “Life has a dynamic. It’s not always so dramatic, but the extremes are… well, the extremes. It probably follows right the way through the story of my choices in music. Where I’ve been pleased to rest along the way in music, with people, with certain musical attitudes and enthusiasms – and sometimes the very opposite of that. It’s just like, ‘What a life!’”
And what is life like now for Robert Plant, out there on the Welsh Marcher lands?
“I like adventures in Soho and East London, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and I know my way round Marrakech quite well. But I’m not a city guy. I can never really get over the speed of the changes of the seasons. At this time in my life, I’m trying to slow it all down, slow down the movement of the seasons so I can really devour them. We were in Estonia and Northern Sweden recently and I could see that spring had turned to summer there and I knew that if you went seven or 800 miles south you’d be on a line where I live. So the season would have advanced that much more there, and I would have missed it. But what do I do? I just go slowly with Arthur over the fields. ‘Misty Mountain Hop’. Well, that shit’s all still there, I’m drawn to that stuff. That’s what I do when I play five-a-side on a Wednesday night with my friends in the village where I’ve been most of my life. We all wait to see who’s gonna have the first cardiac arrest. I promised I’d buy a defibrillator for the village, just to help out.
“There’s one or two policeman who play on the team. It’s funny how a few years gone by, I was neurotic about the cops checking my pockets and I now I play soccer with them. It was a huge change to come back, a complete about turn for me. I spun round, right round, 360 degrees really, right round in a circle and came back. I threw my lot back in with the five-a-side on a Wednesday!
“I think you asked me about being… not restless, but on the move. I think that shows in the lifestyle of a musician anyway. You’re not around long enough to be particularly affected by the glory of the moment. I like that thing about being gone. I don’t wanna do multiple nights in one place. I wanna be gone 15 minutes after we’re offstage. Just gone. I guess every generation’s got its epoch of hope and passion and drive and zing and zest. I don’t miss the one I was in because I’ve still got it. I’m still there, and the company I keep is everything. That gig last night? That was as good as it ever, ever was. Ever was.”
Do you still think you need to prove anything after 48 years of making records?
“No, not to prove… time is so important. The passing of time, when you get to this stage in life. When you get to that last verse in the ballad on the album [“A Stolen Kiss”]: ‘There’s so little time’. You can’t bluff it. You can’t fake it, you can’t take it up, you just gotta live it out. Time is so valuable. I don’t put anything out that I don’t have 110 per cent passion for. Otherwise I’ve got plenty of other things I could do with my life. Mix a greyhound with a good Bedlington Terrier, all that stuff. That’s what I love.”
How would you like to be remembered?
“Probably as the world’s slowest inside right in the Kidderminster Sunday league. I was always keen, though. I never had sex on a Saturday so that I could save myself, and to see if I would actually be picked in the First 11 that ran out onto a pitch that’s covered in cow shit, on the top of the Clee Hills. Clee Hills and Mortimer, where you could have a bloody nose in a minute and a half if you weren’t careful. Look, I just wanna have some fun. And that’s kind of what I said in 1968.”
And have you had fun?
“On and off, yeah. Mostly on.”

Roger Waters’ The Wall tour documentary premieres at Toronto International Film Festival

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Roger Waters’ The Wall tour documentary premieres at Toronto International Film Festival
Roger Waters has premiered his tour documentary Roger Waters: The Wall at the Toronto Film Festival. The documentary was shot by Waters himself alongside director Sean Evans and shows footage from between 2010 and 2013, when the singer was touring the album across the world. A synopsis by Toronto ...

Roger Waters has premiered his tour documentary Roger Waters: The Wall at the Toronto Film Festival.

The documentary was shot by Waters himself alongside director Sean Evans and shows footage from between 2010 and 2013, when the singer was touring the album across the world.

A synopsis by Toronto International Film Festival director Piers Handler says the following about the documentary: “Ever since The Wall was released, it has become one of the classic rock albums of all time. Its popularity continues and its message is still timely. Deeply affected by his father’s and grandfather’s deaths in the two world wars, Roger Waters has crafted a plea to tear down the walls that lead to misunderstandings and wars. This powerful performance film allows Roger to explore what The Wall still means to him as he performs it in front of tens of thousands of fans, and visits more personal places that resonate with meaning on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War.”

The film itself runs for 133 minutes and will be shown twice more in Toronto, however a worldwide release date is yet to be confirmed. The ‘sound’ credit on the film, meanwhile, is attributed to regular Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich.

As the Toronto Sun reports, Waters also took part in a Q&A session after the screening, commenting on various aspects of ‘The Wall’s continued endurance. Addressing this issue, Waters stated, “I think people are sick and tired of being told that the most important thing in their life is commerce and the new this and the new that. I think people are probably ready to go now, ‘Well, all of that rhetoric lead us to lob bombs over the top of the wall, that divides society ecologically, economically, philosophically and politically, from all our fellow human beings. And we no longer want to be told by our political leaders that they are scum and that we are great. ‘So that I believe that it may be we’re no longer interested in the ‘us and them’ form of political philosophy that we’ve been fed on for the last couple of 1,000 years and that we may be ready to move into a new place.”

Roger Waters also celebrated his 71st birthday at the event.

Brian Wilson and The Strokes to pay tribute to George Harrison at George Fest

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Brian Wilson and The Strokes to pay tribute to George Harrison at George Fest
Brian Wilson and members of The Strokes are among the artists who will pay tribute to George Harrison at tribute concert George Fest: A Night To Honour The Music Of George Harrison this month. Other artists taking part in the celebrations for the late Beatle will include members of The Flaming Li...

Brian Wilson and members of The Strokes are among the artists who will pay tribute to George Harrison at tribute concert George Fest: A Night To Honour The Music Of George Harrison this month.

Other artists taking part in the celebrations for the late Beatle will include members of The Flaming Lips, Weezer, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Weird Al Yankovich, Brandon Flowers and Harrison’s son Dhani. Cold War Kids, Norah Jones and Velvet Revolver are also featured on the bill.

The show will take place at Los Angeles’ El Rey Theatre on September 28 and will raise money for Sweet Relief – a charity for musicians struggling to make ends meet due to illness or disability. 100% of the proceeds from the event will benefit the charity.

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