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The xx announce three UK shows to celebrate new album release

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The xx announce three UK shows to celebrate new album release
The xx have announced a trio of intimate UK shows for September. The London band will take to the stage at the O2 Shepherds Bush Empire on September 10 - the same day they release second album Coexist. They will follow this hometown show with gigs at The Coal Exchange in Cardiff on September 11 and...

The xx have announced a trio of intimate UK shows for September.

The London band will take to the stage at the O2 Shepherds Bush Empire on September 10 – the same day they release second album Coexist. They will follow this hometown show with gigs at The Coal Exchange in Cardiff on September 11 and Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on September 12. The xx are also scheduled to perform at Bestival on the Isle of Wight on September 7.

The xx previewed material from Coexist, their follow-up to 2009’s Mercury Prize-winning ‘xx’, at a trio of London shows in May. Earlier this month (July), they unveiled the album’s lead single “Angels” – scroll down to listen to it.

Yesterday [July 23], the band revealed that they have “gained confidence” since the release of their debut album, xx. “It’s nice not feeling cripplingly shy,” Romy Madley Croft confided in an interview with The Vine.

The xx play:

London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire (September 10)

Cardiff The Coal Exchange (September 11)

Edinburgh Usher Hall (September 12)

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Bruce Springsteen makes surprise appearance at Oslo memorial concert

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Bruce Springsteen makes surprise appearance at Oslo memorial concert
Bruce Springsteen and E-Street Band member Steve Van Zandt made a surprise appearance last night [July 22] at a memorial concert in Norway to mark the anniversary of last year's terror attacks. The event, held in Oslo's City Square, featured a number of local artists. Springsteen and Van Zandt appe...

Bruce Springsteen and E-Street Band member Steve Van Zandt made a surprise appearance last night [July 22] at a memorial concert in Norway to mark the anniversary of last year’s terror attacks.

The event, held in Oslo’s City Square, featured a number of local artists. Springsteen and Van Zandt appeared to play protest song, “We Shall Overcome” [watch below], telling the 60,000 strong audience:

“Steve and I are honored to be included here tonight. For all of us who love democracy and tolerance, it’s an international tragedy.”

Anders Behring Breivik bombed a government building in Oslo, killing eight people, as well as killing 69 people at a youth camp on Utoya island.

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Blur launch own iPhone and iPad app

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Blur launch own iPhone and iPad app
Blur have launched their own interactive app for iPad and iPhone. Blur: The App will be available to download free via iTunes from today (July 23). The software has been designed to serve as a companion for the band's upcoming 21-disc retrospective, Blur 21: The Box, which will be released on July ...

Blur have launched their own interactive app for iPad and iPhone.

Blur: The App will be available to download free via iTunes from today (July 23). The software has been designed to serve as a companion for the band’s upcoming 21-disc retrospective, Blur 21: The Box, which will be released on July 30.

The app features rare and previously unreleased music, including demos and remixes, alongside archive video footage of band interviews and live performances. It also includes photo galleries, biographies, a career timeline, a comprehensive discography and videography, and a gigography with setlists powered by setlist.fm.

In addition, Blur: The App syncs up with news feeds from the band’s official website, Facebook page and Twitter account. Fans will able to share content from the app on their own social networking profiles.

Blur will begin an intimate five-date UK tour at Margate Winter Gardens on August 1 as a warm-up for their massive outdoor concert at London’s Hyde Park on August 12. The show, scheduled to coincide with the closing ceremony of the Olympic games, will see Blur topping a bill that also includes New Order and The Specials. The reunited band are also scheduled to headline Sweden’s Way Out West festival in August.

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Elbow announce autumn UK arena tour

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Elbow announce autumn UK arena tour
Elbow have announced details of a UK tour. Following the band's headline slots at Latitude, T In The Park and the Isle Of Wight festivals this year, they will embark on their first ever arena tour in November and December. Kicking off at Nottingham's Capital FM Arena on November 26, the band wil...

Elbow have announced details of a UK tour.

Following the band’s headline slots at Latitude, T In The Park and the Isle Of Wight festivals this year, they will embark on their first ever arena tour in November and December.

Kicking off at Nottingham’s Capital FM Arena on November 26, the band will then head to Birmingham NIA on November 28 and then Liverpool’s Echo Area on November 29, before heading to their Manchester home-town on December 1. They will finish up at London’s The O2 on December 2.

Elbow will play:

Nottingham Capital FM Arena (November 26)

Birmingham NIA (28)

Liverpool Echo Arena (29)

Manchester MEN Arena (December 1)

London The O2 (2)

Earlier this month, Elbow announced that they will release a B-sides compilation titled Dead In The Boot on August 27, featuring 13 B-sides and non-album tracks which have been selected by the band as favourites from their 15-year career.

In a statement on the band’s website, singer Guy Garvey said: “None of our B-sides are album rejects. It’s a different space, usually just post finishing an album when all the members of elbow are chiming and feeling very creative. This gives Dead In The Boot a real late night vibe.”

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The Gaslight Anthem – Handwritten

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The Gaslight Anthem – Handwritten

