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Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner: ‘I want to start writing follow-up to ‘Suck It And See”

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Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner has said that he wants to start writing the band's new album. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the frontman said he was eager to start penning tunes on the follow-up to last year's 'Suck It And See' so he could get a "head start" on the new record. The band are cu...

Arctic MonkeysAlex Turner has said that he wants to start writing the band’s new album.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, the frontman said he was eager to start penning tunes on the follow-up to last year’s ‘Suck It And See’ so he could get a “head start” on the new record.

The band are currently in the middle of a lengthy stint across the USA and Canada as support to The Black Keys on their US arena tour and, when asked if he had been working on new material on the road, he replied: “A bit. I don’t try to write on the road. I might try to this time, just for a change. Usually, I get home and I realize it’s bad, so I’ve not done it in the past.”

He added: “We’ve messed around in sound checks, but I’m not gonna meet a deadline, and it’s not like I need to write, though I want a head start for the next time around.”

Last month, Arctic Monkeys debuted their brand new single ‘R U Mine’. The track, which didn’t feature on ‘Suck It And See’, was released as a single on March 2.

Pink Floyd – The Wall Immersion Edition

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Edited highlights: a new 7CD/DVD 'Immersion' box set includes 64 demos from the archives... “Roger having a bit of a whinge.” That’s how David Gilmour, in a moment of devastating offhandedness, described The Wall. The 1979 double album, a personal obsession for Waters, concerned the meltdown of an English rock star damaged by childhood trauma: his father’s wartime death, his mother’s creepy overprotectiveness, his miserable schooldays. Spawning a worldwide No 1 single (“Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)”) and a movie, the project took a heavy toll. One band-member was sacked (Rick Wright) and two others (Waters and Gilmour) embarked on a 25-year feud. The Wall, of course, was not afraid to lose friends and alienate people. That was, if anything, its field of expertise. It was a chanting, ranting, screaming, gruelling journey into hysteria and catatonia, with only the odd ballad and Gilmour’s guitar solos for comfort breaks. Some it was shockingly un-Floydian; as well as an orchestra and three choirs, Waters and co-producer Bob Ezrin hired a number of American session musicians. Glutted with speech and sound effects, if The Wall had precedents, they were not Animals or Wish You Were Here but Lou Reed’s harrowing Berlin and Alice Cooper’s Welcome To My Nightmare – both of them Ezrin productions. But The Wall went further. It beat its protagonist (Pink) to a pulp, refusing to stop until Waters, man of a thousand accents, donned the robes of a judge presiding over Pink’s fate in an emotionally charged courtroom of the superego. Roger, in other words, was having a bit more than a whinge. EMI’s “Why Pink Floyd?” reissue campaign, which has been running since last September, has dismantled one or two bricks in the band’s implacable wall by making available outtakes and other unreleased material. This new 7CD/DVD ‘Immersion’ edition of The Wall includes two discs of demos from their archives – 64 tracks, to be precise, 26 of which were part of the original work-in-progress that Waters played to the group. This is an edited highlights package rather than the complete match: all but three songs are in the form of excerpts (some as brief as ten seconds), all of them crossfaded into a continuous sequence. The detail in the sketches is surprising. Waters pretty much has the story worked out, from World War II to Pink’s trial, and the music features synthesisers, fuzzy lead guitar lines and a dark, disembodied ambience reminiscent of Bill Laswell’s remixes of Miles Davis. Echoey fragments of familiar songs (“Empty Spaces”, “Goodbye Blue Sky”) fly past leaving only impressions of their shape. It’s a digest of The Wall for the modern consumer in a hurry. Pink is “sitting in a bunker here behind my wall” (“Waiting For The Worms”) after only 11 minutes, and gets his schooldays out of the way before we’ve time to unpack our pencils. But as Waters adds each piece to the jigsaw, you can see why the rest of Floyd were intrigued. There’s something grimly inexorable about his narrative, like a work that has to be made whatever the cost. Like The Beatles’ White Album, there’s a theory that The Wall would have worked better as a single LP. The brilliance of Gilmour (“Comfortably Numb”, “Run Like Hell”) would have counterbalanced the morbid self-pity of Waters. The trial would have gone, the hotel-room longueurs would have been scaled back, and the mother would have been a battleaxe but not a bore. The theory makes The Wall more palatable on paper, but the problem is it wouldn’t have been The Wall. Logic dictates that Pink’s deterioration into a blob of sociopathic nothingness should last for 80 arduous minutes, otherwise why is he so unhappy in the first place? On a smaller canvas, The Wall might have been just another allusion to Syd, another “threatened by shadows at night”, a rehab rehash. Waters was correct to dream large. It had to be an epic. Where he and Ezrin went wrong was to assume that every scene in an epic – the flashbacks, the soliloquies, the crowd shots – must be taken to excess. Thus did The Wall become a cartoon even before Gerald Scarfe turned it into one. This explains why Floyd’s ‘band’ demos, which account for over 100 minutes of music on the boxset, do a lot more than just bring guitars, drums and definition to Waters’ one-man outlines. They allow us to hear what The Wall could have sounded like without Ezrin and without such a megalomaniacal Waters. It could have been a rock album – and a decent one at that. The Englishness, the poignancy, the taut riffing (“Young Lust”) would have been on a par with “Time” and “Have A Cigar”, without all the derangement of smashed televisions and horrendous groupies. But it wouldn’t have been The Wall without that derangement, and so these Floyd demos are a mere pathway, an indication of what happened before the madness. “The Doctor” (which became “Comfortably Numb”) has Waters singing the vocal while Mason (I think) does a sit-down-old chap comedy routine as the family quack. Not a great idea. They drop it for the next version, designating Gilmour as lead singer, but again it’s not right. There are no guitar solos, no crescendos, no deliciously woozy transfers from doctor to patient. The demos are undoubtedly this boxset’s main attraction. A new remaster of a live album is included (Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81), but Floyd fanatics online are declaring themselves disgruntled with the lack of high-resolution 5.1 or Blu-ray, unlike Immersion sets for The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here. Remember, though, how The Wall began: as a mouthful of Waters’ phlegm in the face of a fan in Montreal. How did audiences become so insatiable for that idea? Masochism? Waters still performs it today, his mega-grossing tour scheduled to hit South America at Easter. “So ya thought ya might like to go to the show,” his opening song will begin, dripping with derision, and South America will lap it up. David Cavanagh Please fill in our quick survey about the relaunched Uncut – and you could win a 12 month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Edited highlights: a new 7CD/DVD ‘Immersion’ box set includes 64 demos from the archives…

“Roger having a bit of a whinge.” That’s how David Gilmour, in a moment of devastating offhandedness, described The Wall. The 1979 double album, a personal obsession for Waters, concerned the meltdown of an English rock star damaged by childhood trauma: his father’s wartime death, his mother’s creepy overprotectiveness, his miserable schooldays. Spawning a worldwide No 1 single (“Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)”) and a movie, the project took a heavy toll. One band-member was sacked (Rick Wright) and two others (Waters and Gilmour) embarked on a 25-year feud.

The Wall, of course, was not afraid to lose friends and alienate people. That was, if anything, its field of expertise. It was a chanting, ranting, screaming, gruelling journey into hysteria and catatonia, with only the odd ballad and Gilmour’s guitar solos for comfort breaks. Some it was shockingly un-Floydian; as well as an orchestra and three choirs, Waters and co-producer Bob Ezrin hired a number of American session musicians. Glutted with speech and sound effects, if The Wall had precedents, they were not Animals or Wish You Were Here but Lou Reed’s harrowing Berlin and Alice Cooper’s Welcome To My Nightmare – both of them Ezrin productions. But The Wall went further. It beat its protagonist (Pink) to a pulp, refusing to stop until Waters, man of a thousand accents, donned the robes of a judge presiding over Pink’s fate in an emotionally charged courtroom of the superego. Roger, in other words, was having a bit more than a whinge.

