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Watch Radiohead debut new song ‘Skirting On The Surface’

Tom Goodwyn
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Watch Radiohead debut new song ‘Skirting On The Surface’
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’

Tom Goodwyn
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0
Peter Hook on New Order fallout: ‘It looks like we’re going to court’
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

Tom Goodwyn
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0
The Gaslight Anthem announce one-off UK show for June
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.

Dawes, London Borderline, March 5, 2012

Uncut
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Dawes, London Borderline, March 5, 2012

A few weeks shy of a year ago, I was at the 12 Bar Club in London’s Denmark Street, the Tin Pan Alley of pop legend, to see a young Los Angeles-based band called Dawes. They’d been brought to my attention by an Uncut reader, who couldn’t recommend them highly enough. As an example of what they did in his opinion better than anyone he’d recently heard, he sent me a track called “When My Time Comes”, a rousing country rock thing that I hadn’t been able to stop playing. They were here with the producer of their two albums to date, North Hills and the newly-recorded Nothing Is Wrong, Jonathan Wilson, who a few months later would make a bit of a splash himself with the release of his Gentle Spirit LP. Dawes had recently come to the attention of Robbie Robertson, who invited the band’s vocalist and principal songwriter Taylor Goldsmith to sing back-up vocals on a number of tracks from his How To Become A Clairvoyant album. Robertson and Goldsmith hit it off during the sessions, which was hardly surprising, Taylor being a big fan of The Band and the era in which they flourished. Robertson had barely performed live since The Band’s farewell concerts, filmed as The Last Waltz, in November 1976. But he was clearly galvanised by the songs on his new album to make a welcome return to the stage, and when he needed a band to back him on a couple of American TV shows, Dawes were duly enlisted, with Wilson in tow. They were in London, all of them, to appear on Later. . .With Jools Holland and found time to fit a couple of hastily-arranged shows, including this one at the 12 Bar, where the stage was only big enough to accommodate Taylor, bassist Wylie Gelber and drummer Griffin Goldsmith. Ace keyboardist Tay Strathairn and Jonathan Wilson had to set up on the floor to the right of the stage, almost mingling with the small crowd that had turned out to see them. There was a lot of good music that night, hints in what they played of The Band, Little Feat, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, influences who also shaped the terrific songs on Nothing Is Wrong. What I also remember from the show is how clean-cut and fresh-faced the band looked, apart from Wilson, dressed in scruffy black, who looked like he hadn’t slept since After The Goldrush came out. Last night at the Borderline, the band back in London for a couple of dates at the end of a European tour, they looked a lot less spruce and scrubbed-up. they looked in fact like a band who’d spent most of the last 12 months on the road, a whole pile of travelling behind them, their music sounding correspondingly well lived-in, much grittier than I recall from a year ago, and on most of what they play quite fabulous. Bruce Springsteen has apparently recently become something of a fan and he would doubtless have recognised something of himself in the rousing anthems songs from Dawes’ repertoire have become. “Fire Away”, “The Way You Laugh”, “If I Wanted Someone”, “Peace In The Valley”, “Time Spent In Los Angeles”, “How Far We’ve Come” all become essentially an invitation for mass audience participation, the crowd lending their voices to the billowing choruses that are the band’s signature sound. They might as well have gone for a quick break during a particularly stirring “When My Time Comes”, which was virtually claimed by the audience as its own and was truly uplifting. There were highlights on all fronts – something malarial that sounded like it might turn into “Down By The River” turned out to be a terrific version of “So Well” from Nothing Is Wrong, much danker and moodier than the original. “A Little Bit Of Everything”, meanwhile had the gorgeous disconsolate heft of a classic Warren Zevon ballad, something like “Desperadoes Under The Eaves”, “Accidently Like A Martyr” or “Hasten Down The Wind”. Dawes are at the London Hoxton Bar And Grill tonight, then off to Nashville to open for Mumford And Sons at the Ryman Auditorium, before coming back for UK festival dates in the summer and should definitely be on your must-see list. And before I go, a sincere thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to write in with their thoughts on the new-look Uncut. Please keep your comments coming. You can reach me at the email address below. Have a good week. allan_jones@ipcmedia.com

A few weeks shy of a year ago, I was at the 12 Bar Club in London’s Denmark Street, the Tin Pan Alley of pop legend, to see a young Los Angeles-based band called Dawes. They’d been brought to my attention by an Uncut reader, who couldn’t recommend them highly enough. As an example of what they did in his opinion better than anyone he’d recently heard, he sent me a track called “When My Time Comes”, a rousing country rock thing that I hadn’t been able to stop playing.

They were here with the producer of their two albums to date, North Hills and the newly-recorded Nothing Is Wrong, Jonathan Wilson, who a few months later would make a bit of a splash himself with the release of his Gentle Spirit LP. Dawes had recently come to the attention of Robbie Robertson, who invited the band’s vocalist and principal songwriter Taylor Goldsmith to sing back-up vocals on a number of tracks from his How To Become A Clairvoyant album.

Robertson and Goldsmith hit it off during the sessions, which was hardly surprising, Taylor being a big fan of The Band and the era in which they flourished. Robertson had barely performed live since The Band’s farewell concerts, filmed as The Last Waltz, in November 1976. But he was clearly galvanised by the songs on his new album to make a welcome return to the stage, and when he needed a band to back him on a couple of American TV shows, Dawes were duly enlisted, with Wilson in tow.

They were in London, all of them, to appear on Later. . .With Jools Holland and found time to fit a couple of hastily-arranged shows, including this one at the 12 Bar, where the stage was only big enough to accommodate Taylor, bassist Wylie Gelber and drummer Griffin Goldsmith. Ace keyboardist Tay Strathairn and Jonathan Wilson had to set up on the floor to the right of the stage, almost mingling with the small crowd that had turned out to see them.

