A trailer for the last ever episode of Breaking Bad has been released. Scroll down to watch it.
"All bad things come to an end," the minute-long clip teases, giving very little away about the how the show might sign off. The final episode, titled "Felina", will air on US network AMC this Sunday (September 29) before being made available to UK Netflix subscribers shortly afterwards.
Star Bryan Cranston has recently promised that the show's finale is "very unapologetic and exciting". His co-star Aaron Paul previously told viewers: "You guys are gonna shit your pants!"
Breaking Bad collected the 'Outstanding Drama Series' prize at the Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday night [September 22] and Anna Gunn took home the trophy for 'Supporting Actress In A Drama Series'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B98x6Z-zgiE
A trailer for the last ever episode of Breaking Bad has been released. Scroll down to watch it.
“All bad things come to an end,” the minute-long clip teases, giving very little away about the how the show might sign off. The final episode, titled “Felina“, will air on US network AMC this Sunday (September 29) before being made available to UK Netflix subscribers shortly afterwards.
Star Bryan Cranston has recently promised that the show’s finale is “very unapologetic and exciting”. His co-star Aaron Paul previously told viewers: “You guys are gonna shit your pants!”
Breaking Bad collected the ‘Outstanding Drama Series’ prize at the Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday night [September 22] and Anna Gunn took home the trophy for ‘Supporting Actress In A Drama Series’.
Paul McCartney has revealed the artwork to his latest solo album, New.
The image, which you can see above, will accompany McCartney's album when it is released on October 14.
McCartney debuted three new songs during a concert in Las Vegas on Saturday [September 21]. You can watch footage here.
Th...
Paul McCartney has revealed the artwork to his latest solo album, New.
The image, which you can see above, will accompany McCartney’s album when it is released on October 14.
McCartney debuted three new songs during a concert in Las Vegas on Saturday [September 21]. You can watch footage here.
Happy Mondays have announced details of a UK tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their second album, Bummed.
The Mondays will play the 1988 LP in full at a number of gigs to take place this November and December, kicking off with a show at Canterbury Kings Hall on November 21 and wrapping up ...
Happy Mondays have announced details of a UK tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their second album, Bummed.
The Mondays will play the 1988 LP in full at a number of gigs to take place this November and December, kicking off with a show at Canterbury Kings Hall on November 21 and wrapping up with a gig at Bristol O2 Academy on December 14. The band reformed with their full original line-up for the first time in over 19 years in 2012, although Bez later announced that he wouldn’t be performing with the band on tour, but would instead act as compere and DJ at the shows.
They have reunited twice before, most recently in 2004, but without founding members Mark Day, Paul Davis and Paul Ryder. Paul had sworn he wanted nothing to do with the band again when they split for a second time in 2000. In 2012, meanwhile, the Mondays confirmed that they were working on a new album – which would be the first new material from the original line-up since 1992’s …Yes Please! – but the LP has yet been released.
Mick Jagger is set to become a great-grandfather for the first time, according to reports.
The Daily Mirror says that Jagger's granddaughter Assisi, aged 21, is expecting her first child with her boyfriend Alex. According to sources, the 70-year-old singer is pleased at the news, although his daug...
Mick Jagger is set to become a great-grandfather for the first time, according to reports.
The Daily Mirror says that Jagger’s granddaughter Assisi, aged 21, is expecting her first child with her boyfriend Alex. According to sources, the 70-year-old singer is pleased at the news, although his daughter Jade, 42, is ‘expecting some ribbing’ at becoming a grandmother.
“She and Alex are thrilled and broke the news to their immediate families last week,” they said. “Jade was a little taken aback at first, not least because it means she will be a grandmother by the age of 42. She’s expecting some ribbing from her showbiz pals.”
They added: “Mick is delighted and has no qualms about being a great-grandfather. He’s been joking about becoming a great, great, granddad and still performing!” Jagger has seven children from four relationships, with his daughters Karis and Jade coming from his relationships with Marsha Hunt and Bianca Jagger respectively. He and Jerry Hall have four children together – Elizabeth, James, Georgia and Gabriel – while his youngest child, 14-year-old son Lucas, is from his relationship with Brazilian TV presenter Luciana Gimenez.
Earlier this month, The Rolling Stones confirmed plans to release their Hyde Park gig on DVD and Blu-Ray in November.
Aussie psych-rockers make a splash with their tightest album yet. Tame, it ain't...
Pond for the last couple of years has been the noise Jay Watson and Nick Allbrook make with likeminded confederates when they aren’t touring with Tame Impala. This particular arrangement has made it sometimes seem like Pond are a Tame Impala spin-off, a side project, a kind of hobby, Jay and Nick and their mates going into the studio as the mood vaguely takes them, the equivalent of some blokes retreating to a garden shed to potter aimlessly about, smoke some weed, goof off.
There’s a possibility this perception will even survive Nick’s recent departure from Tame Impala, although it would continually rather wrong-headedly ignore the fact that Pond have a thriving history of their own that goes back to Nick’s early band, Mink Mussel Creek, who also featured a pre-Impala Kevin Parker and includes also four previous albums, Psychedelic Mango (2009), Corridors Of Blissterday (2009), Frond (2010) and last year’s Beards, Wives, Denim, alongside Japandroids’ Celebration Rock the most exultant rock album of 2012.
At one point it seemed there might be two more Pond albums this year, the other being the splendidly-titled Man, It Feels Like Space Again, whose songs were written first but won’t now be recorded until September, the band’s enthusiasm for the newer material evidently making Hobo Rocket a more immediate priority. Beards, Wives, Denim was a sometimes anarchic sprawl in which explosive elements of the MC5, Stooges, Hendrix, early Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin were flung into a highly combustible mix. It was sexy, loud, debauched, brash and mind-blowing. The terrific Hobo Rocket has many of the admirable assets that made BWD great, but there’s a sense in the album’s overall finesse that things as far as possible are being taken perhaps a little more seriously than hitherto. Which is not to say Pond have become suddenly as serious as monks, a glum-fest in brooding cloisters, but merely to acknowledge Hobo Rocket’s greater focus, concentration and concision. At seven tracks, it’s half the length of BWD, which was exhausting enough in parts to make you feel like you’d been subjected to a vigorous waterboarding.
Hobo Rocket is more like a series of tracks that go off like target-specific drone strikes than BWD’s wider field of fire, and its ballistic spray of passably random blasts, salvoes and window-shattering detonations. They are still capable of making a wonderfully infernal din, but there’s conspicuously less errant cacophony here, not so much mucking about. “Whatever Happened To The Million Heads Collide” starts the album spectacularly. There’s a lulling wash of synthesisers and what sounds like something scratching beneath the floorboards, before Joe Ryan’s bass walks into the room with a Bo Diddley swagger accompanied by war drums and sibilant vocal effects that recall the way Kevin Parker’s whispering on “Be Above It”, the opening cut on Tame Impala’s Lonerism, became part of the song’s rhythm track. You may also be reminded of something like Pink Floyd’s “Pow R. Toc H.”
