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Hear Jim O’Rourke’s new track, “A Man’s Mind Will Play Tricks On Him”

Michael Bonner
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Hear Jim O’Rourke’s new track, “A Man’s Mind Will Play Tricks On Him”
Jim O'Rourke returns with a new album, Hands That Bind. You can watch a promo for "A Man's Mind Will Play Tricks On Him [Edit]", the first track released from the album, below. ORDER NOW: The National are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut https://youtu.be/1ZFtiN8PfXE O'Rourke'...

Jim O’Rourke returns with a new album, Hands That Bind.

You can watch a promo for “A Man’s Mind Will Play Tricks On Him [Edit]“, the first track released from the album, below.

O’Rourke’s new album is a soundtrack to Kyle Armstrong’s film, Hands That Bind, set in rural Alberta in the 1980s and starring Will Oldham and Bruce Dern alongside Paul Sparks, Susan Kent, Landon Liboiron and Nicholas Campbell. The video to “A Man’s Mind Will Play Tricks On Him [Edit]” has also been directed by Armstrong.

Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) will be available on vinyl July 7. Click here to pre-order a copy.

The track listing for Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is:

Go Spend Some Time With Your Kids
Wasn’t There Last Night
He’s Only Got One Oar in the Water
That’s Not How the World Works
A Man’s Mind Will Play Tricks On Him
Here is Where I Seem to Be / The Good Lord Doesn’t Need Paperwork
You Have No Idea What I Want
One Way or Another I’m Gone

Durand Jones – My Life In Music

Sam Richards
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Durand Jones – My Life In Music
The Indications frontman on his love of jazz, pop and storytelling soul: “It allows your imagination to run wild.” Read this and more in our JUNE 2023 issue of Uncut, available to buy here. DUKE ELLINGTON & JOHN COLTRANE “In A Sentimental Mood” IMPULSE!, 1963 That was the very fi...

The Indications frontman on his love of jazz, pop and storytelling soul: “It allows your imagination to run wild.” Read this and more in our JUNE 2023 issue of Uncut, available to buy here.

DUKE ELLINGTON & JOHN COLTRANE
“In A Sentimental Mood”
IMPULSE!, 1963

That was the very first tune that, when I closed my eyes, I would forget what decade I was in. I had to be around 12 or 13 years old, but it made me feel like I’d lived on this planet before and I knew what this music was. I came across that record through my grandmother, who was a huge jazz fan. I was doing a black history project for school and she mentioned to me how my people, African-Americans, even though we didn’t have royalty, we created the Duke, we created the Count, we had the Queen Of Soul. That was one thing that she really wanted to express to me as a kid, to make me feel empowered. And it worked.

CORINNE BAILEY RAE
Corinne Bailey Rae
EMI, 2006

I’m thinking about stuff that I liked when I was 17 years old, and one record that really stood out for me was Corinne Bailey Rae’s first record. It brings me back to high school, and made me long for love in a way that I’d never longed for before. I think this album was the record where I began to fall in love with love songs. Corinne Bailey Rae’s voice was soulful yet really bubbly and sweet and light and tender and all of these things that we weren’t really hearing on the radio at that time. I just loved the songs that she was writing, I thought they were really cool. She brought a new sound into what was happening in the soul and R&B world, and it was a very beautiful thing to witness.

GORILLAZ
Demon Days
PARLOPHONE, 2005

Gorillaz were such a huge influence on me at a very young age. I’ll never forget the first record, but I was a little bit older when Demon Days came out. I remember waiting in line to get the CD of it at the local music store near my hometown. When I drove home, the record was still going in the car, but I could not get out of my seat – I had to hear the whole thing. The climax on the title track with the choir and the beautiful strings, it was incredible, man. It was a record that taught me peaks and valleys and different shades and colours and tones. It was just a masterful display of artistry that I’m still enamoured by to this day.

JOHN LEGEND
Once Again
GOOD MUSIC/COLUMBIA, 2006

Through this record, John Legend taught me how to tell a story. I love storytelling, especially in art where a lot is left up to the patron. It allows your imagination to run wild and also to get clues from the mood of the music or the different sounds, and I just thought John Legend really did a good job with that record. I did not know that “Save Room” was a sample for the longest time until I heard the original several years later and was absolutely blown away. The tune is called “Stormy”, by Gábor Szabó. It’s so cool to me and absolutely wild at the same time how my generation – and younger – are being introduced to some of these really wonderful tracks from decades ago.

STEVIE WONDER
Hotter Than July
TAMLA, 1980

I was going through a time in my life where I wanted to listen to the entire Stevie Wonder discography from the top down. Hotter Than July is an incredible record, because he starts with a tune that’s inspired by rock’n’roll. Then he moves into some R&B, some dance stuff. He has a country song on there, some reggae. He has “Lately”, which I think is one of the most beautiful ballads he’s ever written. And then he ends it with “Happy Birthday”. Who else can pull that off? “Happy Birthday” was a huge reason why Martin Luther King has a holiday here in the United States, which I think is the ultimate form of making your music political, in the best way possible.

LUTHER VANDROSS
Never Too Much
EPIC, 1981

Luther was the voice of my dad’s generation. This is one record that he would play over and over on the weekends, mainly “A House Is Not A Home” and “Never Too Much”. But digging into this full album – especially during the pandemic, when I would play it nearly every day – I really learned a lot from Luther Vandross about singing with nuance and power. I heard that he was on tour singing backgrounds for Roberta Flack. He played the tunes for her so she could give some feedback and she fired him! She was like, “You can’t be in my band any more – it’s holding you back. You deserve to be front and centre.” And I thought that was the coolest thing.

DIONNE WARWICK
I’ll Never Fall In Love Again
SCEPTER, 1970

It’s basically a record of break-up songs. I don’t think she was aware at the time, but Hal David and Burt Bacharach were on the verge of breaking up around the time they made this record. Which is very interesting to me because some of the tunes don’t sound fully complete. But what I really love about this record is how dynamic her voice was. What she taught me was nuance, how to sing soft. Before listening deeply to Dionne, I was always a big, boisterous singer. She taught me control: how to still have that electricity or brightness in the voice but also softness at the same time. Breath-like. It’s been so fun doing that on stage lately and it’s given me a lot more grace, for real.

OTIS REDDING & CARLA THOMAS
King & Queen
STAX, 1967

This record consoled me late at night at one of the darkest points in my life, and I love it because of that. But also I love the simpático working relationship that Carla and Otis had on the record, where they were just gelling so well. I don’t think Stax could have found a better duo to make a record like this, because it was absolutely incredible, enthralling. Otis Redding horns sound so different from any other soul horns that I hear, and I think it’s because he ran a really tight ship in the studio. He was very specific with what he wanted and needed and he wasn’t afraid to let it be known. I got my respect for that, because it’s not easy to do.

Durand Jones’ debut solo album Wait Til I Get Over is out on May 5 via Dead Oceans

Friends and collaborators salute as Willie Nelson turns 90!

Stephen Deusner
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Friends and collaborators salute as Willie Nelson turns 90!
Happy 90th birthday, Willie Nelson! Friends and collaborators including Steve Earle, Daniel Lanois and Margo Price salute an indefatigable icon in our JUNE 2023 issue of Uncut, available to buy here. Texas’s Willie Hugh Nelson has not only lived a long life, he’s lived an almost implausibly f...