EMI’s “Why Pink Floyd?” reissue campaign, which has been running since last September, has dismantled one or two bricks in the band’s implacable wall by making available outtakes and other unreleased material. This new 7CD/DVD ‘Immersion’ edition of The Wall includes two discs of demos from their archives – 64 tracks, to be precise, 26 of which were part of the original work-in-progress that Waters played to the group. This is an edited highlights package rather than the complete match: all but three songs are in the form of excerpts (some as brief as ten seconds), all of them crossfaded into a continuous sequence. The detail in the sketches is surprising. Waters pretty much has the story worked out, from World War II to Pink’s trial, and the music features synthesisers, fuzzy lead guitar lines and a dark, disembodied ambience reminiscent of Bill Laswell’s remixes of Miles Davis. Echoey fragments of familiar songs (“Empty Spaces”, “Goodbye Blue Sky”) fly past leaving only impressions of their shape. It’s a digest of The Wall for the modern consumer in a hurry. Pink is “sitting in a bunker here behind my wall” (“Waiting For The Worms”) after only 11 minutes, and gets his schooldays out of the way before we’ve time to unpack our pencils. But as Waters adds each piece to the jigsaw, you can see why the rest of Floyd were intrigued. There’s something grimly inexorable about his narrative, like a work that has to be made whatever the cost.

Like The Beatles’ White Album, there’s a theory that The Wall would have worked better as a single LP. The brilliance of Gilmour (“Comfortably Numb”, “Run Like Hell”) would have counterbalanced the morbid self-pity of Waters. The trial would have gone, the hotel-room longueurs would have been scaled back, and the mother would have been a battleaxe but not a bore. The theory makes The Wall more palatable on paper, but the problem is it wouldn’t have been The Wall. Logic dictates that Pink’s deterioration into a blob of sociopathic nothingness should last for 80 arduous minutes, otherwise why is he so unhappy in the first place? On a smaller canvas, The Wall might have been just another allusion to Syd, another “threatened by shadows at night”, a rehab rehash. Waters was correct to dream large. It had to be an epic. Where he and Ezrin went wrong was to assume that every scene in an epic – the flashbacks, the soliloquies, the crowd shots – must be taken to excess. Thus did The Wall become a cartoon even before Gerald Scarfe turned it into one.

This explains why Floyd’s ‘band’ demos, which account for over 100 minutes of music on the boxset, do a lot more than just bring guitars, drums and definition to Waters’ one-man outlines. They allow us to hear what The Wall could have sounded like without Ezrin and without such a megalomaniacal Waters. It could have been a rock album – and a decent one at that. The Englishness, the poignancy, the taut riffing (“Young Lust”) would have been on a par with “Time” and “Have A Cigar”, without all the derangement of smashed televisions and horrendous groupies. But it wouldn’t have been The Wall without that derangement, and so these Floyd demos are a mere pathway, an indication of what happened before the madness. “The Doctor” (which became “Comfortably Numb”) has Waters singing the vocal while Mason (I think) does a sit-down-old chap comedy routine as the family quack. Not a great idea. They drop it for the next version, designating Gilmour as lead singer, but again it’s not right. There are no guitar solos, no crescendos, no deliciously woozy transfers from doctor to patient.

The demos are undoubtedly this boxset’s main attraction. A new remaster of a live album is included (Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81), but Floyd fanatics online are declaring themselves disgruntled with the lack of high-resolution 5.1 or Blu-ray, unlike Immersion sets for The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here. Remember, though, how The Wall began: as a mouthful of Waters’ phlegm in the face of a fan in Montreal. How did audiences become so insatiable for that idea? Masochism? Waters still performs it today, his mega-grossing tour scheduled to hit South America at Easter. “So ya thought ya might like to go to the show,” his opening song will begin, dripping with derision, and South America will lap it up.

David Cavanagh

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

The Tenth Uncut Playlist Of 2012

A lot on today, so I’ll have to be swift. But as you can see, a lot of exciting new things on the playlist this week, especially near the start. The Hans Chew track, incidentally, is a free download, and is hugely recommended. 1 Jack White – Blunderbuss (Third Man/XL) 2 Hans Chew – Mercy (http://www.hanschew.com/mercy/) 3 Dexys – One Day I’m Going To Soar (BMG Rights Management) 4 Beachwood Sparks – The Tarnished Gold (Sub Pop) 5 Terry Riley – In C (Esoteric) 6 Josephine Foster & The Victor Herrero Band – Perlas (Fire) 7 James Booker – Junco Partner (Hannibal) 8 Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air (Esoteric) 9 Blond:ish – Lovers In Limbo (Kompakt) 10 Wooden Wand – Briarwood: Deluxe Edition (Fire) 11 KWJAZ – KWJAZ (Not Not Fun) 12 Cold Specks – I Predict A Graceful Expulsion: Album Sampler (Mute) 13 Mi Ami – Decade (100% Silk) 14 Father John Misty – Fear Fun (Bella Union) 15 Geoff Barrow/Ben Salisbury – Drokk: Music Inspired By Mega-City One (Invada) Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

A lot on today, so I’ll have to be swift. But as you can see, a lot of exciting new things on the playlist this week, especially near the start. The Hans Chew track, incidentally, is a free download, and is hugely recommended.

1 Jack White – Blunderbuss (Third Man/XL)

2 Hans Chew – Mercy (http://www.hanschew.com/mercy/)

3 Dexys – One Day I’m Going To Soar (BMG Rights Management)

4 Beachwood Sparks – The Tarnished Gold (Sub Pop)

5 Terry Riley – In C (Esoteric)

6 Josephine Foster & The Victor Herrero Band – Perlas (Fire)

7 James Booker – Junco Partner (Hannibal)

8 Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air (Esoteric)

9 Blond:ish – Lovers In Limbo (Kompakt)

10 Wooden Wand – Briarwood: Deluxe Edition (Fire)

11 KWJAZ – KWJAZ (Not Not Fun)

12 Cold Specks – I Predict A Graceful Expulsion: Album Sampler (Mute)

13 Mi Ami – Decade (100% Silk)

14 Father John Misty – Fear Fun (Bella Union)

15 Geoff Barrow/Ben Salisbury – Drokk: Music Inspired By Mega-City One (Invada)

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

Courtney Love tells Eric Erlandson to avoid their romance in Kurt Cobain-inspired book

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Courtney Love has told Hole's Eric Erlandson that she doesn't want him to write about their relationship in his book about Kurt Cobain's suicide. According to the New York Daily News, the singer has given her blessing to the project but has insisted that he doesn't mention any details about their...

Courtney Love has told Hole‘s Eric Erlandson that she doesn’t want him to write about their relationship in his book about Kurt Cobain‘s suicide.

According to the New York Daily News, the singer has given her blessing to the project but has insisted that he doesn’t mention any details about their romantic history together.

She said: “I wish him well. Even more than Dave [Grohl] and [Krist] Novoselic, Eric was family… I just hope he didn’t write that we dated. We had sex, yes, but I don’t date”.

Erlandson first spoke about his Letters To Kurt tome, which will be published on April 8. The 52-chapter offering will be made up of poetry, prose and ‘free association’ and will comprise “reflections on rock’n’roll, drug abuse and the loss of Cobain”.

The guitarist also revealed that he hadn’t discussed the book with Love, adding: “Up until September of last year, October, she was asking me to play with her. But I felt like there was no transformation in our relationship at all. So that kind of worked its way into the book. I never mentioned to her that I had written the book, and I’m sure she’s heard of it now.”

