All print copies come with a free CD – Total Blam-Blam!, featuring 15 of the month’s best new music including Khruangbin, Jessica Pratt, James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg, Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band, Arab Strap, Iron & Wine, Camera Obscura and more!
INSIDE THIS MONTH’S UNCUT
DAVID BOWIE: As a new boxset digs deep into Ziggy Stardust, we map the 1972 masterpiece’s secret history with the aid of key players
THE BLACK KEYS MEET BECK: Two decades after they first met, ‘the Beck Keys’ finally get it together in the studio – and tell us all about it!
ST VINCENT: Annie Clark squares up to her demons on her sublime seventh LP
RICHARD THOMPSON: The magic of Big Pink, adventures in the Sahara and imaginary conversations with Sandy Denny
KAMASI WASHINGTON: The reigning king of jazz saxophone: still on a mission to soothe the soul
MYRIAM GENDRON: The enigmatic French-Canadian on her powerful reckoning with loss and grief
AN AUDIENCE WITH… VINI REILLY: The Durutti Column’s reclusive guitar genius on Tony Wilson, Morrissey and kickabouts with Pat Nevin
THE MAKING OF “STORY OF THE BLUES” BY WAH!: How Pete Wylie’s “drinking song” developed into a huge anthem: “When I have an idea, I have it in Cinemascope!”
ALBUM BY ALBUM WITH IRON & WINE: The man behind the stage name, South Carolina songwriter Sam Beam, reviews his back catalogue
MY LIFE IN MUSIC WITH NEIL FINN: Everywhere he goes, the Crowded House chief takes these records with him: “A song doesn’t have to follow a narrative…”
REVIEWED: Jessica Pratt, Michael Head, Ian Hunter, Vampire Weekend, Pearl Jam, Neil Young, Broadcast, AC/DC, Alice Coltrane, Sister Rosetta Tharp, Microdisney, Arthur Russell, Skip Spence, Echo & The Bunnymen, Air and more
PLUS: Radiohead; Rosanne Cash on Lou Reed; Brett Anderson’s death songbook; Caroline Coon’s punk photos; Alice Russell; introducing Mint Mile…
ONE of my favourite moments of the new David Bowie boxset, covering the birth of Ziggy Stardust, is the demo of “Soul Love” recorded at Haddon Hall in November 1971. The tape has evidently been made for Mick Ronson and, after playing the song through, Bowie leaves a message for his co-conspirator. “I think we should work on that as a single, Mick,” he begins, going on to list ideas for arrangements he has in mind for the song, based around a “heavy, warm sax lineup”. Bowie’s ideas are clear, precise and detailed, revealing a lot about his ability to imagine how a finished song might sound. After this, there’s a pause, then Bowie signs off in the kind of cute parentese he might have used with his then-six-month-old son, Zowie. “Oo-kay? Right ’den.” In the space of just a few moments, we have heard from several different David Bowies: the performer, the composer, the friend. Three months after this charming, intimate recording, another David Bowie came into focus when Ziggy Stardust made his earthly debut on stage at the Toby Jug, a pub off the A3.
A lot has already been written about Bowie’s stellar trajectory during 1971/1972. But for our cover story, Peter Watts has unearthed what feels like a genuinely fresh tale, full of alternate versions, discarded recordings, different tracklistings and paths not taken. You might wonder, then, what might have been had Bowie ended up playing slide guitar on “Starman” – and how that might have looked during that July 6, 1972 Top Of The Pops performance…
There’s plenty more besides, of course. We bring you a hook-up between The Black Keys and Beck, St Vincent, Kamasi Washington, Richard Thompson, a rare encounter with Vini Reilly and I’m honoured to bring you the first major UK music magazine interview with Myriam Gendron, whose beautiful and impeccable songs have a calm, wise grasp of folk traditions.
I’m sure you’ll find a ton of other interesting things squirrelled away inside this month’s issue. So dig in and enjoy. And, as Bowie once said, keep it cool and easy.
John Cale has announced that his new album POPtical Illusion – a swift follow-up to 2023’s acclaimed Mercy – will be released by Double Six / Domino on June 14.
Watch a video for lead single “How We See The Light” below:
In contrast to Mercy’s big cast of collaborators, POPtical Illusion was played mostly by Cale in his Los Angeles studio. The album was co-produced by longtime artistic partner Nita Scott.
POPtical Illusion will be available on 2xLP, CD and digital formats. The Domino Mart pink & mint limited edition vinyl includes a 7″ featuring two exclusive tracks and a paper ‘objet’. Pre-order POPtical Illusionhere and peruse the artwork and tracklisting below:
Actor/director Samantha Morton has formed a new musical duo with producer and XL Recordings boss Richard Russell. Named Sam Morton, their debut album Daffodils & Dirt will be released by XL on June 14.
Watch Morton’s self-directed video for the single “Let’s Walk In The Night”, featuring Alabaster DePlume, below:
Daffodils & Dirt also features guest appearances by Laura Groves, Jack Peñate and Ali Campbell. You can pre-order the album here.
Sam Morton will play their biggest headline show to date at London’s ICA on June 20, tickets here. They will also perform at this year’s End Of The Road, among other festival appearances.
The making of Alan Hull as a songwriter was not sitting hunched over his guitar in his bedroom with only his introspection for company, but the three years he spent working as a trainee nurse in a Tyneside psychiatric institution.
“That’s what changed me and the things I was writing about,” he said of his time working with patients at the St Nicholas hospital in Gosforth in the late 1960s. “It made me think about a lot of things and made the songs go deeper.”
For a while the experience threatened his own equilibrium, but the troubled souls in his care also gave him a “million ideas” and taught him that there are many different ways of looking at the world. Coupled with his own poetic sensibility, a deep compassion for his fellow human beings, a scabrous wit and a righteous pride in his Geordie working-class roots, the result was a flood of songs written between 1966 and early 1970, before he formed Lindisfarne. The band then took its pick of the best, but only scratched the surface of a prodigious songbook that is said to have numbered more than 200 compositions.