This is heavy stuff, man, and things get heavier still on “Xanman” (featured on this month’s free CD), “Aloneaflameaflower” and “Giant Tortoise”, with their blistered layers of guitars, synthesisers, subatomic rhythm tracks and Nick sounding here and there like something brightly feathered making a racket in a rain forest. The dreamy “Oh Dharma” deviates from this pummelling template, introducing a mood of lysergic nostalgia, the kind of poignant wistfulness you might associate with Barrett-era Floyd or The Beach Boys of “In My Room” and “Caroline, No”, a gorgeous interlude about half way through recalling something serene and drifty by Groove Armada. “Hobo Rocket” itself is a magnificent thing, a funky psychedelic groove with Nick on lead guitar, Joe Ryan on sitar and far-out phlegmy vocals from Cowboy John, a colourful local character befriended by the band, probably over drinks. “Where do I find my horse with wings?” Cowboy John demands, in such full-on declamatory mode it makes you wonder if in some alternative Pond-designed universe Jim Morrison instead of dying in a Paris bathtub might have somehow made his way undetected to Perth where for the last 40 years has been propping up a bar in Western Australia waiting for Pond to find him. “What kind of drugs you on, man?” he finally enquires, before invoking the prophet Ezekial and hilariously berating Pond for being unprofessional. The closing “Midnight Mass (At The Market Street Payphone)”, meanwhile, is simply beautiful, its long instrumental coda making you feel like you’re falling through space in a suit of lights.
Allan Jones
Q&A
Nick Allbrook
Do people still think of Pond as a Tame Impala spin-off?
I have no idea what people think. Band names and album titles and songwriting credits and all this business...it gives everyone really concrete definitions to grasp onto, which are probably false. I guess the easiest thing for people to wind their heads around would probably be to invent a new name to tag onto the whole gamete of shart that comes from our mob. Everything we do is a spin-off of something bigger, something probably too fun and pure to put a silly ol' name to. It worked for Wu-Tang, ya?
Hobo Rocket is the second of two albums Pond have written since last year’s Beards Wives Denim. How did it end up being recorded first?
Well, the songs were written after Man, It Feels Like Space Again and we got scared that if we waited too long we would be inconsolably bored with them by the time it came to doing them. So we figured to put them in an e.p. Then we decided the same thing about some more Space Again songs and then it turned into an album.
Where does Hobo Rocket take Pond that they haven’t been before?
Well, it’s the only time we've wanted anything to be really heavy, then listened to it after and said "Wow, that is *really heavy*". So that’s pretty grand. It's also a whole lot more sonically interesting, lyrically interesting, cohesive, barbaric... Yeah I guess it’s just completely removed from everything so far from our rather biased perspective.
What are your own plans now that you’ve left Tame Impala?
Well, I just finished the book I was reading, so I'll need to go find another one. Showering is a must, too, although it’s sunny and I woke up at one o'clock so I should get a move on. Oh, and I'm gonna do some stuff with my spin off band, Pond.
Interview Allan Jones
Aussie psych-rockers make a splash with their tightest album yet. Tame, it ain’t…
Pond for the last couple of years has been the noise Jay Watson and Nick Allbrook make with likeminded confederates when they aren’t touring with Tame Impala. This particular arrangement has made it sometimes seem like Pond are a Tame Impala spin-off, a side project, a kind of hobby, Jay and Nick and their mates going into the studio as the mood vaguely takes them, the equivalent of some blokes retreating to a garden shed to potter aimlessly about, smoke some weed, goof off.
There’s a possibility this perception will even survive Nick’s recent departure from Tame Impala, although it would continually rather wrong-headedly ignore the fact that Pond have a thriving history of their own that goes back to Nick’s early band, Mink Mussel Creek, who also featured a pre-Impala Kevin Parker and includes also four previous albums, Psychedelic Mango (2009), Corridors Of Blissterday (2009), Frond (2010) and last year’s Beards, Wives, Denim, alongside Japandroids’ Celebration Rock the most exultant rock album of 2012.
At one point it seemed there might be two more Pond albums this year, the other being the splendidly-titled Man, It Feels Like Space Again, whose songs were written first but won’t now be recorded until September, the band’s enthusiasm for the newer material evidently making Hobo Rocket a more immediate priority. Beards, Wives, Denim was a sometimes anarchic sprawl in which explosive elements of the MC5, Stooges, Hendrix, early Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin were flung into a highly combustible mix. It was sexy, loud, debauched, brash and mind-blowing. The terrific Hobo Rocket has many of the admirable assets that made BWD great, but there’s a sense in the album’s overall finesse that things as far as possible are being taken perhaps a little more seriously than hitherto. Which is not to say Pond have become suddenly as serious as monks, a glum-fest in brooding cloisters, but merely to acknowledge Hobo Rocket’s greater focus, concentration and concision. At seven tracks, it’s half the length of BWD, which was exhausting enough in parts to make you feel like you’d been subjected to a vigorous waterboarding.
Hobo Rocket is more like a series of tracks that go off like target-specific drone strikes than BWD’s wider field of fire, and its ballistic spray of passably random blasts, salvoes and window-shattering detonations. They are still capable of making a wonderfully infernal din, but there’s conspicuously less errant cacophony here, not so much mucking about. “Whatever Happened To The Million Heads Collide” starts the album spectacularly. There’s a lulling wash of synthesisers and what sounds like something scratching beneath the floorboards, before Joe Ryan’s bass walks into the room with a Bo Diddley swagger accompanied by war drums and sibilant vocal effects that recall the way Kevin Parker’s whispering on “Be Above It”, the opening cut on Tame Impala’s Lonerism, became part of the song’s rhythm track. You may also be reminded of something like Pink Floyd’s “Pow R. Toc H.”
This is heavy stuff, man, and things get heavier still on “Xanman” (featured on this month’s free CD), “Aloneaflameaflower” and “Giant Tortoise”, with their blistered layers of guitars, synthesisers, subatomic rhythm tracks and Nick sounding here and there like something brightly feathered making a racket in a rain forest. The dreamy “Oh Dharma” deviates from this pummelling template, introducing a mood of lysergic nostalgia, the kind of poignant wistfulness you might associate with Barrett-era Floyd or The Beach Boys of “In My Room” and “Caroline, No”, a gorgeous interlude about half way through recalling something serene and drifty by Groove Armada. “Hobo Rocket” itself is a magnificent thing, a funky psychedelic groove with Nick on lead guitar, Joe Ryan on sitar and far-out phlegmy vocals from Cowboy John, a colourful local character befriended by the band, probably over drinks. “Where do I find my horse with wings?” Cowboy John demands, in such full-on declamatory mode it makes you wonder if in some alternative Pond-designed universe Jim Morrison instead of dying in a Paris bathtub might have somehow made his way undetected to Perth where for the last 40 years has been propping up a bar in Western Australia waiting for Pond to find him. “What kind of drugs you on, man?” he finally enquires, before invoking the prophet Ezekial and hilariously berating Pond for being unprofessional. The closing “Midnight Mass (At The Market Street Payphone)”, meanwhile, is simply beautiful, its long instrumental coda making you feel like you’re falling through space in a suit of lights.