Had he not committed suicide in 1994 at the age of 27, Kurt Cobain would have turned 45 on February 20 of this year. Letters To Kurt will be published in the United States three days after the 18th anniversary of Cobain’s death.

Beach House announce details of new album ‘Bloom’ and UK shows

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Beach House have announced the full details of their fourth studio album, which will be titled 'Bloom' and released in May. The Baltimore duo, who released their last LP 'Teen Dream' in 2010, will release their new record on May 14. The record's opening track 'Myth' is currently streaming online ...

Beach House have announced the full details of their fourth studio album, which will be titled ‘Bloom’ and released in May.

The Baltimore duo, who released their last LP ‘Teen Dream’ in 2010, will release their new record on May 14. The record’s opening track ‘Myth’ is currently streaming online – scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to listen to the track.

Speaking to NME about the album, singer Victoria Legrand hinted that the album would feature darker subject matter than ‘Teen Dream’. Her bandmate Alex Scally, meanwhile, revealed that the pair wanted the album to be similar to works such as The Cure’s ‘Disintegration’ and The Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’.

The tracklisting for ‘Bloom’ is as follows:

‘Myth’

‘Wild’

‘Lazuli’

‘Other People’

‘The Hours’

‘Troublemaker’

‘New Year’

‘Wishes’

‘On The Sea’

‘Irene’

Beach House will also play two UK shows in May to support the release of the record. They will play:

Brighton Haunt (May 23)

London Village Underground (24)

Portishead’s Geoff Barrow: ‘There’s definitely going to be another record’

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Portishead's Geoff Barrow has confirmed that the band will record a fourth album. The band released their last album 'Third' in 2008, their first studio record since 1997's self-titled effort and wrapped their touring commitments in support of the album last summer. Speaking to The Quietus, the...

Portishead‘s Geoff Barrow has confirmed that the band will record a fourth album.

The band released their last album ‘Third’ in 2008, their first studio record since 1997’s self-titled effort and wrapped their touring commitments in support of the album last summer.

Speaking to The Quietus, the trio’s multi-instrumentalist Geoff Barrow said of their plans for a fourth album: “We’ve been getting together recently and talking about lots of stuff. There’s definitely going to be another record, we’re just going to get on it as soon as my studio gets working.”

Barrow also spoke about the band’s tour last summer, which saw the trio visit lots of territories they’d played in before. Asked if he’d been inspired by this, Barrow replied: “It inspired us because people were into it, but in terms of where it takes us musically, it inspired us because that’s where it stops. That tour was almost a continuation of the ATP we did in 2007, 2008, it was the same band, pretty much the same set, lots of ‘Third’ and lots of bits of other stuff, so now we want to move forward.”

The multi-instrumentalist added that working on side projects Drokk and Beak had inspired him to work on new material with Portishead.

He said of how the writing process was going: “We’ve not got anything at all down, but for me doing things like Drokk and Beak and lots of other things I’ve got my finger in has made me realise that that’s the way forward for me, just to keep on making music, so I don’t stop, so it doesn’t become an issue. I can just carry on writing, get the momentum going – that’s what everyone wants really, to feel able.”

Geoff Barrow is set to release the soundtrack to last year’s indie hit ‘Drive’ on vinyl, through his Invada Records label.

The soundtrack to the Ryan Gosling starring film featured 1980s electro-pop inspired music by Kavinsky & Lovefoxxx, Cliff Martinez, The Chromatics, Desire and Riziero Ortolani. The soundtrack will get its first vinyl release on May 21.

Palace – the early years

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Five works by Will Oldham's first persona, reissued. No extras, some weirdness... Long before anyone called it that, Will Oldham was making his musical home among the farm animals, pitchforks and clapboard churches of the old, weird, America. Nor was he on any kind of short vacation to this hard country. Over the course of four full-length studio albums made before he abandoned the “Palace” persona, Oldham scratched out his living from the earth, so to speak, a place where the songs were shaped by the fundamentals: warmth, food, drink, occasional violence, and thoughts of God. In this landscape, lust and horses also, more than once, reared their heads. So powerfully did Palace records do their work in the hilariously unglobalized world of indie rock circa 1993, the scant reliable information there was about the person who made them created a vacuum that instantly filled with rumour and surmise, something Oldham’s own mild eccentricity only encouraged. I met him in 1995, when this eccentricity seemed limited to his not particularly rating Teenage Fanclub, but if he had turned up to the interview covered in manure, carrying a Bible one wouldn’t at that time have been enormously surprised. The strength of this impression was the doing, primarily, of the debut Palace Brothers album There Is No-One What Will Take Care Of You (1993), backward in its grammar and in its setting, but supremely prescient in devising a route out of post-hardcore guitar music (every bit as ingenious, in fact, as that made by the “post-rock” band Slint, his contemporaries from Louisville, Kentucky, for whose Spiderland LP Oldham took the cover photo, and most of whose members appear on his first album). The album presents music utterly stripped back – “I Was Drunk At The Pulpit” comprises a single chord; the album, produced to be thus, feels cold and isolated – but not in such a way we’d now call “folk”. Oldham, as his subsequent oddball catalogue proved, is no purist. But perhaps if there was a point being made here, it’s that the bare essentials are what will survive of music, and of us. 1994’s Days In The Wake by comparison feels less of an auteur-directed work, and more a fly-on-the-wall documentary piece – its songs come with chair creaks, and fingers squeaking on the fretboard. This intimacy was at the expense of none of Oldham’s drama, however, or his wit. If anything, this was a singer-songwriter album, but one conducted on a knife edge, its concise half hour containing what was starting to become recognisable as Oldham’s unique beat: mock heroic, grand delusions, touching domestic details, near madness, horses. The thunderstorm that could be heard on “No More Workhorse Blues” reminded you that this was (as we said at the time) a “lo-fi” recording, but it also seemed a Shakespearean indication of the tempest within. Such rough edges prevented some from enjoying Palace music (a point which Oldham addressed himself a decade later, re-recording his “greatest hits” in a no less devisive “Nashville” style for a 2004 album …Plays Greatest Palace Music), but perfection was the casualty of creativity in music that was evolving constantly. It could be exquisite (hear the vocal harmonies on “Agnes, Queen Of Sorrow” on the 1995 mini album Hope), and it could be surprising (the 1997 collection Lost Blues And Other Lost Songs collects singles, B-sides, waifs and strays and experiments, including a version of “Riding” that pitches Oldham in a battle with deafening electric guitars). It’s hard to imagine, however, that this music could have done a better job of uniting true believers and floating voters than it did with the final album reissued here. 1995’s magnificent Viva Last Blues is simply recommended to all. Its medium for the most part a warm and even Stonesy folk-rock, it finds Oldham writing songs that still sound ad hoc but are also – a new thing completely – genuinely groovy. It’s an album that’s rocking (“Cat’s Blues”; “More Brother Rides”; “Work Hard/Play Hard”), amusing (“The Mountain Low” begins with the line: “If I could fuck a mountain…”), and canonically moving (“New Partner”, a song that evokes the Old West, but is in truth more about partnership of a domestic kind) but still retains among the clavinets and wah-wah guitar, some essential Oldham qualities: mystery, profanity, a sense of landscape, and, yes, horses. In the enjoyable, Oldham-starring 2006 film Old Joy, (just one of the divergent paths his career has taken post-Palace), Oldham’s character Kurt and his buddy Mark reminisce about their 1990s youth, spent in independent record shops in the Portland area, one lately closed. That was Palace’s youth, too, and in these albums, one is privileged to join Oldham’s long-running saga at the start of his journey, the road ahead filled with promise, but still alive with strangeness and uncertainty. John Robinson

Five works by Will Oldham’s first persona, reissued. No extras, some weirdness…

Long before anyone called it that, Will Oldham was making his musical home among the farm animals, pitchforks and clapboard churches of the old, weird, America. Nor was he on any kind of short vacation to this hard country. Over the course of four full-length studio albums made before he abandoned the “Palace” persona, Oldham scratched out his living from the earth, so to speak, a place where the songs were shaped by the fundamentals: warmth, food, drink, occasional violence, and thoughts of God. In this landscape, lust and horses also, more than once, reared their heads.