Some of Hull’s songs from the period were haunting and ethereal. Others were raucous singalongs. There were tender love sonnets and songs about the long, dark nights of the soul. Compelling story-telling and angry protest took their place alongside hymns to the hell-raising pleasures of boozing and anthems of faith in humanity such as “Clear White Light”, a line from which gives this anthology its title.
Taken in the round, the demo recordings on Singing A Song In The Morning Light represent the early pencil drawings of an artist whom Jerry Gilbert a few years later in an interview in Sounds would describe as a “deep philosopher acutely aware of other people’s reactions and motives”. At the same time, Gilbert noted that Hull was also “a round-the-clock looner who revels in his own madness”. His ability to drink almost anyone in Newcastle under the table was legendary among Tyneside’s musical fraternity and it was not without good reason that the credits on Hull’s 1973 solo debut Pipe Dream read “vocals, guitar, piano, harmonium, Guinness, wine, tequila, Pernod”.
Lindisfarne took his compositions “Lady Eleanor” and “Run For Home” into the Top 10 of the UK singles chart, while other Hull songs recorded by the band such as “Fog On The Tyne” and “We Can Swing Together” have become much-loved folk-rock standards.
While maintaining a parallel solo career, he was still with Lindisfarne when his death from a heart attack in 1995 at the age of 50 robbed us of a unique voice. In line with the wishes expressed in his will, his ashes were scattered in the Tyne and mourners were instructed to wait for a day when the fog was rolling in.
Yet once the fog had cleared, a feeling lingered among his admirers that when the lists of the all-time great songwriters are being compiled, too often Hull is unfairly forgotten. His legacy has not been overlooked by his fellow songwriters, though. Take a look at the BBC’s 2021 documentary Lindisfarne’s Geordie Genius: The Alan Hull Story; presented by fellow Tynesider Sam Fender, in it Hull’s peers queue up to pay fulsome tribute. “I think he’s up there with Richard Thompson and Ray Davies and the really English songwriters,” opines Elvis Costello, who admits to having stolen shamelessly from him. Others to acknowledge Hull’s influence in the film include Dave Stewart, Sting, Mark Knopfler and Peter Gabriel.
The existence of the demo tapes Hull made before forming Lindisfarne has long been known, but over the years only a handful of tracks have seen the light of day on various anthologies and compilations, leaving a total of 77 of the 90 recordings here that have never previously been released.
By the time Hull recorded these demos he had tasted modest success with a Newcastle band called the Chosen Few, with whom he’d recorded two singles for Pye. But when other members of the band went on to form Skip Bifferty, Hull already had a family to support and more reliable employment was required – which was how in 1966 he came to enrol as a trainee psychiatric nurse. At the same time he took to playing solo in local folk clubs, which led to him recording demos of his songs at a studio in Wallsend established by David Wood, whom he knew from his beat group days.
When Hull couldn’t pay for the studio time, Wood became his manager and the pair set up their own folk club in Whitley Bay. One of the bands who played the club were Brethren, who saw themselves as a kind of Geordie version of The Band. They started backing Hull both onstage and on some of his demos, and the band swiftly evolved into Lindisfarne.
Among the demos recorded with Brethren here are ragged takes of future Lindisfarne hits “Lady Eleanor” (inspired by Hull’s obsessive reading of Edgar Allan Poe while on late shifts at the hospital) and “We Can Swing Together”, a rollicking tale of a drug bust at a party on which Hull and his future bandmates manage to sound like a folk-rock version of the Pink Fairies.
There are also a brace of tracks on which he’s backed by Skip Bifferty, including the contrived psych-pop weirdness of “Schizoid Revolution”, clearly inspired by Hull’s experiences as a psychiatric nurse, while various uncredited friends back him on the prog-tinged freak-out “Overstrung At 3am” and the period satire “Arthur McLean Morrison Jones”.
For the rest it’s mostly just Hull and his guitar or piano. There’s a gorgeous solo take on “Dingly Dell”, which became the title track of Lindisfarne’s third album, and a wondrous version of “Winter Song” which wouldn’t have sounded out of place if sung by Robin Williamson on The Incredible String Band’s first album.
Yet, among the previously unknown songs, what’s most striking is the wildly experimental breadth of his writing as he tries on different skins to see what fits. “This Land Is Cold” transplants Woody Guthrie from Oklahoma to Northumbria, while “Go Throw Your Life Away” worships at the shrine of Dylan, using almost the same chord sequence as “Like A Rolling Stone”, over which Hull sings about doing the football pools. Elsewhere there are adventures in giddy surrealism (“Conversation With A Chinese Cat”), memorable love songs (the Beatlesque “Love Lasts Forever”), aching piano ballads (“Spain 67”), political rants (“Better Town”) and gentle lullabies for his kids (“Go To Sleep”).
The performances are for the most part rough and sketchy – they were, after all, recorded merely as demos for publishing purposes and often committed to tape after several hours spent loosening his vocal cords in the pub. Yet at the same time it’s crystal clear that we’re listening to a songwriter learning how to harness his uniquely Geordie iteration of genius.
Pop music used to be the preserve of the autodidacts, the high-school dropouts who taught themselves a few chords on the guitar and worked things out instinctively. The odd classically trained figure would sometimes crop up here and there – a Mick Ronson scribbling string arrangements on the back of a cigarette packet, a Donald Fagen writing out complex extended chords for his session musicians to improvise over, a Sean Moore from the Manic Street Preachers playing the occasional trumpet flourish over a punk track – but, by and large, pop and rock musicians would eschew formal learning and play by ear.