Happy 90th birthday, Willie Nelson! Friends and collaborators including Steve Earle, Daniel Lanois and Margo Price salute an indefatigable icon in our JUNE 2023 issue of Uncut, available to buy here.

Texas’s Willie Hugh Nelson has not only lived a long life, he’s lived an almost implausibly full one too. By the time he released his first album, And Then I Wrote – in 1962, at the age of 29 – he’d already been playing in dance bands for almost 20 years and had penned a handful of country classics for other singers, including Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and Faron Young’s “Hello Walls”.

In the 60 years since, he’s released over 70 more albums and starred in dozens of films. He’s been a country outlaw, a redneck hippie, a concept-album auteur, a standards singer, an IRS target, a Highwayman, and an affable connoisseur of golf and weed. His deft synthesis of so many different styles and sounds has inspired many subsequent generations of country crooners and renegade rock’n’rollers, while his list of duet partners – from Ray Charles to Julio Iglesias and Miranda Lambert to Wynton Marsalis – demonstrates his broad appeal.

Any career that thrives for eight decades will have more than its share of wild stories, inside jokes and hairy moments. In celebration of his 90th birthday, we asked some of his friends, collaborators and disciples to regale us with their best Willie tales.

Ray Benson (Asleep At The Wheel)

I met Willie in 1971 when Asleep At The Wheel were backing up country singers and he was just getting his thing going. We would play these small 200-seat clubs. We would do a one-hour set, then he would do a one-hour set, then we’d do another set and he’d do another set. One night at this funky kind of place in Dallas, he went onstage and he didn’t get off for three or four hours. He just played and played and played. He loved it, and the crowd loved it. The nightlife people – the strippers, the waitresses, the waiters, the guys
at the bar all night – they just worshipped him. Willie sang songs about their lives: “The nightlife ain’t no good life, but it’s my life”.

It was amazing to see him become successful, but it didn’t really change him. All of us liked to play golf, but we couldn’t afford the membership fees at the golf courses. And he didn’t want to adhere to the dress code anyway. So he just bought his own golf course. He’d be out there in shorts and a tank top playing golf with his buddies. I remember one time it was 35 degrees out, just freezing, and he wanted to play golf. So he hopped into his Mercedes, threw the clubs in the trunk, and was driving his car down the fairway like it’s a golf cart. He said, “Well, it’s my golf course – I can drive on it if I want to.”

Steve Earle

After I dropped out of high school in 1972, I saw Willie at a place in Houston that I think was called the Half Dollar. “Whiskey River” had become his opening and closing song, and he played it three, maybe even four times that night. It was an unbroken set, too – he didn’t like to take breaks. By that time Willie was starting to get a big hippie following, but they didn’t really know what they were walking into. They’d never been in what people back then called hat joints – places where people in cowboy hats would go dance to country music. There was a small group of long-haired kids who went up and sat cross-legged on the dancefloor, right at the foot of the stage. They weren’t really bothering anybody, but it pissed the cowboys off. Some of them started kicking people in the back when they danced by. Willie stopped the show right in the middle of the song and he yelled at them: “There’s room up here for some people to sit and for some people to dance. So cut it out.” And they stopped.

Culturally, nobody was more important in Texas than Willie. I had long hair, but I also had cowboy boots. I got my ass kicked. But I’d say within a year of that show, I found myself standing out in a cow pasture with the very same guys who would jump out of their trucks and beat my ass. We were all listening to the same music, and that’s all because of Willie.

Rodney Crowell

It was probably 1976. Mickey Raphael, Willie’s longtime harmonica player, was a good friend of mine, and I’d played him a newly written song called “Till I Gain Control Again”
at a party one night. Mickey got a version of it to Willie. I didn’t think much of it, but time goes by and Willie’s playing the Palomino in North Hollywood. Mickey told me I really needed to come down. The place was packed, everybody was just squeezed in. And Willie’s onstage and says, “I’m gonna do a Rodney Crowell song. Come on up, Rodney!”

This was the ’70s, so I had imbibed some of the greenery that was available at the time. I was topped off, as they would say. I remember thinking as I walked up to the stage, ‘Wow, I’ve been knighted. I am truly a songwriter now. This is what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.’ And then Willie starts singing, and I’m trying to match his phrasing. We all know that his phrasing is as original as it gets! And he’s looking over at me like he knows exactly what’s happening. He knew I was trying to sing with him, and he wasn’t gonna let me! So much for being knighted. Backstage, I say to him, ‘You were tricking me!’ And he said, ‘Man, I was tricking myself!’ He was just having fun with me.

Daniel Lanois

When I worked with him on [1998’s] Teatro, I spent some time with him on the bus planning out what we were going to do. I asked him, “What was it like when you got started?” He said, “We were pretty much a dance band that provided a romantic night or maybe a night of two-stepping. Saturday night was really important for those audiences, ’cause they’ve been working hard all week.” I was renting a theatre in Oxnard at the time, and I thought I would set it up like an old Texas dance club, one of the places Willie played when he was a kid. We had risers for Willie and Emmylou Harris, another riser for the drummers, and all these benches from the Mexican restaurant across the street.

What’s interesting about Willie is, he never questions anything. He’s just happy that people are devoted to him and trusts that we’ll all look after him. I put the band up in this beautiful hotel nearby, but Willie never went in. He just stayed on his bus, said he didn’t want to haul his luggage. He’d come in when we were ready for him. He’s a master singer and phraser, and once he has a grip on a song, he can deliver it in one or two takes. And he played a Gibson ES330, a lovely instrument from the ’60s; we just wanted a little variety. I said, “If you’re nice to me, I’ll give you that guitar.” But he said, “No, Trigger would get jealous.”

Margo Price

[Recording “Learning To Lose” from All American Made] was the most surreal, amazing experience ever. They told me when we got into the studio that Willie only ever does one or two takes, but he did it probably four times and it was so hard to pick which one we were going to keep because they all had such a different brilliance to them.

He has a studio in Spicewood, Texas that’s on his golf course. When we went there, Trigger, his guitar was all set up next to his stool, and there was another stool that had an ashtray and a couple joints sitting there waiting to be smoked. We just sat there in awe and listened. We hung out for the whole rest of the day and listened to him record his album God’s Problem Child. I couldn’t believe that he just let us sit there and listen to the rest of the session. And when we got done, he came out and shook my hand and shook Jeremy’s hand and said, “That is a great, well-written song.” And Jeremy said, “Well, we were stealing from you, Willie!” And he goes, “Yep, but I didn’t write that song – you wrote that song, and it’s a good one.” And that means more to me than any award or accolade.

Pharoah Sanders – Live At Fabrik Hamburg 1980

John Lewis
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Pharoah Sanders – Live At Fabrik Hamburg 1980
Pharoah Sanders, who died last year at the age of 81, was the last great survivor of spiritual jazz, a saxophonist who filtered the teachings of his mentors Sun Ra, John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane into his own distinctive voice. He’s best known for his unorthodox “extended techniques”: making...

Pharoah Sanders, who died last year at the age of 81, was the last great survivor of spiritual jazz, a saxophonist who filtered the teachings of his mentors Sun Ra, John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane into his own distinctive voice. He’s best known for his unorthodox “extended techniques”: making noises from the tenor saxophone in ways it wasn’t designed for. His most distinctive was overblowing – honking into his mouthpiece so hard that the instrument would massively distort, creating multiple notes, as if playing through a distortion pedal. It was never a gimmick: these shrieks and howls seemed to be part of a mystical quest, a constant need for exploration. It’s why Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points, who collaborated with Sanders on the saxophonist’s Mercury-nominated final album, Promises, described his playing as “a megaphone to his soul”.