Allan Jones
Q&A
Nick Allbrook
Do people still think of Pond as a Tame Impala spin-off?
I have no idea what people think. Band names and album titles and songwriting credits and all this business…it gives everyone really concrete definitions to grasp onto, which are probably false. I guess the easiest thing for people to wind their heads around would probably be to invent a new name to tag onto the whole gamete of shart that comes from our mob. Everything we do is a spin-off of something bigger, something probably too fun and pure to put a silly ol’ name to. It worked for Wu-Tang, ya?
Hobo Rocket is the second of two albums Pond have written since last year’s Beards Wives Denim. How did it end up being recorded first?
Well, the songs were written after Man, It Feels Like Space Again and we got scared that if we waited too long we would be inconsolably bored with them by the time it came to doing them. So we figured to put them in an e.p. Then we decided the same thing about some more Space Again songs and then it turned into an album.
Where does Hobo Rocket take Pond that they haven’t been before?
Well, it’s the only time we’ve wanted anything to be really heavy, then listened to it after and said “Wow, that is *really heavy*”. So that’s pretty grand. It’s also a whole lot more sonically interesting, lyrically interesting, cohesive, barbaric… Yeah I guess it’s just completely removed from everything so far from our rather biased perspective.
What are your own plans now that you’ve left Tame Impala?
Well, I just finished the book I was reading, so I’ll need to go find another one. Showering is a must, too, although it’s sunny and I woke up at one o’clock so I should get a move on. Oh, and I’m gonna do some stuff with my spin off band, Pond.
Nick Mason jokes that Pink Floyd were “obviously very depressed people” while making The Dark Side Of The Moon, in the new issue of Uncut (dated November 2013), and out now.
The band’s drummer makes the wry remark while explaining the creation of the group’s landmark 1973 release.
“We ...
Nick Mason jokes that Pink Floyd were “obviously very depressed people” while making The Dark Side Of The Moon, in the new issue of Uncut (dated November 2013), and out now.
The band’s drummer makes the wry remark while explaining the creation of the group’s landmark 1973 release.
“We were obviously very depressed people,” Mason says. “I don’t think Pink Floyd ever found an ideal way of working together, but The Dark Side Of The Moon was probably the closest we came to it.
“The problem is trying to work out exactly who did what. Not only is it a mystery, but it tends to get everyone incredibly worked up. ‘I did that.’ ‘No, I did that.’”
The key players talk mental disintegration, cricket matches, echo chambers and dawn rushes to Heathrow in the piece, which also touches on the fate of the Harvest label and the group’s subsequent rocky journey.
The new issue of Uncut is out on September 25, 2013.
In 1983, I picked up a copy of a book called Stick, on a whim. It was written by someone I hadn't heard of previously: Elmore Leonard, who died in August. The book was brilliant and turned me into an addict.
I bought everything he'd written and was very soon mainlining pure Elmore. He's a habit I'v...
In 1983, I picked up a copy of a book called Stick, on a whim. It was written by someone I hadn’t heard of previously: Elmore Leonard, who died in August. The book was brilliant and turned me into an addict.
I bought everything he’d written and was very soon mainlining pure Elmore. He’s a habit I’ve had for over 30 years, Leonard delivering one great book after another, one a year until age began to slow him down a little. His last full-length novel was 2010’s Djibouti, Leonard at 85 as spritely and dazzling as ever.
Leonard was mostly described as a crime writer, but he was much more than that, in his way the equal in the hierarchy of American literature of anyone who’s ever put words on a page. He was more than a masterful genre technician, a supremely gifted craftsman. He was a literary genius who created a space in American letters that was uniquely his, with a style that was entirely his own, much imitated but never bettered, vernacular poetry based on breathtaking narrative economy, vivid characterisation and a gift for dialogue that is unsurpassed.
When I met him in London in October, 1988, he was here to promote his new book, Freaky Deaky, but we were soon talking about Hollywood’s botched attempts to make good movies of his novels. This was a decade before Steven Soderbergh and Tarantino did his writing justice with, respectively, Out Of Sight and Jackie Brown, the latter a version of Elmore’s novel Rum Punch. He offered as an example the turbulent history of trying to bring LaBrava, one of his most popular books, to the screen. United Artists had bought the rights, but when a farcical Burt Reynolds version of Stick went belly-up at the box office they passed on the option to the producer Walter Mirisch at Cannon, to see what he could do with it. David Mamet had by this time read the book and greatly admired it. He passed it on to Dustin Hoffman, who loved it, wanted to film it, but had some suggestions he asked Leonard to take on board.
“Dustin had a lot of ideas,” Leonard said sarcastically. “First, he wants to see the character when he was a secret agent, which immediately involves a lot of flashbacks, things that aren’t in the book. Then he, Dustin, doesn’t think that he, Dustin, could fall in love with a 50-year old woman as LaBrava does in the book. He thinks he should have an affair with a young girl in the motel LaBrava runs. So I write a treatment that way.
We meet a couple of times more. Dustin’s just filming Death Of A Salesman with Volker Schlöndorff and he comes along to some meetings. But he doesn’t last long. Then Martin Scorsese comes in. Scorsese lasts a little longer, then he gets a deal on The Color Of Money.
So he’s out and Hal Ashby comes in. Then I get another call from Hoffman, who tells me he’s decided he can after all fall in love with an older woman. Turns out he’s just met Anouk Aimée. So I change it again. Then Hoffman doesn’t want to do it anymore and Al Pacino gets involved for a while. Then Hal Ashby, who’s got involved because of Dustin, he leaves. Then Ted Kotcheff gets involved and Walter Mirisch tells me that Richard Dreyfuss is interested. The only thing now, Ted Kotcheff is suing Cannon for 10 million dollars for something I don’t even know about. I don’t know if it will ever be made.”
At the time we met, Leonard’s hopes for a successful resolution to his problems with Hollywood resided with Cat Chaser, due to go into production shortly, directed by Abel Ferrara.”Abel talks like a thug,” Leonard said, almost approvingly. “Talking to Abel’s like talking to a convict. They’re having trouble with the script. It’s very difficult, but we’ll see.” About this time, the PR from his UK publishers appears – a cluster of worries and timetables. Leonard has more people to talk to. As he puts on his raincoat, I ask him, half jokingly, if he has any advice for aspiring young novelists. “Sure,” he said, smiling. “Keep at it and keep it simple.”
A deluxe edition of Van Morrison's Moondance album is due for release through Warner Bros. Records on October 21.
The Moondance reissue features a newly remastered and expanded version of the album, as well as 50 unreleased tracks including studio outtakes and multiple takes and a final mix of an unheard track, “I Shall Sing”.
We're delighted to preview below a previously unreleased outtake of "Into The Mystic".
The Moondance reissue will be released in a number of different formats. A 4 CD/1 Blu-ray Deluxe Edition will feature a newly remastered version of the original album, three discs of previously unreleased music from the sessions, and a Blu-ray Audio disc with high-resolution 48K 24 bit PCM stereo and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound audio of original album. It will be presented in a linen-wrapped folio and includes a booklet with liner notes from Alan Light and original engineer Elliot Scheiner.