But something odd seemed to happen around the millennium, when an entire sub-genre of classically trained art-rock figures started to emerge across the US and Canada, including the likes of Joanna Newsom, Sufjan Stevens, St Vincent, Owen Pallett, Janelle Monae, Caroline Polachek, Mary Lattimore, Oneohtrix Point Never, Andrew Bird and members of Vampire Weekend, Antony And The Johnsons, Dirty Projectors, The National, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Deerhoof, Battles, Midlake and many more. Where the art school had been the breeding ground for so much British rock music of the 20th century, the 21st saw the music conservatoire producing a peculiar brand of North American pop oddballs.
In many ways, you could see Julia Holter as the apotheosis of this trend. She studied classical piano and composition at the University of Michigan and CalArts, and still teaches at music schools and summer camps. She also makes ultra-literate, conceptual records that are confidently and knowingly recherché. Holter hates seeing music described as cerebral, but she certainly doesn’t seem to wear her highbrow references lightly – there have been albums inspired by Euripides’ Hippolytus and Colette’s Gigi; songs about the medieval romance between Heloise and Abelard; music based on field recordings from antique furniture stores and the temple songs of Buddhist monks; references to the poetry of Sappho and Frank O’Hara; songs inspired by the films of Alain Resnais and Andrei Tarkovsky. She has written a live soundtrack to a 1926 silent film about Joan of Arc with an opera chorus, and used John Cage’s methodology to create music from a 1920s church-club cookbook. She creates dark piano ruminations, upholstered with lavish string arrangements, with nods to everyone from Ligeti to Alice Coltrane. This is a long way from a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom.
Some musicians, from Status Quo to The Fall, Philip Glass to Tinariwen, largely just do one thing really well: they define their own peculiar genre, and do it over and over again. Julia Holter is not that kind of artist. There’s an eternal restlessness about her music, one that flits between different genres, different idioms, wildly varied and wilfully eccentric lineups. Her last album, 2018’s Aviary, was an epic trawl that took us through medieval plainsong, 17th-century madrigals, early classical music, field recordings and snatches of minimalism and free jazz. Such is Holter’s sense of musical confidence, and her control over these elements, that these references never sounded forced, they’re simply elements of her sonic arsenal.
Something In The Room She Moves – started under lockdown, and written and recorded either side of the birth of her daughter in 2020 – is even more varied than Aviary, but it seems to filter out some of Aviary’s transitional elements and instead take us on a voyage that alights on 10 very different and intense soundworlds. It is both poppier – in that there are some immediately appealing grooves – and more self-consciously experimental – in that there are arcane moments of sonic exploration – than anything Holter has ever done.
The poppier moments include “Spinning”, an insistent waltz, set to a thumping glam beat, with lyrics that turn Holter’s abstract poetry into the thrilling nonsense of early rock’n’roll. “What is delicious and what is omniscient/And what is the circular magic I’m visiting,” she coos, over a tangle of woodwind improvisation, fiddly fretless bass and strident synths. “Sun Girl” is wonderfully wobbly and disjointed – Holter conjures up an arresting, summery image by singing wistfully about a sun-obsessed girl who “dreams in golden yellow”, while bassist Dev Hoff sounds like Japan’s Mick Karn jamming with a West African drum troupe, while flautist Maia freaks out like Eric Dolphy over the top.
The title track is a terrific, slow-burning, Kate Bush-style ballad, where Holter recites seemingly abstract lyrics (“if there’s anything I know, I can intuit stucco”), over a warm sonic bath of electric piano, fretless bass, soaring flute and massed synths. “These Morning” is another dreamy, largely drumless ballad set to a complex tangle of Wurlitzer electric piano chords, which gets even better when it slows to an agonising pace as Holter repeats “just lie to me”.
But there are places where Holter is also at her most uncompromisingly experimental. “Meyou” is an a cappella piece where a choir sings a series of simple four-note plainsong-style riffs that alter very slightly each time, the singers constantly twisting the melody a little and employing an ever-widening palette of extended effects, howls and shrieks as the song progresses. “Ocean” is another wordless, self-consciously avant-garde piece, a slice of BBC Radiophonic Workshop-style experimentation where Chris Speed’s clarinet sounds like a swanee whistle slowly soaring over a patchwork of analogue synth drones. The hymn-like “Materia” sets Holter’s cut-glass voice over electric piano: “This version of love I can dwell on in the musing,” she sings, cryptically.
More often than not, the poppy and the experimental co-exist. “Who Brings Me” seems to fuse the Radiophonic-style abstraction – played live on flutes, bowed bass and Fender Rhodes – with a limpid poem of death. “Evening Mood” starts with a gorgeous kaleidoscope of synth voicings and wobbly electronic drones, before settling on a gentle ballad, romantic and unsettling, like Joni Mitchell backed by an ECM band. A woozy recollection of midsummer romance is interrupted by the refrain “daylight hits me” and a wonderfully wayward clarinet solo. Best of all might be “Talking To The Whisper”, a slow-burning seven-minute epic with a maddeningly off-kilter drum loop, a constant Hammond organ drone and a repeated double bass figure. “Love can be shattering,” Holter sings, before the song itself shatters into a Sun Ra-style freak out.
Experimental albums like this can sometimes be more laudable than enjoyable: easier to admire than to love. But there is something about Holter’s approach – her use of dynamics, her muted accompaniment, her sonic balance – that draws the listener in and keeps them beguiled. For a very Californian album, it draws comparisons with two peculiarly English releases – Kate Bush’s The Dreaming and Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom – like them, there is something about this music that is warming, aqueous, immersive and endlessly engaging.
David Bowie‘s 1972 masterpiece The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars lands as a deluxe 5CD and 1 Blu-Ray Audio set, called Rock ‘n’ Roll Star!, on June 14.
