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Call The Cosmos!

Sam Richards
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Call The Cosmos!
“I really enjoyed meself,” says Shaun Ryder of Mantra Of The Cosmos’s rabble-rousing debut show at The Box in London in June. “I mean, a bunch of 60-year-olds forming a new band’s gotta be punk, annit?” To be fair, drummer Zak Starkey – the band’s instigator – and guitarist Andy Be...

“I really enjoyed meself,” says Shaun Ryder of Mantra Of The Cosmos’s rabble-rousing debut show at The Box in London in June. “I mean, a bunch of 60-year-olds forming a new band’s gotta be punk, annit?” To be fair, drummer Zak Starkey – the band’s instigator – and guitarist Andy Bell are still very much in their fifties, but the point stands: they all seem to be revelling in this little sabbatical from their more famous bands, blasting off together into the great unknown.

“It’s really good fun being with those guys,” confirms Bell. “Whether we’re making music or just sitting around chatting, they’re very entertaining people. The added element of chaos for me is Bez. At one point [during the gig] he dragged me to the front of the stage and suddenly I found myself pulling some guitar hero moves! He brought me out of my shell a little bit.”

It was Starkey who originally floated the idea of a “21st century Hawkwind”, writing the band’s debut single “Gorilla Guerilla” with his wife Sshh. He reveals that, for the position of frontman, Ryder was on a shortlist of one. “I knew that the only singer and poet [who’s] psychedelic and different enough would be Shaun. If he hadn’t’ve said ‘Yeah’, I don’t think I would have taken it any further. Everyone’s calling it a supergroup, but that was never the aim. The aim was to just be different and fantastic.”

Bell describes his role in the band as “creating an atmosphere”, citing Public Image Limited and dub reggae as sonic touchstones. “He’s a psychedelic soundscape genius,” enthuses Starkey. “I really didn’t want anyone who does riffs. There’s a lot of songs with one fucking chord in. There aren’t any rules and anything can go anywhere.”

Ryder, too, has free rein to improvise: “We just press record and I get to throw a shitload of ideas down,” he grins. Lyrical themes are “whatever floats me boat at the time.” One song is based entirely on an article from a 1973 edition of NME he found in Starkey’s studio. Others are more topical, threatening to “put the boot in to Putin” – “It started off worse than that, but we thought ‘Let’s give this band a chance before we all get poisoned’” – or rhyming “laughing gas” with “working class”, prompted by a discovery of nitrous oxide canisters in his teenage son’s bedroom. How does a man with Ryder’s reputation for debauchery approach the ‘drugs chat’? “Me two youngest are 14 and 15 so they’re going through that stage of experimenting. I’m not gonna condone it, but I certainly understand. We just have to educate them, really. We don’t smoke in the house, we don’t have alcohol in the house, we don’t have fuckin’ laughing gas in the house! But the best thing is to just leave it to their mother…”

Mantra Of The Cosmos played The Box as a four-piece, but at Glastonbury they expanded to include Brix Smith on bass. “Another 60-year-old!” cackles Ryder. “It’s not ‘life begins at 40’ any more, it’s life ‘begins at 60’. I’m a lot busier now than I ever used to be.” As well as Mantra Of The Cosmos, he’s playing shows with Happy Mondays throughout the summer and has just recorded a new Black Grape album for release in the autumn. “I’ve finally worked out that life is a lot easier without being off your tits.”

Mantra Of The Cosmos’s latest single, “X (Wot You Sayin?)”, is out now on BMG. Watch the video below:

We’re New Here – Horse Lords

Tyler Wilcox
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We’re New Here – Horse Lords
Their official bio still says they’re a “band from Baltimore”, but three out of four Horse Lords currently live in Germany. Andrew Bernstein (saxophone), Max Eilbacher (bass/electronics) and Owen Gardner (guitar) all decamped a few years ago, leaving drummer Sam Haberman as the sole Stateside ...

Their official bio still says they’re a “band from Baltimore”, but three out of four Horse Lords currently live in Germany. Andrew Bernstein (saxophone), Max Eilbacher (bass/electronics) and Owen Gardner (guitar) all decamped a few years ago, leaving drummer Sam Haberman as the sole Stateside member. “It wasn’t part of some big strategy,” Bernstein insists. “But it started to make sense for the three of us, and it’s worked out well so far.”

Whatever the reasoning, Horse Lords fit into the long and distinguished lineage of avant-garde American artists finding a more welcoming response across the pond. “Moving to Europe has had a big effect on the resources available to us,” says Gardner. “In Berlin, experimental music is all around you – it’s almost unfair to compare it to other places. There’s a real appetite for challenging music and huge levels of support for it here, at least relative to the US.”

Horse Lords’ music can certainly be challenging – the group draw from a deep well of minimalism, serial composition, free jazz and polyrhythmic folk music. But don’t let that scare you away. As shown on their masterful 2022 LP Comradely Objects, the band are as inviting (and often as tuneful) as they are adventurous. Listeners may hear echoes of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, Devo or This Heat in the album’s seductive grooves and pleasingly eccentric textures. It begs the question: do Horse Lords consider themselves, when all is said and done, a rock band?

“I’ve begun trying to push ‘progressive rock’ as the genre that we play,” Gardner laughs. “But that might be a little misleading. We certainly use rock instrumentation and there are rock gestures in our music. The DNA of the band is based in rock, but it’s also not where we’re coming from at the same time. For example, everyone in a rock band kind of knows how a song goes once one part is in place. That’s not true in Horse Lords. We have to think about everything in a different way.”

“Extra-musically, we operate as a rock band – or a punk band, more specifically,” offers Bernstein. “We’ve had a pretty DIY ethos, booking our own tours and all of that, just by necessity for most of the band’s history. That’s the world we came up in. If you want to play music with your friends, you form a band and play in basements.”

Horse Lords may be new to Europe, but they’re far from a new band; they formed as a trio in 2010, with Bernstein joining the ranks soon after. “In the Baltimore scene at the time, it wasn’t uncommon for bands to start up, play one show and then the people involved would move on,” Gardner says. “For some reason, with Horse Lords, we started playing shows and writing songs and it just never stopped. There were a lot of commonalities between us and we kind of built this musical language together.”

Part of that shared language is explicitly political – or at least as political as an instrumental band can get. “That might not be the overt aim,” muses Bernstein. “We’re trying to make things that sound interesting to us, first and foremost. But we’re also hoping that the music and the way we operate spurs the listener to think differently. Every act is political, and our decisions might make someone reconsider how they make music or how they go about their lives.”

Horse Lords play Studio 9294, London (Aug 31), End Of The Road festival, Dorset (Sept 1) and Supersonic Festival, Birmingham (Sept 2)

Mellow Candle – Swaddling Songs

Rob Young
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Mellow Candle – Swaddling Songs
Along with Vashti Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day and Comus’s First Utterance, Swaddling Songs by Mellow Candle was one of those lost, cult LPs whose slow rediscovery helped to spark a renewed interest in the British and Irish psychedelic folk, around 25 years ago. While its potion of meadows,...

Along with Vashti Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day and Comus’s First Utterance, Swaddling Songs by Mellow Candle was one of those lost, cult LPs whose slow rediscovery helped to spark a renewed interest in the British and Irish psychedelic folk, around 25 years ago. While its potion of meadows, myth and magic still presses plenty of the right folk-rock buttons today, the band avoided too many overt Celtic tinges. It’s an album that can come out swinging capably hard as well as veiling itself with the odd dusky ballad. Anyone familiar with albums by Sandy Denny, Fotheringay and John & Beverley Martyn from the same era will find themselves on safe ground in its 12 tracks.

1971, when most of these songs were written, is the zenith of this bulge in folk music, the year when some of the best music was made in the British Isles, but also when the glut began to pile up and wither in a declining economy. Many of the bands you might associate with the pagan pastoralia of Mellow Candle – Comus, Trees, Forest, The Woods Band, Spirogyra, Heron and others – came and went at the same time with few albums left among the mulch.

The title, Swaddling Songs, promises a music to wrap yourself in. Or perhaps it was a music that the two women at the group’s centre, Clodagh Simonds and Alison O’Donnell, desired to be swaddled in. Because if the album has a story, it’s a typical one for the period and the generation, of wanting to move away from the stifling city and find freedom, enlightenment and escape out in the countryside, in a natural realm that is not free of strangeness and danger: wandering brigands, birds of ill omen, faery creatures, coffins and crows.