Fourth album signals a slight shift. But is it in the right direction? When The Gaslight Anthem's Brian Fallon last spoke to Uncut, as he drove home to New Jersey from Nashville after finishing work on Handwritten, he promised that the new album would sound like “Tom Petty songs played by Pearl Jam or Foo Fighters.” This was both a surprise and a relief. A few months previously, Fallon had been heard muttering that he was "just bored" with what he¹d been doing, and "didn't want to write any more rock'n'roll songs" ­ an ennui that resulted in the establishment of a side project, Horrible Crowes, to explore a budding interest in balladry. On the deafening evidence of Handwritten, he has exorcised whatever angst was plaguing him. The Gaslight Anthem's major label debut is rambunctious, unreconstructed, garage-rattling rock’n’roll: it sounds, indeed, quite a lot like Tom Petty songs played by Pearl Jam or Foo Fighters. Which is to say, of course, that Handwritten, sounds much like The Gaslight Anthem’s previous recordings. It would be churlish to complain overmuch about this: The Gaslight Anthem bristle with damn-the-torpedos bravado, and at their brilliant best have been and, at the risk of giving away the ending, are ­revelatory. But four albums in, they have developed, as distinctive artists tend to, a template of tropes that they know work for them and their audience. They relax into this once or twice too often on Handwritten, on such cuts as “Howl" and “Desire”, cranking out spiralling spindly riffs and throat-parching, fist-pumping, neck-straining oh-woah-oh choruses. At these points, the thought that this album by The Gaslight Anthem is a fine thing in and of itself can become somewhat tempered by the recollection that one already has three of these. The best of Handwritten, however ­which is most of it ­ abides with the unbound exuberance of its predecessors. Fallon also wasn't kidding when he assured Uncut that enlisting Bruce Springsteen's recently preferred producer Brendan O'Brien was the solidest possible insurance against untowardly resembling their mentor. Handwritten, flourishes a sharper metallic edge than anything The Gaslight Anthem ­ certainly the E Street Band ­have previously attempted. "Too Much Blood" and "Biloxi Parish" rifle for riffs in Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy records, and mark the addition of an intriguing gloomy tone to the Gaslight Anthem¹s familiar palette of breezy barroom rock (the lugubrious "Keepsake" lumbers a bit, though). And when they do reconnect with the unselfconscious vim that has hallmarked their best songs before now ­ “The ‘59 Sound”, “Stay Lucky”, et al ­ they're terrific. The first two songs, “45” and the title track, are glorious, joyous surges, the exclamations of wide-eyed punks who just got guitars and London Calling for Christmas. But for all the fine furies collected on Handwritten, the most memorable moments are those on which The Gaslight Anthem shift to lower gears. “Here Comes My Man” is a pretty acoustic pop tune not a million miles from its near-namesake by Pixies (and appears to be sung, boldly, from the perspective of a woman wearied of waiting for an itinerant musician to come home). “Mae” is a rueful, stately beautiful paean to some siren with “Bette Davis eyes” ­Fallon, not for the first time, appreciates the Proustian potence of quoting older songs in his own. And the closing track, the gently plucked, lightly string-drenched "National Anthem", at once sounds less like The Gaslight Anthem than anything they¹ve previously done, and like it might be the best thing they've ever recorded. Fallon, who has roared through most of what has gone before, drops to a Westerbergish whisper for a downbeat epic of loss and regret. There's a possible lesson for future reference here, about how one can see more when one slows down a little. There's nothing at all wrong with The Gaslight Anthem’s Gaslight Anthem songs, but they’ve got nothing left to prove on that front. ANDREW MUELLER Q&A BRIAN FALLON Handwritten is both heavier and softer than its predecessors. Was that deliberate, or organic? Live, I’d started to notice that a lot of our older songs have this even pace, and I had this urging for extremes. The heaviness came from the 90s stuff we were listening to, loud-quiet-loud stuff. Did you bring anything of the Horrible Crowes project back to this? I’m thinking specifically of tracks like “Mae” and “National Anthem”. With “Mae”, I'd always wanted those songs that builds, just lets you know something big is coming. And “National Anthem”, always a dream to have an acoustic song with a few strings. Did the thought of being on a major label for the first time prompt any self-consciousness? We had enough problems of our own that it didn't affect us. After ’59 Sound came out, everyone was writing that we were going to be next Springsteen, and then American Slang, let's be honest, wasn't the next Springsteen. On this record, I felt so much like I had something to prove that it was like doing it all over again. Like I was holding a bat, and just going to smash whatever came at me as hard as I could. If we¹re not what everyone thinks we are, we'll at least be what we think we are. INTERVIEW: ANDREW MUELLER

Fourth album signals a slight shift. But is it in the right direction?

When The Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon last spoke to Uncut, as he drove home to New Jersey from Nashville after finishing work on Handwritten, he promised that the new album would sound like “Tom Petty songs played by Pearl Jam or Foo Fighters.” This was both a surprise and a relief. A few months previously, Fallon had been heard muttering that he was “just bored” with what he¹d been doing, and “didn’t want to write any more rock’n’roll songs” ­ an ennui that resulted in the establishment of a side project, Horrible Crowes, to explore a budding interest in balladry. On the deafening evidence of Handwritten, he has exorcised whatever angst was plaguing him.

The Gaslight Anthem‘s major label debut is rambunctious, unreconstructed, garage-rattling rock’n’roll: it sounds, indeed, quite a lot like Tom Petty songs played by Pearl Jam or Foo Fighters. Which is to say, of course, that Handwritten, sounds much like The Gaslight Anthem’s previous recordings. It would be churlish to complain overmuch about this: The Gaslight Anthem bristle with damn-the-torpedos bravado, and at their brilliant best have been and, at the risk of giving away the ending, are ­revelatory.

But four albums in, they have developed, as distinctive artists tend to, a template of tropes that they know work for them and their audience. They relax into this once or twice too often on Handwritten, on such cuts as “Howl” and “Desire”, cranking out spiralling spindly riffs and throat-parching, fist-pumping, neck-straining oh-woah-oh choruses. At these points, the thought that this album by The Gaslight Anthem is a fine thing in and of itself can become somewhat tempered by the recollection that one already has three of these.

The best of Handwritten, however ­which is most of it ­ abides with the unbound exuberance of its predecessors. Fallon also wasn’t kidding when he assured Uncut that enlisting Bruce Springsteen’s recently preferred producer Brendan O’Brien was the solidest possible insurance against untowardly resembling their mentor. Handwritten, flourishes a sharper metallic edge than anything The Gaslight Anthem ­ certainly the E Street Band ­have previously attempted. “Too Much Blood” and “Biloxi Parish” rifle for riffs in Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy records, and mark the addition of an intriguing gloomy tone to the Gaslight Anthem¹s familiar palette of breezy barroom rock (the lugubrious “Keepsake” lumbers a bit, though). And when they do reconnect with the unselfconscious vim that has hallmarked their best songs before now ­ “The ‘59 Sound”, “Stay Lucky”, et al ­ they’re terrific. The first two songs, “45” and the title track, are glorious, joyous surges, the exclamations of wide-eyed punks who just got guitars and London Calling for Christmas.

But for all the fine furies collected on Handwritten, the most memorable moments are those on which The Gaslight Anthem shift to lower gears. “Here Comes My Man” is a pretty acoustic pop tune not a million miles from its near-namesake by Pixies (and appears to be sung, boldly, from the perspective of a woman wearied of waiting for an itinerant musician to come home). “Mae” is a rueful, stately beautiful paean to some siren with “Bette Davis eyes” ­Fallon, not for the first time, appreciates the Proustian potence of quoting older songs in his own.

And the closing track, the gently plucked, lightly string-drenched “National Anthem”, at once sounds less like The Gaslight Anthem than anything they¹ve previously done, and like it might be the best thing they’ve ever recorded. Fallon, who has roared through most of what has gone before, drops to a Westerbergish whisper for a downbeat epic of loss and regret. There’s a possible lesson for future reference here, about how one can see more when one slows down a little. There’s nothing at all wrong with The Gaslight Anthem’s Gaslight Anthem songs, but they’ve got nothing left to prove on that front.

ANDREW MUELLER

Q&A

BRIAN FALLON

Handwritten is both heavier and softer than its predecessors. Was that deliberate, or organic?

Live, I’d started to notice that a lot of our older songs have this even pace, and I had this urging for extremes. The heaviness came from the 90s stuff we were listening to, loud-quiet-loud stuff.

Did you bring anything of the Horrible Crowes project back to this? I’m thinking specifically of tracks like “Mae” and “National Anthem”.

With “Mae”, I’d always wanted those songs that builds, just lets you know something big is coming. And “National Anthem”, always a dream to have an acoustic song with a few strings.

Did the thought of being on a major label for the first time prompt any self-consciousness?

We had enough problems of our own that it didn’t affect us. After ’59 Sound came out, everyone was writing that we were going to be next Springsteen, and then American Slang, let’s be honest, wasn’t the next Springsteen. On this record, I felt so much like I had something to prove that it was like doing it all over again. Like I was holding a bat, and just going to smash whatever came at me as hard as I could. If we¹re not what everyone thinks we are, we’ll at least be what we think we are.

INTERVIEW: ANDREW MUELLER

Richard Branson makes pitch to buy back Virgin Records

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Richard Branson makes pitch to buy back Virgin Records
Sir Richard Branson is considering buying back Virgin Records, the label he founded over 40 years ago. The label's current owner Universal Music may sell the baled to appease competition authorities as they look to buy rival major label EMI for £1.2bn. Sir Richard originally sold Virgin Records,...