As a taster for the box, you can hear the “Ziggy Stardust” demo, recorded by Bowie on vocal and acoustic guitar in March 1971 at Haddon Hall in Beckenham.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! contains 29 unreleased tracks, covers early songwriting demos, recordings from The Arnold Corns, rehearsals at Haddon Hall, BBC sessions, singles, live performances, plus outtakes and alternative versions from the original album recording sessions, which have been newly mixed by original album producer, Ken Scott.
The audio-only Blu-Ray disc features the definitive 2012 remaster of the original Ziggy Stardust album in 96kHz/24bit PCM stereo, plus the album and additional mixes from 2003 in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 as well as the singles, outtakes and alternative versions in 96kHz/24 bit PCM stereo.
The Blu-Ray also includes a version of the Ziggy album called Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Come To Earth), taken from Trident Studio tapes dated December 15, 1971, which features an alternative running order and four songs that didn’t make the final album. This will also be available as a limited vinyl LP on April 20, 2024 for Record Store Day. In addition, there is a 1-LP version of Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! compiling the alternative takes and mixes.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! also contains two books. The first is an extensive 112-page book with detailed liner notes, memorabilia, contemporary reviews and articles, rare photographs, as well as brand-new notes and interviews. Accompanying the main book is a 36-page compiled reproduction of Bowie’s personal Ziggy-era notebooks.
And here’s the tracklisting!
*= PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED
Disc 1
1. So Long 60s (San Francisco Hotel recording) *
2. Hang On To Yourself (early demo) *
3. Lady Stardust (demo)
4. Ziggy Stardust (demo)
5. Star (Aka Stars) (demo) *
6. Soul Love (demo and DB spoken notes) *
7. Starman (demo 1 excerpt) *
8. Starman (demo 2) *
9. Moonage Daydream (The Arnold Corns version)
10. Hang On To Yourself (The Arnold Corns version)
11. Looking For A Friend (The Arnold Corns version – rough mix) *
12. Haddon Hall Rehearsals Segue: Ziggy Stardust / Holy Holy / Soul Love *
13. Star (Aka Stars) (Haddon Hall rehearsal) *
14. Sweet Head (Haddon Hall rehearsal) *
Disc 2
Sounds Of The 70s: John Peel
Session recorded on 11th January, 1972 and broadcast on 28th January, 1972
1. Ziggy Stardust *
2. Queen Bitch *
3. Waiting For The Man *
4. Lady Stardust *
Sounds Of The 70s: Bob Harris
Session recorded on 18th January, 1972 and broadcast on 7th February, 1972
5. Hang On To Yourself
6. Ziggy Stardust
7. Queen Bitch
8. Waiting For The Man
9. Five Years
Old Grey Whistle Test Performance
Filmed on 7th February, 1972 and broadcast on 8th February, 1972
except ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ which was not broadcast until 1982.
10. Oh! You Pretty Things (take 1)
11. Queen Bitch
12. Five Years
Disc 3
Sounds Of The 70s: John Peel
Session recorded on 16th May, 1972 and broadcast on 23rd May, 1972
1. White Light/White Heat
2. Moonage Daydream
3. Hang On To Yourself
4. Suffragette City
5. Ziggy Stardust
Johnnie Walker Lunchtime Show
Session recorded on 22nd May, 1972 and broadcast from 5th – 9th June, 1972
6. Starman
7. Space Oddity
8. Changes
9. Oh! You Pretty Things
Sounds Of The 70s: Bob Harris
Session recorded on 23rd May, 1972 and broadcast On 19th June, 1972
10. Andy Warhol
11. Lady Stardust
12. White Light/White Heat
13. Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide
Top Of The Pops Performance
Filmed on 5th July, 1972 and broadcast on 6th July, 1972
14. Starman
Disc 4
1. Round And Round
2. The Supermen (Ziggy session version)
3. Holy Holy (Ziggy session version)
4. Velvet Goldmine (Ziggy session outtake)
5. Starman (original single mix)
6. John, I’m Only Dancing (original single version)
Recorded Live At The Music Hall, Boston.
Recorded on 1st October, 1972
7. The Supermen
8. Changes
9. Life On Mars?
10. My Death *
11. John, I’m Only Dancing
Disc 5
1. Looking For A Friend (The Arnold Corns version 2022 mix) *
2. Hang On To Yourself (early Ziggy session take) *
3. Star (take 5 alternative version) *
4. Lady Stardust (take 1 alternative version) *
5. Shadow Man (Ziggy session version) *
6. The Supermen (Ziggy session version 2023 Mix) *
7. Holy Holy (Ziggy session version alternative mix) *
8. Round And Round (alternative mix)
9. It’s Gonna Rain Again (Ziggy session outtake) *
10. Looking For A Friend (Ziggy session version) *
The five track EP coincides with both World Poetry Day and yesterday’s Spring equinox [March 20].
You can hear “Folk Song” from the EP below.
“Blossom is an extraordinary emotional milestone every year, a moment of illumination and resurgence after the dark winter months,” says Armitage. “Increasingly, we have seen that poetry is resonating with people from across the generations and from many different walks of life, not least when it shades into musical territory and performance. As such, this feels like the right project at the right time, designed to amplify the joy of blossom, encourage people all over the country to feel inspired by nature’s resilience, and to welcome the coming of spring.”
Apart from Armitage, LYR comprise singer-songwriter Richard Walters and multi-instrumentalist and producer Patrick J Pearson.
The Blossomise EP is available to buy or stream on digital platforms here.
LYR will perform Blossomise on a limited tour of four key cities (Plymouth, Coventry, Manchester and Newcastle) that are hosting a variety of creative blossom inspired events as part of the conservation charity’s Blossom Week, April 20 – 28, 2024.