This previously unreleased 1980 recording comes from a gig accompanying his album of the same year, Journey To The One. At the time, Pharoah Sanders doing an LP of ballads might have sounded as insane as, say, Napalm Death doing an LP of ambient music. Yet it works because Sanders doesn’t really change his approach: even on the mellowest numbers he is still wailing in tongues, screaming and yodelling through the sax. An eight-minute version of “The Creator Has A Masterplan” features plenty of ecstatic overblowing, circular breathing and other extended techniques: you can hear him making ambient noises by humming into the bell of the sax, biting the mouthpiece and amplifying the clicking of the sax keys. But such techniques were only part of his arsenal: this album shows him dancing around the range of his tenor sax in the style of Sonny Rollins, leaping from basslines to high-pitched shrieks, like a man having a furious argument with himself. And his playing on a 13-minute version of “It’s Easy To Remember” – an old Rodgers & Hart ballad that John Coltrane covered – is often almost indistinguishable from Trane’s.

There’s a big-swinging, 18-minute version of the future club classic “You Gotta Have Freedom” (where he sounds like he’s ululating through a fuzzbox) and a 20-minute version of the modal jazz piece “Dr Pitt”. Both feature lengthy, rippling, staggeringly inventive solos from pianist John Hicks, who constantly has to keep up with Sanders’ trance-like improvisations. The finale, “Greetings To Idris”, is a rhythmically complex piece featuring plenty of interplay between drummer Idris Muhammad and closely-mic’d bassist Curtis Lundy.

It’s important to remember that, by 1980, it was only the European festival circuit which was keeping jazz alive, in those barren years between the electric advances of the early ’70s and the late-’80s jazz revival. It’s a treat to hear long-lost archive sessions like this, documenting a music that was in danger of dying out in its own country.

Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon (50th Anniversary Deluxe Boxset)

Jack Milner
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Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon (50th Anniversary Deluxe Boxset)
The announcement of this elaborate, expensive boxset was followed by news that Roger Waters will shortly be releasing a completely new re-recording of The Dark Side Of The Moon. This is the strange situation Floyd’s most famous album finds itself in, 50 years after release. It’s the fourth best...

The announcement of this elaborate, expensive boxset was followed by news that Roger Waters will shortly be releasing a completely new re-recording of The Dark Side Of The Moon. This is the strange situation Floyd’s most famous album finds itself in, 50 years
after release. It’s the fourth best-selling LP of all time, with an estimated 45 million copies sold, but it remains a difficult record to pin down.

The magic at work in these 10 songs, the reason why it captured the attention of the wider world, has long flummoxed even its greatest experts; namely Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason. Having spent years arguing over perceived influence, power and credit, the feeling is that even they haven’t got to grips with what makes this – a concept album with an abstract concept, an epic journey that’s over in a concise 43 minutes – such a remarkably resonant record. Asked why he’s remade the record, Waters said: “Because not enough people recognised what it’s about, what it was I was saying then.” Did 45 million people miss the point or did Waters himself?

If Dark Side… was your stoned gateway into a headier world, it’s impossible to divorce oneself from nostalgia, but it’s also difficult to think of a record that’s as sonically perfect as this, from its engineering to its use of synthesisers, sound effects and tape loops. This 50th Anniversary Deluxe Box is suitably lavish in its presentation, but it’s a testament to the sound of the original record that so much attention has been paid here to merely elaborating on the initial mixes. The new remaster sounds fantastic, but then again the basic tracks themselves are already flawlessly recorded. However, the variety of mixes – 2023 remastered, original 5.1, Atmos – feels like a convoluted diversion from the fact there’s very little here that hasn’t been heard before. Even the Live At Wembley Empire Pool, London, 1974 album doesn’t unearth anything new. There’s logic, then, in placing the final studio recordings front and centre, but an official release that included early versions, embryonic live cuts, demos and alternate mixes would have been welcome.

The real star here is the album’s tone and ‘feel’, the fairy dust that has captivated so many over the decades. That ‘feel’ is perhaps best exemplified by the alchemy that occurs when David Gilmour and Rick Wright sing together, especially on “Time”. The duo are instrumentally in perfect harmony throughout, with Gilmour’s guitar and Wright’s ethereal keyboards often indistinguishable as they engage and intertwine.

Key to the album’s unified air is the sophomoric one-two punch of the chords that weave their way through the album. The E minor to A7 that holds up the main body of “Breathe” is perhaps the most effective phrase in rock history; an elegant seesaw between melancholic resignation and euphoric optimism. That simple device, which rises again in “Time”, “Us & Them” and “Any Colour You Like”, is pure tension and release, night and day, light and dark. The quality of the material and the singularity in which it’s presented never lets up, culminating

in “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse” – composed completely by Roger Waters – one of the finest climaxes in popular music.

Waters is quick to take credit for the thematic direction of the record and, as the record’s lyricist and the band’s most dynamic personality, he was certainly Dark Side…’s driving force. Throughout, his words strike a fearless balance between being shockingly direct and then encapsulating existential confusion; it’s some achievement to convey the duality of life and express the feeling of fumbling around in the dark searching for meaning. While the album’s themes have been unfairly criticised as flimsy, or of having a naive view of mental illness, Waters’ glorious feat was being brave enough to try. “Eclipse”’s “And all that is now/And all that is gone/And all that’s to come/And everything under the sun is in tune” is succinct and startlingly perfect.

Perhaps a revelatory, Beatles-style trawl through the archives wouldn’t have suited this most mysterious of million-sellers. Dissecting Dark Side… into its lesser constituent ingredients makes little sense when the final product is such a wonderful example of what collectivism can achieve if, just for a moment, the balance between tension, talent, drive and compromise is reached. It found everyone involved, from engineer Alan Parsons, to sleeve designer Storm Thorgerson, to the four individuals in the band, operating at the very peak of their powers. In that respect, the animosity that continues to fester between the members – the tug of war over influence, credit, inspiration and business – seems even more unpleasant.

While there’s still much to delve into here, a box containing an older sibling’s scuffed second-hand copy of the album, with a joint taped to it, might have been a more fitting tribute.

Curated By King Crimson

Uncut
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Curated By King Crimson
Our latest Curated By…Edition celebrates King Crimson. Their albums, as they see it. Their influences. The greatest gigs they ever saw, and their 50 favourite albums. It’s King Crimson's life in music – as told in a series of exclusive new interviews. The band also lean into the “curation...

Our latest Curated By…Edition celebrates King Crimson. Their albums, as they see it. Their influences. The greatest gigs they ever saw, and their 50 favourite albums. It’s King Crimson’s life in music – as told in a series of exclusive new interviews.

The band also lean into the “curation” part of this assignment. Robert himself introduces an archive feature in which Uncut’s John Lewis enjoys a wide-ranging conversation with John McLaughlin.

Buy a copy here!

 

Introducing our Quarterly Special Edition: Curated By… King Crimson

John Robinson
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Introducing our Quarterly Special Edition: Curated By… King Crimson
Welcome to the latest of our Curated By…editions, in which our cover artist tells us about how they got to where they are today, and what they listened to on the way. They tell us about their influences, their favourite records, and their most revelatory live experiences. They’ll introduce some ...

