Uncut contributor Damon Wise is at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Here’s his first look review of the new Coen brothers film, set in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s: Inside Llewyn Davis…

To the extent that it’s in some senses a period comedy and with music supervised by T-Bone Burnett, the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen appears on the surface to be a companion piece to O Brother, Where Art Thou. In reality, though, Inside Llewyn Davis belongs with the substrata of the Coens’ more esoteric pieces, sharing the cyclical structure of Barton Fink, the existential terror of A Serious Man and, by using a strangely amenable ginger cat instead of a hat, the theme of one man always chasing his destiny that played such a big part in their gangster drama Miller’s Crossing.

Set during one week in early 1961, Inside Llewyn Davis is inspired by The Mayor Of McDougal Street, the posthumously published memoir of Dave Van Ronk. Oscar Isaac stars as Davis, once one half of folk duo Timlin & Davis, who we meet performing in the early ’60s at the Gaslight Club in Greenwich Village. Davis is a difficult man, angry at the world, feckless, penniless, couch-surfing his way round the Village to the increasing annoyance of his acquaintances. Like Barton Fink – a screenwriter trying to make a difference in Hollywood – Davis thinks his music is the real deal, while his peers’ material is mediocre and adulterated. He plays session guitar on a novelty record, sees preppy vocal harmony groups appear on the circuit, and – in a dagger to the heart – discovers that his mistress’ sappy act is a bigger draw than he is. And let’s not forget that the shadow of Dylan is looming on the horizon.

Plot-wise, that’s pretty much it. The biggest thing to happen in the film is a road trip to Chicago for a spec audition. But even within that, the real plot point involves a missed turn to Akron – a beautifully judged moment of melancholy that suggests Davis’ growing dissatisfaction with his life as he briefly contemplates visiting a former lover. This is the core of the Coens 17th movie. But Inside Llewyn Davis remains mostly opaque, with the brothers subverting the loser-learns-a-life-lesson trope to such a degree that some might find it hard to embrace. Davis is not only a difficult man; his self-absorbed and self-righteous manner makes him hard to like.

The music, however, is transcendent, dwelling on performance pieces with Davis and his guitar, singing songs in their entirety in smokey cafés and bars. As with O Brother, Inside Llewyn Davis is filled with material repositioned specially for this film, among them a doo-wop song called “Please Mr Kennedy” rewritten as a space-race pop song, Joan Baez’ “The Death Of Queen Jane”, Ewan MacColl’s “Shoals Of Herring” and even a poem by Allen Ginsberg’s lover Peter Orlovsky, “My Bed Is Covered Yellow”. As ever the Coens’ love of language is strong here, leading to some lovely exchanges between Davis’s agent and his secretary, as well a wonderfully written part for John Goodman as a jazz musician.

How much this relates to Van Ronk’s autobiography is really a moot point: the Coens have taken most of the context and not so many of the details. The result may surprise those expecting a literal historical piece or even a spoof, but long term admirers of the Coens will find this beautiful, atmospheric mood piece a significant work, slight at first sight but lasting long in the mind.

Inside Llewyn Davis opens in the UK in January 2014

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

Before the doors of the Dome Studio Theatre even open tonight (Saturday, May 18), there’s an excited queue stretching most of the way down the street. Not surprising considering one of the most hyped groups of this year, Irish band The Strypes, are first on the bill.

Inside, the crowd are noisily waiting for the group they probably last saw on Later With Jools Holland – in the programme’s studio confines, the group seemed a little tame, and not too comfortable onstage – they are 16, after all. But tonight the band are a revelation, a lot rawer, a lot noisier and totally at ease onstage. Guitarist Josh McClorey is especially mesmerising, ripping out garage-blues riffs and Page-like solos in equal measure.

The four-piece are wired and seriously tight, switching seamlessly between one song and the next in a hail of feedback, harmonica and crashing drums, barely pausing. All four are impressive players, which makes their ’60s R’n’B, of the kind last peddled by the Stones and Them, entirely convincing. They perform a number of covers throughout the set, including “See See Rider”, “Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City” and “Rollin’ And Tumblin’” – it’s impressive that their own songs, such as recent single “Blue Collar Jane” and its B-side, “What The People Don’t See”, seem in no way slight or hackneyed in the company of such classics.

While the crowd might expectedly dwindle after The Strypes leave the stage, Mary Epworth still commands a good-sized audience. The English folk singer-songwriter has dropped any winsome Newsom-like traits and now embraces a more eclectic sound – she plays drums standing up like Mo Tucker throughout the set, while her group include a grizzly rocker playing distorted bass and punching the air and a clean-cut muso on synths and laptop.