A 2CD Expanded Edition set that features the newly remastered version of the original album and 11 previously unreleased tracks drawn from highlights from the Deluxe Edition.
A Standard Edition of the newly remastered version of the original album.
The reissues can be pre-ordered here.
The full track listing for Moondance Deluxe Edition is:
Disc One – Original Album Remastered
1 “And It Stoned Me”
2 “Moondance”
3 “Crazy Love”
4 “Caravan”
5 “Into The Mystic”
6 “Come Running”
7 “These Dreams Of You”
8 “Brand New Day”
9 “Everyone”
10 “Glad Tidings”
Disc Two – All Previously Unreleased
1. “What do we call this Van?”
2. “Caravan” (Take 1)
3. “Caravan” (Takes 2-3)
4. “Caravan” (Take 4)
5. “Caravan” (Takes 5-6)
6. “Caravan” (Take 7)
7. “Caravan” (Take 8)
8. “I’ve Been Working” (Early Version Take 1)
9. “I’ve Been Working” (Early Version Take 2)
10. “I’ve Been Working” (Early Version Take 5)
11. “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” (Outtake)
12. “I Shall Sing” (Take 1)
13. “I Shall Sing” (Takes 2-3)
14. “I Shall Sing” (Takes 4-6)
15. “I Shall Sing” (Take 7)
16. “I Shall Sing” (Takes 8-12)
17. “I Shall Sing” (Take 13)
Disc Three – All Previously Unreleased
1. “Into The Mystic” (Take 10)
2. “Into The Mystic” (Take 11)
3. “Into The Mystic” (Takes 12-13)
4. “Into The Mystic” (Takes 14-16)
5. “Into The Mystic” (Take 17)
6. “Brand New Day” (Take 1)
7. “Brand New Day” (Take 2)
8. “Brand New Day” (Take 3)
9. “Brand New Day” (Take 4)
10. “Brand New Day” (Takes 5-6)
11. “Brand New Day” (Take 7)
12. “Glad Tidings (Take 1)
13. “Glad Tidings (Takes 2-4)
14. “Glad Tidings (Takes 7-8)
15. “Glad Tidings (Take 9)
16. “Caravan Redo” (Takes 1-2)
17. “Caravan Redo” (Take 3)
Disc Four – All Previously Unreleased
1. “Come Running” (Take 1)
2. “Come Running” (Take 2)
3. “Come Running” (Takes 3-4)
4. “Come Running” (Take 5)
5. “Come Running” (“Rolling On 4”)
6. “Moondance” (Take 21)
7. “Moondance” (Take 22)
8. “Glad Tidings” (Alt. Version)
9. “These Dreams Of You” (Alt Version)
10. “Crazy Love” (Remix)
11. “Glad Tidings” (Remix 1)
12. “Glad Tidings” (Remix 2)
13. “Glad Tidings” (Remix 3)
14. “Caravan” (Remix)
15. “These Dreams Of You” (Remix)
16. “I Shall Sing” (Mix)
Disc Five
Blu-Ray Audio disc with high-resolution 48K 24 bit PCM stereo and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound audio of original album (no video)
The track listing for Moodance Expanded Edition is:
Disc One
Original Album Remastered
Disc Two – All Previously Unreleased
1. “Caravan” (Take 4)
2. “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” (Outtake)
3. “Into The Mystic” (Take 11)
4. “Brand New Day” (Take 3)
5. “Glad Tidings” (Alt. Version)
6. “Come Running”(Take 2)
7. “Crazy Love” (Mono Mix)
8. “These Dreams Of You” (Alt. Version)
9. “Moondance” (Take 22)
10. “I Shall Sing” (Take 7)
11. “I’ve Been Working” (Early Version, Take 5)
A deluxe edition of Van Morrison‘s Moondance album is due for release through Warner Bros. Records on October 21.
The Moondance reissue features a newly remastered and expanded version of the album, as well as 50 unreleased tracks including studio outtakes and multiple takes and a final mix of an unheard track, “I Shall Sing”.
We’re delighted to preview below a previously unreleased outtake of “Into The Mystic“.
The Moondance reissue will be released in a number of different formats. A 4 CD/1 Blu-ray Deluxe Edition will feature a newly remastered version of the original album, three discs of previously unreleased music from the sessions, and a Blu-ray Audio disc with high-resolution 48K 24 bit PCM stereo and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound audio of original album. It will be presented in a linen-wrapped folio and includes a booklet with liner notes from Alan Light and original engineer Elliot Scheiner.
A 2CD Expanded Edition set that features the newly remastered version of the original album and 11 previously unreleased tracks drawn from highlights from the Deluxe Edition.
A Standard Edition of the newly remastered version of the original album.
The Cavern Club is to be sold at an auction next month.
The Liverpool nightclub, which played host to The Beatles at least 300 times, will be sold alongside the surrounding Cavern Walks Shopping Centre and is expected to fetch £1 million, The Times reports. It is being sold after its owner, Warne...
The Cavern Club is to be sold at an auction next month.
The Liverpool nightclub, which played host to The Beatles at least 300 times, will be sold alongside the surrounding Cavern Walks Shopping Centre and is expected to fetch £1 million, The Times reports. It is being sold after its owner, Warner Estate, filed for administration last month.
The club was at the heart of the rock n’ roll scene in the city during the 1960s and also saw performances from the Rolling Stones, The Who and Elton John. Its design, with brick arches and underground tunnels, was based on Le Caveau de la Huchette jazz club in Paris.
British Rail ordered the demolition of the original Cavern Club in 1973 to make way for building work on a new underground railway system. The work was never completed and the site became a car park until its excavation in 1982. A replica of the club, complete with bricks from the original, was built on the site and opened in 1984.
Neil Young played an acoustic set at Farm Aid 2013 on Saturday night (September 21).
The event, which took place in Saratoga Springs, New York, also included Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp as well as Pegi Young and The Survivors, who included her husband Neil in their line-up.
Young played a se...
Neil Young played an acoustic set at Farm Aid 2013 on Saturday night (September 21).
The event, which took place in Saratoga Springs, New York, also included Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp as well as Pegi Young and The Survivors, who included her husband Neil in their line-up.
Young played a seven-song acoustic set, as well as three other songs in collaboration with other artists. Alongside his own songs “Old Man” and “Heart Of Gold”, he also covered songs by Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Sam Cooke, Tim Hardin and Phil Ochs. Scroll down to watch Young’s seven-song acoustic set.
Neil Young played:
This Land Is Your Land (guests with Pete Seeger; backing vocals)
Blowin’ In The Wind (Bob Dylan)
Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
Old Man
Heart Of Gold
Since I Met You Baby (Sam Cooke)
Reason To Believe (Tim Hardin)
Changes (Phil Ochs)
Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die (guests with Willie Nelson)
I Saw The Light (guests with Willie Nelson; harmonica)
Paul McCartney debuted three new tracks from his forthcoming album 'New' at a gig in Las Vegas this weekend (Saturday, September 21) – scroll down to watch them.
