Sometime in the summer of 2011, I spent a pretty amazing Saturday morning at a small recording studio in Green Lanes, North London. When I walked in, a hesitant but beautiful piano line was coming through the speakers, and one of the most emotionally compelling voices I’ve encountered in the past few years was singing a song which, it transpired, would be called “Never Ending Happening”.
Sad news reached us last night of the death of Arthur Penn, aged 88. Penn, of course, was the director of many great films including Bonnie And Clyde, Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks.
Here, by way of a tribute, I thought we'd run the transcript of an interview Damien Love did with Penn for Uncut. The interview took place in 2004, while Penn, then 81, was directing a Broadway revival of the play Sly Fox. Speaking in detail about his career, he shared his memories of working with Beatty, Brando, Newman and Hackman, as well as discussing the enduring legacy of his masterpiece, Bonnie And Clyde.
A few bits and pieces to mop up today, beginning with one last thankyou to everyone who has posted on the end of year blogs – or, come to that, who's commented on any of the things I’ve written in the past 12 months. It’s been a genuine pleasure to hear from almost all of you; and of course heartening to discover other people interested in the same music.
Over the next few days, we'll be running full transcripts of the judges' meeting to decide the winner of 2009's Uncut Music Award. Today we begin with their thouhts on the winner, Tinariwen's "Imidiwan: Companions".
A fair few interesting things in this week’s haul, not least a rare record from Plush, now billed as Liam Hayes & Plush, the complete Sly & The Family Stone set from Woodstock, a pretty wild mixtape from White Denim and, maybe best of all, the new album from Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver, this time operating with a bunch of other musicians under the name of Volcano Choir.
Following the success of 2003's inaugural compilation, the follow-up sways to the same delicious white-boy groove. The cream of '60s/'70s southern country is here—from Tony Joe White to Dan Penn—torn between smalltown escape and pining for home. White's "High Sheriff Of Calhoun Parish" drifts in on a haze of woodsmoke; Bobby Gentry's "Fancy" is stifling humidity personified; Townes Van Zandt gets alarmingly funky on the early "Black Widow Blues" (1966); Shirl Milete's "Big Country Blues" is a lyrical feast.
Set fire to anything. Set fire to the air," urged John Cale at the beginning of Music For A New Society. That 1982 masterpiece was the evisceration of a man whose fractured psyche was mirrored perfectly by songs arranged in jagged, improvisatory style; a knife held at the throat of sweetness. Now he reappears with his first album of songs for seven years, and his finest album in any genre for over two decades.