Her single “Black Doe” gets a more than appreciative reception, but the highlight is the sparse closing cover of “The Four Horsemen”, by Greek prog legends Aphrodite’s Child, Epworth transforming Demis Roussos’ blustery falsetto into something much earthier and powerful.

Ty Segall collaborator Mikal Cronin performed here on Friday night, and tonight White Fence, who made last year’s Hair with Segall, plays. A solo artist on record, Tim Presley is joined by a four-piece group (with one off-puttingly playing a Steinberger headless guitar throughout – any right-thinking person knows there is never an excuse for that), who gamely and consistently bash away at the twisted psych riffs while Presley lets loose all manner of feedback and guitar abuse on his Jazzmaster.

Most of the tracks are taken from the recent Cyclops Reap album, but barring a mid-set lull during an overlong motorik jam, Presley manages to keep the crowd’s full attention, and even gets some rather inebriated people dancing at the front.

New Yorkers Woods close the night, beginning with some relaxed country-tinged guitar pop and steadily getting looser and more (politely) raucous until they end with their customary epic jam. The janglier tracks from their most recent record, Bend Beyond, get the warmest reception, especially “Size Meets The Sound” and the ornate title track.

Singer Jeremy Earl has put out a lot of White Fence on his label, Woodsist, but unfortunately there’s no guest appearance from Tim Presley during their set – as well-crafted as Woods’ songs are, they could benefit from a little more of Presley’s wildness. That’s just not Woods’ way, though; even their extended jam possesses a well-considered and exceedingly tasteful ebb and flow rather than a freeform abandon. A sophisticated end to another classic Great Escape.

Club Uncut at The Great Escape 2013 – Day One

Club Uncut at The Great Escape 2013 – Day Two

Tom Pinnock

Photo: Richard Johnson

While last night’s Club Uncut at Brighton’s Great Escape festival hosted bands with a definite Americana bent, Friday (May 17) sees the invasion of US-based (or -inspired) garage-rockers.

But first there is C Joynes – a Cambridge fingerpicker with a tasty line in American primitivism. Obviously influenced by the likes of John Fahey in his country-blues leanings, as well as the worldlier styles of Sir Richard Bishop, Joynes turns his open-tuned, small-bodied acoustic to a variety of beautifully unexpected melodic twists.

Heavenly’s latest alt-rock hopes, Charlie Boyer & The Voyeurs, are next. Topped with distorted organ (far too quiet in the mix tonight) and with a certain studied streetwise cool, Boyer and the Voyeurs sound as if they were nurtured on the New York proto-punk of the Modern Lovers, Television and Patti Smith. Or perhaps just the ‘greatest hits’ of these acts, as the Voyeurs seem to excise Jonathan Richman’s geeky wit, Television’s twin guitar expositions and Smith’s Beat poet pretensions from their sound.

Not to say the Voyeurs don’t have their (simpler) charms, though – debut album title track “Clarietta” is a jagged and supremely catchy gem, and B-side “Be Nice” is an enjoyable Bolan boogie – just that their ’70s NYC sound is buffed to a glossy perfection, without any of the more unpalatable elements of their forebears.

They end with debut single “I Watch You”, undoubtedly their finest work so far, a chugging cousin of Richman’s “Roadrunner” that ends with a duel between guitar and organ. Perhaps one day they can capture its magic for all their songs.

Allah-Las follow, and seem to turn the Dome Studio Theatre into a Californian high school dance circa 1965. Their retro beat-group sound is a perfect pastiche – surf groups, early Love and The Byrds, and Nuggets – imbued with an instantly charming passion; the masterful period-perfect sound of their self-titled debut is also still intact onstage, conjured by spring reverb and deadened bass.

Their slowest songs are perhaps the most successful tonight – “Catamaran” is enhanced by copious use of maracas, surfy instrumental “Sacred Sands” is sprinkled with beautifully Byrds-y chiming guitars, and on the bluesy, Animals-esque closer, drummer Matt Correia takes a turn at lead vocals.

Mikal Cronin is best known as Ty Segall’s bassist, but in 2010 he released an excellent lo-fi debut, which took a more melodic and Beatles-y tack than many of his contemporaries in the San Francisco garage-rock scene. His new album, MCII, is a much slicker powerpop record, but tonight the raw, energetic sound of his four-piece backing band turns both sets of songs into something much heavier and aggressive, though constantly sweetened by the musicians’ cooing harmonies.

Unlike most people promoting new albums, there’s a nice mix of songs from the two records, Cronin – playing a 12-string semi-acoustic throughout – starting the set with the crashing “Is It Alright” (sadly without the manic flute solo from the record) and swiftly moving through other highlights from his debut, including “Apathy” and “Get Along”. The tracks from the more conventional MCII, including the thumping “Am I Wrong” and the loping “See It My Way”, are transformed into ultra-distorted, guitar-heavy workouts, partly due to the explosive drumming of Ty Segall Band member Emily Rose Epstein.