McCartney appeared at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, where he played three tracks from his forthcoming album New - the ti...
Paul McCartney debuted three new tracks from his forthcoming album ‘New’ at a gig in Las Vegas this weekend (Saturday, September 21) – scroll down to watch them.
McCartney appeared at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, where he played three tracks from his forthcoming album New – the title track, “Everybody Out There” and “Save Us”.
New will be released on October 14 and features production from Giles Martin, Mark Ronson, Paul Epworth and Ethan Johns.
McCartney released his last studio album, Kisses On The Bottom, in February 2012.
The tracklisting and details for ‘New’ are as follows:
Mazzy Star have unveiled the video for their new song "California". Watch it below.
"California" is taken from the band's forthcoming album Seasons Of Your Day, their first in 17 years, which comes out in the UK on Monday (September 23).
Mazzy Star will begin a North American tour in support of th...
Mazzy Star have unveiled the video for their new song “California”. Watch it below.
“California” is taken from the band’s forthcoming album Seasons Of Your Day, their first in 17 years, which comes out in the UK on Monday (September 23).
Mazzy Star will begin a North American tour in support of their new album on November 3. European dates are expected to be announced soon.
Television nearly completed a comeback album six years ago, it has been revealed.
The band recorded 16 songs at New York's Stratosphere Sound recording studios between Christmas and New Year in 2007 with engineer Geoff Sanoff. The tracks, which have been sitting in the vaults ever since, still need...
Television nearly completed a comeback album six years ago, it has been revealed.
The band recorded 16 songs at New York’s Stratosphere Sound recording studios between Christmas and New Year in 2007 with engineer Geoff Sanoff. The tracks, which have been sitting in the vaults ever since, still need mixing and vocals, Rolling Stone reports.
Recalling the recording sessions, Sanoff told the magazine: “As soon as I found out who it was, I was like, ‘Cancel everything, we’re doing this’. It sounded amazing. It was so clean and so crisp. As soon as you set them up playing, they just sounded like Television.”
Meanwhile, the band’s guitarist Jimmy Rip said he felt unable to compare the unheard 2007 album to any of Television’s previous LPs because Tom Verlaine had been keen to try something different. “Tom’s pretty adamant about making a real effort to make something new each time,” he explained. “It doesn’t make for super-fast work, but it’s definitely an admirable goal.”
Discussing whether the unheard album could get a release in the future, drummer Billy Ficca added: “It might happen before we all die, I don’t know. It’s sort of laying there.” The band’s most recent album, simply titled Television, came out in 1992 and was only their third studio effort following 1977’s Marquee Moon and 1978’s Adventure.
Meanwhile, Television have recently announced a brief UK headline tour to take place this November before they perform Marquee Moon in full as part of ATP’s ‘End Of An Era Part 1’ festival, which takes place at Pontins in Camber Sands, East Sussex from November 22-24.
The tracklisting for Arcade Fire's forthcoming new album Reflektor has leaked online.
The 13 tracks, spread over two discs, were revealed on Amazon France this weekend. New single Reflektor is the album's opening track, and is followed by "We Exist", "Flashbulb Eyes", "Here Comes The Night Time", "Normal Person", "You Already Know", "Joan Of Arc", "Here Comes The Night Time II", "Awful Sound (Oh Erydice)", "It's Never Over (Oh Orpheous)", "Porno", "Afterlife", and "Supersymmetry".
Reflektor, the band's fourth album, is set for release on October 28. Frontman Win Butler recently described the album, which is a double, as a "mash-up of Studio 54 and Haitian voodoo".
Meanwhile, David Bowie light-heartedly threatened threatened to steal Arcade Fire's Reflektor for himself, according to band member Richard Reed Parry.
The Relfektor tracklisting is as follows:
'Reflektor'
'We Exist'
'Flashbulb Eyes'
'Here Comes The Night Time'
'Normal Person', 'You Already Know'
'Joan Of Arc'
'Here Comes The Night Time II'
'Awful Sound (Oh Erydice)'
'It's Never Over (Oh Orpheous)'
'Porno', 'Afterlife'
'Supersymmetry'
The tracklisting for Arcade Fire‘s forthcoming new album Reflektor has leaked online.
The 13 tracks, spread over two discs, were revealed on Amazon France this weekend. New single Reflektor is the album’s opening track, and is followed by “We Exist”, “Flashbulb Eyes”, “Here Comes The Night Time”, “Normal Person”, “You Already Know”, “Joan Of Arc”, “Here Comes The Night Time II”, “Awful Sound (Oh Erydice)”, “It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheous)”, “Porno”, “Afterlife”, and “Supersymmetry”.
Reflektor, the band’s fourth album, is set for release on October 28. Frontman Win Butler recently described the album, which is a double, as a “mash-up of Studio 54 and Haitian voodoo”.
Meanwhile, David Bowie light-heartedly threatened threatened to steal Arcade Fire’s Reflektor for himself, according to band member Richard Reed Parry.
Giles Martin, producer and son of Beatles collaborator George Martin, discusses his work on the new Paul McCartney album, in the latest issue of Uncut (dated November 2013), out on Wednesday, September 25.
Martin, who has produced the majority of the former Beatle’s upcoming album, New, states that the record is the best McCartney has made in years.
“If [Paul] doesn’t like the direction it’s going in, he’ll do something about it,” Martin says. “It’s his record. I think it’s his best for years, but I would say that.”
Martin also reveals some of the worries he experienced working with the Beatle.
“One day he did a live take of a bass part, and there was a mistake in the verse. I thought, ‘Well, you’re probably going to get fired, but you might as well tell him.’
“My dad’s always told me that you’re being paid for your opinion, so there’s no point in just saying, ‘Oh my God, that’s brilliant.’”
New, which also features production from Ethan Johns, Mark Ronson and Paul Epworth, is released on October 14.
The new issue of Uncut is out on September 25, 2013.
Giles Martin, producer and son of Beatles collaborator George Martin, discusses his work on the new Paul McCartney album, in the latest issue of Uncut (dated November 2013), out on Wednesday, September 25.
Martin, who has produced the majority of the former Beatle’s upcoming album, New, states that the record is the best McCartney has made in years.
“If [Paul] doesn’t like the direction it’s going in, he’ll do something about it,” Martin says. “It’s his record. I think it’s his best for years, but I would say that.”
Martin also reveals some of the worries he experienced working with the Beatle.
“One day he did a live take of a bass part, and there was a mistake in the verse. I thought, ‘Well, you’re probably going to get fired, but you might as well tell him.’
“My dad’s always told me that you’re being paid for your opinion, so there’s no point in just saying, ‘Oh my God, that’s brilliant.’”
New, which also features production from Ethan Johns, Mark Ronson and Paul Epworth, is released on October 14.
The new issue of Uncut is out on September 25, 2013.
Tom Waits has announced he will be playing at this year's Bridge School Benefit.
Waits announced the news via his Facebook and Twitter - accounts on Saturday, September 21.