But at what point does protective swaddling tip over into overprotective suffocation? “Reverend Sisters”, slower, brooding and reflective, stands apart from the other tracks. It harks back to the girls’ younger days at the Holy Child Convent School in Dublin, where they met and began making music. The nuns who taught them, they recall, summoned them to their office to educate them that life is not a dream, and wisdom will come with the years. The song’s retort to the sisters is that wisdom did come, but not the kind they had in mind. “Now the veils are lifted from my eyes and I can see,” it concludes. The inclusion of this backstory gives the album a mature footing, their childhood a yardstick by which to measure the broader horizons they now aim at.

Simonds and O’Donnell stated making music together in 1963, at the age of 10, and took the name Mellow Candle a couple of years later. 1967 found the duo recording a demo which made its way – after receiving airplay on Radio Luxembourg – to the ears of a talent scout for the actor David Hemmings, who was then looking to break into music production. He invited them to London, where they recorded two songs with an orchestra. Simon Napier-Bell put them out as a single in August 1968, but it didn’t make much of a dent and the friends parted company. Three years on, in the kernel of Britain’s psych-folk Indian summer, they gave it another go. The girlish whimsy had given way to a more windswept vibe. O’Donnell brought David Williams, the guitarist in another band she’d been playing with. Initial rehearsals and writing sessions happened in the suitably rural stables at the home of Simonds’s parents’ house. John Peel hosted the Wexford Festival of Living Music, where the Candle were on the bill, and A&R man/future Chiswick/Ace Records founder Ted Carroll, then managing Thin Lizzy, among others, took them under his wing. (He arranged for Simonds to play keyboards and Mellotron on Lizzy’s second album, Shades Of A Blue Orphanage.) Eventually after a few false starts, including a demo recorded with Caravan’s drummer Richard Coughlan, new members Frank Boylan (bass) and William Murray (drums) were hired. December 1971 found them at Tollington Park Studios in North London, where they recorded Swaddling Songs in a few days. It was released on Deram, the experimental/progressive arm of Decca Records.

The rest of the scenarios are set out in the fields and moors, the perennial landscape of legend in these isles. “Heaven Heath” opens the record with a harpsichord waltz and a romantic vignette, in an Emily Bronte/Christine Rossetti mode, of a woman, a gravestone and a dead child. “Sheep Season” plays out the age-old enmity between shepherd and wolf, while the swaggering, Jefferson Airplane-ish “The Poet And The Witch” opens with an atmospheric snatch of taped tide and gulls. Like many of Mellow Candle’s songs, it’s a stream-of-consciousness mulch of folk-myth archetypes, watered by a diet of romantic lyrical ballads and the visionary-pastoral idealism of WB Yeats. It’s also a great example of the two women’s powerful combined vocals. The next, “Messenger Birds”, showcases O’Donnell’s soaring solo voice in a song that sails a similar course to where Sandy Denny was heading at exactly the same time on The North Star Grassman and the Ravens.

Elsewhere, on “Vile Excesses” and the heavy “Lonely Man”, the Candle lock into their most appealing rhythmic grooves and suggest – in the absence of live tapes – their potential as a jam band, with some strong striding piano from Simonds and twanging electric guitar performance from Williams.

For Mellow Candle, the wilderness offered an enchanted antidote to the crushing boredom of city life. The last track contains just two lines of text, as well as wordless chants: “I know the Dublin pavements/Will be boulders on my grave”. Neither one of Candle’s founders allowed the rocks to gather, even though the band, broke and unnoticed, couldn’t struggle on much longer after the album’s release. They have each enjoyed fascinating, self-driven musical careers in the decades since. Clodagh Simonds was employed as Richard Branson’s PA at Virgin Records, and made guest vocal appearances on Mike Oldfield’s organic ambient LPs Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn. After residing in South Africa for many years she returned and in 2005 formed experimental folk band Fovea Hex. For Alison O’Donnell the 1970s involved being a member of folk band Flibbertigibbett, but in more recent times she has joined forces with Steven Collins’s alternative folk collective The Owl Service, formed her own unit United Bible Studies, and in 2022 released a solo folk album Hark The Voice That Sings For All. If anything remains of the Mellow Candle era in Fovea Hex and UBS, it’s the sense of openness to the moment, the musical fluidity and the focus on atmospheric texture. Above all, they have finally affirmed that it is possible to thrive on making an uncompromised music far away from anything perceived as the mainstream.

End Of The Road extra! Slowdive interviewed: “The destination was never really discussed or known”

Piers Martin
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End Of The Road extra! Slowdive interviewed: “The destination was never really discussed or known”
Ahead of their main slot at tonight's End Of The Road Festival, Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell and Christian Savill take us through the creation of Slowdive's Everything Is Alive, the influence of The Cure and unlikely meetings in Stateside car parks. Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage...

Ahead of their main slot at tonight’s End Of The Road Festival, Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell and Christian Savill take us through the creation of Slowdive‘s Everything Is Alive, the influence of The Cure and unlikely meetings in Stateside car parks.

Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

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How did this album come about?
Rachel Goswell: We were due to go in to the studio in April 2020, but Covid happened. We had six weeks booked and Neil had been working on his ideas. They were a load of electronic ideas for a solo record, but we were like, ‘Oh we should do another record.’ So he brought all that stuff to us to sift through, to choose the tracks or the ideas we wanted to work on. That got delayed until October 2020 when we finally were able to get together in the studio.

Christian Savill: We finished touring in 2018 and during Covid it often felt like, are we ever going to do anything as a band ever again? So when this record started, it was a nice feeling to all be together again.

Neil Halstead: I’d been working on a lot of electronic music prior to 2019, on my own, at my studio, with no real outlet for it. When the band started talking about working on a new record, I took a bunch of these fairly minimal tracks and started repurposing them for Slowdive. It seemed like an interesting way to start the process. I had about 40 ideas that I sent through to the band and it’s from this pot that most of the record emerged.

Goswell: It’s a culmination of three years’ work are our involvement, as in everyone apart from Neil, was regrouping in studios and in between that, Neil would take stuff away and be tinkering, and would continue to tinker. But it kind of got to the point where he was just so far down rabbit holes trying to do mixes that, you know, we needed to get a different pair of ears in outside of us, and, that’s where Shawn Everett came in to do some of the mixes.

What did you do with this album that you hadn’t done before?
Halstead: Starting the record in a way we hadn’t worked before was a way of pushing Slowdive to take a different journey – the destination was never really discussed or known. As a band, we all have different ideas about where we might end up and part of the nice thing about the collaborative process is that it opens the process up and keeps it fresh and hopefully you surprise yourself too.

Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

Who came up with “Kisses”?
Goswell: One day Neil casually said, ‘I’ve got this song here.’ And we were like, whoa, that’s a great tune!

Halstead: I demoed this song really early in the process and it sort of sat there while we worked on lots of other stuff. Eventually we recorded it but couldn’t really decide on a direction – we ended up with a whole bunch of different versions, with big guitars, no guitars, electro, super indie, lo-fi, hi-fi… There’s a great sort of Kraftwerky version actually, but we kept coming back to the demo, which is essentially the ‘pop’ version which was sort of complete but I think scared me at least because it felt too pop. But that ended up being the way we went. We threw a few bits of the other versions in for good measure. For the video – directed by Noel Paul – we talked about it having a Wong Kar-wai (i)Fallen Angels(i) vibe, which is a film I love. He was keen to use Naples as a backdrop and took it from there. I love what Noel did, and the kids he got in the video are so cool. It’s probably my favourite Slowdive video.

Goswell: The video that Noel did is just brilliant. We had a few treatments for the video come in from various people, but he seemed to capture the mood. And he did this little video introducing himself and saying he’d been a Slowdive fan for years and what he wanted to do in the video. I love how it turned out. It is by far my favourite Slowdive video.

Savill: They had to delay the filming of it, because they had it all planned and then Napoli won Serie A so it was just chaos and they couldn’t film it.

“Andalucia Plays” has a touch of The Cure’s “Faith” to it – have you noticed that?
Goswell: Yeah. That’s fair comment. There was definitely the Cure playing in the studio.

And there’s a kind of Disintegration-style heaviness about the album too, wouldn’t you say?
Goswell: Yes.

Savill: Yes, most definitely. Not going to deny that.

Goswell: So many references. I mean, Nick, our bass player, he only really listens to the Cure, doesn’t he?

Savill: They’re his favourite band of all time.

Does working with electronics help you express yourself?
Halstead: Definitely. Pygmalion was when I really started digging into electronic music, and modular synthesis is a fun way to approach composition. I like that it increases the random/magic factor and opens the process to happy accident. Simon [Scott, drummer] has been working in that world for a long time and it’s something we both geek out on. I saw Simon do a modular show in Berlin recently and it reminded me that it’s still really potent live – it’s always edgy and different every time.

Is there a bit of Pygmalion in this album?
Halstead: Perhaps that was where the record began. There’s a little of that in the centre but it goes its own way.