Tickets for the tour are on-sale on the National Trust’s website today. The currently confirmed LYR Blossomiseperformance dates are:
Saturday, April 20 – Plymouth, Market Hall
Sunday, April 21 – Coventry, Charterhouse
Saturday, April 27 – Greater Manchester, Quarry Bank
Back in November, Alan Sparhawk played an emotional set in Utrecht’s Jacobikerk as part of Le Guess Who? festival – his first European show since the death of his wife and Low bandmate Mimi Parker.
Backed by his son Cyrus on bass, Owen Mahon on drums and Dave Carroll (of Trampled By Turtles) on electric banjo, Sparhawk combined songs destined for a future solo album with jams by his and Cyrus’s funk sideline, Derecho Rhythm Section.
Watch Sparhawk and band play “Get High”, “Salvation”, “Impossible Day” and “Want It Back” below:
“When we founded the group,” Can’s Irmin Schmidt once confided to Uncut, “we didn’t know where we will go.” As it turned out, they went places no other band has been, before or since. The Köln outfit were one of the most unique, influential and exhilarating groups in rock, as evidenced by their ongoing programme of live releases from the mid-1970s.
The latest, Live In Paris 1973, is the first in the series to feature the inimitable presence of vocalist Damo Suzuki, who sadly passed away last month, leaving Schmidt as the last surviving member of that 1973 line-up.
The keyboardist has long since been the curator of Can’s legacy, co-authoring 2018’s All Gates Open: The Story Of Can with sometime Uncut writer Rob Young. But he’s also written a great deal of music outside Can, including numerous film and TV soundtracks and an opera based on Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast.
So, what do you want to ask a free-rock titan? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Monday (March 25) and Irmin will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.
Whatever you say they are, that’s what they’re not. It’s a natural impulse of any band who have experienced sudden acclaim, and the reductive hype that goes with it, to kick hard against it creatively. Sometimes that’s to the point of commercial self-harm. So when Yard Act’s follow-up to their 2022 debut, the Mercury-nominated, The Overload, is peppered with sardonic self-referential asides, you’re immediately struck by the suspicion that this is their stab at leaving every party that would have them as members. The disagreeable second album, if you will.
“I was hot property once but now the promise has gone,” James Smith sneers on opening track “An Illusion”, and the inward focus continues on the biz-baiting anti-anthem “We Make Hits” (“and if this isn’t a hit, we’ll say it’s ironic”). As if his spiritual uncle and namesake Mark E has been reborn as an acolyte of the Arctic Monkeys, Smith relates, “We know there’s no surprising/Anyone with eyes and ears round here that we’re all gonna sink.”
That’s one of several such barbs, either side of Smith witheringly referring to his own band as “post-punk’s latest poster boys” who “ride on the coattails of the dead”. Yet there remains a vim and vigour about their sound that belies such lyrical pessimism. They’re still enjoying themselves on this rabble-rousing two-fingers to expectations, even if they can’t shake their inner critics: “We just wanna have some fun before we’re sunk/And if that’s the attitude you exude then you know you’re really punk!”
Despite such apparent preoccupation with their own impending demise, Smith insists that during the process of creating Where’s My Utopia?, they managed to forget about “what dickheads will make of album two” (as they put it later on this album), allowing them to make the kind of sounds they always had in their heads but didn’t feel confident enough to on The Overload. The styles hopscotch freely, from the infectious urchin funk of “Dream Job” (think LCD Soundsystem backed by the Blockheads) through the blend of sprechsegang, dub, noise-rock and hip-hop found on “Fizzy Fish”, to the hardcore bluster that closes “Grifter’s Grief” and the echoes of Go-Go’s-style pop evoked by Katy J Pearson’s contribution to “When The Laughter Stops”.
The contrasts are heightened by the production help of Gorillaz drummer Remi Kabaka Jr, and the frequent stylistic handbrake turns also reflect the bipolar mood swings of some tracks and the meandering tales they tell. “Down By The Stream”’s story of teenage misadventure with “cherry cola can bongs” is set to clumsily ebullient, whooping Northern hip-hop, as if Cypress Hill had been relocated to Billinge Lump, but Smith’s admission of bullying triggers a stark swerve into sparse ambient noise and a flashback, where he broods about how he would brutally intimidate his own son if he bullied anyone – thereby continuing the cycle of abuse, of course.
Similarly digressive, in an equally compelling way, is the seven-minute “Blackpool Illuminations”. To sparse acoustic backing, Smith’s monologue about a childhood mishap in a Blackpool B&B segues into a more evocative meditation on teenage wanderlust, gracefully accompanied by subtle strings and bucolic woodwind, which then prove just as apt when the scene turns uncomfortably psychedelic as “the pill kicks in” for our young adventurers.
They can’t allow us to daydream for too long, though: suddenly the fourth wall cracks open, the symphony drops out and a cynical-sounding observer asks, “Are you making this up?” As the backdrop switches to woozy, funereal jazz, Smith explains, “Well, some of it, yeah… I didn’t want to burden anyone with the truth.” Whether it’s fact, fiction or more likely a mixture of both, over gentle folktronica he concludes, in answer to the album title, “I don’t need no Utopia, because the unknown’s the only hope for a brighter future.”
What that holds is hard to say after this unpredictable, freewheeling affair. It may not be fuelled by as many immediate hooks and gnarly grooves as The Overloa, but it’s a bold progression both musically and lyrically. So whether they like it or not, “post-punk’s latest poster boys” might be staying on our walls a while yet.
For a while there Sheer Mag were the last great American indie band, releasing singles, EPs, compilations and at least two classic albums on their own shoestring Wilsun RC imprint based out of Fishtown, Philadelphia. But it’s only fitting that they finally signed on the dotted line with Jack White’s Third Man Records.
Though they’re not quite ready for the label’s hand-crafted, lathe-cut, heavyweight vinyl treatment – the quintessential Sheer Mag format you feel might still be a busted-up, unspooled old cassette you find at the side of the road outside a gas station somewhere on I-10 – you could say that Sheer Mag are the true spiritual heirs of The White Stripes.