Sir Richard Branson is considering buying back Virgin Records, the label he founded over 40 years ago.

The label’s current owner Universal Music may sell the baled to appease competition authorities as they look to buy rival major label EMI for £1.2bn.

Sir Richard originally sold Virgin Records, the company he founded in 1970 aged 20, to Thorn EMI for £510m in 1992. In 1977, the label signed the Sex Pistols. Writing on his blog, the Virgin mogul wrote that he thinks the company is a “sleeping beauty”:

“I have had informal talks with both Lucian Grainge and Patrick Zelnik about Virgin Records. I have known Lucian and Patrick for both 30 years. They are great record men and Patrick has committed to revitalise Virgin Records – which has been mismanaged in the last 10 years,” he wrote.

He added: “Lucian and I feel it is a “sleeping beauty” which could become an innovative and leading label once again with the right management and investment. The potential disposal of Virgin Records by Universal is an exciting opportunity and I am keen to try to work on an arrangement with Patrick Zelnik to acquire the company I started in the seventies.”

Current artists on the Virgin roster include Gorillaz and The Rolling Stones.

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Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan: ‘The next Kurt Cobain or Trent Reznor won’t make it’

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Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan: ‘The next Kurt Cobain or Trent Reznor won’t make it’
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has said that he firmly believes whoever the next "Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love or Trent Reznor" is, they will not make it big in the same way as those artists. The singer, whose band released their new studio album Oceania last month, has said that most alte...

Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has said that he firmly believes whoever the next “Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love or Trent Reznor” is, they will not make it big in the same way as those artists.

The singer, whose band released their new studio album Oceania last month, has said that most alternative bands will never escape the scene they start in as that scene is now self-sufficient.

Speaking to the Daily Beast, Corgan said: “If you’re 20 years old and you aspire to be like me or Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love or Trent Reznor, you’re not going to make it that way. You won’t succeed. Let’s say you’re the next Kurt Cobain. You will be appropriated on your first album by the Pitchfork community. Your record company will rally round that idea because that’s your marketing platform. But the minute you’re in that world you’re frozen.”

Corgan then went on to say that Pitchfork and those who read it is “very much about social codes” and “whether you’re wearing the right t-shirt.”

He added: “Those Pitchfork people are very much about social codes, about whether you’re wearing the right t-shirt. That orthodoxy is no different than the rigidity of the football team at school. You can’t break the social order if you’re preaching to the choir – and the choir already has cool haircuts!”

The singer then said that what had made “Nirvana so dangerous” was the fact that they attracted listeners from across the cultural spectrum and not just from one scene. He added: “You’ve got to want to subvert the social order of the high school. That’s why Nirvana was so fucking dangerous. They had the jocks listening to them. Kurt Cobain used to talk about how weird it was to be performing, and see the people who used to beat him up cheering along.”

Corgan then said that this belief was his main reason for keeping the name ‘Smashing Pumpkins‘ alive, despite the fact he is the only member of the original line-up still in the band.

He said of this: “Where’s the rebellion right now? There’s almost no music about what’s going on politically, which is crazy because this is the craziest political time I’ve ever lived in. I’m talking big picture. Where are the bands of dissent? Where has the pushback gone? When I’m treated like a weirdo for the pushback I give, I go, ‘I’ve been doing this for 25 fucking years!’ Cira 1993 the name Smashing Pumpkins made people go, ‘Aw, I fucking hate that band,’ or, ‘I fucking love that band.’ The name still has a charge in it.”

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The Who tickets for 1979 cancelled gig will be honoured at 2013 show

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The Who tickets for 1979 cancelled gig will be honoured at 2013 show
The Who fans who still possess a ticket for their cancelled 1979 gig in Providence, Rhode Island can still use the brief for the band's show in the city in 2013. The legendary group were due to perform in the city on December 1979, but authorities prevented the gig from going ahead as 11 fans had b...

The Who fans who still possess a ticket for their cancelled 1979 gig in Providence, Rhode Island can still use the brief for the band’s show in the city in 2013.

The legendary group were due to perform in the city on December 1979, but authorities prevented the gig from going ahead as 11 fans had been trampled to death at a previous show in Ohio.

Now, The Who have announced that fans who still have the rare ticket will be able to swap it for a new brief, which will entitle the holder entry into band’s gig at the Dunkin’ Donuts Centre on February 26 2013.

Lawrence Lepole, manager of the venue, told Rhode Island’s WPRO-AM radio station: “If someone does have tickets from ’79, we will honour them. If you’ve got a ’79 ticket we will find a way for you to come and see the show.”

He added: “Somewhere, someplace, someone’s got it stashed. The question is, are they willing to give that up? If they’re willing, we’re willing to take it.”

The Who will visit Providence, Rhode Island on their mammoth 2013 32-date tour of the US. The band will be playing their Quadrophenia album in its entirety, as well as other favourites.

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Sebastian Bergman

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Sebastian Bergman

It's the Swedish Cracker! Sort of... A dishevelled criminal profiler, down on his luck and plagued by inner demons and vices, is engaged by a reluctant police force to help track down a killer. Yes, this could be the pitch for Cracker – but here it’s successfully used as the premise of this month’s essential piece of Nordic Noir. There are clear parallels between Robbie Coltrane’s Fitz and Rolf Lassgard’s title character beyond the bear-like frames of both actors, although where Fitz was a slave to a destructive gambling habit, Bergman’s weakness is women. The subtext to both series is that it takes a troubled mind to get inside another troubled mind, but while Cracker spun on Fitz’s intuition, Sweden’s Sebastian Bergman functions as more of a standard police procedural. When we first meet Sebastian, he’s sorting through his recently deceased mother’s house and contents, and notices the arrival of detectives to question a murder suspect next door. It’s the same crack team he worked with 12 years earlier. Te script only hints at the reasons for their falling out, and his co-opting onto the investigation ruffles the feathers of familiarly-drawn squad members – the weary and jaded lead cop, a no-nonsense ambitious fast-track female sergeant, a younger idealistic rookie. This opening two-parter, “The Cursed One” introduces the mesmerising Lassgard, previously seen as a detective in the original Swedish Wallander. He plays Bergman as a relatively taciturn and benign force (far removed from Coltrane’s ebullient Fitz), understated but wise. He never really seems to do much, but you can’t take your eyes off him. Bergman’s personal tragedy of having lost his wife and young daughter in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami may veer too close to soap opera for some, but as a set-up for unlikely new hero it ticks a satisfying number of boxes. EXTRAS: None TERRY STAUNTON

It’s the Swedish Cracker! Sort of…

A dishevelled criminal profiler, down on his luck and plagued by inner demons and vices, is engaged by a reluctant police force to help track down a killer. Yes, this could be the pitch for Cracker – but here it’s successfully used as the premise of this month’s essential piece of Nordic Noir. There are clear parallels between Robbie Coltrane’s Fitz and Rolf Lassgard’s title character beyond the bear-like frames of both actors, although where Fitz was a slave to a destructive gambling habit, Bergman’s weakness is women. The subtext to both series is that it takes a troubled mind to get inside another troubled mind, but while Cracker spun on Fitz’s intuition, Sweden’s Sebastian Bergman functions as more of a standard police procedural.