Savill: Pygmalion was a record that was going against what was expected of us at the time. I’m not saying that this record is completely way out there, but I think it is a case of not trying to do a record to meet expectations of what people want on a Slowdive record, but more like: what do we actually want to do?

Goswell: We’ve always stuck to our guns, apart from when [Alan] McGee didn’t like the original (i)Souvlaki(i) demos. But aside from that, everything we’ve released has been very much what we want to do.

What do you remember about Pygmalion?
Goswell: We waited a year for that record to come out, it was finished a year before it was released. We were rehearsing for a tour, weren’t we, and I remember the rehearsals being a little tense.

Savill: Yes, it wasn’t the greatest time because it felt like everything was against us. We were against what was happening, not necessarily musically, but we were out of step with everything. And it felt like something was just coming to an end, really.

Goswell: We were skint. Nobody cared. All that stuff. A hard time.

Savill: When I come back to that record – and I didn’t listen to it for a long time – I was like, oh man, this is really good. So I’m glad that we did that, because I guess there was probably pressure to do something more commercial If we were to have a future as a band. And, you know, it’s just like no, this wasn’t going to happen.

Goswell: The band definitely came to its natural conclusion at that point.

When did you twig that Slowdive might be getting popular?
Savill: I married an American and went to live in Asheville, North Carolina for a bit. I was working as a janitor in a grocery store. I’d be collecting carts in the car park and kids started coming up to me, going, ‘Hey man, is it true you were in Slowdive?’ That was completely freaky. So I’d become aware that, wow, kids have heard of this band that split up 15 years ago. We could feel it growing.

Rachel: I became aware that the Slowdive stuff was ticking along during the MySpace days, around 2006-7. I logged in and saw “shoegaze” as a genre and remember looking at it very confused – what the hell is this?

After the unusual career you’ve had, do you feel vindicated?
Goswell: Not vindicated but it’s a nice surprise. I think others feel vindicated on our behalf, people who’ve supported us since the beginning. The Slowdive story is a bit of an anomaly. Other bands who’ve reformed, like Blur and Stereolab, didn’t get the kicking we got at the time in the UK press.

Savill: We literally came back from the dead.

This second life of Slowdive has now been going longer than the first – have you got used to the big crowds and constant acclaim now?
Halstead: Yes it’s definitely been a moment longer. I think the first act was six years, three albums and five EPs, and it’s almost nine years since we got back together. We’re way less efficient at this point, that’s for sure, but there’s less angst, and probably more fun on this part of the journey. We play festivals now which was something we never did back in the day. It’s great to see the band being embraced by a new generation of kids and I suppose we all feel pretty lucky to still be able to do it.

Neil, you have a deep love of folk music – has this shaped the new album in any way?
Halstead: Yeah, I spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to make folk music, and I think the only tune that comes directly from that world on this album is the song “Andalusia Plays” which was a song I wrote around 2015 and I wrote it as tune for a solo folky record thing. I was messing around with ideas one day and started playing an organ part that seemed to work with the lyrics and the original melody – it took it into a different world and that seemed to take it to where Slowdive could do a version, so I demoed it up and sent it to the band.

Are you often surprised by the contributions to your tracks by the other members of the band?
Halstead: Yeah, I mean, I love being part of Slowdive and hearing Simon mangle the guitars through his Max patch system or Nick finding a killer bassline or Christian finding something beautiful in a guitar part, Rachel doing her thing – it’s always a fun journey. We argue a lot, we disagree about parts and ideas but there is still a moment where we’ll all be in unison and vibing on something. We work together pretty well and I guess that’s a rare thing.

What are the essential qualities of a Slowdive song?
Halstead: If we all love it, then it has the qualities. What they are exactly, I don’t know.

Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

This interview originally appeared in Uncut’s June 2024 issue

Deluxe reissue of Prince’s Diamonds & Pearls announced

Michael Bonner
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Deluxe reissue of Prince’s Diamonds & Pearls announced
Prince's 1991 album Diamonds & Pearls is due for a deluxe release on October 27 from Paisley Park Enterprises, in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Records. You can hear a previously unreleased track, “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, along with “Insatiable (Early Mix - Ful...

Prince‘s 1991 album Diamonds & Pearls is due for a deluxe release on October 27 from Paisley Park Enterprises, in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Records. You can hear a previously unreleased track, “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, along with “Insatiable (Early Mix – Full Version)” from the set.

Prince’s first with backing band The New Power Generation, Diamonds & Pearls is coming as a Super Deluxe Edition (7CD+Blu-ray / 12LP+Blu-ray / audio-only download and streaming), a Deluxe Edition (2CD / 4LP 180g vinyl) and Remastered album (1CD / 2LP / 2LP 180g clear “Diamond” vinyl / download and streaming).

Here’s the tracklisting for the Super Deluxe Edition:

CD1 / LP 1 & 2: DIAMONDS AND PEARLS (REMASTERED)
Thunder (2023 Remaster)
Daddy Pop (2023 Remaster)
Diamonds and Pearls (2023 Remaster)
Cream (2023 Remaster)
Strollin’ (2023 Remaster)
Willing and Able (2023 Remaster)
Gett Off (2023 Remaster)
Walk Don’t Walk (2023 Remaster)
Jughead (2023 Remaster)
Money Don’t Matter 2 Night (2023 Remaster)
Push (2023 Remaster)
Insatiable (2023 Remaster)
Live 4 Love (2023 Remaster)

CD2 / LP 3 & 4: SINGLE MIXES & EDITS (REMASTERED)
Gett Off (Damn Near 10 Minutes)
Gett Off (Houstyle)
Violet the Organ Grinder
Gangster Glam
Horny Pony
Cream (NPG Mix)
Things Have Gotta Change (Tony M Rap)
Do Your Dance (KC’s Remix)
Insatiable (Edit)
Diamonds and Pearls (Edit)
Money Don’t Matter 2 Night (Edit)
Call the Law
Willing and Able (Edit)
Willing and Able (Video Version)
Thunder (DJ Fade)

CD 3 – 5 / LP 5 – 9: VAULT I, II, III
VAULT I
Schoolyard
My Tender Heart
Pain
Streetwalker
Lauriann
Darkside
Insatiable (Early Mix – Full Version)
Glam Slam ’91
Live 4 Love (Early Version)
Cream (Take 2)
Skip to My You My Darling
Diamonds and Pearls (Long Version)
All tracks previously unreleased

VAULT II
Daddy Pop (12″ Mix)
Martika’s Kitchen
Spirit
Open Book
Work That Fat
Horny Pony (Version 2)
Something Funky (This House Comes) (Band Version)
Hold Me
Blood on the Sheets
The Last Dance (Bang Pow Zoom and the Whole Nine)
Don’t Say U Love Me
All tracks previously unreleased

VAULT III
Get Blue
Tip o’ My Tongue
The Voice
Trouble
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Standing at the Altar
Hey U
Letter 4 Miles
I Pledge Allegiance to Your Love
Thunder Ballet
All tracks previously unreleased

CD 6 & 7 / LP 10 – 12: LIVE AT GLAM SLAM, 1992
Thunder
Daddy Pop
Diamonds And Pearls
Willing And Able
Jughead
The Sacrifice Of Victor
Nothing Compares 2 U
Thieves In The Temple
Sexy M.F.
Insatiable
Cream/Well Done/I Want U/In The Socket (Medley)
1999/Baby I’m A Star/Push (Medley)
Gett Off
Gett Off (Houstyle)
All tracks previously unreleased

BLU-RAY
LIVE AT GLAM SLAM, 1992
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, JANUARY 11, 1992
SPECIAL OLYMPICS, METRODOME, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, JULY 1991

SOUNDCHECK – JULY 19, 1991:
Let’s Go Crazy/Baby I’m A Star/Push (Medley)

All tracks previously unreleased

SHOW – JULY 20, 1991:
Diamonds And Pearls
Let’s Go Crazy/Baby I’m A Star/Push (Medley)

All tracks previously unreleased

DIAMONDS AND PEARLS VIDEO COLLECTION
Introduction
Thunder (Live)
Gett Off
Cream
Diamonds And Pearls
Dr. Feelgood (Live)
Call The Law
Willing And Able
Jughead (Live)
Insatiable
Strollin’
Money Don’t Matter 2 Night
Live 4 Love (Live)

Bob Dylan announces new tour dates

Michael Bonner
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Bob Dylan announces new tour dates
Bob Dylan has announced new dates for his Rough And Rowdy Ways World Tour. Following his run of Asian and European tour dates earlier this year, he is now turning his attention to North America. Dylan's dates begin in Kansas City on October 1 and currently run up to October 30, when he plays i...

Bob Dylan has announced new dates for his Rough And Rowdy Ways World Tour.