So powerfully did Palace records do their work in the hilariously unglobalized world of indie rock circa 1993, the scant reliable information there was about the person who made them created a vacuum that instantly filled with rumour and surmise, something Oldham’s own mild eccentricity only encouraged. I met him in 1995, when this eccentricity seemed limited to his not particularly rating Teenage Fanclub, but if he had turned up to the interview covered in manure, carrying a Bible one wouldn’t at that time have been enormously surprised.

The strength of this impression was the doing, primarily, of the debut Palace Brothers album There Is No-One What Will Take Care Of You (1993), backward in its grammar and in its setting, but supremely prescient in devising a route out of post-hardcore guitar music (every bit as ingenious, in fact, as that made by the “post-rock” band Slint, his contemporaries from Louisville, Kentucky, for whose Spiderland LP Oldham took the cover photo, and most of whose members appear on his first album).

The album presents music utterly stripped back – “I Was Drunk At The Pulpit” comprises a single chord; the album, produced to be thus, feels cold and isolated – but not in such a way we’d now call “folk”. Oldham, as his subsequent oddball catalogue proved, is no purist. But perhaps if there was a point being made here, it’s that the bare essentials are what will survive of music, and of us.

1994’s Days In The Wake by comparison feels less of an auteur-directed work, and more a fly-on-the-wall documentary piece – its songs come with chair creaks, and fingers squeaking on the fretboard. This intimacy was at the expense of none of Oldham’s drama, however, or his wit. If anything, this was a singer-songwriter album, but one conducted on a knife edge, its concise half hour containing what was starting to become recognisable as Oldham’s unique beat: mock heroic, grand delusions, touching domestic details, near madness, horses. The thunderstorm that could be heard on “No More Workhorse Blues” reminded you that this was (as we said at the time) a “lo-fi” recording, but it also seemed a Shakespearean indication of the tempest within.

Such rough edges prevented some from enjoying Palace music (a point which Oldham addressed himself a decade later, re-recording his “greatest hits” in a no less devisive “Nashville” style for a 2004 album …Plays Greatest Palace Music), but perfection was the casualty of creativity in music that was evolving constantly. It could be exquisite (hear the vocal harmonies on “Agnes, Queen Of Sorrow” on the 1995 mini album Hope), and it could be surprising (the 1997 collection Lost Blues And Other Lost Songs collects singles, B-sides, waifs and strays and experiments, including a version of “Riding” that pitches Oldham in a battle with deafening electric guitars). It’s hard to imagine, however, that this music could have done a better job of uniting true believers and floating voters than it did with the final album reissued here.

1995’s magnificent Viva Last Blues is simply recommended to all. Its medium for the most part a warm and even Stonesy folk-rock, it finds Oldham writing songs that still sound ad hoc but are also – a new thing completely – genuinely groovy. It’s an album that’s rocking (“Cat’s Blues”; “More Brother Rides”; “Work Hard/Play Hard”), amusing (“The Mountain Low” begins with the line: “If I could fuck a mountain…”), and canonically moving (“New Partner”, a song that evokes the Old West, but is in truth more about partnership of a domestic kind) but still retains among the clavinets and wah-wah guitar, some essential Oldham qualities: mystery, profanity, a sense of landscape, and, yes, horses.

In the enjoyable, Oldham-starring 2006 film Old Joy, (just one of the divergent paths his career has taken post-Palace), Oldham’s character Kurt and his buddy Mark reminisce about their 1990s youth, spent in independent record shops in the Portland area, one lately closed. That was Palace’s youth, too, and in these albums, one is privileged to join Oldham’s long-running saga at the start of his journey, the road ahead filled with promise, but still alive with strangeness and uncertainty.

John Robinson

The Monkees’ Davy Jones ‘thought his chest pains were heartburn’, says daughter

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The Monkees' Davy Jones thought his chest pains leading up to his death were just "a bad case of heartburn", according to his daughter. Jones passed away as a result of a heart attack last week (February 29) at the age of 66. In an interview with the National Enquirer, his daughter Talia said that he had dismissed the pains in his chest as indigestion because he had recently been given a clean bill of health by doctors. "My father just had all of these tests and everything came back great," she said. "He was told his heart was like a 25-year-old's." She went on to add: "So when he continued to have pains in the chest area, he never thought it was anything but a bad case of heartburn. In fact, he needed more extensive testing to know what was going on". Talia also suggested it was Jones' stressful lifestyle that had led to his health problems. "Of course there was stress," she said. "What stressed him was just living the lifestyle he did - literally going from one country to the next, one state to the next. He was always trying to do so much and please everybody." Earlier this week (March 6), it was revealed that the three remaining members of The Monkees would not be attending Jones' funeral. Drummer Micky Dolenz said that the band had been made aware by Jones' family that they wished for his funeral to be "very, very low-key and very, very private" and if he and his bandmates attended, he feared the event may become "a media circus". He also said that Jones' death is likely to mean that the band will no longer tour or record under the name 'The Monkees', but that there will probably be a memorial concert for Jones.

The MonkeesDavy Jones thought his chest pains leading up to his death were just “a bad case of heartburn”, according to his daughter.

Jones passed away as a result of a heart attack last week (February 29) at the age of 66. In an interview with the National Enquirer, his daughter Talia said that he had dismissed the pains in his chest as indigestion because he had recently been given a clean bill of health by doctors.

“My father just had all of these tests and everything came back great,” she said. “He was told his heart was like a 25-year-old’s.” She went on to add: “So when he continued to have pains in the chest area, he never thought it was anything but a bad case of heartburn. In fact, he needed more extensive testing to know what was going on”.

Talia also suggested it was Jones’ stressful lifestyle that had led to his health problems. “Of course there was stress,” she said. “What stressed him was just living the lifestyle he did – literally going from one country to the next, one state to the next. He was always trying to do so much and please everybody.”

Earlier this week (March 6), it was revealed that the three remaining members of The Monkees would not be attending Jones’ funeral. Drummer Micky Dolenz said that the band had been made aware by Jones’ family that they wished for his funeral to be “very, very low-key and very, very private” and if he and his bandmates attended, he feared the event may become “a media circus”.

He also said that Jones’ death is likely to mean that the band will no longer tour or record under the name ‘The Monkees’, but that there will probably be a memorial concert for Jones.

Metallica to start shooting 3D film this summer

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Metallica have revealed that they will begin shooting their 3D film this summer. In a statement posted on their official website, the metal legends said they had agreed to work with Hungarian director Nimrod Antal on the project, which they expect to release next summer. Speaking about working ...

Metallica have revealed that they will begin shooting their 3D film this summer.

In a statement posted on their official website, the metal legends said they had agreed to work with Hungarian director Nimrod Antal on the project, which they expect to release next summer.

Speaking about working with Antal, whose work includes the 2004 Hungarian language flick Kontroll and the 2010 blockbuster Predators with actor Adrian Brody, the band’s drummer Lars Ulrich said: “I’ve been a fan of Nimrod’s since his first Hungarian film, Kontroll, showed up at Cannes in 2004 and blew everyone away. I’ve watched with excitement his career in Hollywood blossom over the last few years.”