When we first meet Sebastian, he’s sorting through his recently deceased mother’s house and contents, and notices the arrival of detectives to question a murder suspect next door. It’s the same crack team he worked with 12 years earlier. Te script only hints at the reasons for their falling out, and his co-opting onto the investigation ruffles the feathers of familiarly-drawn squad members – the weary and jaded lead cop, a no-nonsense ambitious fast-track female sergeant, a younger idealistic rookie.

This opening two-parter, “The Cursed One” introduces the mesmerising Lassgard, previously seen as a detective in the original Swedish Wallander. He plays Bergman as a relatively taciturn and benign force (far removed from Coltrane’s ebullient Fitz), understated but wise. He never really seems to do much, but you can’t take your eyes off him. Bergman’s personal tragedy of having lost his wife and young daughter in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami may veer too close to soap opera for some, but as a set-up for unlikely new hero it ticks a satisfying number of boxes.

EXTRAS: None

TERRY STAUNTON

The Dark Knight Rises

Michael Bonner
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The Dark Knight Rises

Coming into work on the bus this morning, it occurred to me that the Christopher Nolan film I most wanted to watch again was Insomnia. I remember it being the least tricksy of Nolan’s films; a sharp, intelligent thriller, heavy on style and atmosphere, which seemed less concerned with the kind of ingenious puzzles and narrative twists that the director deployed in Memento, The Prestige and Inception. A remake of a Norwegian thriller, in the days before such things were fashionable, with Al Pacino as a frazzled cop investigating a murder in a small Alaskan town, a place of unrelenting perpetual light, Insomnia felt more of human film, I suppose, as we watched Pacino unravel, his senses jammed wide open, wired on the midnight sun and no sleep. It's easier, I think, to admire Nolan’s movies for their intelligence and technical skill than for their emotional warmth. Insomnia, however, might prove to be the exception. There is very little humanity to be found in Nolan Batfilms. How could there be? The characters in these Batfilms are psychopaths, freaks; barely human in the first place. The Dark Knight Rises opens eight years on from the events in The Dark Knight, with the Batman retired after having taken the blame for the death of District Attorney Harvey Dent; meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is living in self-imposed isolation in Wayne Manor, apparently with “eight inch long nails, peeing into Mason jars”, a nice allusion to Howard Hughes. But as one astute observer comments, Wayne is simply “waiting for something bad to happen” – which it surely does, a “moment of crisis” presents itself in the shape of Bane, a concrete slab of a man, intent on destroying Gotham City and the Batman, too. What humanity there is comes from Michael Caine’s Alfred and Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon, men very much without capes, who provide the film with a moral compass and incidentally, deliver the best performances here. These are character actors at the top of the game, unshowily going about their business supporting the story. Incidentally, Gary Oldman in this film looks like David Bowie's Nikolai Tesla in The Prestige. Christian Bale, meanwhile, is purse-lipped and grimly intense as usual; though here at least he is allowed to explore Wayne’s vulnerabilities with fresh focus. Tom Hardy’s Bane is an intriguing adversary for the Batman. Not a marquee name like the Joker, instead he serves as a very physical opponent for the Batman: Hardy, never afraid to work out should a role demand it, is of extraordinary bulk here. Never mind that you can’t hear most of what he says, thanks to a mask that obscures half his face; his fists are fine communicators. Among the other newcomers, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a wiry, dogged policeman with strong professional ethics, Anne Hathaway is a witty Selina Kyle (Nolan’s script never calls her Catwoman), and Marion Cotillard in an unrewarding role as a slippery corporate executive. The Dark Knight Rises is an entertaining and interesting film, though not exactly a transformative one. It’s not as mad or strange as The Dark Knight, say, while the “city imperilled” plotline is hardly new to comic book movies, most recently having been wheeled out for The Avengers. What it does do is provide a satisfying closure for Nolan and Bale, for whom this is their last Batfilm. Whoever takes on the franchise next will have a hard act to follow: these films have been, by and large, exemplary examples of their kind. But I hope now he’s done with this that Nolan will revisit smaller, more intimate projects like Insomnia and leave the pyrotechnics behind.

Coming into work on the bus this morning, it occurred to me that the Christopher Nolan film I most wanted to watch again was Insomnia. I remember it being the least tricksy of Nolan’s films; a sharp, intelligent thriller, heavy on style and atmosphere, which seemed less concerned with the kind of ingenious puzzles and narrative twists that the director deployed in Memento, The Prestige and Inception. A remake of a Norwegian thriller, in the days before such things were fashionable, with Al Pacino as a frazzled cop investigating a murder in a small Alaskan town, a place of unrelenting perpetual light, Insomnia felt more of human film, I suppose, as we watched Pacino unravel, his senses jammed wide open, wired on the midnight sun and no sleep. It’s easier, I think, to admire Nolan’s movies for their intelligence and technical skill than for their emotional warmth. Insomnia, however, might prove to be the exception.

There is very little humanity to be found in Nolan Batfilms. How could there be? The characters in these Batfilms are psychopaths, freaks; barely human in the first place. The Dark Knight Rises opens eight years on from the events in The Dark Knight, with the Batman retired after having taken the blame for the death of District Attorney Harvey Dent; meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is living in self-imposed isolation in Wayne Manor, apparently with “eight inch long nails, peeing into Mason jars”, a nice allusion to Howard Hughes. But as one astute observer comments, Wayne is simply “waiting for something bad to happen” – which it surely does, a “moment of crisis” presents itself in the shape of Bane, a concrete slab of a man, intent on destroying Gotham City and the Batman, too.

What humanity there is comes from Michael Caine’s Alfred and Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon, men very much without capes, who provide the film with a moral compass and incidentally, deliver the best performances here. These are character actors at the top of the game, unshowily going about their business supporting the story. Incidentally, Gary Oldman in this film looks like David Bowie’s Nikolai Tesla in The Prestige. Christian Bale, meanwhile, is purse-lipped and grimly intense as usual; though here at least he is allowed to explore Wayne’s vulnerabilities with fresh focus. Tom Hardy’s Bane is an intriguing adversary for the Batman. Not a marquee name like the Joker, instead he serves as a very physical opponent for the Batman: Hardy, never afraid to work out should a role demand it, is of extraordinary bulk here. Never mind that you can’t hear most of what he says, thanks to a mask that obscures half his face; his fists are fine communicators. Among the other newcomers, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a wiry, dogged policeman with strong professional ethics, Anne Hathaway is a witty Selina Kyle (Nolan’s script never calls her Catwoman), and Marion Cotillard in an unrewarding role as a slippery corporate executive.

The Dark Knight Rises is an entertaining and interesting film, though not exactly a transformative one. It’s not as mad or strange as The Dark Knight, say, while the “city imperilled” plotline is hardly new to comic book movies, most recently having been wheeled out for The Avengers. What it does do is provide a satisfying closure for Nolan and Bale, for whom this is their last Batfilm. Whoever takes on the franchise next will have a hard act to follow: these films have been, by and large, exemplary examples of their kind. But I hope now he’s done with this that Nolan will revisit smaller, more intimate projects like Insomnia and leave the pyrotechnics behind.

Jack White reveals former anxiety issues

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Jack White reveals former anxiety issues
Jack White has spoken out about his anxiety issues. In a new interview, the former frontman of The White Stripes has that in his days with his old band, he was plagued by concerns over what other people thought about him. "I just sat in the corner, pondering, letting it torture me..." he said. "You...