He Tweeted the following message:
"ALERT! Tom will perform a full acoustic set feat songs from BAD AS ME for the upcoming Br...
Tom Waits has announced he will be playing at this year’s Bridge School Benefit.
Waits announced the news via his Facebook and Twitter – accounts on Saturday, September 21.
He Tweeted the following message:
“ALERT! Tom will perform a full acoustic set feat songs from BAD AS ME for the upcoming Bridge School Benefit.”
On Facebook, a longer statement read:
“Alert! Tom Waits joins Bridge School Benefit line up on Sunday Oct 27th.
“Last Minute Tom will perform a full acoustic set featuring songs from his album BAD AS ME with his band (David Hidalgo guitar; Les Claypool bass; Casey Waits, drums; and more).
“Waits, who has not toured since 2008 and has no plans to tour, says ‘I had every good intention to stay home and work on my JD Salinger Halloween mask, but when Neil told me yesterday he was serving burnt cow’s eyes on a flat tire and it’s all gluten free, I invited myself!'”
This year’s Bridge School Benefit takes place on October 27 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, California. Tickets can be bought here.
Along with Waits, other confirmed artists include CSNY, Queens Of The Stone Age/, Elvis Costello and My Morning Jacket.
Waits has played the Bridge School Benefit concerts twice before, first in 1999 and then in 2007, when he performed with the Kronos Quartet. Scroll down to watch footage of Waits’ 1999 Bridge School performance.
The coverage in last weekend’s broadsheet arts pages of Cormac McCarthy’s new book was puzzling, to say the least: there wasn’t any. As you might expect, there were plenty of reviews of Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, which was also released this week – The Times even ran with a preview/review of The Goldfish, Donna Tartt’s first novel in a decade, which isn’t published for another month. But, strangely, the publication of The Counselor by Cormac McCarthy passed by without comment.
I suspect that part of the reason might be that The Counselor is a published screenplay, rather than a novel. It has staggered publication dates – on sale in the UK this week, and October 15 in America. McCarthy’s publishers, Picador, have released it as a hardback. The film it’s based on isn’t released until November 15 here. I don’t want to speculate on whatever negotiations may have taken place between Fox, who’re releasing the film, or Picador, McCarthy’s publishers, regarding the specific release pattern for the book and film, but I must admit, I’m struggling to think of another writer whose screenplay has appeared in print ahead of the film’s release. Of course, the publication of screenplays used to be quite a thing in the late 90s/early 00s - Faber used to publish scripts by Tarantino, the Coens and Woody Allen, and (I think) Paul Thomas Anderson. But anyway, here we are with what is, effectively, a new work by Cormac McCarthy.
At this point I should probably say turn away now if you don’t want to know what happens in the story: you might well be saving yourself for Ridley Scott’s film in November. While I won’t give away any major plot points, I need to discuss some things in the story you might not want to find out. So, (some) spoilers ahead.
And there’s another thing. I’m not sure exactly how precisely Scott has followed McCarthy’s screenplay. It was interesting to watch a new clip of the film released earlier this week, featuring characters played by Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz – who appeared semi-naked, wrapped loosely in towels, lying by a swimming pool. As the scene appears in the book, they're both fully clothed, having coffee in a mall and the conversation includes a lengthy discourse about Catholic confession. I think it’s an important distinction to make. McCarthy’s book; Scott’s film. I’m here specifically to talk about McCarthy’s book.
Did I enjoy it? Yes, but with some reservations. I found myself appreciating it more as a creative exercise than the kind of immersive experience I’m used to with McCarthy’s writing. I suspect this comes from the form – the traditional rhythms and structures of his sentences, and how they function on a descriptive and also emotional level are largely absent, as you’d imagine from a screenplay, and instead McCarthy favours very exact, very visual passages, more like reportage than creative writing. These are actually pretty effective on page – and McCarthy’s ability to sustain this high level of very precise writing is especially impressive: “Two-lane blacktop road through the high desert. Night. A car passes and the lights recede down the long straight and fade out. A man walks out from the scrub cedars that line the road and stands in the middle of the road and lights a cigarette. He is carrying a roll of thin monel wire over one shoulder. He continues across the road to the fence. A tall metal pipe is mounted to one of the fenceposts and at the top – some twenty feet off the ground – is a floodlight. The man pushes a button on a small plastic sending unit and the light comes on, flooding the road and the man’s face. He turns it off and walks down the fence line a good hundred yards to the corner of the fence and here he drops the coil of wire to the ground and takes a flashlight from his back pocket and puts it in his teeth and takes a pair of leather gloves from his belt and puts them on.” The rest of this section, incidentally, runs for twice the length.
The dialogue itself, on the other hand, moves from the elliptical to the baroque. The story itself concerns an outwardly respectable lawyer, the Counselor, who gets involved in drug trafficking, a “one-time deal” involving 625 kilos of cocaine being transported from Mexico to Chicago in a septic tank: “If the whole deal were to go tits up in ditch the papers would put the street value at a hundred mil. We’re probably looking at twenty. Maybe a little more.” As you might imagine, it doesn’t end particularly well. The Counselor is a curiously passive character: much of the book involves his participation in conversations regarding greed, sex and death. It’s the latter two which, for the most part, McCarthy is interested in here. The book opens with a bed scene where the Counselor and his girlfriend, Laura, are talking dirty. It’s very intimate, very close-up. Later, Reiner – a contact of the Counselor – describes in forensic detail an incident where his girlfriend, Malkina, had sex with his car. There are detailed discussions about the particular type of assassination favoured by certain Mexican drug cartels. For the most part, these particular horrors happen off screen: of what we’ll broadly call ‘the speaking parts’ there are only three on-screen murders, one of which is particularly graphic beheading. As this is a screenplay, McCarthy explores his familiar ideas of violence and morality through dialogue, rather than description, which makes The Counselor a frequently uncomfortable, pretty unsettling read. What’s worse, I guess: seeing someone beheaded in a second on a film, or hearing the means and execution of a beheading discussed at length over a five-minute scene? And, remember, this isn’t Tarantino – there’s no jokes to lighten the humour.
“Do you know how many people were killed in Juarez last year?”
“No. A lot?”
“Yes. I think three thousand is a lot. These people are another species, Counselor. You might want to think about that as well. They will rip out your liver and eat it in front of your dog.”
There is an especially unpleasant subtext involving disappeared young girls that moves the story from – broadly – a crime thriller into something more transgressive. McCarthy’s writing has always been caught up with notions of moral degradation and cruelty – the obsessive detailing of the depravities carried out by Indian scalpers in Blood Meridian, for instance. But what unfolds here is especially appalling stuff. Another key McCarthy preoccupation lies in subverting codes and conventions – much as he re-evaluated the Western in Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy, you could argue that The Counselor is basically a particularly brutal satire on crime movies.
Where does it fit, then, with McCarthy’s most writing? It’s interesting, perhaps, that his last publication was “a novel in dramatic form”, The Sunset Limited, from a 2006 play. Ignoring The Road, I’m reminded that the novel of No Country For Old Men read in part like a screenplay in the making – not just the storyline, but the descriptive precision of the writing had a script-like quality that he uses again here with The Counselor script.