Welcome to the latest of our Curated By…editions, in which our cover artist tells us about how they got to where they are today, and what they listened to on the way. They tell us about their influences, their favourite records, and their most revelatory live experiences. They’ll introduce some selections from Uncut’s archive of interviews, and tell us more about themselves – and about their life in music.

In this issue, we welcome King Crimson to the editorial office. When the band first split in 1974, they kept their fanbase interested with a compilation called The Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson. It was a compendiously annotated double album which spoke not only to the wealth of music the band had recorded in just five years, but also to the care with which they had charted their progress, and their readiness to explain what they’d been up to.

Here, King Crimson members past and present give us something similar. If the band’s music can sometimes seem forbidding, the players themselves are most approachable. In a series of all-new interviews, they’ve opened up to tell us about their evolving relationship with that music – a 30 page album by album trip through their recorded history, from In The Court Of The Crimson King to The Power To Believe. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the gripping Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, meanwhile, we’ve dwelled on that period in particular, and spoken at length to Bill Bruford, to office temp-turned-Robert-Fripp-jam-session-participant-turned-King-Crimson-violinist David Cross, and to lyricist Richard Palmer-James.

Robert Fripp has himself kept a watchful eye on things throughout, breaking off from rehearsals (“rocking out with my wife”, in preparation for his upcoming string of “Sunday Lunch” festival appearances) to answer questions about the band he directed for over 50 years. Seeking to spice things up editorially, he encouraged a more “off the wall” approach to questioning and so we’ve made his suggestion a feature of the magazine. Inside, the members of the band answer 50 questions about the band that might not otherwise have sprung to mind.

The band also lean into the “Curation” part of this assignment. Robert himself introduces an archive feature in which Uncut’s John Lewis enjoys a wide-ranging conversation with John McLaughlin. Other members of King Crimson also make entertaining selections. Some are probably already known and revered among Crimson fans, like Peter Gabriel (chosen by Tony Levin), or Kate Bush (Jakko Jakszyk). Some, like Earth, Wind & Fire (Gavin Harrison) may open up some new horizons.

What else? We’ve asked the band to face down their Wikipedia entries, and we can tell you that Jakko Jakszyk has a story to tell you about The Nolan Sisters and Whitney Houston which you’re going to want to hear.

Enjoy the magazine.

Live review! The Flaming Lips, Troxy, London (25/04/23)

Sam Richards
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Live review! The Flaming Lips, Troxy, London (25/04/23)
“I don’t really like gimmicks,” says Wayne Coyne, to hearty guffaws from both audience and band. He has, after all, just spent three minutes firing off a series of confetti cannons from between the thighs of four 20-foot high inflatable pink robots. But compared to some Flaming Lips shows of r...

“I don’t really like gimmicks,” says Wayne Coyne, to hearty guffaws from both audience and band. He has, after all, just spent three minutes firing off a series of confetti cannons from between the thighs of four 20-foot high inflatable pink robots. But compared to some Flaming Lips shows of recent times, when it became hard to discern the presence of an actual band amid a tsunami of glitter and balloons resembling a spoilt Trump scion’s fifth birthday party, this is a relatively straightforward rendering of their classic 2002 album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, in celebration of its recent 20th anniversary.

Once the roadies have deflated the giant robots (a somewhat unflattering process), the strength of the Yoshimi… material shines through. It’s a pleasure to hear lesser-played songs such as “It’s Summertime” and “All We Have Is Now” beaming down their warm rays of philosophical consolation.

Despite being two decades old, “One More Robot” seems to have something worthwhile to say about our current AI conundrum. And there’s a first-ever live airing for the Grammy-winning instrumental “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)”, Coyne enthusiastically miming the trumpet fanfare. Conversely, while “Do You Realize??” has been overplayed to the point where you might assume it would feel sickly and trite, it still hits home.

After an interval, the Lips return for what should be a triumphant romp through the greatest hits. But it’s a stop-start affair, with interminable gaps betweens songs as Coyne introduces a remote-controlled bird, or changes into what looks like a superhero dog onesie. Perhaps it’s finally time to ditch these remaining gimmicks. With Steven Drozd conducting a five-piece band including twin drummers in matching wigs, the songs sound great by themselves: “Waitin’ For A Superman” and “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” are poignant and rousing, while “She Don’t Use Jelly” is joyously daft and raucous in a way they ought to revisit more often.

This is the first time they’ve attempted one of these dual-set concerts, so you hope it’ll be slicker at Hammersmith Apollo on Friday. But for all Yoshimi…’s sci-fi comic book conceptualism, its songs connect here not because of the giant inflatable robots, but because they are achingly human. That has to be the way forward.

Set List
Fight Test
One More Robot
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 2
In The Morning Of The Magicians
Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell
Are You A Hypnotist??
It’s Summertime
Do You Realize??
All We Have Is Now
Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)
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My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion
She Don’t Use Jelly
Silver Trembling Hands
Enthusiasm For Life Defeats Existential Fear
Waitin’ For A Superman
Assassins Of Youth
Borderline
Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate
A Spoonful Weighs A Ton
Race For The Prize

Hear “A Child’s Question, August” from PJ Harvey’s new album, I Inside the Old Year Dying

Michael Bonner
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Hear “A Child’s Question, August” from PJ Harvey’s new album, I Inside the Old Year Dying
PJ Harvey has released details of her new studio album, I Inside the Old Year Dying. To celebrate this momentous news, she's released “A Child’s Question, August” which you can hear below. ORDER NOW: The National are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut The video has been directed...

PJ Harvey has released details of her new studio album, I Inside the Old Year Dying. To celebrate this momentous news, she’s released “A Child’s Question, August” which you can hear below.

The video has been directed by photographer and musician, Steve Gullick.

Harvey’s first album since 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project, I Inside the Old Year Dying will be released on July 7 via Partisan Records. The album is produced by long-time collaborators Flood and John Parish.

You can pre-order I Inside the Old Year Dying by clicking here.

I Inside the Old Year Dying tracklist:

Prayer at the Gate
Autumn Term
Lwonesome Tonight
Seem an I
The Nether-edge
I Inside the Old Year Dying
All Souls
A Child’s Question, August
I Inside the Old I Dying
August
A Child’s Question, July
A Noiseless Noise

Since

We’re New Here – Modern Cosmology

Jason Anderson
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We’re New Here – Modern Cosmology
Stereolab cross-pollinate with Brazilian band Mombojó to grow something new, in our JUNE 2023 issue of Uncut, available to buy here. It’s clear from more than just their name that Modern Cosmology believe the universe has a plan for them. Full of serendipitous turns and lengthy gaps in the act...

Stereolab cross-pollinate with Brazilian band Mombojó to grow something new, in our JUNE 2023 issue of Uncut, available to buy here.

It’s clear from more than just their name that Modern Cosmology believe the universe has a plan for them. Full of serendipitous turns and lengthy gaps in the action, their tale begins in 2012 in São Paulo, Brazil, where Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier was performing a solo concert. In attendance were several members of Mombojó, an act from Recife known for playfully merging Brazilian folk, samba and psychedelia with the alt-pop sounds of their favourite UK and US bands, Stereolab in particular. “We grew up on them,” guitarist Marcelo Machado (aka Um Cara Massa) tells Uncut. “We’d been eating their sounds and textures from the time we were 15.”