There was a lot of good music that night, hints in what they played of The Band, Little Feat, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, influences who also shaped the terrific songs on Nothing Is Wrong. What I also remember from the show is how clean-cut and fresh-faced the band looked, apart from Wilson, dressed in scruffy black, who looked like he hadn’t slept since After The Goldrush came out.

Last night at the Borderline, the band back in London for a couple of dates at the end of a European tour, they looked a lot less spruce and scrubbed-up. they looked in fact like a band who’d spent most of the last 12 months on the road, a whole pile of travelling behind them, their music sounding correspondingly well lived-in, much grittier than I recall from a year ago, and on most of what they play quite fabulous.

Bruce Springsteen has apparently recently become something of a fan and he would doubtless have recognised something of himself in the rousing anthems songs from Dawes’ repertoire have become. “Fire Away”, “The Way You Laugh”, “If I Wanted Someone”, “Peace In The Valley”, “Time Spent In Los Angeles”, “How Far We’ve Come” all become essentially an invitation for mass audience participation, the crowd lending their voices to the billowing choruses that are the band’s signature sound.

They might as well have gone for a quick break during a particularly stirring “When My Time Comes”, which was virtually claimed by the audience as its own and was truly uplifting. There were highlights on all fronts – something malarial that sounded like it might turn into “Down By The River” turned out to be a terrific version of “So Well” from Nothing Is Wrong, much danker and moodier than the original. “A Little Bit Of Everything”, meanwhile had the gorgeous disconsolate heft of a classic Warren Zevon ballad, something like “Desperadoes Under The Eaves”, “Accidently Like A Martyr” or “Hasten Down The Wind”.

Dawes are at the London Hoxton Bar And Grill tonight, then off to Nashville to open for Mumford And Sons at the Ryman Auditorium, before coming back for UK festival dates in the summer and should definitely be on your must-see list.

And before I go, a sincere thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to write in with their thoughts on the new-look Uncut. Please keep your comments coming. You can reach me at the email address below.

Have a good week.

allan_jones@ipcmedia.com

LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, Beck, Devendra Banhart to soundtrack new art installation

Tom Goodwyn
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0
LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, Beck, Devendra Banhart to soundtrack new art installation
LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, Beck, Devendra Banhart, No Age and more are set to provide the soundtrack to a new artwork by Doug Aitken in Washington, DC. The piece, called Song 1, sees the Los Angeles based multimedia artist projecting 360 degree films onto the exterior of the Hirshhorn Museum...

LCD Soundsystem‘s James Murphy, Beck, Devendra Banhart, No Age and more are set to provide the soundtrack to a new artwork by Doug Aitken in Washington, DC.

The piece, called Song 1, sees the Los Angeles based multimedia artist projecting 360 degree films onto the exterior of the Hirshhorn Museum, reports Pitchfork.

The soundtrack to the projections will be made up of the above acts singing their own versions of the 1930s jazz standard, ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, which has in the past been covered by The Flamingos, Peggy Lee and Summer Camp. The new versions of the song will be spliced together for use in the project.

The Hirshhorn gallery says the piece, which runs from March 22 – May 13 “will transform the Hirshhorn’s iconic circular building into ‘liquid architecture’. Using approximately eleven high-definition projectors, Aitken will seamlessly blend imagery to envelop the entire façade of the Gordon Bunshaft-designed structure with a 360-degree panorama that will make the Museum recede into cinematic space – rotating, rising, and evolving into new forms.”

Bruce Springsteen streams new album ‘Wrecking Ball’ online

Tom Goodwyn
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0
Bruce Springsteen streams new album ‘Wrecking Ball’ online
Bruce Springsteen is streaming his brand new album, 'Wrecking Ball', online. Scroll down to listen. Released today (March 5), 'Wrecking Ball', follows 2009's 'Working On A Dream' and 2010's outtakes collection 'The Promise'. The veteran singer held a press conference at Theatre Marigny in Paris l...

Bruce Springsteen is streaming his brand new album, ‘Wrecking Ball’, online. Scroll down to listen.

Released today (March 5), ‘Wrecking Ball’, follows 2009’s ‘Working On A Dream’ and 2010’s outtakes collection ‘The Promise’. The veteran singer held a press conference at Theatre Marigny in Paris last month to explain that the songs were inspired by the economic troubles the US is facing and the issue that “no one has been held to account”.

Speaking to the Guardian, Springsteen said: “What was done to our country was wrong and unpatriotic and un-American and nobody has been held to account. There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.”

He told the conference: “I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.”

Springsteen will deliver the keynote speech at South By Southwest on March 15 in Austin, Texas and also perform a small, intimate show for which tickets will be given out to festival badgeholders via a draw. He then kicks off his US tour three days later in Atlanta.

He will visit the UK in the summer, beginning at Sunderland Stadium of Light on June 21 before moving on to Manchester Etihad Stadium (22), Isle Of Wight Festival (24) and London Hard Rock Calling (July 14).

Radiohead announce October UK arena tour

Tom Goodwyn
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0
Radiohead announce October UK arena tour
Radiohead have announced a UK arena tour for later this year. The Oxford band, who are currently touring North America in support of their new album 'The King Of Limbs', will play three shows on the tour. The band will first play a show at Manchester's Evening News Arena on October 6 before pla...

Radiohead have announced a UK arena tour for later this year.

The Oxford band, who are currently touring North America in support of their new album ‘The King Of Limbs’, will play three shows on the tour.

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 have been playing two new songs ‘Identikit’ and ‘Cut A Hole’ as part of their recent live set. You can see live footage of both tracks by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking.

The band have also booked assorted European shows and festival appearances throughout the summer, including slots at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Fuji Rock Festival and Bilbao BBK Live festival.

Radiohead will play:

Manchester Evening News Arena (October 6)

London O2 Arena (8,9)

‘Identikit’

‘Cut A Hole’

Elbow, Paul Weller, Bon Iver to headline Latitude 2012

Tom Goodwyn
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0
Elbow, Paul Weller, Bon Iver to headline Latitude 2012
Elbow, Paul Weller and Bon Iver will headline this year's Latitude Festival. The event takes place on July 12–15 in Suffolk's Henham Park and has confirmed over 60 acts in its first announcement. Among the other bands on the bill are Janelle Monae, The Horrors, Laura Marling, Metronomy, St Vi...