My personal favourite from Cronin’s debut, “Green And Blue”, is finally deployed near the end of the set, enhanced by sawing violin and ending in a hail of feedback and fuzz. On the evidence of tonight, Cronin’s greatest days are perhaps still ahead.

Club Uncut at The Great Escape 2013 – Day One

Club Uncut at The Great Escape 2013 – Day Three

Tom Pinnock

Photo: Richard Johnson

There are many delights on offer in David Bowie – Five Years, the BBC’s terrific new documentary focussing on five critical periods in Bowie’s career. Here’s a longhaired Bowie, sporting a natty fedora, at Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1971, miming being disembowelled. And here he is on The Dick Cavett Show in 1974, wearing a dark blue shirt, tartan tie and brown trousers, twirling a cane while he performs “Footstompin”, a cut that eventually became “Fame”. Elsewhere, you’ll find Tony Visconti reminiscing about the day he explained to Bowie and Brian Eno how his new Eventide H910 Harmonizer “fucks with the fabric of time.” Meanwhile, here’s Carlos Alomar’s revelation that he found the clean, happy and well-adjusted Bowie of Let’s Dance to be “a little odd”.

David Bowie – Five Years covers the artist’s most fertile creative period – 1971 – 1983 – which it breaks down into sections (1971 – 1972; 1974 – 1975; 1976 – 1977; 1979 – 1980; 1982 – 1983), each one comprising a mix of archive footage and new interviews with musicians and commentators, all essentially ‘narrated’ by Bowie himself edited from contemporaneous interview clips.

The gang’s all here – Ziggy, the Thin White Duke, Major Tom – along with such luminous co-conspirators as Eno, Robert Fripp, Ken Scott, Woody Woodmansey, Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis, Nic Roeg and Earl Slick. The question is, what are we getting here that’s new? Considering these chapters in Bowie’s career have already been extensively documented, what can David Bowie – Five Years bring that we don’t already know, what fresh insight does it offer? How does this contribute to the sum total of Bowieness in the universe – which after the rumpus earlier this year is already approaching critical mass?

It is, essentially, all about the detail. Here, in unseen black and white footage from 1972, is Angie Bowie at an early and poorly attended Ziggy show, pressed right up against the front of the stage, screaming at her husband during “Suffragette City” like she was at a Beatles gig. Later, Spiders From Mars drummer Woody Woodmansey recalls, “It’s funny, but he would eat breakfast as a superstar.” I guess fame is what connects these individual glimpses into Bowie’s career. Hearing Woodmansey’s comment reminds me of the line in Bowie’s diary from 1975, an extract of which is on display in the V&A exhibition, where Bowie describes “Fame” as “my first co-write with Lennon, a Beatle, about my future.” Interviewed in this documentary about the Let’s Dance period from seven years later, Nile Rodgers admits “I was charged with the responsibility” of giving him hits.

What does this say about Bowie? That he’s had intractable belief in his success all along, to such a degree that it influenced the way he ate his Weetabix? That he deliberately sacrificed the mystery and distance that made him so exceptional in the Seventies in order to achieve global superstardom in the early Eighties? “We’re out of characters now, just into suits,” he says in an interview around Let’s Dance, basically foreshadowing the rest of his career throughout the Nineties and early Noughties. “The suit will change form tour to tour but the bloke inside it is generally much the same.”

You could be forgiven for thinking the Let’s Dance album – and the Scary Monsters period that preceded it – would be the fresher stories here. After all, they’re certainly less raked over than Ziggy or the Berlin years. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, they clock up the shortest running times in the film – 11 minutes is devoted to Scary Monsters and 15 for Let’s Dance. (In comparison, Ziggy receives 20 minutes, Young Americans gets 22 and Heroes clocks in at 19.)

I suspect much of this has to do with who the producers have on hand to talk, and to their credit they favour the musicians who were there on the ground, rather than filling in gaps with journalists and other available commentators. Certainly, the Young Americans and Heroes sections benefit from the extensive input of Alomar, Davis, Slick, Visconti, Eno, Fripp and Ava Cherry. The personable Alomar and Davis are especially good value, but there’s one great story about the day they arrived in the studio to find Eno had set up a blackboard with charts on it – “like elementary school,” says Davis with disbelief. Fripp is particularly funny, enthusiastically describing the “hairy rock’n’roll” he was requested to play on Heroes. The 1974 – 1975 and 1976 – 1977 years also contain the meatiest part of the narrative: Bowie’s American sojourn, his cocaine addiction and eventual recuperation in Berlin. In one interview here, Bowie claims to have been “very, very worried” after coming “close several times to overdose… It was like being in a car going towards the edge of a cliff. I had almost resigned myself to the fact I’m going over the edge and I’m not going to be able to stop.”