He went on to add: “Within five minutes of meeting him I was addicted to his enthusiasm, his take on the creative process and his ‘thinking outside the box’ personality. Let’s get on with it!”

Last weekend (March 4), Ulrich hinted that the band could release their next LP without a record label, following the expiration of their deal with Warner, and even said the band could give the album “away in cereal boxes”. He said: “We’re free and clear of our record contract. The world’s our oyster. We can basically do whatever we want. And we’re going so start figuring that out.”

Metallica will play a headline slot at this summer’s Download Festival as well as a series of other large European shows, performing their 1991 self-titled record, commonly known as ‘The Black Album’, in its entirety.

In October last year they teamed up with Lou Reed to release the album ‘Lulu’, which is based around German dramatist Frank Wedekind’s 1913 play about the life of an abused dancer.

LCD Soundsystem and Paul Simon docs for Sundance London

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Robert Redford launches the UK version of his garlanded indie film festival... Robert Redford's inaugural Sundance London event takes place between April 26 and 29 at the 02 in Greenwich. Set in the mountains of Utah, Sundance provided a crucial platform in the early Nineties for filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee - the kind of filmmaker, in other words, who proved hugely influential on Uncut's film content in our earliest days. Now Redford seems keen to expand his empire over here, swapping the high-altitude ski-slopes of Park City for the Greenwich peninsula. Some of the music events have already been announced - there's Tricky, playing his Maxinquaye album in its entirely, and T Bone Burnett in conversation with Robert Redford. But today we finally get to see what films are being screened. Knowing how hit and miss Sundance can be, these are the films I'm cautiously optimistic about seeing. Apologies, in advance, for basically cribbing from the press release; it's the only information I've got right now for these films. Incidentally, you can find the full programme over here: www.sundance-london.com. 2 Days In New York (Director: Julie Delpy, Screenwriters: Julie Delpy, Alexia Landeau) — Marion has broken up with Jack and now lives in New York with their child. A visit from her family, the different cultural background of her new boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend who her sister is now dating, and her upcoming photo exhibition make for an explosive mix. Cast: Julie Delpy, Chris Rock, Albert Delpy, Alexia Landeau, Alex Nahon. The House I Live In (Director: Eugene Jarecki) — For over 40 years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world's largest jailer and damaged poor communities at home and abroad. Yet, drugs are cheaper, purer and more available today than ever. Where did we go wrong and what is the path toward healing? The Queen of Versailles (Director: Lauren Greenfield) — Jackie and David were triumphantly constructing the biggest house in America – a sprawling, 90,000-square-foot palace inspired by Versailles – when their timeshare empire falters due to the economic crisis. Their story reveals the innate virtues and flaws of the American Dream. SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS (Directors: Dylan Southern, Will Lovelace) — A film that follows LCD Soundsystem front man James Murphy over a crucial 48-hour period, from the day of their final gig at Madison Square Garden to the morning after, the official end of one of the best live bands in the world. Under African Skies (Director: Joe Berlinger) — Paul Simon returns to South Africa to explore the incredible journey of his historic Graceland album, including the political backlash he sparked for allegedly breaking the UN cultural boycott of South Africa, designed to end Apartheid.

Robert Redford launches the UK version of his garlanded indie film festival…

Robert Redford’s inaugural Sundance London event takes place between April 26 and 29 at the 02 in Greenwich. Set in the mountains of Utah, Sundance provided a crucial platform in the early Nineties for filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee – the kind of filmmaker, in other words, who proved hugely influential on Uncut’s film content in our earliest days.

Now Redford seems keen to expand his empire over here, swapping the high-altitude ski-slopes of Park City for the Greenwich peninsula.

Some of the music events have already been announced – there’s Tricky, playing his Maxinquaye album in its entirely, and T Bone Burnett in conversation with Robert Redford.

But today we finally get to see what films are being screened. Knowing how hit and miss Sundance can be, these are the films I’m cautiously optimistic about seeing. Apologies, in advance, for basically cribbing from the press release; it’s the only information I’ve got right now for these films. Incidentally, you can find the full programme over here: www.sundance-london.com.

2 Days In New York (Director: Julie Delpy, Screenwriters: Julie Delpy, Alexia Landeau) — Marion has broken up with Jack and now lives in New York with their child. A visit from her family, the different cultural background of her new boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend who her sister is now dating, and her upcoming photo exhibition make for an explosive mix. Cast: Julie Delpy, Chris Rock, Albert Delpy, Alexia Landeau, Alex Nahon.

The House I Live In (Director: Eugene Jarecki) — For over 40 years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world’s largest jailer and damaged poor communities at home and abroad. Yet, drugs are cheaper, purer and more available today than ever. Where did we go wrong and what is the path toward healing?

The Queen of Versailles (Director: Lauren Greenfield) — Jackie and David were triumphantly constructing the biggest house in America – a sprawling, 90,000-square-foot palace inspired by Versailles – when their timeshare empire falters due to the economic crisis. Their story reveals the innate virtues and flaws of the American Dream.

SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS (Directors: Dylan Southern, Will Lovelace) — A film that follows LCD Soundsystem front man James Murphy over a crucial 48-hour period, from the day of their final gig at Madison Square Garden to the morning after, the official end of one of the best live bands in the world.

Under African Skies (Director: Joe Berlinger) — Paul Simon returns to South Africa to explore the incredible journey of his historic Graceland album, including the political backlash he sparked for allegedly breaking the UN cultural boycott of South Africa, designed to end Apartheid.

Yoko Ono denies claims that John Lennon had bulimia

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Yoko Ono has denied claims that John Lennon suffered from bulimia. According to the Daily Telegraph, a new book from author Debra Sharon Davis titled BackStage Pass VIP claims that the Beatles legend loved to eat food such as bowls of Rice Krispies topped with ice cream, but forced himself to be ...

Yoko Ono has denied claims that John Lennon suffered from bulimia.

According to the Daily Telegraph, a new book from author Debra Sharon Davis titled BackStage Pass VIP claims that the Beatles legend loved to eat food such as bowls of Rice Krispies topped with ice cream, but forced himself to be sick afterwards as he “hated the feeling of being full”.

“Lennon was confused about his obsession with food,” she said. “Lennon was surrounded by talented musicians, but many had drinking and drug problems – so it was hard for them to see Lennon’s purging behaviour as extraordinary.

“One must also realize that at that time the public and the media were unaware of bulimia as an addiction and health risk – which made it all the more frightening for John Lennon,” she added. “He literally had no point-of-reference on what he was experiencing.”

However, Ono has now denied the allegations, with the singer telling the Daily Mirror that her late husband “was always on a very healthy diet”.

She added: “John did not have an eating disorder. Sometimes he slipped and ate a bar of chocolate. His diets included vegetarian diet, macrobiotic diet and, very rarely a juice-only diet. All of the above are internationally approved health diets.”

In January of this year (January 12), it was reported that Yoko Ono was set to work with The Flaming Lips on their new studio album. She will join a cast of collaborators including Nick Cave, Bon Iver, Ke$ha and Lykke Li who have all signed up to work with the band on the LP.

She released her last studio album, ‘Between My Head And The Sky’, in September 2009.

Beach House unveil new track ‘Myth’ – listen

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Beach House have posted a track from their forthcoming new album online – scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to hear 'Myth' now. The LP, which will be the fourth studio effort from duo Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally and the follow-up to their 2010 album 'Teen Dream', is expected t...

Beach House have posted a track from their forthcoming new album online – scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to hear ‘Myth’ now.

The LP, which will be the fourth studio effort from duo Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally and the follow-up to their 2010 album ‘Teen Dream’, is expected to be released later this year.