Jack White has spoken out about his anxiety issues.

In a new interview, the former frontman of The White Stripes has that in his days with his old band, he was plagued by concerns over what other people thought about him. “I just sat in the corner, pondering, letting it torture me…” he said. “You just can’t win – the judgement that’s thrown on you is unbearable.”

White made the comments to MSN, and also explained that he covered “You Just Can’t Win” by Van Morrison as a result of his feelings of vulnerability.

Earlier this week, Jack White unveiled the video for his song Freedom At 21.

Last month (June 26), White performed songs from ‘Blunderbuss’ during a show at London’s Brixton Academy. He will continue his ‘Blunderbuss’ tour in the US later this month, before returning to the UK for a one-off gig at Camden’s Roundhouse as part of London’s iTunes Festival on September 8.

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Blur to headline Converse ‘Represent’ show at London’s 100 Club

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Blur to headline Converse ‘Represent’ show at London’s 100 Club
Blur will headline an intimate gig at The 100 Club next month as part of Converse's 'Represent' series of free shows. Damon Albarn and co have been confirmed as the headline act for the August 2 show, and will play last on a bill which includes a stellar supporting cast of The Bots, Savages and Sw...

Blur will headline an intimate gig at The 100 Club next month as part of Converse’s ‘Represent’ series of free shows.

Damon Albarn and co have been confirmed as the headline act for the August 2 show, and will play last on a bill which includes a stellar supporting cast of The Bots, Savages and Swiss Lips. To get tickets, fans need to visit Converse.co.uk/blur from 9am on Wednesday August 1, with registration open until 6pm. Successful applicants will be notified by email and must confirm if they can attend by 12pm on August 2.

The Britpop legends – who had previously been billed as ‘Very Special Guests’ on the ‘Represent’ line-up – are also set to play two special one-off gigs on July 31 at London’s Maida Vale Studios which will be broadcast live on radio. They will then embark on a run of intimate shows next month, which will act as a warm-up for their huge outdoor gig at London’s Hyde Park on August 12.

Plan B, Paul Weller and Nas are amongst the other headliners who will perform as part of the ‘Represent’ shows, which will see nine gigs taking place at London’s 100 Club in July and August. The shows will kick off with Plan B on July 30 and then run for a further two weeks as UK Subs then headline a punk extravaganza on July 31 with support from the Anti-Nowhere League and Discharge.

Paul Weller then headlines on August 1 with support from Spiritualized, Towns and 2:54, while SBTRKT will top the bill on August 6. Santigold, Django Django and Best Coast are all set to play the venue on August closely followed by reggae legends Toots And The Maytals on August 8, with metallers Overkill and Pulled Apart By Horses then topping the bill on August 9. Nas rounds things off on August 10, with support from Kano and Speech Debelle.

Speaking about the shows, Geoff Cottrill of Converse’s Chief Marketing Office said: “Represent builds on our global commitment to music. We’re excited to bring such an amazing and diverse roster of artists under one roof and to give music fans around the world a chance to participate in the action through our live streams or here on the ground in London.”

To find out more information about the show and for all the details on how to get tickets, visit Converse.co.uk. You can watch a video trailer for the series of shows, meanwhile, by clicking at the bottom of the page.

The line-up for Converse: Represent is as follows:

July 30

Plan B

L Marshall

Yuna

Jacob Banks

July 31

UK Subs

Anti-Nowhere League

Discharge

Goldblade

Ed Tudor Pole

Dumbjaw

August 1

Paul Weller

Spiritualized

Japandroids

02:54

Towns

August 2

Blur

The Bots

Savages

Swiss Lips

August 6

SBTRKT

Rudimental

John Talabot

Man Without Country

Lemonade

August 7

Santigold

Django Django

Best Coast

Citizens!

Friends

August 8

Toots & the Maytals

Natty

The Heatwave

Janice Graham Band

August 9

Overkill

Pulled Apart By Horses

The Safety Fire

Wet Nuns

August 10

Nas

Kano

Speech Debelle

Spoek Mathambo

Children Of The Night

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Roger Waters’ The Wall tour named the highest grossing of 2012 so far

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Roger Waters’ The Wall tour named the highest grossing of 2012 so far
Roger Waters' The Wall tour has been named the highest grossing tour of the year so far by Boxscore/Billboard. The Pink Floyd man's global jaunt earned $131.4 million (£83.6 million) from November 1 last year to May 31 this year, selling 1.2 million tickets. The tour ends on July 21 in Quebec City...

Roger Waters‘ The Wall tour has been named the highest grossing tour of the year so far by Boxscore/Billboard.

The Pink Floyd man’s global jaunt earned $131.4 million (£83.6 million) from November 1 last year to May 31 this year, selling 1.2 million tickets. The tour ends on July 21 in Quebec City, and will have made more than $350 million (£223 million) in total since it hit the road in 2010, and will have been seen by three million people.

The second highest earning tour in the above time frame is Michael Jackson: The Immortal Tour by Cirque du Soleil, which has racked up $68.4 million (£43.5 million) in tickets, while Bruce Springsteen comes in third with his Wrecking Ball tour pulling in $52.4 million (£33.34 million) in box office sales.

Jay-Z and Kanye West’s The Throne, as well as Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and Pearl Jam have also made the Top 10 of the world’s highest grossing tours over the seven month period.

The Top 10 highest earning tours from November 1 2011 to May 31 2012 are:

1. Roger Waters’ The Wall ($131.4 million/£83.6 million)

2. Michael Jackson: The Immortal Tour by Cirque du Soleil ($68.4 million/£43.5 million)

3. Bruce Springsteen ($52.4 million/£33.34 million)

4. Jay-Z/Kanye West’s The Throne ($46 million/£29.27 million)

5. Lady Gaga ($44 million/£27.99 million)

6. Van Halen ($38.6 million/£24.6 million)

7. Trans-Siberian Orchestra ($33.4 million/£21.24 million)

8. Taylor Swift ($26.3 million/£16.73 million)

9. Pearl Jam ($25.4 million/£16.16 million)

10. Andre Rieu ($25.3 million/£16.10 milllion)

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Sales of ‘old albums’ overtake sales of ‘new albums’ for the first time

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Sales of ‘old albums’ overtake sales of ‘new albums’ for the first time

Sales of "old albums" have overtaken sales of "new albums" for the first time over the last six months in the US. Sales of "old albums", which are classified as LPs that have been on sale for longer than 18 months, numbered at 76.6 million over the last six months, with sales of "new albums" numbering at 73.9 million, reports OC Weekly. According to chart analysts Nielsen, the biggest "old album" sellers have been Whitney Houston and Guns N' Roses' Greatest Hits, while Adele's 21 remains by far the biggest seller in the "new albums" category. Nielsen analyst David Bakula has said that the reason for the change is that record labels and retailers have continued to drop the price of older albums to as low as £3.99 and this has attracted brand new customers. He said of this: "I really, truly do believe that there probably is a consumer that is buying music here that wasn't buying music in the past." The number of albums sold in the UK fell by almost seven million from the same period in 2011, with 43.6 million albums were sold in the first half of 2012, which is a fall of 6.9 million from the first half of 2011, when 50.5 million albums were shifted. Overall, digital sales are up again by 17.3%, with sales of singles up by 6% overall. In total, 93.6 million singles were bought in the first half of 2012, up from 88 million during the same period last year. Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12 month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Sales of “old albums” have overtaken sales of “new albums” for the first time over the last six months in the US.