Following his run of Asian and European tour dates earlier this year, he is now turning his attention to North America.

Dylan’s dates begin in Kansas City on October 1 and currently run up to October 30, when he plays in Schenectady, NY. More dates will be announced soon, we’re told.

Dylan plays:

October 1 The Midland Theatre – Kansas City, MO
October 2 The Midland Theatre – Kansas City, MO
October 4 Stifel Theatre – St. Louis, MO
October 6 Cadillac Palace Theatre – Chicago, IL
October 7 Cadillac Palace Theatre – Chicago, IL
October 8 Cadillac Palace Theatre – Chicago, IL
October 11 The Riverside Theater – Milwaukee, WI
October 12 The Riverside Theater – Milwaukee, WI
October 16 Murat Theatre – Indianapolis, IN
October 20 The Andrew J. Brady Music Center – Cincinnati, OH
October 21 Akron Civic Theatre – Akron, OH
October 23 Warner Theatre – Erie, PA
October 24 Auditorium Theatre – Rochester, NY
October 26 Massey Hall – Toronto, Ontario
October 27 Massey Hall – Toronto, Ontario
October 29 Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier – Montreal, Quebec
October 30 Proctors Theatre – Schenectady, NY

… and in the meantime, don’t forget we currently have two Dylan specials available: our Ultimate Music Guide: The Deluxe Edition and The Complete Bob Dylan.

Hear Al Green cover Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”

Michael Bonner
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Hear Al Green cover Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”
Al Green returns with a cover of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day". You can hear it below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5NT_079_X0 ORDER NOW: Tom Waits is on the cover of the latest UNCUT It's Green's first release since his 2018 cover of Freddy Fender’s “Before The Next Teardrop F...

Al Green returns with a cover of Lou Reed‘s “Perfect Day“.

You can hear it below.

It’s Green’s first release since his 2018 cover of Freddy Fender’s “Before The Next Teardrop Falls”. About “Perfect Day”, Green says, “I loved Lou’s original ‘Perfect Day’. The song immediately puts you in a good mood. We wanted to preserve that spirit, while adding our own sauce and style.”

The recording took place at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis, TN during February 2023. Produced by Matthew Johnson and Bruce Watson, the track finds Green reunited with members of the Hi Rhythm Section, including Reverend Charles Hodges [organ], Leroy Hodges [bass], and Archie “Hubbie” Turner [piano].

Green has some tour dates lined up in the States, with more due to follow:

September 30, 2023 – Highland, CA – Yaamava’ Theater
November 24, 2023 – Detroit, MI – Fox Theatre
November 25, 2023 – St. Charles, MO – The Family Arena

Sonic Boom – My Life In Music

Michael Bonner
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Sonic Boom – My Life In Music
This week, Panda Bear & Sonic Boom release Reset In Dub - a dub version of their acclaimed 2022 album Reset by British dub producer Adrian Sherwood. To mark this auspicious occasion, here's Sonic Boom's My Life In Music from Uncut's June 2020 issue [Take 277]... ORDER NOW: Tom Waits is on the ...

This week, Panda Bear & Sonic Boom release Reset In Dub – a dub version of their acclaimed 2022 album Reset by British dub producer Adrian Sherwood. To mark this auspicious occasion, here’s Sonic Boom’s My Life In Music from Uncut’s June 2020 issue [Take 277]…

Psychedelic spaceman Pete Kember – aka Sonic Boom – on the music that takes him there: “Any day I listen to Sam Cooke is a good day for me!”

KRAFTWERK
THE MAN-MACHINE
CAPITOL, 1978
This is just a really awesome record. There seemed to be a lot of cool records coming from Germany in this era, like Bowie and Iggy Pop and Kraftwerk, and they were sort of interconnected; I feel like they were all having some sort of conversation with each other on different levels. For me, this and Trans Europe Express are kind of a pair, they’re both just incredibly solid records. Kraftwerk set a bar which I’ve always tried to aspire to – they were so succinct and cleverly minimal in what they did. I really like that combination of the mechanical and the soulful. Their melodies and the overall vibe of what they did was really deep.

SAM COOKE
SAM COOKE
CAMBRA, 1982
I’ve never come across the original Sam Cooke albums when I look to buy stuff online, but the compilations which cherry-pick all his hits and occasionally some other tracks are just so great. The vibe he put out and the feeling that he put into his songs… you totally buy into every word that comes out of his mouth, and I think that’s the greatest thing you can do as a singer or a musician. I can put on songs like “Sad Moods” or “Having A Party” and they instantly transport me. Any day I listen to Sam Cooke is a good day for me, it always makes me feel good.

LAURIE ANDERSON
BIG SCIENCE
WARNER BROS, 1982
I remember hearing “O Superman” on the radio and really not getting it: “What the fuck is this?” Then one day I took some psilocybin mushrooms with a friend, he put this album on, and when I heard the whole record and the song in context, I was just floored by it. I still feel it’s one of the greatest pieces of art that’s been put on a record, and [I love] the innovation, the humour in it… I still listen to it regularly, and I’m constantly amazed by what a tour de force, what genius it was. I have some live records of her doing it, and whatever country she was in she would do it in their language. That’s so deeply fantastic!

PIERRE HENRY & MICHEL COLOMBIER
MESSE POUR LE TEMPS PRESENT
PHILIPS, 1967
The first side of this is a combination of a ’60s beat group and Pierre Henry doing his electronic amazingness on the top of it. Something about it just really works well, and it reminds me of some of the Delia Derbyshire stuff too, like the Dr Who theme. “Psyche Rock” is quite predictive, and presages Silver Apples and Suicide in some ways. Side Two is musique concrète stuff made with the sound of a door hinge opening and closing, so that’s a whole different universe! But Side One has been really influential on me – the tones of the electronics and the boldness with which he uses it.

BO DIDDLEY
ROAD RUNNER: THE CHESS MASTERS, 1959-1960
HIP-O SELECT, 2008
I know most people know him by name and recognise the Bo Diddley beat, but he’s incredibly underrated. He did so many beautiful rhythms on his songs, often using samba and tango beats, and mixing gospel, blues and South American rhythms. I think he rewrote the rulebook over and over again. He might be one of the people who could be credited with the roots of ’60s black soul music. What he did in the ’50s really created the form that everyone used, though I know a large part of that comes from gospel music. I’ve always loved the guy. I got to meet him once and jam with him on Jools Holland, which was pretty surreal!

THE SANDPIPERS
GUANTANAMERA
A&M, 1966
The Sandpipers were a vocal-based group, and I fear they might have fallen into a middle-of-the-road rut. One of their songs that a lot of people might know is called “Inchworm”, and on this album they do a mixture of standards and covers. They do The Beatles’ “Things We Said Today” – but they’ve got beautiful voices and the whole record is really transcendental. When I moved to Portugal I had the privilege of being able to rediscover all my records again in a totally new environment; it’s really beautiful being able to listen to all this music in the mountains. Their vocals are something for me to aspire to, and I envy those who make it look so effortless, which The Sandpipers certainly do.

orchestral manoeuvres in the dark
ARCHITECTURE & MORALITY
DINDISC, 1981
Interestingly, they had two hits off this one, both called “Joan Of Arc”, both Top 5! Later on, I discovered that my mum’s childhood friend, Auntie Avril, used to get a teenage Andy McCluskey to babysit for her kids! I said to her, “I always really loved the first ‘Joan Of Arc’ song, I’d love to try a remix…” So she put us in touch, and Andy sent me both “Joan Of Arc” songs on 24-track, two-inch multitrack. I quickly realised when I got the tapes up that the first “Joan Of Arc” was actually a demo that had had bits added to it, and I couldn’t get it even close to sounding as awesome as the original!

GEORGE FAITH
TO BE A LOVER
BLACK SWAN, 1977
This is a Lee Perry-produced album, from what is probably his best period, around the same time as Junior Murvin’s Police And Thieves. They’re both perfect albums for me – beautiful songs, perfect production, and both subtly psychedelic, which Lee Perry is a genius at. I only found this about four years ago, and it wasn’t too easy to find, but it’s a fantastic record that I think has been overlooked. Someone asked me recently what music I would play on my birthday, and I feel like every time I listen to this record it genuinely feels as good as any birthday I ever had. I don’t know what more you could ask! I highly recommend this to anyone.

Hear Joni Mitchell’s “Help Me” demo

Michael Bonner
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Hear Joni Mitchell’s “Help Me” demo
Joni Mitchell has shared a demo of “Help Me” from her upcoming Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975) box set. ORDER NOW: Tom Waits is on the cover of the latest UNCUT Featuring a mix of previously unheard demos, early and alternate versions and live performances...

Joni Mitchell has shared a demo of “Help Me” from her upcoming Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975) box set.