Speaking in this week’s issue of NME about the album, Legrand hinted that the album would feature darker subject matter than ‘Teen Dream’.

Her bandmate Scally, meanwhile, revealed that the pair wanted the album to be similar to works such as The Cure’s ‘Disintegration’ and The Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’.

Beach House released their self-titled debut in 2006, following it with ‘Devotion’ in 2008 and ‘Teen Dream’ two years later.

Melvins tour van featuring Kurt Cobain’s Kiss artwork up for online auction

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A tour van formerly used by Melvins and featuring exterior artwork by Nirvana's Kurt Cobain is currently up for sale on eBay. Known as the 'Melvan', the 1972 Dodge Sportsman Royal Van features a mural of the band Kiss apparently drawn by Cobain in marker pen. The eBay listing describes the van as 'world famous'. The listing reads: "This is a very unique piece of Melvins/Nirvana history and truly one of a kind. The Kiss mural on the side was hand drawn by Kurt Cobain using sharpie markers shoplifted from the Thriftway grocery store in Montesano, Washington." It continues: "This was one of the first Melvins tour vans and was used on at least one US tour. Kurt himself was often times known to drive this van to local shows, also included are two former registrations, one signed by Roger Osborne (King Buzzo) and the second signed by former Melvins bass player Matt Lukin!" The auction finishes on March 13 and the winner must pick up the van from Montesano, Washington. Rolling Stone reports that the van is being sold by Ben Berg, who has had the van since 1992. Berg told the publication: "I think Kurt's name is carved somewhere in the van, as well. I don't know the exact location. I know that Krist Novoselic's name is carved in there. Dale Crover's name from the Melvins is carved in there." He added: "It's on eBay reserved at $150,000 (£95,414). If it's somebody with money right now that wants to contact me, I would let it go for like, $135,000 (£85,872)."

A tour van formerly used by Melvins and featuring exterior artwork by Nirvana‘s Kurt Cobain is currently up for sale on eBay.

Known as the ‘Melvan’, the 1972 Dodge Sportsman Royal Van features a mural of the band Kiss apparently drawn by Cobain in marker pen.

The eBay listing describes the van as ‘world famous’. The listing reads: “This is a very unique piece of Melvins/Nirvana history and truly one of a kind. The Kiss mural on the side was hand drawn by Kurt Cobain using sharpie markers shoplifted from the Thriftway grocery store in Montesano, Washington.”

It continues: “This was one of the first Melvins tour vans and was used on at least one US tour. Kurt himself was often times known to drive this van to local shows, also included are two former registrations, one signed by Roger Osborne (King Buzzo) and the second signed by former Melvins bass player Matt Lukin!”

The auction finishes on March 13 and the winner must pick up the van from Montesano, Washington. Rolling Stone reports that the van is being sold by Ben Berg, who has had the van since 1992. Berg told the publication: “I think Kurt’s name is carved somewhere in the van, as well. I don’t know the exact location. I know that Krist Novoselic’s name is carved in there. Dale Crover’s name from the Melvins is carved in there.”

He added: “It’s on eBay reserved at $150,000 (£95,414). If it’s somebody with money right now that wants to contact me, I would let it go for like, $135,000 (£85,872).”

Jack White to headline Third Man Records showcase at SXSW

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Jack White is set to headline the Third Man Records showcase event at SXSW in Austin, Texas. White will head up his own label's bill at The Stage on 6th on Friday March 16. Also performing will be Third Man artist Karen Elson and John Reilly & Friends (featuring Becky Stark & Tom Brosseau...

Jack White is set to headline the Third Man Records showcase event at SXSW in Austin, Texas.

White will head up his own label’s bill at The Stage on 6th on Friday March 16. Also performing will be Third Man artist Karen Elson and John Reilly & Friends (featuring Becky Stark & Tom Brosseau), The Black Belles, Pujol and Lanie Lane.

Third Man will also be bring their Rolling Record store to Austin for the second year in a row, selling “exclusive goods and some brand new SXSW-only Rolling Record Store merchandise”. The record store on wheels will open for business on March 14. To find its location, follow the Twitter feed at Twitter.com/Thirdmanrrs.

Jack White launched his live solo career on long-running US sketch show Saturday Night Live last weekend. The former White Stripes man performed two tracks off of his debut solo album ‘Blunderbuss’, due for release on April 23, on the show guest hosted by Lindsay Lohan.

Scroll down the page and click to see videos of Jack White playing debut solo single ‘Love Interruption’ and the previously unheard ‘Sixteen Saltines’. The appearance came ahead of White’s debut solo live shows, which will take place before his SXSW appearance in the United States.

Jack White returns to the UK in the summer and will play at Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend on June 23-24, alongside Lana Del Rey and The Maccabees.

To learn more about Jack White’s career, head to iTunes.com.apple.com/nme-icons, where you can purchase a special NME iPad app detailing the celebrated singer/guitarist/producer’s past 15 years in rock’n’roll.

A one-off NME Icons special issue magazine dedicated to White is also available – see Backstreet-merch.com for details of how to purchase.

Study suggests that listening to Bruce Springsteen could make you ‘racist’

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A new study undertaken by the University of Minnesota has suggested that listening to mainstream rock music can make people 'racist'. Researchers played a host of different music genres to 138 students for seven minutes. The students were then told they were part of a study to work out how funds should be distributed within their college. Then they were offered a range of different ethnic groups to divide the money between, reports the Daily Mail. Apparently, after listening to mainstream rock music like Bruce Springsteen, the white students favoured other white students in regards to sharing college funds, over black and Latino students. Meanwhile, the white students who had listened to more ethnically diverse pop, including Akon and Gwen Stefani, were fairer towards other ethnic groups. Heather LaMarre, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Minnesota said of the study: "Rock music is generally associated with white Americans, so we believe it cues white listeners to think about their positive association with their own in-group." Associate professor Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick added: "Music has a lot of power to influence our thoughts and actions, more than we often recognise. It has the power to reinforce our positive biases toward our own group, and sometimes negative biases toward others." After listening to the background music, with no phones or reading material as a distraction, the participants were asked how their tuition money should be distributed amongst the Centres of African American Studies, Latino American Studies, Arab American Studies, and Rural and Agricultural Studies. The participants who listened to the mainstream rock gave 35% of the money to the white American group and equal amounts to the others, while those who listened to chart pop split the money equally.

A new study undertaken by the University of Minnesota has suggested that listening to mainstream rock music can make people ‘racist’.

Researchers played a host of different music genres to 138 students for seven minutes. The students were then told they were part of a study to work out how funds should be distributed within their college. Then they were offered a range of different ethnic groups to divide the money between, reports the Daily Mail.

Apparently, after listening to mainstream rock music like Bruce Springsteen, the white students favoured other white students in regards to sharing college funds, over black and Latino students. Meanwhile, the white students who had listened to more ethnically diverse pop, including Akon and Gwen Stefani, were fairer towards other ethnic groups.

Heather LaMarre, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Minnesota said of the study: “Rock music is generally associated with white Americans, so we believe it cues white listeners to think about their positive association with their own in-group.”

Associate professor Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick added: “Music has a lot of power to influence our thoughts and actions, more than we often recognise. It has the power to reinforce our positive biases toward our own group, and sometimes negative biases toward others.”

After listening to the background music, with no phones or reading material as a distraction, the participants were asked how their tuition money should be distributed amongst the Centres of African American Studies, Latino American Studies, Arab American Studies, and Rural and Agricultural Studies.

The participants who listened to the mainstream rock gave 35% of the money to the white American group and equal amounts to the others, while those who listened to chart pop split the money equally.

Blur’s Damon Albarn announces ‘Dr Dee’ studio album details

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Damon Albarn will release a studio album of material composed for his Dr Dee opera on May 7. The Blur frontman recorded the 18-track album late last year at his west London studio with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Albarn has described the album, which is inspired by inspired by mathematician...