Sales of “old albums”, which are classified as LPs that have been on sale for longer than 18 months, numbered at 76.6 million over the last six months, with sales of “new albums” numbering at 73.9 million, reports OC Weekly.

According to chart analysts Nielsen, the biggest “old album” sellers have been Whitney Houston and Guns N’ Roses‘ Greatest Hits, while Adele’s 21 remains by far the biggest seller in the “new albums” category.

Nielsen analyst David Bakula has said that the reason for the change is that record labels and retailers have continued to drop the price of older albums to as low as £3.99 and this has attracted brand new customers. He said of this: “I really, truly do believe that there probably is a consumer that is buying music here that wasn’t buying music in the past.”

The number of albums sold in the UK fell by almost seven million from the same period in 2011, with 43.6 million albums were sold in the first half of 2012, which is a fall of 6.9 million from the first half of 2011, when 50.5 million albums were shifted.

Overall, digital sales are up again by 17.3%, with sales of singles up by 6% overall. In total, 93.6 million singles were bought in the first half of 2012, up from 88 million during the same period last year.

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Beck to debut three new songs in new PS3 game ‘Sound Shapes’

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Beck to debut three new songs in new PS3 game ‘Sound Shapes’
Beck has announced that he will be debuting three brand new songs on the soundtrack to new computer game Sound Shapes. The tracks, which are titled "Cities", "Touch The People" and "Spiral Staircase", will each feature on a different level of the game, which is due for release next month. Accordin...

Beck has announced that he will be debuting three brand new songs on the soundtrack to new computer game Sound Shapes.

The tracks, which are titled “Cities”, “Touch The People” and “Spiral Staircase”, will each feature on a different level of the game, which is due for release next month.

According to Sony, the new PS3 adventure Sound Shapes is “a classic side-scrolling platformer where your actions make the music”.

As well as Beck, Deadmau5, I Am Robot And Proud and Jim Guthrie will also contribute music. The game itself will be released on August 7.

Last month, Beck released his Jack White-produced track “I Just Started Hating Some People Today” along with a new B-Side “Blue Randy”. The two tracks were recorded last year at the Third Man Studio in Nashville when Beck was in the Tennessee city recording the follow-up to 2008’s Modern Guilt.

Beck joins the likes of Tom Jones, Laura Marling and Insane Clown Posse in recording and releasing one-off singles on White’s Third Man Records.

The singer has not released any details about the follow-up to Modern Guilt, with the only postings about the album coming from bass player Justin Meldal-Johnsen, who tweeted that Beck’s new material “would blow your mind”.

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Bob Dylan announces North American arena tour

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Bob Dylan announces North American arena tour
Bob Dylan has announced a North American arena tour in support of his forthcoming album, The Tempest. The arena dates begins in Winnipeg, Manitoba on October 5 and runs through November 21 in Brooklyn, New York. Rolling Stone reports that this is Dylan's first time headlining arenas in America sin...

Bob Dylan has announced a North American arena tour in support of his forthcoming album, The Tempest.

The arena dates begins in Winnipeg, Manitoba on October 5 and runs through November 21 in Brooklyn, New York.

Rolling Stone reports that this is Dylan’s first time headlining arenas in America since 2006.

Special guest on the tour will be Mark Knopfler, with whom Dylan toured Europe last year.

The Tempest, which is the 35th studio album of Dylan’s career, will come out on September 10 in the UK and September 11 in the US.

Here are Dylan’s North American arena tour dates:

5/10 Winnipeg, MB – MTS Centre

6/10 Regina, SK – Brandt Centre

8/10 Saskatoon, SK – Credit Union Centre

9/10 Edmonton, AB – Rexall Place

10/10 Calgary, AB – Scotiabank Saddledome

12/10 Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena

13/10 Seattle, WA – Key Arena

15/10 Portland, OR – Rose Garden Arena

17/10 San Francisco, CA – Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

18/10 San Francisco, CA – Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

19/10 Berkeley, CA – Greek Theatre

20/10 Sacramento, CA – Power Balance Pavilion

22/10 Santa Barbara, CA – Santa Barbara County Bowl

24/10 San Diego, CA – Valley View Casino Center

26/10 Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Bowl

29/10 Broomfield, CO – 1STBANK Center

30/10 Broomfield, CO – 1STBANK Center

1/11 Grand Prairie, TX – Verizon Theatre

2/11 Tulsa, OK – BOK Center

3/11 Omaha, NE – Century/Link Center

5/11 Madison, WI – Alliant Energy Center

7/11 St. Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center

8/11 Milwaukee, WI – BMO Harris Bradley Center

9/11 Chicago, IL – United Center

12/11 Grand Rapids, MI – Van Andel Arena

13/11 Auburn Hills, MI – The Palace of Auburn Hills

14/11 Toronto, ON – Air Canada Centre

16/11 Montreal, QC – Bell Centre

18/11 Boston, MA – TD Garden

19/11 Philadelphia, PA – Wells Fargo Center

20/11 Washington, DC – Verizon Center

21/11 Brooklyn, NY – Barclays Center

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Rare version of The Beatles’ LP ‘Introducing…The Beatles’ fetches almost $15,000 at auction

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Rare version of The Beatles’ LP ‘Introducing…The Beatles’ fetches almost $15,000 at auction

A rare Beatles album has sold for just under $15,000 (£9,581) at auction. The album, which is a rare edition of the Fab Four's first US release Introducing…The Beatles, sold last Thursday (July 12) for $14,999 (£9,580) on eBay to a private collector. The record, which contains "Love Me Do" and "PS, I Love You", is the first Beatles album to have been released in the United States. It was originally scheduled for release in July 1963, but was delayed by legal issues until January 1964. The album's release reportedly came just 10 days before the band's new album Meet The Beatles! came out. When putting the record out, the band's original US label Vee-Jay Records discovered that while they had 6,000 front album covers printed and ready-to-go, but no back covers. As a result, they used a full page advert to show off 25 records from their label on the back-side of the record. The 'Ad Back' version of the album only appeared on the first pressing and is extremely rare. It is this version that the collector has stumped up $14,999 (£9,580) for. You can find all the details of the sale at Ebay.com. Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12 month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

A rare Beatles album has sold for just under $15,000 (£9,581) at auction.

The album, which is a rare edition of the Fab Four’s first US release Introducing…The Beatles, sold last Thursday (July 12) for $14,999 (£9,580) on eBay to a private collector.

The record, which contains “Love Me Do” and “PS, I Love You”, is the first Beatles album to have been released in the United States.

It was originally scheduled for release in July 1963, but was delayed by legal issues until January 1964. The album’s release reportedly came just 10 days before the band’s new album Meet The Beatles! came out.

When putting the record out, the band’s original US label Vee-Jay Records discovered that while they had 6,000 front album covers printed and ready-to-go, but no back covers. As a result, they used a full page advert to show off 25 records from their label on the back-side of the record.

The ‘Ad Back’ version of the album only appeared on the first pressing and is extremely rare. It is this version that the collector has stumped up $14,999 (£9,580) for.

You can find all the details of the sale at Ebay.com.