Anyway, I’ve rattled on for longer than I intended, but a final thought: the role of women in The Counselor. McCarthy isn’t historically noted for his portrayal of woman, but here he gives us two good ones – Laura and Malkina. I think it would be remiss of me to go into too much detail about what happens to them, but they represent diametrical points of view: Laura, a Catholic, the most innocent character in the story; Malkina, a femme fatale of unusual tastes. “Forever can be pretty fucking short,” she observes.
The Counselor by Cormac McCarthy is published now by Picador; the film opens in the UK on November 15.
Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.
The coverage in last weekend’s broadsheet arts pages of Cormac McCarthy’s new book was puzzling, to say the least: there wasn’t any. As you might expect, there were plenty of reviews of Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, which was also released this week – The Times even ran with a preview/review of The Goldfish, Donna Tartt’s first novel in a decade, which isn’t published for another month. But, strangely, the publication of The Counselor by Cormac McCarthy passed by without comment.
I suspect that part of the reason might be that The Counselor is a published screenplay, rather than a novel. It has staggered publication dates – on sale in the UK this week, and October 15 in America. McCarthy’s publishers, Picador, have released it as a hardback. The film it’s based on isn’t released until November 15 here. I don’t want to speculate on whatever negotiations may have taken place between Fox, who’re releasing the film, or Picador, McCarthy’s publishers, regarding the specific release pattern for the book and film, but I must admit, I’m struggling to think of another writer whose screenplay has appeared in print ahead of the film’s release. Of course, the publication of screenplays used to be quite a thing in the late 90s/early 00s – Faber used to publish scripts by Tarantino, the Coens and Woody Allen, and (I think) Paul Thomas Anderson. But anyway, here we are with what is, effectively, a new work by Cormac McCarthy.
At this point I should probably say turn away now if you don’t want to know what happens in the story: you might well be saving yourself for Ridley Scott’s film in November. While I won’t give away any major plot points, I need to discuss some things in the story you might not want to find out. So, (some) spoilers ahead.
And there’s another thing. I’m not sure exactly how precisely Scott has followed McCarthy’s screenplay. It was interesting to watch a new clip of the film released earlier this week, featuring characters played by Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz – who appeared semi-naked, wrapped loosely in towels, lying by a swimming pool. As the scene appears in the book, they’re both fully clothed, having coffee in a mall and the conversation includes a lengthy discourse about Catholic confession. I think it’s an important distinction to make. McCarthy’s book; Scott’s film. I’m here specifically to talk about McCarthy’s book.
Did I enjoy it? Yes, but with some reservations. I found myself appreciating it more as a creative exercise than the kind of immersive experience I’m used to with McCarthy’s writing. I suspect this comes from the form – the traditional rhythms and structures of his sentences, and how they function on a descriptive and also emotional level are largely absent, as you’d imagine from a screenplay, and instead McCarthy favours very exact, very visual passages, more like reportage than creative writing. These are actually pretty effective on page – and McCarthy’s ability to sustain this high level of very precise writing is especially impressive: “Two-lane blacktop road through the high desert. Night. A car passes and the lights recede down the long straight and fade out. A man walks out from the scrub cedars that line the road and stands in the middle of the road and lights a cigarette. He is carrying a roll of thin monel wire over one shoulder. He continues across the road to the fence. A tall metal pipe is mounted to one of the fenceposts and at the top – some twenty feet off the ground – is a floodlight. The man pushes a button on a small plastic sending unit and the light comes on, flooding the road and the man’s face. He turns it off and walks down the fence line a good hundred yards to the corner of the fence and here he drops the coil of wire to the ground and takes a flashlight from his back pocket and puts it in his teeth and takes a pair of leather gloves from his belt and puts them on.” The rest of this section, incidentally, runs for twice the length.
The dialogue itself, on the other hand, moves from the elliptical to the baroque. The story itself concerns an outwardly respectable lawyer, the Counselor, who gets involved in drug trafficking, a “one-time deal” involving 625 kilos of cocaine being transported from Mexico to Chicago in a septic tank: “If the whole deal were to go tits up in ditch the papers would put the street value at a hundred mil. We’re probably looking at twenty. Maybe a little more.” As you might imagine, it doesn’t end particularly well. The Counselor is a curiously passive character: much of the book involves his participation in conversations regarding greed, sex and death. It’s the latter two which, for the most part, McCarthy is interested in here. The book opens with a bed scene where the Counselor and his girlfriend, Laura, are talking dirty. It’s very intimate, very close-up. Later, Reiner – a contact of the Counselor – describes in forensic detail an incident where his girlfriend, Malkina, had sex with his car. There are detailed discussions about the particular type of assassination favoured by certain Mexican drug cartels. For the most part, these particular horrors happen off screen: of what we’ll broadly call ‘the speaking parts’ there are only three on-screen murders, one of which is particularly graphic beheading. As this is a screenplay, McCarthy explores his familiar ideas of violence and morality through dialogue, rather than description, which makes The Counselor a frequently uncomfortable, pretty unsettling read. What’s worse, I guess: seeing someone beheaded in a second on a film, or hearing the means and execution of a beheading discussed at length over a five-minute scene? And, remember, this isn’t Tarantino – there’s no jokes to lighten the humour.
“Do you know how many people were killed in Juarez last year?”
“No. A lot?”
“Yes. I think three thousand is a lot. These people are another species, Counselor. You might want to think about that as well. They will rip out your liver and eat it in front of your dog.”
There is an especially unpleasant subtext involving disappeared young girls that moves the story from – broadly – a crime thriller into something more transgressive. McCarthy’s writing has always been caught up with notions of moral degradation and cruelty – the obsessive detailing of the depravities carried out by Indian scalpers in Blood Meridian, for instance. But what unfolds here is especially appalling stuff. Another key McCarthy preoccupation lies in subverting codes and conventions – much as he re-evaluated the Western in Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy, you could argue that The Counselor is basically a particularly brutal satire on crime movies.
Where does it fit, then, with McCarthy’s most writing? It’s interesting, perhaps, that his last publication was “a novel in dramatic form”, The Sunset Limited, from a 2006 play. Ignoring The Road, I’m reminded that the novel of No Country For Old Men read in part like a screenplay in the making – not just the storyline, but the descriptive precision of the writing had a script-like quality that he uses again here with The Counselor script.
Anyway, I’ve rattled on for longer than I intended, but a final thought: the role of women in The Counselor. McCarthy isn’t historically noted for his portrayal of woman, but here he gives us two good ones – Laura and Malkina. I think it would be remiss of me to go into too much detail about what happens to them, but they represent diametrical points of view: Laura, a Catholic, the most innocent character in the story; Malkina, a femme fatale of unusual tastes. “Forever can be pretty fucking short,” she observes.
The Counselor by Cormac McCarthy is published now by Picador; the film opens in the UK on November 15.
Cate Blanchett has a breakdown in 'Frisco in Woody Allen's latest...