If the Stripes’ artfully homespun, high-concept primitivism was the perfect expression of the USA’s garage band soul at the turn of the century, then the Philly quartet are the modern equivalent. Both the Mag and the Stripes are bands that have thrived on limitations. In fact, what mono was for Jack and Meg, you might say compression is for Sheer Mag. Look at the wave form for “Eat It Or Beat It”, the second track on Playing Favorites, and it’s as solidly brickwalled as the Eastern State Penitentary – none of the rich dynamic range that’s come into favour since the end of the CD-era loudness wars. It’s the sound of late-night AM radio sometime in the late 1970s/early ’80s, where hard rock, power pop, country, new wave, disco and even a little prog have been impacted together into diamond-hard nuggets consisting of pop hooks, gutbucket rock’n’roll and demented, defiant joy.
It’s part of Sheer Mag’s irresistible charm that they continue to find thrilling new ways of traversing the same dirt track chicanes of verse, chorus, bridge and solo. In fact Hart and Kyle Seely, the engine room and writers of Sheer Mag’s tunes might be the most smartest pop formalists this side of Jack Antonoff. Playing Favorites kicks off with the title track, another timeless anthem to chasing the domestic blues away, packing up the van and searching for kicks on the road. For all Tina Halladay’s shredded vocals – she’s Janis Joplin, straining to make herself heard over an XF-84H Thunderscreech – it’s an immaculate confection, rivalling New Zealand’s power-pop supremos The Beths in the elegant ingenuity of its construction.
The album supposedly began life as an attempt at a disco EP – albeit the kind of dancehall where the floor comes alive with shots of jack rather than poppers – and though Sheer Mag aren’t quite ready for their string section, you can hear some of the Philly roots of disco on “All Lined Up”, which makes a metaphysical conceit worthy of Marvell out of the ricochet of pool balls across a desolate poolhall. “This world’s cold, and we’re alone/But we’re not just drifting through outer space,” croons Halliday hopefully. “We got shot at an angle/To the deepest pocket yet made”. At times Sheer Mag are miraculous pop hustlers, still pulling off the most absurd trick shots on the scuffed three yards of stained green baize.
Which isn’t to say that they’re not above a little experiment. In the past Sheer Mag may have viewed the four-minute mark with the same wariness as the Ramones or Roger Bannister, but here we have “Mechanical Garden”, clocking in at an epic 5:55, comprising a ZZ Top boogie prelude, an orchestral interlude and some arpeggios that might have found a home on Rush’s Moving Pictures, before resolving into a disco strut worthy of Hall & Oates. What’s more it features guest shredding from Tuareg guitar master Mdou Moctar.
But the most intriguing departure on Playing Favourites might be the moments when they turn down the dial from 11 for a moment. “Tea On The Kettle” was apparently inspired by the band’s love of Essex post-psych mavericks the Cleaners From Venus. “Someday when we can find more than pennies and dimes, we’ll go somewhere gentle,” sings Tina with beguiling tenderness, like she’s dusting herself down after battling through another force 10 hurricane. “Baby, with you by my side it’s a whole new ball game.” At times like this it feels like Sheer Mag are only just getting started.
Three years ago, the Delhi-born, US-based composer Arushi Jain quit her comfortable tech job in San Francisco and headed to New York to become an artist full-time. Since then, it’s not gone too badly. Jain, who styles herself the ‘Modular Princess’ after her musical practice, released Under The Lilac Sky in 2021, a beautiful meditation rooted in the Indian classical tradition that also veers into seriously mind-expanding psychedelia. The album fell victim to the pandemic but has since come to resonate with a growing audience who appreciate transportive synthesiser jams, including James Holden, Arooj Aftab, Floating Points and Suzanne Ciani.
“I think I’m finally over ‘San Francisco Arushi’ and entering a different version of me that’s craving human connection a bit more,” says Jain, 30, from her Brooklyn apartment. “In San Francisco you had to make things happen because there wasn’t much going on. In New York I want to meet more artists and write with them.”
Jain was taught classical music at a number of prestigious schools in India before she moved to the Bay Area at 18 to study computer science at Stanford University (“the only reason I was in the US was to become a software person,” she says). While there, she discovered computer synthesis at the Center For Computer Research In Music And Acoustics. “I took a few classes and was like, this is so empowering – you can just build a thing that you think of. And I carried that energy of making it happen for yourself into other aspects of my life.”
A major part of Jain’s New York chapter has been the realisation of her second album, Delight. It’s another sublime collection of richly textured electronics, this time laced with saxophone, flute and her voice – “I wanted a new sound palette that was a little more organic and acoustic, not just generated” – and based entirely on the Bageshri raag. A raag is a melodic framework used in Indian classical music, and Bageshri – essentially about love – is one Jain felt impelled to explore. “I was listening to it a lot and playing it on the piano and it really spoke to me. It’s a beautiful raag, very captivating. It’s about being in love, but it doesn’t have to be a person. It could be an experience, a meditation, a ritual, a foundation you build for yourself. It’s like something that you want to be around all the time, someone or something who replenishes and nourishes you.”
On Delight, Jain uses the raag to search for the “state of flow” she feels while writing – a process somewhat hampered by a repetitive strain injury that restricts playing. “There are certain parts of the creative process that I have briefly experienced that I adore, and I’m committed to finding that again,” she says. “I use a lot of my logic brain and rational brain in the act of composing, but the goal is to eventually go from the logic to the feeling, because that’s when you realise what’s working.”
Jain also hosts a monthly show on NTS radio and runs a label, both called Ghrunghru, which focus on new experimental electronic music emanating from the South Asian diaspora. “The reason I started writing this music is because I was feeling a lot of dissonance within myself around what I was doing so far from home,” she says. “That experience of taking multiple worlds of yours and putting them together is something that all immigrants have to do. Under The Lilac Sky helped me glue the different parts of me together.”