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Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan

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Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan

Brooklyn brainiacs go back to basics? Not quite... For all their grand designs – the glitch operas, the whalesong cycles, the earnest attempts, as bandleader Dave Longstreth puts it, to “construct some sort of dialogue between West African guitar music and American hardcore, or between mid-2000s Timbaland and Mahlerian wind writing” – you always wondered what Dirty Projectors would sound like once they shed the conceptual baggage and went back to basics. And here’s the answer, kind of. For six months last year, Longstreth sequestered himself away in an abandoned house in rural Delaware County to write the songs for what would become the sixth Dirty Projectors album. Making the time-honoured pilgrimage upstate seems to have mellowed his approach. Previously, his music has rejected, even mocked the idea of heritage rock; on Swing Lo Magellan you can hear whole clumps of Townsend riffage and McCartney melody floating to the surface. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy listen. The album remains magnificently wordy – "this next one's a little ditty called 'Impregnable Question'!" – and Longstreth’s wriggling vocal lines and counter-intuitive, clip-clopping rhythms still require some getting used to. But once you've tuned into the DPs' frequency, you're rewarded with a relentlessly novel album that's generous with its wisdom and often exhilarating in its execution. When those blinding harmonies burst out of nowhere, you’re reminded that this band always set out to excite rather than confound or confuse. “Dance For You” is particularly irresistible, Longstreth singing gaily of boogieing down “gargoyle streets” hoping to “feel the breath of a force I cannot explain”. Amber Coffman’s lead vocal turn on “The Socialities” isn’t quite as arresting as her Aaliyah tribute “Stillness Is The Move”, but the understated arrangement highlights a ravishing melody. Overall, Swing Lo Magellan is closer in spirit to the choral campfire vibe of David Byrne collaboration “Knotty Pine” than much of predecessor Bitte Orca. Its freshness can be attributed to a 'first take best take' recording policy that lends each song a remarkable immediacy. Plenty of bands boast about “leaving in the mistakes”, as if a bit of sloppy guitar work will somehow transform their mediocre din into something raw and vital. But when you hear Dirty Projectors fluff a cue or miss a beat, it genuinely feels as if they’re too wrapped up in the songs to care. Conversely, the lyrics leave nothing to chance. For the first time, Longstreth’s words offer real value, rather than just verbose decoration – even if his cautionary, quasi-Biblical tales feel like they’re sometimes working at odds with the playful optimism of the music. “Offspring Are Blank” unfolds like a sinister creation myth, in which the “marriage of eagle and snake” leads to “shadows that lengthen from the sky to the ground/ And a silence that can swallow sound”. “Gun Has No Trigger” is a solemn fable about a Philistine getting their comeuppance. Meanwhile, the figure of 16th century circumnavigator Ferdinand Magellan is invoked on the title track as a symbol of our yearning to venture off the map in lives that often feel tediously pre-ordained. Of course, there’s the ever-present danger that Longstreth’s intellectual swaggering will come across to many as smug and superior. For an album he intended to be more direct and personal, it’s only on the closing track – a gloriously punch-drunk ballad called “Irresponsible Tune” – that he really comes close to opening up. “With our songs, we are outlaws/ With our songs, we’re alone” he notes, glumly acknowledging his outsider status in a “world crooked, fucked up and wrong”. Yet without music, Longstreth concludes, “life is pointless, harsh and long”. For that reason, we should be grateful that he continues to boogie down gargoyle streets to his own strange, alluring, irresponsible tune. Sam Richards Q&A Dave Longstreth How much did the abandoned house where you wrote and recorded Swing Lo Magellan influence the atmosphere of the record? I think not terribly much. What was cool about the house is that it was unfinished. Turns out an unfinished room is a pretty nice place to make stuff that doesn't exist yet. But in general I would not overplay this narrative of the house and the rural upstate. Basically, New York is an amazing place to absorb music and culture and hang out with friends and everything, but I don't think it's ever been a good place for writing music – unless it's a kind of angular, claustrophobic dissonance that you're after. Was it quite a new approach for you to start writing individual songs without any kind of grand plan? It was. When you're writing a story, like The Getty Address or Mount Wittenberg Orca, the writing is done when the story's done. This time, it was much more open. It was super-fresh and liberating. It felt like, “I'm going to open this window and just collect these leaves as they blow off the tree.” Why did you choose not to overdub or redo all the little imperfections? Perfection is such an over-esteemed virtue right now. I can understand it in the Renaissance or something when it was hard, but lot of music being produced at the moment has got this sort of cheap, digital perfection to it. I felt that showing a little bit of rawness or vulnerability made these songs feel more true to themselves. A lot of the demo elements are part of the finished record. A lot of the vocals are the first time I ever sang these songs. INTERVIEW: SAN RICHARDS

Brooklyn brainiacs go back to basics? Not quite…

For all their grand designs – the glitch operas, the whalesong cycles, the earnest attempts, as bandleader Dave Longstreth puts it, to “construct some sort of dialogue between West African guitar music and American hardcore, or between mid-2000s Timbaland and Mahlerian wind writing” – you always wondered what Dirty Projectors would sound like once they shed the conceptual baggage and went back to basics.

And here’s the answer, kind of. For six months last year, Longstreth sequestered himself away in an abandoned house in rural Delaware County to write the songs for what would become the sixth Dirty Projectors album. Making the time-honoured pilgrimage upstate seems to have mellowed his approach. Previously, his music has rejected, even mocked the idea of heritage rock; on Swing Lo Magellan you can hear whole clumps of Townsend riffage and McCartney melody floating to the surface.

That doesn’t mean it’s an easy listen. The album remains magnificently wordy – “this next one’s a little ditty called ‘Impregnable Question’!” – and Longstreth’s wriggling vocal lines and counter-intuitive, clip-clopping rhythms still require some getting used to. But once you’ve tuned into the DPs’ frequency, you’re rewarded with a relentlessly novel album that’s generous with its wisdom and often exhilarating in its execution.

When those blinding harmonies burst out of nowhere, you’re reminded that this band always set out to excite rather than confound or confuse. “Dance For You” is particularly irresistible, Longstreth singing gaily of boogieing down “gargoyle streets” hoping to “feel the breath of a force I cannot explain”. Amber Coffman’s lead vocal turn on “The Socialities” isn’t quite as arresting as her Aaliyah tribute “Stillness Is The Move”, but the understated arrangement highlights a ravishing melody.

Overall, Swing Lo Magellan is closer in spirit to the choral campfire vibe of David Byrne collaboration “Knotty Pine” than much of predecessor Bitte Orca. Its freshness can be attributed to a ‘first take best take’ recording policy that lends each song a remarkable immediacy. Plenty of bands boast about “leaving in the mistakes”, as if a bit of sloppy guitar work will somehow transform their mediocre din into something raw and vital. But when you hear Dirty Projectors fluff a cue or miss a beat, it genuinely feels as if they’re too wrapped up in the songs to care.

Conversely, the lyrics leave nothing to chance. For the first time, Longstreth’s words offer real value, rather than just verbose decoration – even if his cautionary, quasi-Biblical tales feel like they’re sometimes working at odds with the playful optimism of the music. “Offspring Are Blank” unfolds like a sinister creation myth, in which the “marriage of eagle and snake” leads to “shadows that lengthen from the sky to the ground/ And a silence that can swallow sound”. “Gun Has No Trigger” is a solemn fable about a Philistine getting their comeuppance. Meanwhile, the figure of 16th century circumnavigator Ferdinand Magellan is invoked on the title track as a symbol of our yearning to venture off the map in lives that often feel tediously pre-ordained.