Elbow, Paul Weller and Bon Iver will headline this year’s Latitude Festival.

The event takes place on July 12–15 in Suffolk‘s Henham Park and has confirmed over 60 acts in its first announcement.

Among the other bands on the bill are Janelle Monae, The Horrors, Laura Marling, Metronomy, St Vincent, Wild Beasts, White Lies, Bat For Lashes, M83, Zola Jesus, Chairlift, Iceage, Richard Hawley and a whole host of others.

For more information head to Latitudefestival.co.uk.

The Latitude Festival line-up so far is:

Alabama Shakes

Amandou & Mariam

The Antlers

Apparat

Bat For Lashes

Battles

Baxter Dury

Bon Iver

Buena Vista Social Club

Bwani Junction

Chairlift

Cold Specks

Daryl Hall

Daughter

Dawes

Destroyer

Django Django

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

Elbow

Esperanza Spalding

Explosions In The Sky

Fatoumata Diawara

The Field

Francois and the Atlas Mountains

Givers

The Horrors

Howler

I Break Horses

Iceage

Janelle Monae

Jonathan Wilson

Josh T Pearson

Kindness

Kurt Vile

Lang Lang

Laura Marling

Lianne La Havas

Liz Green

Lloyd Cole

M83

Metronomy

Michael Kiwanuka

Other Lives

Paul Weller

Perfume Genuis

Richard Hawley

Sharon van Etten

Silver Seas

Simple Minds

Sissy & The Blisters

SBTRKT

Soko

St Vincent

Sunless ‘97

Team Me

Thomas Dolby

Tune Yards

The War on Drugs

We Have Band

White Lies

Wild Beasts

Wooden Shjips

Yeasayer

Zola Jesus

Zun Zun Egui

Paul Weller: ‘I think I’m an alcoholic’

Tom Goodwyn
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0
Paul Weller: ‘I think I’m an alcoholic’
Paul Weller has discussed his battle with drink, stating: "I think I'm an alcoholic". In an interview with the The Times, the singer revealed he had given up drinking over a year ago because he feared that his hedonistic lifestyle was going to kill him. Weller, who releases his new album 'Sonik...

Paul Weller has discussed his battle with drink, stating: “I think I’m an alcoholic”.

In an interview with the The Times, the singer revealed he had given up drinking over a year ago because he feared that his hedonistic lifestyle was going to kill him.

Weller, who releases his new album ‘Sonik Kicks’ on March 26, said: “I feel fitter now. I go to the gym. Stopped drinking about 16 months ago… Time for a lifestyle change. I couldn’t keep doing it. It was killing me… I miss the silliness… I’m not one of those people who can just have a couple of drinks. If it’s two, it might as well be 20. If it’s 20, it might as well be 40…”

He went on to add: “I think I’m an alcoholic, definitely. Yeah. I would have thought so. It’s hard to know where a pisshead becomes an alkie. Fine line. But yeah, I think so.”

‘Sonik Kicks’ comes out on March 26 and contains a total of 14 tracks. It also includes guest appearances from Noel Gallagher and Blur‘s Graham Coxon. You can hear a track from the album, which is titled ‘Around The Lake’, by visiting the singer’s official website Paulweller.com.

Weller will play five new London shows to promote the album’s release. He will headline the UK capital’s Roundhouse venue on March 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22. Weller will perform ‘Sonik Kicks’ in full at the shows.

Radiohead announce more dates for ‘The King Of Limbs’ world tour

Tom Goodwyn
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0
Radiohead announce more dates for ‘The King Of Limbs’ world tour
Radiohead have announced more dates for their world tour in support of their latest album 'The King Of Limbs'. The band, who scheduled a string of shows in New Zealand last week, will play a second set of US dates in May and June. The new run of shows kick off on May 29 at the Concast Center in ...

Radiohead have announced more dates for their world tour in support of their latest album ‘The King Of Limbs’.

The band, who scheduled a string of shows in New Zealand last week, will play a second set of US dates in May and June.

The new run of shows kick off on May 29 at the Concast Center in Massachusetts and runs until June 16 when the Oxford band will play Downsview Park in Toronto. The tour includes 11 new shows in total and will take place either side of the band’s headline slot at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.

The band have also booked assorted European shows and festival appearances throughout the summer, including slots at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Fuji Rock Festival and Bilbao BBK Live festival. They have also added a new date in Germany at the Lanxess Arena in Cologne on October 15.

The band are expected to confirm UK dates in the next few weeks and have previously hinted that the band will play arena shows than outdoor dates. The band last toured the UK in 2008.

Arcade Fire to release ‘Sprawl II’/’Ready To Start’ remixes for Record Store Day

Tom Goodwyn
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0
Arcade Fire to release ‘Sprawl II’/’Ready To Start’ remixes for Record Store Day
Arcade Fire have announced that they will be releasing remixes of their tracks 'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)' and 'Ready To Start' to celebrate this year's Record Store Day. The Canadian band will release Damian Taylor remixes of both tracks on 12" vinyl on April 21, with copies are lim...

Arcade Fire have announced that they will be releasing remixes of their tracks ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’ and ‘Ready To Start’ to celebrate this year’s Record Store Day.

The Canadian band will release Damian Taylor remixes of both tracks on 12″ vinyl on April 21, with copies are limited to 1,000.

Arcade Fire released ‘Abraham’s Daughter’, their new track from the soundtrack to the new fantasy film The Hunger Games last week – scroll down and click below to hear it.

The track will play over the dystopian thriller’s closing credits and was recorded by the Canadian band last month. The film itself will also feature a track titled ‘Horn Of Plenty’ which has been written and recorded by Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Regine Chassagne.