The footage is brilliant, whether you’ve seen it before or not. Personally, I loved the beautiful black and white footage from the Young Americans tour rehearsals, with Bowie leading Luther Vandross and his backing singers through a terrific version of “Right”. Or a 1974 press conference at the Amstel Hotel in Amsterdam, Bowie in a smock and eye-patch asking for a drink. Doorstepped by Janet Street Porter en route to the stage at Earl’s Court in 1978.

And then there’s the Penelopes. From 1973’s “Life On Mars?” video right up to a press conference convened at Claridge’s a decade later to announce his signing to EMI, those teeth also are surely worth a documentary in their own right.

David Bowie – Five Years screens on BBC Two on May 25

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

Another year, another three days of fantastic music at Brighton’s Dome Studio Theatre, curated by Uncut, as part of The Great Escape – this year promises perhaps the most high-energy lineup yet at Club Uncut, with highlights over the weekend including Mikal Cronin, White Fence and Allah-Las. But first, Thursday (May 16) sees Phosphorescent headlining.

Grizzly of beard and long of hair, it’s surprising that the openers, six-piece Red River Dialect, are Brighton-based (though originally from Cornwall, I believe). Despite origins, they certainly capture the sound of a psychedelic Old West, with singer David Morris fingerpicking delicate, Americana-tinged patterns on acoustic guitar, and his five bandmates adding spacey violin and effect-heavy guitar.

It’s a successful mix, ensuring that what could otherwise have been pastiche elements to the songwriting are transformed by the reverb- and delay-drenched textures conjured by the group. The only criticism would perhaps be that with six people in the band, including three guitarists, these textures could be even denser and more captivating. Red River Dialect win over the early crowd, though, despite a host of technical problems including a broken bass string and a faulty guitar lead, which the band battle through with wry good humour.

Solo guitarist Dean McPhee is next, and the Yorkshireman’s unshowy demeanour is in stark contrast to his impressive talents.

“Alright guys, I’m Dean McPhee,” he says, bending the microphone stand awkwardly up to his mouth, “I’m gonna play some guitar music for you.”

A slight understatement, perhaps – McPhee’s fingerpicked, effect-heavy instrumental compositions are far from standard ‘guitar music’ – the crystalline notes emanating from his Telecaster, drowned in a pool of reverb, bring to mind Maurice Deebank’s playing on Felt’s early work. McPhee performs two new, unfinished pieces, including the droney “The Red Sea”, so excited is he about his next album, and finishes with the title track to 2010’s Brown Bear album, lit by eerie red light.

Lord Huron feature the first stetson of Club Uncut at The Great Escape – sported by singer and songwriter Ben Schneider. Showcasing the euphoric country-rock of last year’s Lonesome Dreams album, the Los Angeles quintet get large swathes of the well-lubricated crowd dancing like they’re at a hoedown.

Bizarrely, though, their loop-enhanced sound is more subdued than on record, or at least smoother and more arena-ready, which to me is a shame – but don’t bet against their wordless harmonies soundtracking more TV shows (they’ve already been featured on the US version of Shameless).

Tonight’s headliner, Phosphorescent, draws by far the biggest crowd of the evening, which isn’t surprising given his consistently excellent run of records, culminating in this year’s Muchacho.

Matthew Houck is flanked by a bassist, a drummer, a percussionist, an organist and a pianist, and restricts himself to playing just simple strummed chords on his Fender Jazzmaster. Houck’s voice is as expressive and wracked as ever, especially on “The Quotidian Beasts” and “Song For Zula”, where it’s tremulous, pained and wreathed in slapback echo.

The more electronic elements on Muchacho are rendered a lot more organically tonight – synth parts are performed on organ, for example – so they fit in well with Houck’s earlier, earthier work, along with his straight and seemingly impromptu cover of Willie Nelson’s “Reasons To Quit” (the opener on Phosphorescent’s To Willie covers album).

Here’s To Takin’ It Easy’s closer, “Los Angeles”, also ends Houck’s set tonight. Already an epic on record, tonight it’s slow-burning and stunning, with powerful vocals from the whole band. The singer even takes a break from playing chords to unleash a wild, extended guitar solo, hitting his amp, conjuring shards of feedback and savaging his instrument. It’s lucky it’s the end of the night, as you’d pity the poor souls who had to follow that exorcism.

Club Uncut at The Great Escape 2013 – Day Two

Club Uncut at The Great Escape 2013 – Day Three

Tom Pinnock