Of course, there’s the ever-present danger that Longstreth’s intellectual swaggering will come across to many as smug and superior. For an album he intended to be more direct and personal, it’s only on the closing track – a gloriously punch-drunk ballad called “Irresponsible Tune” – that he really comes close to opening up. “With our songs, we are outlaws/ With our songs, we’re alone” he notes, glumly acknowledging his outsider status in a “world crooked, fucked up and wrong”. Yet without music, Longstreth concludes, “life is pointless, harsh and long”. For that reason, we should be grateful that he continues to boogie down gargoyle streets to his own strange, alluring, irresponsible tune.

Sam Richards

Q&A

Dave Longstreth

How much did the abandoned house where you wrote and recorded Swing Lo Magellan influence the atmosphere of the record?

I think not terribly much. What was cool about the house is that it was unfinished. Turns out an unfinished room is a pretty nice place to make stuff that doesn’t exist yet. But in general I would not overplay this narrative of the house and the rural upstate. Basically, New York is an amazing place to absorb music and culture and hang out with friends and everything, but I don’t think it’s ever been a good place for writing music – unless it’s a kind of angular, claustrophobic dissonance that you’re after.

Was it quite a new approach for you to start writing individual songs without any kind of grand plan?

It was. When you’re writing a story, like The Getty Address or Mount Wittenberg Orca, the writing is done when the story’s done. This time, it was much more open. It was super-fresh and liberating. It felt like, “I’m going to open this window and just collect these leaves as they blow off the tree.”

Why did you choose not to overdub or redo all the little imperfections?

Perfection is such an over-esteemed virtue right now. I can understand it in the Renaissance or something when it was hard, but lot of music being produced at the moment has got this sort of cheap, digital perfection to it. I felt that showing a little bit of rawness or vulnerability made these songs feel more true to themselves. A lot of the demo elements are part of the finished record. A lot of the vocals are the first time I ever sang these songs.

INTERVIEW: SAN RICHARDS

The Who announce American Quadrophenia tour

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The Who announce American Quadrophenia tour
The Who will be performing their 1973 album Quadrophenia in its entirety on their newly announced US tour, which begins on November 1 in Sunrise, Florida, visiting Boston, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and more, finishing up in Providence, Rhode Island on February 26, 2013. Tickets will go on sa...

The Who will be performing their 1973 album Quadrophenia in its entirety on their newly announced US tour, which begins on November 1 in Sunrise, Florida, visiting Boston, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and more, finishing up in Providence, Rhode Island on February 26, 2013.

Tickets will go on sale through the Who’s official fan club at 10 a.m. July 20th and to the public on Friday, July 27th.

Here are the upcoming tour dates:

1/11 Sunrise, FL – BankAtlantic Center

3/11 Orlando, FL – Amway Center

5/11 Duluth, GA – The Arena at Gwinnett Center

8/11 Greenville, SC – Bi-Lo Center

9/11 Greensboro, NC – Greensboro Coliseum

11/11 Pittsburgh, PA – CONSOL Energy Arena

13/11 Washington, DC – Verizon Center

14/11 Brooklyn, NY – Barclays Center

16/11 Boston, MA – TD Garden

20/11 Montreal, QC – Bell Centre (on sale 28/7)

23/11 Toronto, ON – Air Canada Centre

24/11 Detroit, MI – Joe Louis Arena

27/11 Minneapolis, MN – Target Center

29/11 Chicago, IL – Allstate Arena

2/12 Nashville, TN – Bridgestone Arena

5/12 New York, NY – Madison Square Garden

6/12 Newark, NJ – Prudential Center

8/12 Philadelphia, PA – Wells Fargo Center

9/12 Uncasville, CT – Mohegan Sun Arena

Leg Two:

28/1/2013 Anaheim, CA – Honda Center

30/1 Los Angeles, CA – STAPLES Center

1/2 Oakland, CA – Oracle Arena

2/2 Reno, NV – Reno Events Center

5/2 San Diego, CA – Valley View Casino Center

6/2 Glendale, AZ – Jobing.com Arena

8/2 Las Vegas, NV – The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino

12/2 Denver, CO – Pepsi Center

14/2 Tulsa, OK – BOK Center

16/2 Louisville, KY – KFC Yum! Arena

17/2 Columbus, OH – Schottenstein Center

19/2 Hamiltion, ON – Copps Coliseum

21/2 Uniondale, NY – Nassau Coliseum

22/2 Atlantic City, NJ – Boardwak Hall

24/2 Manchester, NH – Verizon Wireless Arena

26/6 Providence, RI – Dunkin’ Donuts Center

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Patti Smith to appear on Red Hot Chili Pepper Flea’s solo EP

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Patti Smith to appear on Red Hot Chili Pepper Flea’s solo EP

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea has revealed that Patti Smith will appear on his new solo EP. In a series of tweets, he wrote that the proceeds to the self-recorded Helen Burns EP will go towards Silverlake Conservatory for Music, the music school he set up in 2001. "I am putting out an EP I made by myself in a couple of days. It is obscure arty mostly instrumental music, except when Patti Smith sings," he wrote. "All proceeds from my Helen Burns EP will go towards the Silverlake Conservatory of Music". The release will use a Radiohead-style pay-what-you-want model, he wrote: "It will be available for download at any price you want to pay, it will be a donation to the Silverlake Conservatory of Music". However, an autographed vinyl version of the EP containing a piece of bass string will cost $75. For fans hoping to a Red Hot Chili Peppers-style record, Flea says the sound is completely different, writing: "I recorded most of the EP when we finished our tour for 'Stadium Arcadium'. It is not RHCP music or even close to it. It is a trippy freakout". Full details of how to get hold of the EP will be announced in the next two days. Red Hot Chili Peppers are set to release 18 singles over the next six months. The tracks, which were all recorded during the band's sessions for their 2011 studio album 'I'm With You', will be released as nine double A-sided 7'' singles from August 11. Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12 month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea has revealed that Patti Smith will appear on his new solo EP.

In a series of tweets, he wrote that the proceeds to the self-recorded Helen Burns EP will go towards Silverlake Conservatory for Music, the music school he set up in 2001.

“I am putting out an EP I made by myself in a couple of days. It is obscure arty mostly instrumental music, except when Patti Smith sings,” he wrote. “All proceeds from my Helen Burns EP will go towards the Silverlake Conservatory of Music”.

The release will use a Radiohead-style pay-what-you-want model, he wrote: “It will be available for download at any price you want to pay, it will be a donation to the Silverlake Conservatory of Music”. However, an autographed vinyl version of the EP containing a piece of bass string will cost $75.

For fans hoping to a Red Hot Chili Peppers-style record, Flea says the sound is completely different, writing: “I recorded most of the EP when we finished our tour for ‘Stadium Arcadium’. It is not RHCP music or even close to it. It is a trippy freakout”.

Full details of how to get hold of the EP will be announced in the next two days.

Red Hot Chili Peppers are set to release 18 singles over the next six months. The tracks, which were all recorded during the band’s sessions for their 2011 studio album ‘I’m With You’, will be released as nine double A-sided 7” singles from August 11.

Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12 month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

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