The Hunger Games is set to be released on March 23 in the UK and stars Winter’s Bone actress Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks.

Arcade Fire are currently working on the follow-up to their 2010 album ‘The Suburbs’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWVXcYsIwyk

Jack White makes solo live debut on ‘Saturday Night Live’ – video

Tom Goodwyn
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0
Jack White makes solo live debut on ‘Saturday Night Live’ – video
Jack White launched his live solo career on long-running US sketch show Saturday Night Live last night (March 3) 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. White also debuted...

Jack White launched his live solo career on long-running US sketch show Saturday Night Live last night (March 3)

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.

White also debuted two new bands – one all-female, one all-male.

Scroll down the page and click to see videos of Jack White playing debut solo single ‘Love Interruption’ and the previously unheard ‘Sixteen Saltines’.

For ‘Love Interruption’, he was backed by a six-piece all-female six-piece band, while ‘Sixteen Saltines’ featured a five-piece all-male band, including a violin player.

The latter is a heavier rock song in a similar vein to that of The White Stripes and had White throwing himself around the stage.

The appearance precedes White’s debut solo live shows, which will take place at the end of this month in 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.

‘Blunderbuss’ is produced by the man himself and recorded at his Third Man Studio in Nashville.

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.

Alex James: ‘Blur will unveil a tear-jerking new song at Hyde Park reunion gig’

Tom Goodwyn
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0
Alex James: ‘Blur will unveil a tear-jerking new song at Hyde Park reunion gig’
Blur will play a brand new song during their headlining slot at the Olympic Closing Ceremony Celebration Concert in London later this year - but will not be recording a new album, bassist Alex James has confirmed. On August 12, the reunited Britpop band will return to Hyde Park, the scene of thre...

Blur will play a brand new song during their headlining slot at the Olympic Closing Ceremony Celebration Concert in London later this year – but will not be recording a new album, bassist Alex James has confirmed.

On August 12, the reunited Britpop band will return to Hyde Park, the scene of three of their reunion shows of 2009, for a gig which will also feature The Specials and New Order.

Speaking about their plans to include a new song in the setlist on tonight’s (March 4) episode of Top Gear, James said that the unnamed track was “like a hymn, a real tear-jerker”.

He told host Jeremy Clarkson: “We’ve got a new song to unveil, I just listened to it this morning.”

It was unclear whether James was referring to ‘Under The Westway’ – which frontman Damon Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon played during a two-song set at a pre-Brits charity gig for War Child at O2 Sheperd’s Bush Empire in London last month – or another new song.

When later asked by Clarkson whether there’s a new album on the horizon, James responded: “No, there’s not.”

The bassist also spoke about Blur’s five-song set at the Brit Awards 12 days ago (February 21), where they picked up the Outstanding Contribution To Music award, commenting: “It was utterly magnificent to get back together and smash those songs out again.”

Speaking to NME recently, Blur confirmed they had been working on new material since reuniting, but were cagey about whether they’d record a new album, which would be their first since 2003’s ‘Think Tank’.

Pressed on whether any of their new songs would make the Hyde Park set, Coxon said he’d be “interested in playing new things” during the gig, adding: “We always used to play underdeveloped things and kick them into shape during the shows, but it isn’t the occasion for that. Obviously we’re not gonna play the same set we played in 2009, but there things that people always, always wanna hear.”

Along with playing at Hyde Park, Blur are also scheduled to headline Sweden’s Way Out West festival in August.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WPKXPgMkbc

Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood’s album with Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki streaming online

Tom Goodwyn
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Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood’s album with Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki streaming online
Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood's album with Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki is now streaming online in full. The guitarist's classical side-project, which is due for release on March 13, is being streamed at NPR.org. The album, which was made last autumn in Poland, consists of two pieces by Pe...

Radiohead‘s Jonny Greenwood‘s album with Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki is now streaming online in full.

The guitarist’s classical side-project, which is due for release on March 13, is being streamed at NPR.org.

The album, which was made last autumn in Poland, consists of two pieces by Penderecki from the early ’60s and two by Greenwood including ‘Popcorn Superhet Receiver’, which featured in the guitarist’s film score for There Will Be Blood.

You can watch footage of a live performance from Greenwood’s part of the album by scrolling and clicking below.

The full tracklisting for ‘Jonny Greenwood/Krzysztof Penderecki’ is as follows:

‘Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima’

‘Popcorn Superhet Receiver: Part 1’

‘Popcorn Superhet Receiver: Part 2 A’

‘Popcorn Superhet Receiver: Part 2 B’

‘Popcorn Superhet Receiver: Part 3’

‘Polymorphia’

’48 Responses To Polymorphia: Es ist Genug’

’48 Responses To Polymorphia: Ranj’

’48 Responses To Polymorphia: Overtones’

’48 Responses To Polymorphia: Scan’

’48 Responses To Polymorphia: Baton Sparks’

’48 Responses To Polymorphia: Three Oak Leaves’

’48 Responses To Polymorphia: Overhang’

’48 Responses To Polymorphia: Bridge’

’48 Responses To Polymorphia: Pacay Tree’

Greenwood is also currently working on the score to the film The Master.

The movie is a drama set in the ’50s and is confirmed to star Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Joaquin Phoenix. It is due to be released sometime in 2013. The film is being directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who also made There Will Be Blood.

Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parks, Yim Yames – New Multitudes

Michael Bonner
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0
Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parks, Yim Yames – New Multitudes

Alt Americana supergroup finish what their Daddy started. Huntington’s disease began its slow, remorseless work of destroying Woody Guthrie physically and mentally, in the late 1940s, just prior to the advent of the technology that might have permitted the capture of definitive, more or less modern-sounding versions of his songs. However, the fact that Guthrie’s original canon exists primarily as scratchy, lo-fi, live-to-tape performance – and unrecorded, unfinished scrawlings in notebooks – has kind of worked to its benefit, permitting uncountable successors the space to rework and interpret. Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames indisputably possess the necessary qualifications. Their combined histories in Son Volt, Gob Iron, Uncle Tupelo, Centro-matic and My Morning Jacket were at least sufficient to impress Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter and the custodian of his archives, who allowed the quartet to fossick through her father’s scrapbooks in search of snippets worth vivifying. New Multitudes is scarcely the first such project. Billy Bragg and Wilco (alma mater of Farrar’s former Uncle Tupelo compadre Jeff Tweedy) recorded two sets of previously unheard Guthrie lyrics under the Mermaid Avenue marque. Jonatha Brooke did something similar with The Works, The Klezmatics on Wonder Wheel and Happy Joyous Hanukkah. All faced the same challenge – that of paying due respect to a titanic figure while summoning the nerve to stamp their own mark on the material. Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames manage this with almost supernatural ease, though this may say at least as much about the adaptability and accessibility of Guthrie’s writing as it does about them. There are twelve tracks on New Multitudes (and a further eleven on a bonus disc issued with the limited edition). In no case have messrs Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames done the easy and obvious thing (ersatz campfire singalong) or the obtuse and perverse thing (attempting to haul Guthrie’s words beyond their natural milieu of recognisable Americana). Opening track “Hoping Machine”, indeed, is irresistibly evocative of Uncle Tupelo at their more stately, Farrar lending a song of optimism-despite-it-all (“Don’t let any earthly calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine”) an appropriately striving melody and hesitant arrangement. The four collaborators split lead vocal duties equally. In general, Farrar’s songs tend toward the gently pugnacious, Johnson’s to the sombre and guttural, Parker’s to amiably ragged country rock, Yames’ to ambitious excursions to the edge of where Guthrie’s songs might feel comfortable (“Changing World” is rendered as a punky, snotty lament that sounds curiously, and curiously aptly, like Wreckless Eric, while “My Revolutionary Mind” is a string-soaked torch ballad that builds to a cacophonous climax before cutting out with a suddenness unrivalled since Dinosaur Jr’s “Just Like Heaven”). Inevitably, “New Multitudes” is essentially an exercise in imagining how these songs might have sounded had their author lived long enough to record them. It says much for the chops and the passion brought to the project by the quartet, that Woody Guthrie also becomes plausibly a Slobberbone-style alt.country snarler (Johnson’s “VD City”), a Jackson Browne-variety west coast balladeer (Parker’s “Fly High”), a swaggering Tom Petty-ish southern rocker (Parker’s “Angel’s Blues”), or a reverent dustblown roots crooner very much in the vein of, funnily enough, Son Volt (Farrar’s closing title track). Any approach of Guthrie’s legacy is a step into a long, dark shadow – he is, along with his approximate contemporaries Robert Johnson and Hank Williams, no more or less than a founding father of modern American popular song. But his work endures because of its essential big-hearted hospitality – and Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames have made themselves right at home. Q&A Jay Farrar How would you quantify the continuing influence of Guthrie on American music? Woody seems to be that elemental source that had a ripple effect on American music. The ethos and musical aesthetic of Woody influenced the folk movement of the 1950s, which in turn inspired Bob Dylan. Woody might not have been the first person to write protest songs but he did show that music can have a powerful effect for generations down the line. There is a timeless message in Woody¹s music. When Woody didn't like the status quo he wrote a song with the intent to change the status quo. Andrew Mueller How intimidating ­ or otherwise ­ is the task of writing music for Guthrie’s lyrics? Maybe the initial walk up the steps to the archives was intimidating, but after finding inspiration in Woody¹s philosophy and work ethic, the music seemed to already be written. A connection would jump out with a certain set of lyrics or notes and the music would just be there. How much unused Guthrie stuff is still awaiting examination? Woody was prolific in a way that all writers can aspire to. Will, Anders, Jim and I only made it through a fraction of the material at the archives. The archives are ready for the next in line. How did you go about reconciling the influences and ideas of the four contributors? There was never any master plan and this project came to fruition through happenstance and visceral propulsion. From the start it seemed an approach that didn¹t focus on any singular theme or sound would be the best. There is a breadth and scope to Woody¹s artwork and songs that was apparent after visiting the archives. Woody wasn¹t afraid to tackle any subject from STDs to prostitution to street drugs. I guess our job here, which we found along the way, was to show another side of Woody Guthrie. Interview by Andrew Mueller

Alt Americana supergroup finish what their Daddy started.

Huntington’s disease began its slow, remorseless work of destroying Woody Guthrie physically and mentally, in the late 1940s, just prior to the advent of the technology that might have permitted the capture of definitive, more or less modern-sounding versions of his songs. However, the fact that Guthrie’s original canon exists primarily as scratchy, lo-fi, live-to-tape performance – and unrecorded, unfinished scrawlings in notebooks – has kind of worked to its benefit, permitting uncountable successors the space to rework and interpret.

Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames indisputably possess the necessary qualifications. Their combined histories in Son Volt, Gob Iron, Uncle Tupelo, Centro-matic and My Morning Jacket were at least sufficient to impress Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter and the custodian of his archives, who allowed the quartet to fossick through her father’s scrapbooks in search of snippets worth vivifying.

New Multitudes is scarcely the first such project. Billy Bragg and Wilco (alma mater of Farrar’s former Uncle Tupelo compadre Jeff Tweedy) recorded two sets of previously unheard Guthrie lyrics under the Mermaid Avenue marque. Jonatha Brooke did something similar with The Works, The Klezmatics on Wonder Wheel and Happy Joyous Hanukkah. All faced the same challenge – that of paying due respect to a titanic figure while summoning the nerve to stamp their own mark on the material. Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames manage this with almost supernatural ease, though this may say at least as much about the adaptability and accessibility of Guthrie’s writing as it does about them.