Starstruck but fuelled by liquid courage, Machado’s bandmate Felipe S passed Sadier a Mombojó CD that night. Months later, she listened to the gift and loved what she heard. As she describes it now, her Facebook message to them essentially read as follows: “If you need some backing vocals, I’m your gal.”

Mombojó’s 2014 album Alexandre included their inaugural collaboration, but the bonds deepened when Sadier joined her five new friends for a two-week residency in Recife. By then the singer was ready to make a stronger commitment: “When it was still ‘Laetitia with Mombojó’, I found that a little horrifying, actually. I thought if we were in the realm of creation, we might as well create a band – that felt like a more honest way to behave.”

The newly minted Modern Cosmology’s first release was 2016’s  “Summer Long”, an intoxicating EP to anyone who appreciates Stereolab’s dabblings in bossa nova and has wondered what a space-age Os Mutantes might sound like. Seven years later, they return with What Will You Grow Now?, a full-length LP that’s among the most inventive work either party has ever made, amply demonstrating the “freedom and joy” Sadier found in Mombojó’s amiable company.

Though Stereolab’s reactivation and other projects kept Sadier far from Brazil, they connected online to work on songs started in Recife and others that grew out of Mombojó jams (such as the free-flowing one recorded on a boat that yielded the album’s title track). The project also provided some solace to the participants amid the turbulence that surrounded its creation. “This project bracketed a complex time in the world,” says bassist Missionário José. “The Trump administration was a pain to everybody, and here we had the Bolsonaro administration. We began to make this album before they started to win the elections, and now it’s coming out after all that has… not quite ended, but at least halted for now.”

A vibrant statement of resistance and resilience, the music also retains its sense of spontaneity despite its protracted recording process. “When they sent me the backing tracks, I adored the fact that it felt so open and unfinished,” says Sadier. “I told them we should keep this vibe, because I feel that in music, things can be polished and sealed and finished. I loved that open-ended quality.” Mombojó are equally appreciative of their partner. “She has a talent of flipping ideas upside down,” says José. “We think a song is going in a certain direction but when she adds her vocals and lyrics, now there’s a song we couldn’t have imagined.”

The Modern Cosmology team express their eagerness to happen upon more of these happy accidents, and to finally perform live together again; Brazil’s the likeliest site of shows for now, but time will tell. Either way, they’re thrilled to see this project blossom. “The seeds found the right ground and got the right amount of water and light,” says Sadier, “and they have been growing steadily ever since.”

What Will You Grow Now? is out on May 5 via Duophonic

Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten shares debut solo single, “The Score”

Tom Skinner
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Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten shares debut solo single, “The Score”
Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten has shared his debut solo single – listen to "The Score" below. ORDER NOW: The National are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Fontaines D.C. talk uprooting and having a sense of identity on Skinty Fia The stripped-back intimate tr...

Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten has shared his debut solo single – listen to “The Score” below.

The stripped-back intimate track sees the Irish singer “shift his creative process from a collaborative endeavour to a solely introspective one”, per a press release. It was produced by Chatten and Dan Carey, the latter of whom helmed all three Fontaines albums to date.

“You know the score/ It ain’t limited to your knowing looks and touches anymore,” Chatten sings over acoustic guitar before a minimal electronic beat kicks in. “Cuz when you make his love you turn alone/ You see your heart’s been tethered to a sinking stone.”

Speaking about the single in a statement, the vocalist explained: “‘The Score’ is a heavyweight bated breath of lust. I wrote it in Madrid between an electric fan and a dying plant and I intend to keep it there. It was inspired by sugar and sunset.”

The song arrives with a trippy accompanying video, which was directed and produced by Georgie Jesson. Tune in here:

It is not yet known whether “The Score” will feature on an album, EP or wider solo project from Chatten.

Last month saw Chatten appear on an edition of Sleaford Mods’ online talk show Late Night With Jason. The Fontaines D.C. singer phoned in from Australia where the band were touring earlier this year.

This summer, Fontaines D.C. will head out on the road to support Arctic Monkeys on their 2023 North American tour.

Speaking to NME at the BRIT Awards 2023 (where Fontaines won the Best International Group statue), guitarist Carlos O’Connell said that the band would “go back into the mindset of writing” after the AM gigs.

“We’ve done every album straight after another, and this is a new thing for us to have a break,” he continued. “I don’t necessarily like it but I know it’s good for me and it’s good for everyone.”

As for those massive upcoming dates with Alex Turner and co, O’Connell told NME: “I’m excited not only because of the music and everything, but I think it’s amazing as a band to see someone with such legacy and so much time behind them. They’ve stuck together and it’s quite beautiful.

“To see a band like Arctic Monkeys stick together after so long and to continue to make albums that challenge the music around them and challenge the music they’ve already made is inspiring.”

Fontaines D.C’s third and most recent studio record, Skinty Fia, came out in April 2022. It gave the band their first Number One on both the official UK and Irish album charts.

Watch Neil Young and Stephen Stills perform Buffalo Springfield classics

Michael Bonner
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Watch Neil Young and Stephen Stills perform Buffalo Springfield classics
Neil Young and Stephen Stills performed publicly together for the first time in five years at Stills' Light Up the Blues concert, a fundraising event to benefit Autism Speaks, held at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre. ORDER NOW: The National are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut Additional...

Neil Young and Stephen Stills performed publicly together for the first time in five years at Stills’ Light Up the Blues concert, a fundraising event to benefit Autism Speaks, held at Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre.

Additionally, Graham Nash appeared by video during the show to pay tribute to David Crosby. “David was my best friend for almost 50 years. I’m going to miss him terribly in my life. I think about him every day,” Nash said, before footage played of Crosby and Nash performing “Guinnevere” in 2013 at Lincoln Center.

In further tribute, Stills performed “Wooden Ships” – the song he co-wrote with Crosby and Paul Kantner – alongside his son Chris Stills and James Raymond, Crosby’s son and longtime musical collaborator.

“Wooden Ships”

After sets from Joe Walsh and Willie Nelson, the evening climaxed with an 11-song set form Young and Stills, backed by Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real. It began with three solo Neil cuts “From Hank To Hendrix“, “Comes A Time” and “Heart Of Gold” – before Stills joined on piano for CSNY’s “Helpless” and together they played five Buffalo Springfield songs: “On The Way Home“, “Everybody’s Wrong“, “For What It’s Worth“, “Bluebird” and “Mr. Soul“. The evening concluded with the Stills-Young Band track, “Long May You Run“.

The setlist:

Young solo:
From Hank To Hendrix
Comes A Time
Heart Of Gold

With Stills:
Helpless
On The Way Home
Everybody’s Wrong (vocals by Stephen Stills)
Human Highway

For What It’s Worth (vocals by Stephen Stills)
Bluebird (vocals by Stephen Stills)
Mr. Soul

Long May You Run

And here’s some clips from the show:

“For What It’s Worth”

“Bluebird”

“Mr Soul”

“Long May You Run”

Lucinda Williams: “It was so satisfying to put the record straight.”

Stephen Troussé
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Lucinda Williams: “It was so satisfying to put the record straight.”
Three years ago, a stroke left medical professionals wondering whether Lucinda Williams would ever walk again. With dogged resilience, however, she returns this spring with her long-awaited memoir and her 16th album – whose guests include Bruce Springsteen, Margo Price and Angel Olsen.  You wo...