I remember my mom giving me money to go grocery shopping and I stopped at the record store first and bought <Exile…> – took that off the top and then spent the rest of the money on food. And, yeah, I still listen to it. There’s so many songs on it that you’re always discovering a different song. I like that it’s kinda murky-sounding, there’s something magical about it. I didn’t really know anything about [the legend of its making] as a kid. It was just the record itself, the sound. They seemed to be taking off, from surviving the ’60s and then suddenly jumping into something that I really liked. Their guitar-playing inspired me, Mick Taylor and Keith Richards together.
THE STOOGES
The Stooges
ELEKTRA, 1969
When I was maybe 11 or 12, I got the Rolling Stone Record Guide, and I would try to collect all the albums that had five stars. I definitely discovered a lot of stuff through that, like The Velvet Underground. I dunno if The Stooges got five stars, but somehow I got onto their first album. Something about it really spoke to me, especially the guitar sound. That inspired me, as a direction, to try to emulate it. I played with Ron Asheton a lot, and it was cool to learn how to play The Stooges’ songs the right way. I see people play ’em the wrong way and it just doesn’t sound right. There’s a lot of subtlety that people bulldoze over, usually.
EATER
The Album
THE LABEL, 1977
The record store that sold punk and new wave stuff, the owner would go to England and buy cut-outs, so there’d be 50 copies of the Eater album when I was getting into punk. I would just buy anything that was punk and I somehow really latched on to that. I’d heard that the drummer was 14, and I was 14 or 15 when I heard it, so I related to that immediately. I also liked the fact they would speed up covers, which became a big thing in punk. They did “I’m Eighteen” by Alice Cooper, but made it “Fifteen” and sped it up a lot. I thought that was cool. I just liked the sound of it – it was like the music punk Velvet Underground fans would make, who are young.
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
Junkyard
4AD, 1982
The Birthday Party was a big band for me, coming out of hardcore. It seemed like the hardcore scene had kinda died, and we’re all looking for some new kind of music that has the same energy. That’s where The Birthday Party came in, and Junkyard was the album that I had. I remember my roommate at college really hated it, which I thought was good. He liked The Doors and he would go mental when I played The Birthday Party. So of course that appealed to me – any music that I liked that would annoy other people, I would play more. I was really into [Nick Cave] back then. I even would try to copy his dress sense and hair and stuff. He was like my fashion icon in college.
WIPERS
Over The Edge
TRAP, 1983
I decided that I was going to switch [from drums] to guitar to form a band, because I didn’t like any guitar players around. The sound I heard for guitar, nobody around my town was playing like that, so I decided I had to try it. Gerard Cosloy, who runs Matador, went to school with me – he was the manager of my hardcore band at the time, Deep Wound. And he told me about The Wipers. I hadn’t heard of it until I was in college and started playing guitar, and that soon became one of my main things I was trying to copy when I was learning guitar, so it was a big influence on my guitar playing. Not that I could copy it, but I tried.
TASTE
On The Boards
POLYDOR, 1970
I got into that way later, probably around [Dinosaur Jr’s 1994 album] <Without A Sound>. My bass player at the time Mike Johnson turned me on to Taste and Rory Gallagher, and that album I thought was really amazing. It really spoke to me and re-inspired me. He [Gallagher] just played differently than other people. His leads went weird places, so it caught my ear because it didn’t sound like something I would play, or anyone would play. Where he was going on the guitar was cool – it was just different-sounding and very intense and immediate. There’s some great songs on the first Taste album, but the second one is good all the way through.
GUIDED BY VOICES
Bee Thousand
SCAT, 1994
That was something my brother actually turned me on to. He had seen Guided By Voices and I was feeling very kinda jaded on the whole music scene at the time. Knowing that this band’s older than me and they seem more enthusiastic and the whole album is so awesome, it definitely gave me a kick. Even when they’re in the basement, it was as if they were in a big studio. Everything about it, they were really going for it. We just played with them in Dayton – they did a 40th anniversary or something. That was pretty cool, to play with them in their hometown. They’ve always had a lot of friends hanging around, so it was cool seeing all their drinking buddies, the local crew.
RON WOOD
I’ve Got My Own Album To Do
WARNER MUSIC, 1974
It’s always been a favourite of mine. I had all these Stones albums, and I was looking for more Stones, anything, and I found out about this Ron Wood album. Mick and Keith are on there, and it’s great to hear Ron and Keith singing together – I wish they would do that more often. When I was on Warners, my A&R man asked me if I wanted to re-release anything. I said, “Oh yeah, it’d be cool if you guys would put out the Ron Wood album on CD.” And when they did, they sent it to Jay Farrar, who ended up covering one of the songs on the first Son Volt album. At one point, I got to tell Ron Wood that, so that was exciting.
The news was confirmed by his family in a statement, who said: “We are devastated to announce that our wonderful husband and father has passed away peacefully at home, with his family by his side.”
Harley, who had been receiving cancer treatment, had cancelled a run of shows last year, writing on his website that it was a “heartbreaking” decision.
“It’s tiresome, and tiring. But the fight is on… And thankfully the cursed intruder is not affecting the voice. I sing and play most evenings.”
His family said Harley had “passed away peacefully at home”, adding: “We know he will be desperately missed by people all over the world.”
“Whoever you know him as, his heart exuded only core elements. Passion, kindness, generosity. And much more, in abundance,” his wife Dorothy and children Kerr and Greta wrote in a statement.
“The birdsong from his woodland that he loved so much was singing for him. His home has been filled with the sounds and laughter of his four grandchildren.”
Born Stephen Nice in south London in 1951, he worked as a journalist on the regional newspapers during the early 1970s.