There are twelve tracks on New Multitudes (and a further eleven on a bonus disc issued with the limited edition). In no case have messrs Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames done the easy and obvious thing (ersatz campfire singalong) or the obtuse and perverse thing (attempting to haul Guthrie’s words beyond their natural milieu of recognisable Americana). Opening track “Hoping Machine”, indeed, is irresistibly evocative of Uncle Tupelo at their more stately, Farrar lending a song of optimism-despite-it-all (“Don’t let any earthly calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine”) an appropriately striving melody and hesitant arrangement.

The four collaborators split lead vocal duties equally. In general, Farrar’s songs tend toward the gently pugnacious, Johnson’s to the sombre and guttural, Parker’s to amiably ragged country rock, Yames’ to ambitious excursions to the edge of where Guthrie’s songs might feel comfortable (“Changing World” is rendered as a punky, snotty lament that sounds curiously, and curiously aptly, like Wreckless Eric, while “My Revolutionary Mind” is a string-soaked torch ballad that builds to a cacophonous climax before cutting out with a suddenness unrivalled since Dinosaur Jr’s “Just Like Heaven”).

Inevitably, “New Multitudes” is essentially an exercise in imagining how these songs might have sounded had their author lived long enough to record them. It says much for the chops and the passion brought to the project by the quartet, that Woody Guthrie also becomes plausibly a Slobberbone-style alt.country snarler (Johnson’s “VD City”), a Jackson Browne-variety west coast balladeer (Parker’s “Fly High”), a swaggering Tom Petty-ish southern rocker (Parker’s “Angel’s Blues”), or a reverent dustblown roots crooner very much in the vein of, funnily enough, Son Volt (Farrar’s closing title track).

Any approach of Guthrie’s legacy is a step into a long, dark shadow – he is, along with his approximate contemporaries Robert Johnson and Hank Williams, no more or less than a founding father of modern American popular song. But his work endures because of its essential big-hearted hospitality – and Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames have made themselves right at home.

Q&A

Jay Farrar

How would you quantify the continuing influence of Guthrie on American music?

Woody seems to be that elemental source that had a ripple effect on American music. The ethos and musical aesthetic of Woody influenced the folk movement of the 1950s, which in turn inspired Bob Dylan. Woody might not have been the first person to write protest songs but he did show that music can have a powerful effect for generations down the line. There is a timeless message in Woody¹s music. When Woody didn’t like the status quo he wrote a song with the intent to change the status quo.

Andrew Mueller

How intimidating ­ or otherwise ­ is the task of writing music for Guthrie’s lyrics?

Maybe the initial walk up the steps to the archives was intimidating, but after finding inspiration in Woody¹s philosophy and work ethic, the music seemed to already be written. A connection would jump out with a certain set of lyrics or notes and the music would just be there.

How much unused Guthrie stuff is still awaiting examination?

Woody was prolific in a way that all writers can aspire to. Will, Anders,

Jim and I only made it through a fraction of the material at the archives.

The archives are ready for the next in line.

How did you go about reconciling the influences and ideas of the four

contributors?

There was never any master plan and this project came to fruition through happenstance and visceral propulsion. From the start it seemed an approach that didn¹t focus on any singular theme or sound would be the best. There is a breadth and scope to Woody¹s artwork and songs that was apparent after visiting the archives. Woody wasn¹t afraid to tackle any subject from STDs to prostitution to street drugs. I guess our job here, which we found along the way, was to show another side of Woody Guthrie.

Interview by Andrew Mueller

Game Of Thrones Series 1

Michael Bonner
-
0
Game Of Thrones Series 1

It may inhabit a fantasy world far away, but HBO’s epic saga stalks familiar territory... Sky Atlantic’s launch promotion last year largely focused on two offerings courtesy of safe hands in the HBO stable. Boardwalk Empire (“from the makers of The Sopranos”) and David Simon’s post-Wire series Treme came pre-packaged with hallmarks of quality, presumably seen as easier “sells” than a drama based on a series of fantasy novels. However, to dismiss Game Of Thrones as a run-of-the-mill swords-and-sorcery yarn that might have characters from The Big Bang Theory coveting action figures and tie-in role-playing software, would be a mistake. Not that creators David Benioff and DB Weiss played down the other-worldly elements of George RR Martin’s original A Song Of Fire And Ice novels, but neither did they ignore the stories’ broader themes. Motifs familiar to earlier HBO successes are never far from the surface, be they political intrigue and power struggles (The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood) or troubled dynasties seemingly on the verge of collapse (The Sopranos again, Carnivale, Six Feet Under). This is meaty, multi-layered and most definitely grown-up television, its graphic sex and violence confidently underpinned by weightier concerns, not to mention superb direction, writing and performances. Four rival dynasties battle for control over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, unforgiving landscapes where seasons last for years rather than months. As the series opens, our chief protagonist is Lord Eddard “Ned” Stark (chiselled jaw and steely eyes provided by Sean Bean), a man with family headaches at home and more pressing life-or-death issues of the fields of war. Elsewhere across the Seven Kingdoms, Prince Viserys Targaryen (Harry Lloyd) forges a new alliance to regain the Iron Throne. Small wonder Benioff himself, perhaps only half-jokingly, describes the show as “The Sopranos in Middle Earth.” The “fantasy” tag may have initially been off-putting to some, but word-of-mouth boosted viewing figures and rapidly dispelled any notions that Game Of Thrones belonged in the same category as Xena or Hercules in the 1990s, or more recent 300 knock-offs like Spartacus. The action may take place in an ancient make-believe world, but the brutality, corruption, and all manner of other human failings are as tangibly real as in any modern-day drama. EXTRAS: Featurettes, commentaries, character profiles. Terry Staunton

It may inhabit a fantasy world far away, but HBO’s epic saga stalks familiar territory…

Sky Atlantic’s launch promotion last year largely focused on two offerings courtesy of safe hands in the HBO stable. Boardwalk Empire (“from the makers of The Sopranos”) and David Simon’s post-Wire series Treme came pre-packaged with hallmarks of quality, presumably seen as easier “sells” than a drama based on a series of fantasy novels.