Damon Albarn will release a studio album of material composed for his Dr Dee opera on May 7.

The Blur frontman recorded the 18-track album late last year at his west London studio with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

Albarn has described the album, which is inspired by inspired by mathematician, polymath and advisor to Elizabeth I John Dee, as containing “strange pastoral folk” songs.

He’s set to perform the songs with singers and musicians featured on the album at Wiltshire even OneFest on April 14, following the premiere of the production at the Manchester International Festival last summer.

Speaking about the show, Albarn commented: “I’m really looking forward to the festival. Wiltshire in spring feels like a perfect setting for Dr Dee songs. Some of my favourite musicians are playing with me, it will be special.”

The tracklisting of ‘Dr Dee’ is as follows:

‘The Golden Dawn

‘Apple Carts’

‘Oh Spirit Animate Us’

‘The Moon Exalted’

‘A Man of England’

‘Saturn’

‘Coronation’

‘The Marvelous Dream’

‘A Prayer’

‘Edward Kelley’

‘Preparation’

‘9 Point Star’

‘Temptation Comes In The Afternoon’

‘Watching the Fire That Waltzed Away’

‘Moon (Interlude)’

‘Cathedrals’

‘Tree Of Life’

‘The Dancing King’

Last month, Albarn reunited with Blur to accept the Outstanding Contribution To Music award at the Brit Awards. The Britpop legends are scheduled to headline the Olympic Closing Ceremony Celebration Concert at London’s Hyde Park on August 12. They’re also due to play at Sweden’s Way Out West festival during the same month.

Guided By Voices – Let’s Go Eat The Factory

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The chaotic US band’s “classic lineup” convenes for the first time in over 15 years... When US indie institution Matador celebrated its 21st birthday with a mini-festival in the unlikely surroundings of Las Vegas's Palms Hotel & Casino in October 2010, the big draw was not the last ever Pavement reunion show, nor Sonic Youth’s Sister-heavy set, nor even the possibility of finding yourself at the blackjack table with one of Superchunk. No, the biggest clamour of the weekend was reserved for the reformation of a greying, beer-swilling bar band from Dayton, Ohio. Guided By Voices are a group who still command a great deal of affection, spawning numerous tribute acts (Gilded By Vices, anyone?) and websites dedicated to chronicling their every recorded note (no mean feat – side projects included, there are upwards of 1500 GBV songs in circulation). It’s not so hard to understand the appeal: Guided By Voices songs are typically short and catchy with endearingly daft titles, recorded just primitively enough to deter the casual listener; their vast catalogue rewards the retentive fan; and bandleader Robert Pollard is an avuncular have-a-go frontman who flies the flag for middle-aged Joe Schmoes everywhere. For a period in the mid-90s, it felt like there was a new Guided By Voices record every week, crammed with pithy lo-fi pop missives called things like “Tractor Rape Chain” and “Big Chief Chinese Restaurant”. Even if they weren’t all classics, the band’s extreme prolificacy transmitted an infectious enthusiasm. Live shows were celebratory affairs, with sets lasting up to three hours and Pollard acting out his rock star fantasies by scissor-kicking his way across the stage, soaked in beer and sweat. Several slicker incarnations of Guided By Voices soldiered on until 2004, but it’s the reformation of the “classic” mid-90s line-up – Robert Pollard, multi-instrumentalist Tobin Sprout, guitarist Mitch Mitchell, drummer Kevin Fennell, bassist Greg Demos and studio member Jim Pollard – that has got the die-hards frothing. Following the success of the Matador 21 show and subsequent reunion tour, the “classic line-up” decided to make an album together for the first time since 1996’s Under The Bushes, Under The Stars. In an attempt to recapture some of the patchwork lo-fi charm of 1994’s breakthrough album Bee Thousand, Let’s Go Eat The Factory is entirely home-recorded. Yet despite the familiar set-up, this is no lazy retread of minor past glories. “Chocolate Boy”, “Doughnut For A Snowman” and “The Unsinkable Fats Domino” are typically succinct melodic gems, but elsewhere Guided By Voices appear to be getting gnarlier in their old age. Opener “Laundry And Lasers” offers a terse volley of strafing drone rock. The three-minute “Imperial Racehorsing” – an epic by GBV’s former standards – is a thrilling psychedelic churn, complete with sizzling guitar wig-outs. The deconstructed rock weirdness of “The Big Hat And Toy Show” sounds like something from the Not Not Fun label, or an early Royal Trux record. It’s not quite what we were expecting, but it’s not unwelcome either. On the flipside, the deployment of the ersatz string sounds from a child’s keyboard and a cavalier approach to playing and singing in key renders several numbers unlistenable. But the joy of any Guided By Voices release is that you’re on to the next song soon enough. It was always widely assumed that GBV’s experimental flourishes were a bit of a smokescreen for their lack of technique. But this record is deliberately confounding, suggesting that the reformed band are not content to just turn up and play the expected role of idiot uncles. Let’s Go Eat The Factory is not a brilliant album in and of itself, but it does cast Guided By Voices in a slightly different light: more than just a quirky sideshow, perhaps we ought to view their whole career as a prolonged act of rock’n’roll subversion. Sam Richards

The chaotic US band’s “classic lineup” convenes for the first time in over 15 years…

When US indie institution Matador celebrated its 21st birthday with a mini-festival in the unlikely surroundings of Las Vegas’s Palms Hotel & Casino in October 2010, the big draw was not the last ever Pavement reunion show, nor Sonic Youth’s Sister-heavy set, nor even the possibility of finding yourself at the blackjack table with one of Superchunk. No, the biggest clamour of the weekend was reserved for the reformation of a greying, beer-swilling bar band from Dayton, Ohio.

Guided By Voices are a group who still command a great deal of affection, spawning numerous tribute acts (Gilded By Vices, anyone?) and websites dedicated to chronicling their every recorded note (no mean feat – side projects included, there are upwards of 1500 GBV songs in circulation). It’s not so hard to understand the appeal: Guided By Voices songs are typically short and catchy with endearingly daft titles, recorded just primitively enough to deter the casual listener; their vast catalogue rewards the retentive fan; and bandleader Robert Pollard is an avuncular have-a-go frontman who flies the flag for middle-aged Joe Schmoes everywhere.

For a period in the mid-90s, it felt like there was a new Guided By Voices record every week, crammed with pithy lo-fi pop missives called things like “Tractor Rape Chain” and “Big Chief Chinese Restaurant”. Even if they weren’t all classics, the band’s extreme prolificacy transmitted an infectious enthusiasm. Live shows were celebratory affairs, with sets lasting up to three hours and Pollard acting out his rock star fantasies by scissor-kicking his way across the stage, soaked in beer and sweat.

Several slicker incarnations of Guided By Voices soldiered on until 2004, but it’s the reformation of the “classic” mid-90s line-up – Robert Pollard, multi-instrumentalist Tobin Sprout, guitarist Mitch Mitchell, drummer Kevin Fennell, bassist Greg Demos and studio member Jim Pollard – that has got the die-hards frothing. Following the success of the Matador 21 show and subsequent reunion tour, the “classic line-up” decided to make an album together for the first time since 1996’s Under The Bushes, Under The Stars.

In an attempt to recapture some of the patchwork lo-fi charm of 1994’s breakthrough album Bee Thousand, Let’s Go Eat The Factory is entirely home-recorded. Yet despite the familiar set-up, this is no lazy retread of minor past glories. “Chocolate Boy”, “Doughnut For A Snowman” and “The Unsinkable Fats Domino” are typically succinct melodic gems, but elsewhere Guided By Voices appear to be getting gnarlier in their old age.