Three years ago, a stroke left medical professionals wondering whether Lucinda Williams would ever walk again. With dogged resilience, however, she returns this spring with her long-awaited memoir and her 16th album – whose guests include Bruce Springsteen, Margo Price and Angel Olsen. 

You wouldn’t consider it today, fresh from a triumphant European tour, but two years ago it seemed like Williams might never walk or pick up a guitar again. Back in November 2020, her partner Tom Oversby found her collapsed on the bathroom floor of their Nashville home. He rushed her to Vanderbilt Medical Centre where medics discovered a blood clot on the right side of her brain. The stroke affected the motor skills along the left half of her body; only timely intervention and the long, arduous process of rehab prevented more lasting and profound disability.

“It was kind of biblical, really,” she laughs now, recalling the shocking events of that year. “We’d been staying so much in Nashville while we were on tour it made sense to buy a place there. A couple of weeks after we closed on the house a tornado hit and took off part of the roof and blew up the porch. A few weeks after that, the pandemic came along. And then, just before Thanksgiving, I had my stroke…”

Thirty-five years on, 2023 is witnessing the prime of Lucinda Williams. Her new record, Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart, featuring guest appearances from Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa, Jesse Malin and the Replacements’ Tommy Stinson, Margo Price and Angel Olsen, is a triumph – the kind of defiant, unabashed rock album only Williams’ could make.

Equally, her new memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You, sees the full flowering of the prose writer her lyrics always hinted at. There’s a remarkable honesty to it. At times it is painful – such as when she’s reckoning with generational abuse and neglect, mental illness and destructive relationships – and occasionally hilarious, when recalling her freewheeling teens and ill-starred romantic dalliances.

Lucinda’s book chronicles a messy, peripatetic life of hotel rooms and troubled romance, a longstanding obsession with the “poet on a motorcycle” archetype and a motley crew of stupendously unworthy ne-’er-do-wells.

Most significantly, after decades of sexist reviews and features, the book allows Lucinda to tell her story, her way. A 1997 New York Times Magazine profile about the laborious recording of Car Wheels… that presented her as a perfectionist control freak still rankles. “It was pretty crazy,” she concedes. “It had been five years since my last record, but I remember specifically John Fogerty taking 11 years or so between albums, and not one word was said about it! It’s something I’ve never lived down, that whole perfectionism thing. It was so satisfying to put the record straight.”

Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart is released by Thirty Tigers on April 30; Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You is published by Simon & Schuster on April 27

PJ Harvey teases return and shares new studio clips

Arusa Qureshi
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PJ Harvey teases return and shares new studio clips
PJ Harvey has shared that she has been back in the studio with her longtime collaborators John Parish and Flood. ORDER NOW: The National are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: PJ Harvey – B-sides, Demos & Rarities review Last week, the musician shared via her socia...

PJ Harvey has shared that she has been back in the studio with her longtime collaborators John Parish and Flood.

Last week, the musician shared via her social media and her newsletter that she was making a new playlist available on her Spotify.

The playlist features “tracks from her catalogue produced by John Parish and Flood,” and comes in at just under 40 minutes.

Writing in her newsletter, Harvey said: “I have recently been in the studio with John Parish and Flood, my closest musical partners for nearly 30 years. This is a celebration of their masterful work with me. I am so grateful. Thank you John. Thank you Flood. I love you both.”

In addition to the playlist, Harvey shared two new studio clips, filmed, directed and edited by Steve Gullick – you can watch those below.

A message at the end of the newsletter reads: “Keep an eye out for a special announcement next Tuesday at 8pm BST,” suggesting details about a new project or her return.

Last year, Harvey announced an expansive, 59-track box set of rare songs titled B-Sides, Demos and Rarities. The compilation catalogues nearly five dozen archival cuts from the singer-songwriter, 14 of which have never previously seen the light of day.

In February last year, Harvey shared a series of photographs of herself in the studio, prompting speculation her 10th studio album could be on the way. In June, Harvey provided an update on the forthcoming album, telling Rolling Stone she was “very pleased with it” and earmarking a 2023 release.

Also last year, Harvey shared a cover of Leonard Cohen‘s “Who By Fire” for the Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters.

Ahe said of the cover: “It was a very enjoyable day spent recording the version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Who by Fire’ for Bad Sisters. I had spoken to Sharon Horgan in advance of the recording session, so I understood why she felt the song’s lyric was so perfect for the series, but also understood what nuances of Leonard’s performance she most loved, and therefore what to try and recapture but in my own way.”

The Pop Group’s Mark Stewart dies aged 62

Emma Wilkes
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The Pop Group’s Mark Stewart dies aged 62
Mark Stewart has died at the age of 62. ORDER NOW: The National are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut The band confirmed that The Pop Group frontman had died today in the early hours (April 21) on their official social media accounts. No cause of death has been confirmed. “Mark ...

Mark Stewart has died at the age of 62.

The band confirmed that The Pop Group frontman had died today in the early hours (April 21) on their official social media accounts. No cause of death has been confirmed.

“Mark is in Communion with Love. As Sufis say; there is no such thing as death, no one is going to die, but since death is so valuable, it has been hidden in the safe of fears,” the statement began.

“Mark’s family and friends respectfully ask to be given space at this difficult time.”

The band’s former label boss Daniel Miller contributed to the statement with a tribute to Stewart, in which he said: “I’ve known Mark as a friend and a fellow traveller for over 40 years, since he was the lead singer of The Pop Group. I have so many wonderful memories of him – some bizarre, some outrageous, but always inspiring and somehow for a reason.

“His musical influence has been much greater than acknowledged. He was always encouraging young artists, especially those local to him in Bristol – many have gone on to be global stars.

“His warmth and kindness as a friend has always been something very important to me. We had so many laughs together, and he had so much creative energy. The last time I saw Mark a few months ago in Bristol, performing an improvised set with Lee Ranaldo. He was nothing but hilarious, his piece was basically a stand-up routine, and after the show we spent many hours putting the world to rights, it’s a wonderful memory, I will miss him greatly.

“Mark, I can’t imagine you being anything other than restless but I hope you find your very special place.”

The band’s guitarist Gareth Sager added: “Mark was the most amazing mind of my generation, RIP,” while record producer Adrian Sherwood said: “Thank you my brother. You were the biggest musical influence in my life and our extended family will miss you so so much. Love forever.”

Stewart founded The Pop Group as a teenager in Bristol in 1977 along with Sager, John Waddington, Simon Underwood, and Bruce Smith. The politically oriented band blended post-punk with dub and reggae and released two albums, 1979’s ‘Y’ and 1980’s ‘For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?’. The group disbanded in 1980 with a final performance at rally for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a campaign Stewart continued to be heavily involved with.

They later reformed in 2010 and released two further albums, 2015’s ‘Citizen Zombie’ and 2016’s ‘Honeymoon On Mars’. Stewart’s last performance with the band was in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral to celebrate City of Culture 2021, at the invitation of the late Terry Hall.

Tributes have been paid to Stewart from across the music world. Cosey Fanni Tutti said she was “shocked and so very sad” to hear of his death, while Sleaford Mods said he was “proper” and “didn’t care for the dogshit”.