Featuring a mix of previously unheard demos, early and alternate versions and live performances from the period covering 1972’s For The Roses, 1974’s Court And Spark, and 1975’s The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, the box set is released on October 6, 2023 by Rhino as 5xCD, Digital and 4xLP versions.

The tracklisting is:

CD ONE:
Graham Nash David Crosby Session
Wally Heider Studios, Hollywood, CA, December 13, 1971
01 “Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire”
02 “For The Roses”

For The Roses Demos
A&M Studios, Hollywood, CA, late 1971 / early 1972
03 “Banquet”
04 “Lesson In Survival”
05 “Like Veils Said Lorraine”
06 “See You Sometime”

Live At Carnegie Hall
New York City, NY, February 23, 1972
07 “This Flight Tonight”
08 “Electricity”
09 “Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire”
10 “Big Yellow Taxi”
11 “Blue”
12 “For Free”
13 “Banquet”
14 “All I Want”
15 “Intro to A Case Of You”
16 “A Case Of You”
17 “Intro To Carey”
18 “Carey”
19 “Lesson In Survival”
20 “Woodstock”
21 “Intro To You Turn Me On I’m A Radio”
22 “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio”
23 “Intro To For The Roses”
24 “For The Roses”

CD TWO:
Live At Carnegie Hall [continued]
New York City, NY, February 23, 1972
01 “Both Sides Now”
02 “My Old Man”
03 “Intro To The Circle Game”
04 “The Circle Game”

For The Roses Early Sessions
Wally Heider Studios, Hollywood, CA, April 16-21, 1972
05 “Medley: Bony Moronie/Summertime Blues/You Never Can Tell” (with James Taylor)
06 “Electricity” (with James Taylor)
07 “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio (with Neil Young & The Stray Gators)
08 “See You Sometime” (early version with bass & drums)
09 “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio” (early version with bass & drums)

Live At The Royal Festival Hall
London, England, May 5, 1972
10 “Intro To Judgement Of The Moon And Stars” (Ludwig’s Tune)
11 “Judgement Of The Moon And Stars” (Ludwig’s Tune)

For The Roses Sessions
A&M Studios, Hollywood, CA, July – August, 1972
12 “Blonde In The Bleachers” (alternate guitar mix)
13 “Let The Wind Carry Me” (piano/vocal mix)
14 “Barangrill” (guitar/vocal mix)
15 “Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire” (sax guide vocal)
16 “Sunrise Raga”
17 “Twisted” (early alternate version)

James Bay Benefit Concert
Paul Sauvé Arena, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, April 15, 1973
18 “Intro To Big Yellow Taxi”
19 “Big Yellow Taxi”

CD THREE:
Court And Spark Demos
A&M Studios, Hollywood, CA, Summer 1973
01 Piano Suite:
“Down To You”
“Court And Spark”
“Car On A Hill”
“Down To You”
02 “People’s Parties”
03 “Help Me”
04 “Just Like This Train”
05 “Raised On Robbery”
06 “Trouble Child”

Wild Tales [Graham Nash] Session
Rudy Records Studios, San Francisco, CA, August 25, 1973
07 “Raised On Robbery” (early working version)
08 “Raised On Robbery” (with Neil Young & The Santa Monica Flyers)

Court And Spark Sessions
A&M Studios, Hollywood, CA, September – October, 1973
09 “People’s Parties” (early alternate take)
10 “Trouble Child” (early alternate take)
11 “Car On A Hill” (early alternate take)
12 “Down To You” (alternate version)
13 “The Same Situation” (alt vocal/piano mix)
14 “Bonderia”

Live At Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Los Angeles, CA, March 3, 1974
15 “Introduction”
16 “This Flight Tonight” (with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express)
17 “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio” (with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express)
18 “Free Man In Paris” (with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express)
19 “The Same Situation” (with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express)
20 “Just Like This Train” (with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express)

CD FOUR:
Live At Dorothy Chandler Pavilion [cont.]
Los Angeles, CA, March 3, 1974
01 “Rainy Night House” (with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express)
02 “Woodstock” (with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express)
03 “Cactus Tree”
04 “Big Yellow Taxi”
05 “Intro To People’s Parties”
06 “People’s Parties”
07 “All I Want”
08 “A Case Of You”
09 “Intro To For The Roses”
10 “For The Roses”
11 “Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire” (with Tom Scott)
12 “Blue”
13 “For Free” (with Tom Scott)
14 “Trouble Child” (with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express)
15 “Help Me” (with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express)
16 “Car On A Hill” (with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express)

CD FIVE:
Live At New Victoria Theatre
London, England, April 22, 1974
01 “Intro To Jericho”
02 “Jericho”

Live At Wembley Stadium
London, England, September 14, 1974
03 “Woman Of Heart And Mind”

The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Demos
A&M Studios, Hollywood, CA, 1975
04 “In France They Kiss On Main Street”
05 “Edith And The Kingpin”
06 “Don’t Interrupt The Sorrow”
07 “Shades Of Scarlet Conquering”
08 “The Boho Dance”
09 “Harry’s House”
10 “Dreamland”

The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Sessions
A&M Studios, Hollywood, CA, 1975
11 “In France They Kiss On Main Street” (alternate version)
12 “The Jungle Line” (guitar/alternate vocal)
13 “Edith And The Kingpin” (alternate version)
14 “Don’t Interrupt The Sorrow” (alternate version)
15 “Shades Of Scarlet Conquering” (alternate version)
16 “The Boho Dance” (alternate version)
17 “Dreamland” (early alternate band version)

Rhiannon Giddens – You’re The One

Andrew Mueller
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Rhiannon Giddens – You’re The One
The cover of You’re The One is a pretty unmistakable statement of intent. It’s a close-up headshot of the artist, with a front cover tracklisting and bulbous, colourful typefaces. It is instantly evocative of a late 1960s or early 1970s release by Tammy Wynette, Aretha Franklin, Bobbie Gentry, D...

The cover of You’re The One is a pretty unmistakable statement of intent. It’s a close-up headshot of the artist, with a front cover tracklisting and bulbous, colourful typefaces. It is instantly evocative of a late 1960s or early 1970s release by Tammy Wynette, Aretha Franklin, Bobbie Gentry, Dolly Parton or Loretta Lynn – the old school of confessional singers who very much wanted the purchaser to know that they were buying a little piece of them.

ORDER NOW: Tom Waits is on the cover of the latest UNCUT

You’re The One is partially a homage to this period and this ilk of country and soul, but not entirely – it was always unlikely that an artist as versatile and restless as Rhiannon Giddens was going to be comfortable within the confines of a single genre. In the six years since her previous solo album, Freedom Highway, Giddens has been awarded a MacArthur “Genius” grant, won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on an opera about the enslaved West African theologian Omar Ibn Said, a Grammy for one of her albums with her partner, the Italian composer Francesco Turrisi, and worked on musical projects including, but not limited to, Our Native Daughters – the latter a banjo supergroup with Allison Russell, Leyla McCalla and Amythyst Kiah, whose sole album to date was a highlight of 2019. In between all of which and more, she starred in two seasons of high-gloss country soap Nashville and wrote a series of children’s books.

Giddens also wrote or co-wrote everything on You’re The One, with the exception of “Good Ol’ Cider”, a brief traditional bluegrass instrumental which closes the album with a zestful reminder of Giddens’ virtuosity on the banjo, and concludes an eventful musical journey at her musical roots. The trip begins with “Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad” – co-written, along with two other tracks, by Dirk Powell. It’s a partial introduction to what follows, in that it is a classic soul track with a classic country title, Giddens delivering this Franklin-via-Winehouse kiss-off to the faithless oaf who inspired it with the relish of a woman realising that a punchy brass section and sweetly shooping backing singers are better company anyway.

There is, indeed, about half a side here of an extremely niche concept album of soul songs with country titles. “Wrong Kind Of Right” is a starkly articulated – and beautifully sung – coming to terms with a lopsided relationship, acknowledging the reality while pledging, either stoically or foolishly, to sink still further costs (“But I wouldn’t change a thing/I’ll just dive into the fall”). “Hen In The Foxhouse” has a lyric of the kind of droll defiance patented by Loretta Lynn, set to a backing track, and delivered with a vocal more evocative of the strut and sass of Patti LaBelle. Giddens’ voice draws from the soul and country palettes with equal ease, blessed with the tremor and drama demanded by the former, the conversational warmth required for the latter – and, as she demonstrates on the exquisite “Who Are You Dreaming Of”, the combination of all of the above necessary to carry off the string-drenched Petula Clark-ish torch ballad.