Opener “Laundry And Lasers” offers a terse volley of strafing drone rock. The three-minute “Imperial Racehorsing” – an epic by GBV’s former standards – is a thrilling psychedelic churn, complete with sizzling guitar wig-outs. The deconstructed rock weirdness of “The Big Hat And Toy Show” sounds like something from the Not Not Fun label, or an early Royal Trux record. It’s not quite what we were expecting, but it’s not unwelcome either.

On the flipside, the deployment of the ersatz string sounds from a child’s keyboard and a cavalier approach to playing and singing in key renders several numbers unlistenable. But the joy of any Guided By Voices release is that you’re on to the next song soon enough.

It was always widely assumed that GBV’s experimental flourishes were a bit of a smokescreen for their lack of technique. But this record is deliberately confounding, suggesting that the reformed band are not content to just turn up and play the expected role of idiot uncles. Let’s Go Eat The Factory is not a brilliant album in and of itself, but it does cast Guided By Voices in a slightly different light: more than just a quirky sideshow, perhaps we ought to view their whole career as a prolonged act of rock’n’roll subversion.

Sam Richards

Watch Radiohead debut new song ‘Skirting On The Surface’

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Radiohead have debuted another new song on their North American tour. The band, who are currently touring the continent in support of their new album 'The King Of Limbs', had previously played new songs 'Identikit' and 'Cut A Hole' during their live set and have now debuted another new cut. Thi...

Radiohead have debuted another new song on their North American tour.

The band, who are currently touring the continent in support of their new album ‘The King Of Limbs’, had previously played new songs ‘Identikit’ and ‘Cut A Hole’ during their live set and have now debuted another new cut.

This track is titled ‘Skirting On The Surface’ and has previously been played live during frontman Thom Yorke‘s solo tour. You can watch the band perform the track live in Dallas, Texas by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking.

Earlier today (March 6), Radiohead finally announced details of their UK arena tour, which will take place later this year.

The band will first play a show at Manchester’s Evening News Arena on October 6 before playing two shows at London’s O2 Arena on October 8 and 9.

Tickets for the shows go onsale tomorrow (March 7) at 9am (GMT) for fan club members and on general sale on Friday (March 9) at 9am (GMT). Most tickets sold will be “paperless”, meaning ticket buyers must bring their purchase confirmation email, the card they used for the purchase and valid photo ID to the gigs. Tickets will be limited to four per person.

Radiohead will play:

Manchester Evening News Arena (October 6)

London O2 Arena (8,9)

Peter Hook on New Order fallout: ‘It looks like we’re going to court’

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Peter Hook has admitted that his ongoing dispute with his former bandmates in New Order is heading for the courts. New Order announced in late 2011 that they had reformed, but that Hook would not be part of their line-up. Instead keyboard player Gillian Gilbert, who hadn't performed with the band...

Peter Hook has admitted that his ongoing dispute with his former bandmates in New Order is heading for the courts.

New Order announced in late 2011 that they had reformed, but that Hook would not be part of their line-up. Instead keyboard player Gillian Gilbert, who hadn’t performed with the band for over 10 years, rejoined and bass duties were taken up by Tom Chapman, who was part of frontman Bernard Sumner’s recent project Bad Lieutenant.

Hook has been very vocal in his condemnation of the reunion and has now told NME that he will be taking on his bandmates in court to settle the dispute.

Asked about his legal situation with New Order, Hook replied: “It looks like we’re going to court; neither side looks amenable to backing down.”

Then asked if he wanted to stop the band using the name ‘New Order’, Hook replied: ” I’m not against them playing, but what I’m rallying against is the business dealings they’ve done to secure the New Order trademark, which is oppression of a minority, which is illegal. They’ve taken the New Order name and the trademark and basically thrown me 50p and said ‘That’s all your worth twatface. That’s what you get for playing Joy Division music’. It’s a business thing. They are in a position of strength because there’s three of them, but what they’re saying is that the New Order name has got nothing to do with me and that’s what I dispute.”

Hook also revealed that he’s seen some footage of the band playing live on their recent tour of Australia and New Zealand and is convinced that the band’s new bass player Tom Chapman is actually miming along to his bass parts.

He said of this: “I’ve watched so-called ‘New Order’ playing in Auckland and Tom Chapman is miming along to my bass on tape. ‘Round & Round’. Have a look at it. He’s got his fingers on the low and you can hear my high bass in the background. So he’s miming. It’s the Milli Vanilli of bass.”

Asked if he was annoyed by this, he said: “It’s a fantastic compliment, but I best get on to my intellectual property lawyer and see if it’s something you’re allowed to do. I do think that miming to my bass is pretty much the ultimate insult. Still, check it out, there I am lurking in the background like a ghost.”

New Order have responded to Hook’s allegations, telling NME that although part of Chapman’s bassline is pre-recorded, they are not using any of Hook’s basslines in their live show.

They told NME: “On the chorus of ‘Round & Round’ there is a low bass part, a high bass part and Tom sings backing vocals. It’s more than one person can manage so Tom recorded his high bass part and it’s replayed as part of the backing track sequence. We strongly refute the allegation that New Order are using any of Mr Hook’s bass playing in our live performance. When Mr Hook was part of New Order he tracked his parts that couldn’t be played live because they coincided with other parts. We are simply doing the same with our new bass player.”

They also said in response to Hook’s comments: “People living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones or their recent fake DJing YouTube hit might need to be recalled. Keep watching.”

Hook also spoke about the recent discovery of Joy Division and New Order master tapes in Jamie Oliver’s restaurant in Manchester and revealed that the find had yielded video footage and complete audio recordings of ‘Festival Of The Tenth Summer’.

‘Festival Of The Tenth Summer’ ran in the summer of 1986 and was given to celebrate Manchester. It featured a gig at the city’s GMEX venue with performances from the likes of The Smiths, Echo And The Bunnymen and The Fall.

Hook added that due to his ongoing situation with New Order, it was unlikely the material from the festival would be released.

Speaking about this, Hook said: “The greatest thing we found in Jamie Oliver’s was actually ‘The Tenth Summer’ tapes. But because we’ve now fallen out and there’s no communication between us, we’re not going to be able to do anything with them, which is sad and so they’re stuck in limbo. But there’s video footage and the complete audio recordings of all the bands, Echo And The Bunnymen, Smiths, Buzzcocks, New Order. It would make a great record.”

Peter Hook will play Joy Division‘s 1981 compilation album ‘Still’ in full at two shows at Manchester’s 251 venue on May 18 and 19. Charities Mind and Forever Manchester will both receive some of the proceeds from the shows.

The Gaslight Anthem announce one-off UK show for June

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The Gaslight Anthem have announced a one-off UK show for this summer. The New Jersey band, who are currently in the final stages of mixing their fourth album, which is set to be titled 'Handwritten', will play London's Koko venue on June 11. The band have recorded the follow-up to 2010's 'Ameri...

The Gaslight Anthem have announced a one-off UK show for this summer.

The New Jersey band, who are currently in the final stages of mixing their fourth album, which is set to be titled ‘Handwritten’, will play London’s Koko venue on June 11.

The band have recorded the follow-up to 2010’s ‘American Slang’ in Nashville and have also confirmed via their Twitter account Twitter.com/Gaslightanthem that they have also recently recorded a number of covers and a selection of B-sides.

Speaking the album, frontman Brian Fallon has previously described the songs from ‘Handwritten’ as “pretty personal and pretty aggressive”. The album does not have a scheduled release date as yet.

The Gaslight Anthem have also confirmed today (March 6) that they will open up for reunited grunge icons Soundgarden on some of their European summer tour dates.