Kraftwerk – Ultimate Music Guide

Uncut
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Kraftwerk – Ultimate Music Guide
Celebrating the return to touring of Kraftwerk, one of music’s most innovative bands. From their origins on the fringes of the German art scene over 50 years ago, the core duo of Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter brought their influence to bear on David Bowie, Iggy Pop – and an entire generation...

Celebrating the return to touring of Kraftwerk, one of music’s most innovative bands. From their origins on the fringes of the German art scene over 50 years ago, the core duo of Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter brought their influence to bear on David Bowie, Iggy Pop – and an entire generation of electronic musicians.

Buy a copy of the magazine here. Missed one in the series? Bundles are available at the same location…

Introducing the Ultimate Music Guide to Kraftwerk

John Robinson
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Introducing the Ultimate Music Guide to Kraftwerk
BUY THE KRAFTWERK DELUXE ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE If there was a recent occasion to capture some of Kraftwerk’s unique standing it was surely their run of 3-D Catalogue shows in 2013. There we stood, on the sloping floor of the Tate Modern turbine hall, delighting in the band’s music – ...

BUY THE KRAFTWERK DELUXE ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE

If there was a recent occasion to capture some of Kraftwerk’s unique standing it was surely their run of 3-D Catalogue shows in 2013.

There we stood, on the sloping floor of the Tate Modern turbine hall, delighting in the band’s music – it was the placid, ominous Radio-Activity the night I went – but also in the band’s many quirks and contradictions. It was an evening of past and present; high and popular art.

We could witness Kraftwerk’s dedication to technology (their engrossing visuals) but also smile at the kitsch retro-futurism which permitted it (the cardboard 3D glasses, unchanged since the 1950s). We could hear the songs we knew; but now with optimal updates installed. Most obviously, while the band remained utterly serene and remote, the music and the experience conspired to connect and enfold us all.

That night, and throughout that week, Kraftwerk revisited their official canon, as they presented it in their 2009 box set Der Katalog, an eight-album run of highly-polished, high-concept work beginning with 1974’s Autobahn. In this magazine, you’ll find in-depth reviews of those albums, and a wealth of contemporary encounters with the band, drawn from the archives of NME, Melody Maker and Uncut.

Everything outside of these self-imposed restrictions, Ralf Hutter has pronounced, is “archaeology”. But every machine has a prototype – and Kraftwerk are no different. As such, this publication isn’t only a celebration of Kraftwerk’s 50 years of creativity, it also gets into the circuitry of their story. Here you’ll be able to discover more about the period outside Kraftwerk’s canon: the two “cone” albums, Ralf And Florian, and even the album by Organisation, the experimental Dusseldorf band which featured a young Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider.

As you’ll read in the early pages here, and in our reminiscence from Florian and Ralf’s early collaborator Eberhard Kranemann, anyone who imagines Kraftwerk to have always been about clean lines, control and laboratory conditions will be in for a surprise: the dawn of Kraftwerk was a rather more random place. Still, somewhere amid the naked swimming, the auto-destructive art, guitars and cross-legged hippies, however, a scientific breakthrough was made.

Working thereafter in their Kling Klang studio, Ralf and Florian created a hermetic unit (“like a married couple,” Kranemann notes), dedicated to their music and to a – highly European – vision of interconnectivity and its implications. While some writers welcomed the new music – initially as another turn on prog’s winding track – and responded to Kraftwerk for their advances in aesthetics, music and humour, there was in some quarters a suspicion manifesting itself in an exaggerated, yobbish ignorance. If there was a coherent complaint to be discerned in the latter position, it was usually that Kraftwerk’s music was “cold” and lacking “humanity”.

Which is a little ironic. Because as much as it is about technology, it’s worth remembering that Kraftwerk’s music is about technology’s consequences for human beings. That could mean weighing data-gathering against individual freedom, or pondering social connection via remote computers. On a practical level, even into middle age, the band were interested in the effects electronic music had on actual people – taking regular trips into the world’s evolving clublands to take the temperature of the room.

In recent years, co-incident with their old/new release The Mix, in which the band reworked some of their best-known songs for a younger – or at least more club music familiar – audience, Kraftwerk has predominantly been a performing rather than a recording unit.

Since this magazine was last published, we have mourned the passing of Kraftwerk founder member Florian Schneider-Esleben, emerged from the pandemic which interrupted the band’s 50th anniversary celebrations, and now can continue to enjoy their legacy as they continue a European tour. Europe Endless – and also timeless.

Get your copy in stores now, or here with free UK P&P.

Rye Lane

Stephen Troussé
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Rye Lane
It’s something of a national embarrassment that the country that produced Shakespeare and Jane Austen has failed to muster a half-decent rom-com in over 100 years (let’s draw a discrete veil for now across the work of Richard Curtis). So the fizzing, funny, irresistible spree of Rye Lane is caus...

It’s something of a national embarrassment that the country that produced Shakespeare and Jane Austen has failed to muster a half-decent rom-com in over 100 years (let’s draw a discrete veil for now across the work of Richard Curtis). So the fizzing, funny, irresistible spree of Rye Lane is cause for hats in the air. Following the freshly single Yas and Dom from their meet-cute in some art gallery loos, through the streets, markets, parks and bars of Peckham and Brixton, Raine Allen-Miller’s debut feature does for south London what Jacques Demy did for Cherbourg, what Richard Linklater did for Vienna, what Spike Lee did for Bed-Stuy.

Though not a musical as such – though tracks by A Tribe Called Quest and Terence Trent D’Arby among others feature on a memorable soundtrack – this is a film that feels artfully scored and choreographed to the music of the everyday, where sound systems, sneakers, shopfront graffiti and spring blossom all rhyme like the smoothest flow.

The script, by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia, maybe best know for BBC3’s hit-and-miss Famalam, is similarly on- point, capturing the awkward comedy of everything from pretentious private views (“teeth are the Stonehenge of the face” says one artworld hypebeast) to family barbecues and first kisses. “You know you’re very…” begins David Jonsson’s Dom, trying to put his finger on just what intrigues him about Vivian Oparah’s knockout Yas, as they wander through an indoor market. “Peng? Disarmingly refreshing?” she offers, twirling through the shoe racks. Rye Lane is without doubt the pengest, most
disarmingly refreshing British comedy you will see this year.

Wednesday – Rat Saw God

Stephen Deusner
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Wednesday – Rat Saw God
“Chosen To Deserve”, a knotty relationship anthem on Wednesday’s third album, features one of the more unusual ODs described in a rock song. “My friends all took Benadryl ’til they could see shit crawlin’ up the walls”, guitarist/vocalist Karly Hartzman sings, her voice twisting into a...

“Chosen To Deserve”, a knotty relationship anthem on Wednesday’s third album, features one of the more unusual ODs described in a rock song. “My friends all took Benadryl ’til they could see shit crawlin’ up the walls”, guitarist/vocalist Karly Hartzman sings, her voice twisting into a slurred twang. “One of those times my friend took a little too much/He had to get his stomach pumped”.

It’s a complicated moment, funny but also harrowing, and she sounds simultaneously embarrassed by her juvenile escapades, impressed by their wildness, and relieved that she and her friends survived long enough to put the memory into a song. A sharp lyricist with a keen eye for revealing details, and a surprisingly deft singer with the ability to add fine gradients of emotion to a throwaway line, Hartzman stands by all her dumb decisions, all her glaring flaws, all her bad experiences: “I’m the girl you were chosen to deserve”, she declares, then adds: “Thank God that I was chosen to deserve you”.