In general, however, the countrier she keeps it, the better. “Yet To Be”, a stomping duet with Jason Isbell, is the tale of a Black woman and an Irish man, each running away from something and finding each other – and also a cautious celebration of the fact that this kind of happy ending is no longer as remarkable as it would have been until depressingly recently (“The here and now is better than it was back then”). “You Louisiana Man” sounds more or less exactly how you’d expect a song called “You Louisiana Man” to sound, all accordion and banjo and keening fiddle over crackling drums and humid electric piano. “If You Don’t Know How Sweet It Is”, co-written with Bhi Bhiman, throws back to the Dolly Parton/Loretta Lynn tradition of final warnings issued by women too long taken for granted (“You’re good, but I’ll find better.”) “Way Over Yonder”, co-written with Keb’ Mo’, is an exultant front-porch gospel stomper celebrating more earthly redemptions than the title suggests, specifically “a little bitty joint just out of town, got the best fried chicken for miles around”.

Giddens’ resume to date is the kind of thing which prompts awe not only at her range, but her time-management skills. It is difficult to know what she’ll do next. For the moment, however, there is ample reason to be glad she did this.

Pavement’s original drummer Gary Young has died, aged 70

Sam Richards
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Pavement’s original drummer Gary Young has died, aged 70
Pavement's original drummer Gary Young has died, age 70. Frontman Stephen Malkmus announced the news on Twitter, writing “Gary Young passed on today. Gary’s pavement drums were ‘one take and hit record’… Nailed it so well. rip.” https://twitter.com/dronecoma/status/1692340536366219491...

Pavement’s original drummer Gary Young has died, age 70. Frontman Stephen Malkmus announced the news on Twitter, writing “Gary Young passed on today. Gary’s pavement drums were ‘one take and hit record’… Nailed it so well. rip.”

Young had drummed for several bands around Stockton, California – including Fall Of Christianity and The Authorities – before Malkmus and Scott ‘Spiral Stairs’ Kannberg booked Young’s Louder Than You Think studio in 1989 to record their first EP, Slay Tracks 1933-1969.

Young suggested he play drums for the band, and subsequently appeared on all early Pavement releases, including debut album Slanted And Enchanted, which was also recorded at Louder Than You Think.

Young’s eccentric showmanship was a prominent feature of Pavement’s first tours. He was often to be seen performing handstands on-stage, or handing out fruit to the crowd.

He was replaced by Steve West following 1992’s Watery, Domestic EP, after which he released three solo albums backed by his band Hospital. Earlier this year, Young was the subject of a puppet-based documentary entitled Louder Than You Think.

“Garrit Allan Robertson Young put Pavement on the map,” wrote the band in an official statement. “He drummed very hard from a different planet… He was magnetic, he was magical, he was dangerous. We could think of him as an uncle, an older brother that none of us had… We all loved him and it was life changing to have a staggering weapon to play music with… Never fear. The Plant Man lives on every time Pavement steps on a stage and will continue to do so.”

DeYarmond Edison – Epoch

Stephen Deusner
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DeYarmond Edison – Epoch
On “Handwriting On The Wall”, an a cappella track recorded around the time he was dreaming up Bon Iver, Justin Vernon shouts his head off. He screams and yells and hollers, his performance knowingly too big and too loud for the song. But there’s a point to his histrionics: rather than attempt ...

On “Handwriting On The Wall”, an a cappella track recorded around the time he was dreaming up Bon Iver, Justin Vernon shouts his head off. He screams and yells and hollers, his performance knowingly too big and too loud for the song. But there’s a point to his histrionics: rather than attempt to convey depth of feeling, Vernon is trying to capture the unique grain of his voice when pushed to such an extreme. It fuzzes out around the edges, becoming unrecognisable as his or even as human. It’s akin to the way he would famously manipulate his voice on 2007’s For Emma, Forever Ago and especially on 2009’s “Blood Bank” EP, except on “Handwriting…” he’s doing it organically rather than digitally.

ORDER NOW: Tom Waits is on the cover of the latest UNCUT

There are many such moments on Epoch, an immense and admiring boxset that collects everything from Vernon’s early band DeYarmond Edison. In these songs can be found the DNA for Bon Iver, but also for nearly all of the roots-leaning indie rock of the past 15 years. DeYarmond Edison weren’t merely a band behind a singing/songwriting frontman, but something closer to the REM model: a democracy where each personality shone through. It’s a supergroup in reverse. In addition to Vernon, the band also included brothers Brad and Phil Cook and percussionist Joe Westerlund. Together, those three released three imaginative albums as Megafaun, including 2009’s excellent Gather Form & Fly. Separately, they’ve been busy as side players and producers, with Phil helming albums for Waxahatchee, Hiss Golden Messenger and Hurray For The Riff Raff, among others.

Listening to Epoch, it’s easy to pick out the origin points for these better-known projects, yet DeYarmond Edison was more than the sum of its players. Together, they created a separate identity, something that is not always present in their subsequent efforts. This set is no mere addendum to their later careers, but a testament to the unique spark between likeminded musicians engaging with – and in some cases reinvigorating – regional music traditions. Their story opens, appropriately, at HORDE Festival, the jam-band version of Lollapalooza, where the primary members first met in 1997. They started playing together during summer band camp, calling themselves Mount Vernon and then DeYarmond Edison (after Vernon’s middle names). In 2005, they moved from Eau Claire to North Carolina, a state where every strain of music, old and new, exists on the same continuum.

The band didn’t really take the Tri-Cities by storm, though. Instead, they were dismissed by some as too earnest, either too accessible or not accessible enough. Epoch doesn’t shy away from these criticisms: “We Can Look Up”, credited to Mount Vernon, presents a sentimental take on roots music, landing a little too close to the self-congratulatory rootsiness of Rusted Root. And on the live track “Set Me Free”, Vernon strains his voice to convey a very conventional – and not especially convincing – soulfulness. Those are the first and last songs on Epoch, which suggests that he and his bandmates were still maturing during this time, still growing into the artists they would become.

In that regard, this set has the trajectory of a thick American novel. It’s a coming-of-age story, as the members of DeYarmond Edison gradually find their footing as players and a command of their own influences. As early as 2002’s Silent Signs, they were pushing – sometimes gently, sometimes violently – at the edges of folk and blues, country and bluegrass, heartland rock and avant-garde drone, boisterous free jazz and beautifully harmonised hymns. The peak might be their five-month residency at the Bickett Gallery in Raleigh in early 2006. Mixing originals like “Phil’s Instrumental” with traditionals like “Step It Up & Go” (the unofficial state song of North Carolina), they deconstruct these styles with wit and imagination, and there’s a high-wire precariousness to the way they let the songs fall apart and then reassemble them in weird new shapes.

That residency serves as the climax of Epoch. DeYarmond Edison called it quits not long after, and Vernon returned to Wisconsin, sequestered himself in a remote cabin and recorded some exquisitely lonely songs. The other members stayed in Raleigh and made music as Megafaun for years before setting off on their own separate careers. There was little animosity between them, as evidenced by the frequency with which they’ve continued to collaborate: at least one of the Cook brothers has played on every Bon Iver album, and Epoch includes tracks from a 2014 reunion show. DeYarmond Edison continue in all but name, although this boxset serves as an exclamation point to their early years together.

Watch the videos for two brand new songs by The National

Sam Richards
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Watch the videos for two brand new songs by The National
The National have today posted videos for two brand new songs. "Space Invader" and "Alphabet City" didn't appear on April's First Two Pages Of Frankenstein album, but the former has been getting a live airing on the band's current tour. Both videos feature drawings and illustration from Bryce Des...

The National have today posted videos for two brand new songs. “Space Invader” and “Alphabet City” didn’t appear on April’s First Two Pages Of Frankenstein album, but the former has been getting a live airing on the band’s current tour.

Both videos feature drawings and illustration from Bryce Dessner’s wife Pauline de Lassus AKA singer-songwriter (and regular National collaborator) Mina Tindle. Watch below:

The National tour Europe from September 21, starting with dates in Dublin, Leeds, Glasgow and London – full itinerary and ticket details here.

Hear a previously unreleased track from Brian Eno’s Top Boy OST

Sam Richards
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Hear a previously unreleased track from Brian Eno’s Top Boy OST
To coincide with the final season of Top Boy, which returns to Neflix on September 7, Brian Eno will issue his full soundtrack to the British gang drama in all formats. Top Boy (Score From the Original Series) will be released digitally on September 1 with a CD and vinyl release following on Sept...

To coincide with the final season of Top Boy, which returns to Neflix on September 7, Brian Eno will issue his full soundtrack to the British gang drama in all formats.

Top Boy (Score From the Original Series) will be released digitally on September 1 with a CD and vinyl release following on September 29.