However, to dismiss Game Of Thrones as a run-of-the-mill swords-and-sorcery yarn that might have characters from The Big Bang Theory coveting action figures and tie-in role-playing software, would be a mistake. Not that creators David Benioff and DB Weiss played down the other-worldly elements of George RR Martin’s original A Song Of Fire And Ice novels, but neither did they ignore the stories’ broader themes.

Motifs familiar to earlier HBO successes are never far from the surface, be they political intrigue and power struggles (The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood) or troubled dynasties seemingly on the verge of collapse (The Sopranos again, Carnivale, Six Feet Under). This is meaty, multi-layered and most definitely grown-up television, its graphic sex and violence confidently underpinned by weightier concerns, not to mention superb direction, writing and performances.

Four rival dynasties battle for control over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, unforgiving landscapes where seasons last for years rather than months. As the series opens, our chief protagonist is Lord Eddard “Ned” Stark (chiselled jaw and steely eyes provided by Sean Bean), a man with family headaches at home and more pressing life-or-death issues of the fields of war. Elsewhere across the Seven Kingdoms, Prince Viserys Targaryen (Harry Lloyd) forges a new alliance to regain the Iron Throne. Small wonder Benioff himself, perhaps only half-jokingly, describes the show as “The Sopranos in Middle Earth.”

The “fantasy” tag may have initially been off-putting to some, but word-of-mouth boosted viewing figures and rapidly dispelled any notions that Game Of Thrones belonged in the same category as Xena or Hercules in the 1990s, or more recent 300 knock-offs like Spartacus. The action may take place in an ancient make-believe world, but the brutality, corruption, and all manner of other human failings are as tangibly real as in any modern-day drama.

EXTRAS: Featurettes, commentaries, character profiles.

Terry Staunton

Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball

Michael Bonner
-
0
Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball

An angry Boss attacks big business on his grim but brilliant 17th studio album... Bruce Springsteen has never been shy of confronting the gloomy and unpalatable downside of capitalism - indeed, some would say he rather revels in the bitter tears of working-class defeat - but he's never before sounded quite so bitter and angry as he does on Wrecking Ball. The contrast with his last studio album, 2009's Working On A Dream, is instructive: on that record, flush with the renewed hope furnished by Obama's election, he meditated optimistically upon the possibility of change, alongside the usual complement of blue-collar tableaux, with even a few cheery, almost euphoric, contemplations of a possibly positive future. Here, the few glimmers of light are themselves occluded by curtains of bitter irony and weary acknowledgement of defeat. It's as if this most engagingly demagogic of American underclass standard-bearers is having to fight grimly to stave off the lure of nihilism. On first hearing, the opener "We Take Care Of Our Own" sounds like a typical Springsteen anthem of uplift, a celebration of fellowship and communality that one can see being hijacked by politicians the next time Navy Seals pluck an American citizen from the clutches of Somalian pirates, or take out some high-level jihadist. "Wherever this flag flies," he sings, "we take care of our own". But then you start hearing what he's actually saying, and it's another "Born In The USA" moment, as he pours out condemnatory question after question: "Where's the promise from sea to shining sea? Where's the work that will set my hands and my soul free?". And the song's most potent image, "From the shotgun shack to the Superdome", transforms from a superficially bullish expression of inter-class community to something with a sting in its tail, the mention of the Superdome inevitably drawing one's mind back to Hurricane Katrina, when America signally failed to take care of its own. That disregard, he suggests, has spread across the entire country. And there's no dispute here about who's to blame: Wrecking Ball features the bluntest condemnations of bankers and big business yet expressed by a star of Springsteen's magnitude. "Up on banker's hill, the party's going strong; down here below, we're shackled and drawn" he avers in "Shackled And Drawn", one of several songs in which the dense, ebullient folk-rock textures blend with revivalist gospel touches, in a burlier, more muscular version of the hootenanny stylings of the We Shall Overcome Seeger Sessions album. In "Death To My Hometown", the big, sturdy beat, fiddle and tin whistle bring the flavour of an Irish rebel song to another condemnation of the "robber barons" who managed to destroy families and factories without firing so much as a single shot. But has Bruce ever been this bitter and bloodily corporeal before? "They left our bodies on the plains, the vultures picked our bones... the greedy thieves who came around and ate the flesh of everything they found..." Rather than the pained nobility of previous Springsteen anthems of dispossession, this has the visceral tang of a horror movie: capitalism as cannibalism. There's an inescapable impression that, decades on from the great romantic blue-collar gestures of Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River and Born In The USA, he realises that for men and women thirty years older than then, losing one's job is so much closer to losing one's life. Hence the bitter truth behind a song like "This Depression", a slow, mournful piece streaked with Tom Morello's eerily yearning guitar, in which economic depression brings emotional depression, bluntly stated in a cry for help from his beloved: "I haven't always been strong, but never this weak". It's bleak, but not in the fancifully literate, cinematic manner of Nebraska; it's not a study in bleakness, it's just as grim as it gets. Again, there's an underlying acknowledgement that these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are that much more wounding for those in their fifties and sixties than they were thirty years earlier, when the prospect of failure could be burnished with a Bukowskian lustre of romantic tribulation. Anger all but overtakes Springsteen in "Jack Of All Trades", where slow piano triplets carry his careworn delivery of the protagonist's sentimental determination to survive by taking any job offered. A trumpet and mandolin break piles on the poignancy as he reflects on how "banker man grows fat, working man grows thin", his stiff upper lip finally slipping to confide how "If I had a gun, I'd find the bastards and shoot 'em on sight". As the song ends, the Spectoresque welter of horns, guitars and chimes seems to chorus assent. The flipside attitude is expressed in "Easy Money", which deals with the corrosive trickle-down effect of toxic greed: if they can get away with it, reasons the benighted protagonist preparing for petty crime, why should I follow the rules? Elsewhere, "You've Got It" offers a Little-Feat-style steel-guitar tribute to a lover's indefinable qualities, while "Rocky Ground" dips into religious imagery of money-changers and an endangered flock as it looks to a new, less troubled dawn. And inspired by the demolition of Giants Stadium in New Jersey, "Wrecking Ball" itself was written some years ago, and first performed on the Working On A Dream tour, which perhaps explains the truculent tone of the song's resolute fatalism, which employs the failing building as a metaphor for the doomed nobility of human endeavour: "When all this steel and these stories drift away to rust, and all our youth and beauty has been given to the dust". "Land Of Hope And Dreams", one of several songs employing the kind of white gospel choir vocals used by Dylan on "All The Tired Horses", was written even earlier, back in the late '90s. A full-blown Springsteen anthem with added mandolin wistfulness, incorporating Clarence Clemons' final solo for The Boss, it's an updated version of those Woody Guthrie dustbowl ballads anticipating a new life in California; it's typically resolute and uplifting, but in this context its exultant spirit seems a touch bogus, though it's understandable he would want to end the album on a more positive note. Which gives the concluding "We Are Alive" which follows the run-out groove crackle an unexpected mordancy, as Springsteen gives voice to the graveyard dead: "If we put our ears to the cold grey stones, this is what they'd sing: we are alive". Set to a chipper Johnny Cash-style mariachi groove of banjo, whistle and horns, it's a strange but redemptive affirmation of the human spirit, and, in the face of endemic depression of all kinds, of endurance as the defining heroic act of our age. Andy Gill 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!