The song is an apt introduction to this Asheville, North Carolina band, who’ve already released two studio albums and a covers collection in their few years together. All of Wednesday’s influences and concerns, along with all their vices and virtues, are rammed into the rambunctious five-and-a-half minutes of “Chosen To Deserve”: a massive Southern-rock riff from MJ Lenderman, a scribbly Sonic Youth/Crazy Horse guitar attack, smears of cosmic lap steel from Xandy Chelmis. Their love of ’90s alt.rock has already prompted comparisons to acts like Snail Mail and Phoebe Bridgers, but Wednesday cast a wider net: at times on Rat Saw God, they sound like a skewed country band several whiskey neats into a set, at other times they’re snarling skatepunks hellbent on making trouble.

The quintet laid out their influences on last year’s wide-ranging Mowing The Leaves Instead Of Piling ’Em Up, which is more essential and revealing than most covers albums. They studied the honky-tonk storytelling of Gary Stewart, the psychedelic melodicism of Smashing Pumpkins, and the Southern eccentricity of Vic Chesnutt, but perhaps no other band exerts more of an influence than the Drive-By Truckers. Wednesday toured with them last year, covered “Women Without Whiskey”, even added a shout-out on their new song “Bath County”. Most crucially they share with that band a similar sense of place and a penchant for open-ended songwriting. “They’re doing what I wanna do when I’m older,” Hartzman tells Uncut.

On Rat Saw God, Wednesday take those lessons and work them into their own songs. Like her heroes, Hartzman understands that she’s her best source of materials – not just her emotions and ideas, but her background, where she grew up and the people she grew up with. Instead, this is an album full of everyday tragedies: overdoses, police raids, car crashes, ungrounded amps, unwanted pregnancies, head lice, nosebleeds, and a relentless loneliness that floods you even when you’re among friends, bandmates or lovers.

On “Quarry”, she gives listeners a tour of her old neighbourhood, depicting its hard-luck denizens with sympathy and specificity: there’s the old woman at the end of the block who complains about spoiled children “but then she gives out full-size candy bars on Halloween”. And the Kletz brothers, with head lice and “flat parts on their crew cuts from layin’ their heads on their knees”. Those poetic details accumulate into poignant images of home, but Hartzman make no stabs at romanticising this milieu.

That’s because her bandmates won’t let her. They add dramatic punch to these songs, enough to remind you Wednesday is a band and not a singer-songwriter project. They’re sympathetic to her travails, but never so much that it gets in the way of the runaway tempo of “TV In The Gas Pump” or akimbo riffs of “Hot Rotten Grass Smell” or the trippy tempo changes on “Turkey Vultures”. They might be the friends she keeps singing about, the ones doing Benadryl and playing Mortal Kombat all night, especially when they blast “Bull Believer” wide open, wailing discordantly while Hartzman screams, “Finish him! Finish him!” Once they hit that dramatic pique, they keep going, maintaining the din for nearly two minutes. Rarely does so much noise convey such raw melancholy.

Remarkably, the world they create together never curdles into sentimentality. As much as these songs dwell on their past, they make no room for nostalgia. “Memory always twists the knife”, Kartzman sings on “What’s So Funny”, mixing humour and horror until they’re indistinguishable. “Nothing will ever be as vivid as the darkest time of my life”. Wednesday turn that stabbing pain into triumphant rock’n’roll.

Suede announce 30th anniversary reissue of self-titled debut

Andrew Trendell
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Suede announce 30th anniversary reissue of self-titled debut
Suede have announced details of a new project called Suede30 – celebrating three decades of their acclaimed self-titled debut. ORDER NOW: The National are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Suede: “We’ve got to find ways to be uncomfortable” Arriving on July 7 wi...

Suede have announced details of a new project called Suede30 – celebrating three decades of their acclaimed self-titled debut.

Arriving on July 7 will be special limited edition 30th anniversary releases – offering up their 1993 debut in a newly mixed and mastered format. Containing the fan favourites and era classics “Animal Nitrate”, “So Young”, “The Drowners” and “Metal Mickey”, the LP hit Number One upon first release, selling over 100,000 copies in its first week and becoming the fastest-selling debut album ever in the UK at that time before going on to win the Mercury Music Prize.

The band’s glam rock sound and aesthetic – along with their very real tales of mundane UK life – were at odds with the prevailing US grunge trends of the time, and was inadvertently a precursor to the Brit-rock movement.

“It was a genuinely magical time in my life and one for which I’ll always be grateful,” said frontman Brett Anderson. “It felt incredible being in what I thought was quite probably the most exciting band in the world at the time, making a record which felt like more than just another band making another album.”

Bassist Mat Osman added: “So, 30 years ago, this is where it all began. A mixture of the live songs that had won us a following and our first experiments in the studio. Listening back now it still has that sense of wildness, and drama, and possibility of those early days. So young and so gone, indeed!”

To mark the announcement, the band have also shared a remastered video of the single “Metal Mickey”, which you can check out below.

Suede30 will be released on July 7 on 180g black vinyl LP, double DC, picture disc and blu-ray editions, all with audio newly mastered by Phil Kinrade at AIR Studios from the original ½” tapes and production masters, overseen and approved by original album producer Ed Buller.

The double CD deluxe gatefold edition will also include the nine B-sides, along with a cover of The Pretenders‘ “Brass in Pocket”, originally recorded for an NME covermount cassette.

The picture disc LP (limited to 1030 copies worldwide) will feature reimagined exclusive artwork by Paul Khera, along with an exclusive picture disc featuring Anderson’s lyrics housed in a deluxe gatefold sleeve featuring gold foil detailing, and a classic Kevin Cummins photograph across the centrefold.

Pre-order the album here, and check out the tracklist below:

CD 1: SUEDE

1. “So Young”
2. “Animal Nitrate”
3. “She’s Not Dead”
4. “Moving”
5. “Pantomime Horse”
6. “The Drowners”
7. “Sleeping Pills”
8. “Breakdown”
9. “Metal Mickey”
10. “Animal Lover”
11. “The Next Life”

CD 2: THE B-SIDES

1. “My Insatiable One”
2. “To The Birds”
3. “He’s Dead”
4. “Where The Pigs Don’t Fly”
5. “Painted People”
6. “The Big Time”
7. “High Rising”
8. “Dolly”
9. “My Insatiable One” [piano version]
10. “Brass In Pocket”

The band kicked off the anniversary activity last month by performing a unique show in Manchester that celebrated 30 years of their debut album.

Meanwhile, the band have recently been touring in support of their acclaimed 2022 album Autofiction. Speaking to NME last year, Anderson revealed that the band were already at work on their next album.

“The next record that we’re planning to write, and have already started, is much more experimental,” he told NME. “I don’t really know if there’s an arc with [Autofiction]. I’m not seeing it as a selection of albums. You just have to do it one at a time, really. I do think of those three records as [being] together, especially Night Thoughts and The Blue Hour, but the next record will be completely different.”

He added: “I’d love to think that our most daring work is ahead of us. That’s a really exciting prospect – that a band at our stage of our career haven’t just settled for running through the motions. I love making new records: it makes my heart beat faster, it’s what I get up for in the morning.”

With “further activity soon to be announced” soon, Suede’s UK Autofiction tour continues with two nights at London’s O2 Academy Brixton on December 15 and 16.

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