Below you can hear the previously unheard track “Cutting Room 1”, written by Eno for the series but never used:

“From the beginning of Top Boy, I was given the freedom to work in the way I prefer,” says Brian Eno, “making music and atmospheres and then giving it to the film makers to use as they saw fit. I try to absorb the idea of what a piece is about and from that I produce a lot of music, and say, ‘Here it is. Use it as you wish.’

“If you’d been scoring it in the conventional Hollywood way, the temptation would be to up the excitement factor, up the danger factor, all the time. But Top Boy is really about children in a pretty bad situation. So I explored the internal world of the children, not just what’s happening to them in the external world. Quite a lot of the music was deliberately naive, it was sort of simple. The melodies were simple, not really sophisticated, or grown-up.”

Pre-order or pre-save the album here.

Hear Beth Gibbons cover Joy Division and David Bowie

Michael Bonner
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Hear Beth Gibbons cover Joy Division and David Bowie
Beth Gibbons has joined with The Miraculous Love Kids to mark the 2 year anniversary of the Taliban regaining control of Afghanistan. They have recorded “Atmosphere/Heroes”, combining Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” with David Bowie’s “Heroes”, which you can hear below. https://www...

Beth Gibbons has joined with The Miraculous Love Kids to mark the 2 year anniversary of the Taliban regaining control of Afghanistan.

They have recorded “Atmosphere/Heroes”, combining Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” with David Bowie’s “Heroes”, which you can hear below.

The Miraculous Love Kids are a group of Afghan girls who sing, play guitar and record music and who, along with their families, were able to take the journey from Kabul, Afghanistan to Pakistan, Islamabad to escape the Taliban. You can read more about them by clicking here.

Credit: Lenny Cordola

The group was founded by American musician and activist Lanny Cordola.

“I was so honoured to guest on the Miraculous Love Kids’ reconstructed cover track ‘Atmosphere / Heroes’ and to be a voice next to these brave and beautiful girls of Afghanistan,” says Gibbons.

Credits for the song are:

Produced by Lanny Cordola and Sarmad Ghafoor
Engineered and mixed by Sarmad Ghafoor
Drums: Joel Taylor
Bass: William Dagsher
Guitars and Vocals: The Miraculous Love Kids
Guitar: Lanny Cordola
Lead Vocals: Beth Gibbons

Hear Sufjan Stevens’ new track, “So You Are Tired”

Michael Bonner
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Hear Sufjan Stevens’ new track, “So You Are Tired”
Sufjan Stevens has released details of his new studio album, Javelin. To accompany this announcement, he's shared a new track, "So You Are Tired", which you can hear below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjHG25QwYeg ORDER NOW: Tom Waits is on the cover of the latest UNCUT Javelin is r...

Sufjan Stevens has released details of his new studio album, Javelin. To accompany this announcement, he’s shared a new track, “So You Are Tired“, which you can hear below.

Javelin is released on October 6 via Asthmatic Kitty Records. Javelin marks Stevens’ first solo album of songs since 2020’s The Ascension, and his first in full singer-songwriter mode since 2015’s Carrie & Lowell.

Collaborators on the new album include adrienne maree brown, Hannah Cohen, Pauline Delassus, Megan Lui, Nedelle Torrisi and Bryce Dessner. The album closes with a cover of Neil Young‘s “There’s A World”.

The album will also be accompanied by a 48-page book of art and essays created by Stevens.

You can pre-order Javelin here.

Javelin tracklist:

Goodbye Evergreen
A Running Start
Will Anybody Ever Love Me?
Everything That Rises
Genuflecting Ghost
My Red Little Fox
So You Are Tired
Javelin (To Have And To Hold)
Shit Talk
There’s A World

Sun Ra Arkestra, The Forge, London (11/08/23)

Sam Richards
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Sun Ra Arkestra, The Forge, London (11/08/23)
For all his soothsaying abilities, even the great Sun Ra himself might be surprised to see how the Arkestra he founded in the mid-1950s continues to thrive, some 30 years after his death. The group are now colourful festival fixtures and have in recent years been revived as a recording entity under ...

For all his soothsaying abilities, even the great Sun Ra himself might be surprised to see how the Arkestra he founded in the mid-1950s continues to thrive, some 30 years after his death. The group are now colourful festival fixtures and have in recent years been revived as a recording entity under the stewardship of the remarkable Marshall Allen, who’s been with them almost since the beginning.

Allen has not made the trip this time – he is 99, after all – but it’s good to see that there are already plans in place for his succession. In his absence, the Arkestra are conducted by saxophonist Knoel Scott (purple shirt, gold cape, occasional fez), a mere 67. Not that Scott really has to do much conducting, bar the occasional nod of the head towards his fellow musicians. Perhaps it’s Sun Ra’s omnipotent presence, but they move in unspoken harmony, as if guided by a serene, invisible hand.

At certain points in their history, the Arkestra have baffled audiences with their avant-garde approach; at others, they’ve seemed like a curious throwback. But today they sound fairly contemporary, even when playing tunes that date back half a century or more. Partly this is due to a new generation of jazz acts such as Kamasi Washington and Kokoroko taking the Arkestra’s cosmic big band sound as a template, but they have also sensibly chosen to keep the rhythms swinging and the melodies prominent.

The powerfully smooth vocals of Tara Middleton, present on almost every number they play, lend the music a warm neo-soul quality. The Arkestra may be travelling the spaceways and moving to celestial rhythms, but they do so calmly and beatifically – a spinning satellite rather than a burning comet.

There is plenty of fire, however, in their individual solos. From the back of the room, it’s impossible to see the full extent of the Arkestra, clustered together on The Forge’s small stage, so it’s a thrill when Cecil Brooks (red robes, trumpet) or Dave Hotep (sparkling knitted hat, red semi-hollow guitar) pop up from behind Scott’s head to put their own singular spin on things. Newest member Chris Hemingway (purple trilby, soprano sax) is the most mesmerising to watch, twisting in ever-tightening loops, while James Stewart (blue velvet crown, tenor sax and flute) brings a regal grace to proceedings.

A lively “Love In Outer Space” concludes with a percussive flurry and the ritual banging of a gong. “The World Is Not My Home” is a raucous finale, powered by parping trombones and deep baritone saxes, with Scott and Middleton rapping the lyrics back and forth: “I know I’m a member of the angel race / My home is somewhere else in outer space”.

They may be the earthly apostles of a dense Afrofuturist philosophy, but at heart the Arkestra are also a simple good-time band, determined to keep the party going in the cantina at the end of the universe. “We are Sun Ra’s band,” says Scott at the end, acknowledging their almighty creator. “We came from outer space to entertain you, I hope we’ve done so.” They have indeed – and they’ll probably still be doing so long after every mortal in this room is nothing but space dust.

Squaring The Circle – The Story Of Hipgnosis

Peter Watts
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Squaring The Circle – The Story Of Hipgnosis
Following Mark Blake’s authorised biography of Hipgnosis comes Anton Corbijn’s documentary about the pioneering art studio, the relationship between co-founders Aubrey “Po” Powell and Storm Thorgerson and their remarkable body of work for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, 10CC, Peter Gabriel, Wings ...

Following Mark Blake’s authorised biography of Hipgnosis comes Anton Corbijn’s documentary about the pioneering art studio, the relationship between co-founders Aubrey “Po” Powell and Storm Thorgerson and their remarkable body of work for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, 10CC, Peter Gabriel, Wings and more. This is Corbijn’s first feature documentary and as you’d expect given director and subject matter, he provides excellent pace and a strong visual identity, especially in the arty black-and-white set-pieces that bookend the film.

In the absence of Thorgerson – who died in 2013 – Po is the film’s main narrator. Typically garrulous, Po’s recollections are bolstered by archive interviews and footage, but Corbijn’s trump card is the group of rock heavyweights who deliver thoughtful and occasionally self-effacing reflections. Corbijn coaxes a Royal Flush of contributors: all three surviving members of Floyd, Page and Plant, Peter Gabriel and Paul McCartney.

Alongside these are several Hipgnosis photographers and designers plus assorted members of the Hipgnosis/Floyd set in both Cambridge and London – some familiar from another recent documentary, Have You Got It Yet? The Story Of Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd. Elsewhere, Peter Saville explores Hipgnosis’s work from a designer’s standpoint, while Noel Gallagher – an odd choice, perhaps – explains the importance of album art from a fan and aspiring musician’s perspective. These luminaries deliver a well-drilled run through the greatest hits of Hipgnosis anecdotage, from red footballs in the Sahara Desert to flying pigs at Battersea Power Station. These fabulous yarns are told with pace, so it’s impossible to get bored even if it’s the hundredth time you have heard how Hipgnosis set a man on fire for Wish You Were Here, rebuilt a New Orleans speakeasy for In Through The Out Door or flew a valuable art deco statue halfway up the Alps for a Wings greatest hit collection. It would have been interesting to hear a little more about Hipgnosis’s style from other artists and designers – including Corbijn himself given the stark differences and occasional similarities with his own work.