I should probably come clean and admit that Woody Allen’s earlier, funnier films – or, really, even his serious, black and white ones – passed me by. I quite liked the joke in Sleeper about scientists discovering that McDonald’s was good for you, but that’s pretty much where the director and I part company.
But from Vicky Crinstina Barcelona onwards, I’ve found myself in the unusual position of enjoying his films. A Woody-come-lately, perhaps, but at least I’m here now. And in many respects, Blue Jasmine continues the director’s current upward trajectory: is a very good film, but it is also deeply lop-sided. At its centre – and, really, its top, bottom, sides and outerlying regions – is Cate Blanchett as Jasmine, a glossy New York socialite who turns up at her adoptive sister’s in San Francisco, her life in ruins. “There are only so many traumas a person can withstand until they take to the streets and start screaming.” Ginger takes Jasmine in, and what ensues is essentially a portrait of a woman on the brink.
In flashback, we see Jasmine’s previous life, as she enjoys her husband’s wealth while looking the other way regarding it its provenance. She self-medicates with pills and vodka, presumably to blot out awareness of her husband’s crooked business dealings and his extramarital activities. In present day San Francisco, meanwhile, Jasmine finds herself encouraged by Ginger to go on double dates, take a job as a dental assistant, and go back to college. Allen’s writing is lucid and – in depicting the sister’s relationship – flinty.
Blue Jasmine isn’t an especially funny film – though it makes extremely good use of two stand-up comics: Louis CK, as a sound engineer who seduces Ginger, and Andrew Dice Clay, as Ginger’s ex-husband. Clay – where has he been? – delivers one of the film’s best performances, burned and unforgiving after being ripped off by Jasmine’s husband, Hal. Meanwhile, Alec Baldwin, as Hal, is also superb – much as you’d imagine – and Sally Hawkins is breezy and likable as Ginger. But Blue Jasmine consists almost entirely of supporting performances, with everyone orbiting Blanchett’s modern day Blanche DuBois, wallowing in her epic self-deceptions. Blanchett is being tipped for Oscar glory, and this is surely a very good, very committed performance (if a little self-consciously so). But as accomplished as Blue Jasmine is, I think it could have been a more rounded film had Woody Allen given more room elsewhere.
There are many shades of blue; not all of them are represented here.
Michael Bonner
Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.
Cate Blanchett has a breakdown in ‘Frisco in Woody Allen’s latest…
I should probably come clean and admit that Woody Allen’s earlier, funnier films – or, really, even his serious, black and white ones – passed me by. I quite liked the joke in Sleeper about scientists discovering that McDonald’s was good for you, but that’s pretty much where the director and I part company.
But from Vicky Crinstina Barcelona onwards, I’ve found myself in the unusual position of enjoying his films. A Woody-come-lately, perhaps, but at least I’m here now. And in many respects, Blue Jasmine continues the director’s current upward trajectory: is a very good film, but it is also deeply lop-sided. At its centre – and, really, its top, bottom, sides and outerlying regions – is Cate Blanchett as Jasmine, a glossy New York socialite who turns up at her adoptive sister’s in San Francisco, her life in ruins. “There are only so many traumas a person can withstand until they take to the streets and start screaming.” Ginger takes Jasmine in, and what ensues is essentially a portrait of a woman on the brink.
In flashback, we see Jasmine’s previous life, as she enjoys her husband’s wealth while looking the other way regarding it its provenance. She self-medicates with pills and vodka, presumably to blot out awareness of her husband’s crooked business dealings and his extramarital activities. In present day San Francisco, meanwhile, Jasmine finds herself encouraged by Ginger to go on double dates, take a job as a dental assistant, and go back to college. Allen’s writing is lucid and – in depicting the sister’s relationship – flinty.
Blue Jasmine isn’t an especially funny film – though it makes extremely good use of two stand-up comics: Louis CK, as a sound engineer who seduces Ginger, and Andrew Dice Clay, as Ginger’s ex-husband. Clay – where has he been? – delivers one of the film’s best performances, burned and unforgiving after being ripped off by Jasmine’s husband, Hal. Meanwhile, Alec Baldwin, as Hal, is also superb – much as you’d imagine – and Sally Hawkins is breezy and likable as Ginger. But Blue Jasmine consists almost entirely of supporting performances, with everyone orbiting Blanchett’s modern day Blanche DuBois, wallowing in her epic self-deceptions. Blanchett is being tipped for Oscar glory, and this is surely a very good, very committed performance (if a little self-consciously so). But as accomplished as Blue Jasmine is, I think it could have been a more rounded film had Woody Allen given more room elsewhere.
There are many shades of blue; not all of them are represented here.
Stephen Stills, Emmylou Harris and Dr John were among the artists honoured at the Americana Music Honors & Awards 2013 on Wednesday night [September 18].
The ceremony took place in the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Stills also performed "For What It's Worth", alongside fellow Buffalo Springfie...
Stephen Stills, Emmylou Harris and Dr John were among the artists honoured at the Americana Music Honors & Awards 2013 on Wednesday night [September 18].
The ceremony took place in the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Stills also performed “For What It’s Worth”, alongside fellow Buffalo Springfield member Richie Furay shortly after being awarded the Spirit of Americana/Free Speech in Music Award.
Among other performances, Dr John was joined by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys for “I Walk On Guilded Splinters”, backed by a house band who included Don Was and Larry Campbell.
The Americana Music Honors & Awards 2013 winners are:
Album of the Year: ‘Old Yellow Moon’ Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell
Artist of the Year: Dwight Yoakam
Duo Group of the Year: Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell
Song of the Year: ‘Birmingham’ Shovels & Rope
Emerging Artist of the Year: Shovels & Rope
Instrumentalist of the year: Larry Campbell
Trailblazer Award: Old Crow Medicine Show
Spirit of Americana / Free Speech in Music Award co-presented by the Americana Music Association and the First Amendment Center: Stephen Stills
Lifetime Achievement for Instrumentalist: Duane Eddy
Lifetime Achievement Award for Executive: Chris Strachwitz
Lifetime Achievement for Performance: Dr. John
Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriter: Robert Hunter
Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon has said he would have given up all his talent for a good night’s sleep when his tinnitus was at its worst.
Speaking in the new issue of Uncut, dated October 2013 and out now, McAloon said he suffered particularly badly from the hearing problem for around six mon...
Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon has said he would have given up all his talent for a good night’s sleep when his tinnitus was at its worst.
Speaking in the new issue of Uncut, dated October 2013 and out now, McAloon said he suffered particularly badly from the hearing problem for around six months last decade, and still has difficulty hearing bass in his right ear.
“Something happens in my right ear where bass frequencies disappear, so when I work on low-range things I have to shift them to a higher octave so I can hear them,” he says.
“It’s more or less manageable now, but I had a terrible six months when the noises in my head just wouldn’t switch off. There was a point where I would have happily given it all up, any talent I might have, for a night’s sleep.
“And my three daughters had to learn to be quiet around me, which is a terrible thing for children to have to do.”
Prefab Sprout’s new album, Crimson/Red – their first album of genuinely brand new material for more than a decade – is released on October 7.