He formed Cockney Rebel in 1972 with Jean-Paul Crocker, Stuart Elliott, Paul Jeffreys and Milton Reame-James. Their debut album The Human Menagerie was followed by two hit singles, “Judy Teen” and “Mr. Soft”, but the band split.
Harley reformed the band with a new line-up, including Elliott, Jim Cregan, Duncan Mackay and George Ford, and renamed them Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel.
Their first single “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)“, was a UK Number One in 1975; it was followed by their Best Years of Our Lives album that same year.
The band enjoyed one final Top 10 hit – a cover of The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” – before Harley set off on a solo career, including two albums in the late 1970s,Hobo With A Grin and The Candidate.
During the ’80s, he had a Top 10 duet with Sarah Brightman on the title song of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom Of The Opera“.
He continued as a solo artist and also with a revived line-up of Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. Harley also presented the BBC Radio 2 show Sounds Of The 70s from 1999 to 2008.
Taken from the soundtrack to Gary Hustwit‘s upcoming documentary, Eno, this contemplative piece finds Eno in rare, reflective mood, referencing early influences like Ketty Lester, Dee Clark and Bobby Vee and recalling childhood experiences.
Eno – the official soundtrack to the film will be released by UMR on April 19. The film receives its UK premier at London’s Barbican the following day.
Mark Knopfler has released an all-star version of “Going Home (Theme From Local Hero” under the name Mark Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes, in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America.
It features over 60 big-name musicians, including Jeff Beck (in the final recording he made before he died last year), David Gilmour, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Ringo Starr, Joan Armatrading, Eric Clapton, Ron Wood, Joan Jett, Duane Eddy, Hank Marvin, Nile Rodgers, Brian May, Sting, Tony Iommi, Joe Walsh and many more.
“I really had no idea that it was going to be like this,” says Knopfler. “Before I knew where I was, Pete Townshend had come into my studio armed with a guitar and an amp. And that first Pete power chord… man, I tell you. We were in that territory, and it was just fantastic. And it went on from there. Eric [Clapton] came in, played great, just one tasty lick after another. Then Jeff Beck’s contribution arrived and that was spellbinding. I think what we’ve had is an embarrassment of riches, really.”
You can download the single here. It is also available on CD, 12″ vinyl with etched B-side, and deluxe CD+Blu-Ray, all with artwork by Peter Blake.
Strange to think about it in these terms now that Johnny Marr is a solo artist and Morrissey is doing his best to please only himself; after the lawsuits and the contractual revelations. Still: the driving principle and greatest strength of The Smiths was always unity – the unique quality they had as a band.
Forty years on from the release of their debut album, it’s that which we celebrate with our the 172-page Definitive Edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to The Smiths. As Mike Joyce writes in his introduction to the magazine, the band had a quality which remained mysterious even to those closest to it.
“The music we were playing was so different, and it stayed like that throughout the Smiths’ career,” Mike says. “It wasn’t punk or reggae or vaudeville, or something with big anthemic tunes but at the same time it was all of that. The band was never about the four individuals. You could say the same about the Beatles or the Stones: how did it work? Why did it work? It just happened that way, as a unit. What we were creating was so magical and diverse it drew us all in.”
As you’ll read in the magazine or in the limited edition hardbackwith an exclusive cover that you can also get from us,this chemistry wasn’t short-lived. Collected here are incisive and in-depth reviews of all the band’s albums, and a selection of the best interviews from the archives. Not only that, we follow the band’s chief instigators into their solo careers, to find Johnny Marr an occasionally mystical maker of stirring electro-rock and Morrissey satiating his constituency with an increasingly robust view of current events. In the new eight-page foldout miscellany timeline, meanwhile, you’ll find stats, maps, and insightful miscellany.
The past year has seen the passing of Andy Rourke, and it’s testimony to him and abiding ties of what The Smiths created together that Johnny Marr and Morrissey have both been of one mind in expressing their sadness and gratitude for his life. Marr knew Rourke as a close friend. Morrissey, as an admiring bandmate: “nothing that he played had been played by someone else,” he wrote.
It’s the same unique quality that Mike Joyce praises in the band’s music as a whole in his introduction to the magazine. “What we did is bigger than us as individuals,” he says. “We changed the perception of what indie bands were supposed to be.”
Myriam Gendron has announced details of her third album.
The follow-up to Not So Deep As A Well(2014) andMa délire –Songs of love, lost & found (2021), Mayday will be released on May 10 via Thrill Jockey & Feeding Tube.
In the meantime, Gendron has shared some new music from the album. You can hear “Long Way Home” below:
Mayday finds Gendron accompanied by the guitarist Marisa Anderson and drummer Jim White, as well as Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lavoie, Bill Nace (Body/Head) and saxophonist Zoh Amba.
The tracklisting for Mayday is:
There Is No East Or West
Long Way Home
Terres brûlées
Dorothy’s Blues
La Luz
La belle Françoise (pour Sylvie)
Lully Lullay
Look Down That Lonesome Road
Quand j’étais jeune et belle
Berceuse
Gendron is also touring America this spring:
March 22 – Knoxville, TN – Big Ears Festival April 2 – Minneapolis, MN – The Cedar April 4 – Rock Island, IL – Rozz Tox April 5 – Milwaukee, WI – Wilson Center April 6 – Chicago, IL – Judson & Moore April 26 – Williamstown, MA – Clark Art Institute May 16 – New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge * May 17 – Keene, NH – Thing in the Spring * May18 – Montréal, QC – Lion d’Or * May 20 – Portland, OR – Holocene * May 22 – Seattle, WA – Rabbit Box * May 23 – Vancouver, BC – St. James Community Square * May 24 – San Diego, CA – The Loft * May 25 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon * May 26 – Mill Valley, CA – Sweetwater Music Hall *