During this journey, we learn much about Storm and Po’s volatile relationship, both with each other and – in the case of Storm – with their clients. One of the best sequences is a super-cut featuring every interviewee giving their impressions of Thorgerson, which basically constitutes the various ways it is possible to say: “He was the rudest man I have ever met.” This slowly gives way to an outpouring of admiration and affection, led, somewhat surprisingly by Roger Waters, who fell out bitterly with his old friend and squash partner but, it seems, never stopped loving him. Make of that what you will.

The broader theme is that Hipgnosis were as rock and roll as the bands they worked with, having coming from the same place – both literally in the case of Floyd, but also politically and artistically. Hipgnosis’s rule-breaking attitude complemented the anti-establishment ethos of their bands, particularly after they left the acid-saturated London counterculture behind and wallowed in the endless possibilities presented by 70s mega-stardom. Hipgnosis even dissolved in rancour as egos and sheer exhaustion took hold, much as you’d expect from any great band. But with a back catalogue that includes Dark Side Of The Moon and Houses Of The Holy, they left an era-defining legacy.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You

Sharon O'Connell
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Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You
“Change is a constant and so I am constantly changing,” sings Will Oldham on the first track of his new album. It’s an existential truism that also works as a reminder to listeners – don’t expect any repeat performances. However securely coupled to country, folk and Southern Americana his ...

“Change is a constant and so I am constantly changing,” sings Will Oldham on the first track of his new album. It’s an existential truism that also works as a reminder to listeners – don’t expect any repeat performances. However securely coupled to country, folk and Southern Americana his music may be, Oldham, who adopted the Bonnie “Prince” Billy alias in 1998, is a protean modernist. So, alongside the album of Merle Haggard covers and multiple recordings with Emmett Kelly’s Cairo Gang, his résumé includes two shapeshifting LPs made with fellow “wolf” Matt Sweeney and last year’s collaboration with Bill Callahan on Blind Date Party, a spirited double that includes such unlikely covers as “Deacon Blue” and Billie Eilish’s “Wish You Were Gay”. Hook-ups with Tortoise, Baby Dee, Royal Trux and Björk also figure.

Those wanderings are as much about Oldham’s practice as his expression, though clearly the two are connected. That is, the idea of community, of collaborative music-making as a way of reaching out if you are, as he once said of himself, “constantly battling a tendency towards isolation”. To that effect, for Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You, he gathered together a bunch of local Louisville musicians for an in-the-room set that took around six weeks to record and must have been a joy after the pandemic-imposed remoteness of Blind Date Party. Initial sessions were recorded with bass and drums but those takes were scrapped, with the result that the songs have a more traditional feel (it may be worth remembering that drums are rare in Appalachian music). A rhythm section most likely seemed over-emphatic, given the songs’ fine bones and at times stately bearing. At their core is the musical heritage of Oldham’s home state and by extension, the Child ballads, but those are inspirations, not stone tablets; there’s communion with the usual crew of Cohen, Cash, Prine and David Berman, plus some pleasingly out-of-context flourishes.

It’s an intimate set suffused with love, understanding and skittish dark humour, that addresses on both universal and personal levels what it means to be alive in the 21st century. Though mortality and Earth’s devastation cast an apocalyptic shadow, Oldham is never morbid – his singular lyricism lightens the philosophical load and sweet melodies abound. “Like It Or Not” is the dulcet, Sunday school-ish opener, a reflection on purpose, the constancy of change and the levelling effect of our shared fate. Simple guitar chords and Oldham’s lilting, close-mic’d voice are matched with minimal mandolin and a soft backing vocal: “Everyone dies in the end so there’s nothing to hide,” he sings almost cheerfully, in an echo of the album’s title. “Like it or not, I’m singing destruction!/ Like it or not, I’m happy today!/Rise up and remember your golden instruction!/The end of the world isn’t going away.” It’s followed by “Behold! Be Held!”, which begins with what reads like a memo to his music-industry masters (“I want to make music all the time, not just in fits and skirmishes”) but unfolds as a(nother) relaxed reminder of “that gruelling death bell”, adding keyboards and some raffish saxophone. “Bananas” is a rapturous declaration of love that nods to Neil Young’s “Comes A Time” and features the operatically pure pipes of Dane Waters as well as a perfectly placed “shit”.

There’s a change of mood for “Blood Of The Wine”, which shifts between a canter and a slow waltz and features powerfully underplayed mandolin and strings. More dramatic is “Trees Of Hell”, a vivid and foreboding, gothic-country portrait of ecological destruction, collective culpability and nature’s revenge. Lightness returns with “Rise And Rule (She Was Born In Honolulu)”, a finger-picked number in the English traditional style that ruminates on ancestry and keeping the names of those we’ve lost alive, and closer “Good Morning, Popocatépetl”. Here, over gently lapping guitar and murmurous keys, Oldham harmonises with himself, vowing revenge for any wrong done to his friends. Taking his lyrics at face value is, of course, as unwise now as it ever was.

As the title suggests, Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You is an open, compassionate record with a fierce spirit, though it’s nothing like a guts spiller – that’s never been Oldham’s way. But it does have a purpose that goes beyond self-expression, which is maybe why it lands with such resounding sincerity and winning charm. As he writes on his Bandcamp page, “its songs and music are by and for people together. For listening together. Before it gets too late.”

Keith Richards on Tom Waits: “He’s a great bunch of guys!”

Michael Bonner
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Keith Richards on Tom Waits: “He’s a great bunch of guys!”
Keith Richards talks exclusively about his long friendship with Tom Waits in the new issue of Uncut - on sale now. A happy accident waiting to happen, the relationship between Tom Waits and Keith Richards began when Richards accepted a “flippant” suggestion by Waits to his record company that...

Keith Richards talks exclusively about his long friendship with Tom Waits in the new issue of Uncut – on sale now.

A happy accident waiting to happen, the relationship between Tom Waits and Keith Richards began when Richards accepted a “flippant” suggestion by Waits to his record company that they invite Keith to play on Rain Dogs in 1985. “I said, ‘What about Keith Richards?’” Waits later recalled. “I was just joking, but somebody went ahead and called him, and he said, ‘Yeah’. I said, ‘Now we’re really in trouble…’” Richards came in to the studio in New York, drank some Cutty Sark, and played on “Blind Love”, “Union Square” and “Big Black Mariah”. Waits standard line was that the Stones guitarist was working off a cash debt.

Since then, the pair have regularly collaborated and convened, notably on Waits’ Bone Machine, featuring their co-write “That Feel”, and Bad As Me. Their musical bond stems from a genuine and warm personal connection. Richards calls Waits “a real rhythm man”, while Waits sums up Richards in typically idiosyncratic style, likening him to “a frying pan made from one piece of metal. He can heat it up really high and it won’t crack, it just changes colour.”

In this extract, Richards recalls Waits’ unconventional studio techniques, how they write together and how Waits almost made a rare appearance at Willie Nelson‘s birthday concert earlier this year…

“[For Bone Machine], we somehow ended up in Tom’s studio/playroom in California, somewhere near Monterey. We played around and fooled around. We sort of fell into each other and started to strum along. I was impressed by the amount of weirdo instruments he had hanging around. It’s an amazing collection. I thought, ‘Hello!’ He had a Mellotron, like an early version of the synthesiser, which was loaded entirely with train noises. He had so many drums and a lot of percussion. I realised listening to his stuff that he had a lot of rhythms going on in his head and in his body, and when I saw the drums that made sense. I understood more about his music. He’s an African rhythm man, basically. It is all about the groove, and the groove is another word for the Grail. People search for it everywhere, and when you find it you hang on to it.

“How do you write with Tom? You actually sit back and say, ‘That’s good, Tom! And that’s good, too!’ Then you throw in an idea here and there. It’s fun to watch him work, and he’s very relaxed about it. The sessions I do with him, it’ s just him and me. He has a unique angle on just about everything, and it’s refreshing to hang around with him and join in. We kick around every subject under the sun and then we get in front of the microphone and do something.

“Tom’s music is so American. Probably more folk-American than anything, but somehow modern. He’s a weird mixture of stuff; a great bunch of guys!

“I spoke to him a couple of months ago. There was a point where he was going to be at the Willie Nelson birthday party concert [at Hollywood Bowl, in April]. I was looking forward to that, but it didn’t happen. We’re in touch. I have letters from him in his beautiful writing hanging on the wall…”

Read the full interview – plus our deep dive into the making of Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years – in the new issue of Uncut

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