An angry Boss attacks big business on his grim but brilliant 17th studio album…

Bruce Springsteen has never been shy of confronting the gloomy and unpalatable downside of capitalism – indeed, some would say he rather revels in the bitter tears of working-class defeat – but he’s never before sounded quite so bitter and angry as he does on Wrecking Ball.

The contrast with his last studio album, 2009’s Working On A Dream, is instructive: on that record, flush with the renewed hope furnished by Obama’s election, he meditated optimistically upon the possibility of change, alongside the usual complement of blue-collar tableaux, with even a few cheery, almost euphoric, contemplations of a possibly positive future. Here, the few glimmers of light are themselves occluded by curtains of bitter irony and weary acknowledgement of defeat. It’s as if this most engagingly demagogic of American underclass standard-bearers is having to fight grimly to stave off the lure of nihilism.

On first hearing, the opener “We Take Care Of Our Own” sounds like a typical Springsteen anthem of uplift, a celebration of fellowship and communality that one can see being hijacked by politicians the next time Navy Seals pluck an American citizen from the clutches of Somalian pirates, or take out some high-level jihadist. “Wherever this flag flies,” he sings, “we take care of our own”. But then you start hearing what he’s actually saying, and it’s another “Born In The USA” moment, as he pours out condemnatory question after question: “Where’s the promise from sea to shining sea? Where’s the work that will set my hands and my soul free?”. And the song’s most potent image, “From the shotgun shack to the Superdome”, transforms from a superficially bullish expression of inter-class community to something with a sting in its tail, the mention of the Superdome inevitably drawing one’s mind back to Hurricane Katrina, when America signally failed to take care of its own. That disregard, he suggests, has spread across the entire country.

And there’s no dispute here about who’s to blame: Wrecking Ball features the bluntest condemnations of bankers and big business yet expressed by a star of Springsteen’s magnitude. “Up on banker’s hill, the party’s going strong; down here below, we’re shackled and drawn” he avers in “Shackled And Drawn”, one of several songs in which the dense, ebullient folk-rock textures blend with revivalist gospel touches, in a burlier, more muscular version of the hootenanny stylings of the We Shall Overcome Seeger Sessions album. In “Death To My Hometown”, the big, sturdy beat, fiddle and tin whistle bring the flavour of an Irish rebel song to another condemnation of the “robber barons” who managed to destroy families and factories without firing so much as a single shot.

But has Bruce ever been this bitter and bloodily corporeal before? “They left our bodies on the plains, the vultures picked our bones… the greedy thieves who came around and ate the flesh of everything they found…” Rather than the pained nobility of previous Springsteen anthems of dispossession, this has the visceral tang of a horror movie: capitalism as cannibalism. There’s an inescapable impression that, decades on from the great romantic blue-collar gestures of Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River and Born In The USA, he realises that for men and women thirty years older than then, losing one’s job is so much closer to losing one’s life.

Hence the bitter truth behind a song like “This Depression”, a slow, mournful piece streaked with Tom Morello‘s eerily yearning guitar, in which economic depression brings emotional depression, bluntly stated in a cry for help from his beloved: “I haven’t always been strong, but never this weak”. It’s bleak, but not in the fancifully literate, cinematic manner of Nebraska; it’s not a study in bleakness, it’s just as grim as it gets. Again, there’s an underlying acknowledgement that these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are that much more wounding for those in their fifties and sixties than they were thirty years earlier, when the prospect of failure could be burnished with a Bukowskian lustre of romantic tribulation.

Anger all but overtakes Springsteen in “Jack Of All Trades“, where slow piano triplets carry his careworn delivery of the protagonist’s sentimental determination to survive by taking any job offered. A trumpet and mandolin break piles on the poignancy as he reflects on how “banker man grows fat, working man grows thin”, his stiff upper lip finally slipping to confide how “If I had a gun, I’d find the bastards and shoot ’em on sight”. As the song ends, the Spectoresque welter of horns, guitars and chimes seems to chorus assent. The flipside attitude is expressed in “Easy Money”, which deals with the corrosive trickle-down effect of toxic greed: if they can get away with it, reasons the benighted protagonist preparing for petty crime, why should I follow the rules?

Elsewhere, “You’ve Got It” offers a Little-Feat-style steel-guitar tribute to a lover’s indefinable qualities, while “Rocky Ground” dips into religious imagery of money-changers and an endangered flock as it looks to a new, less troubled dawn. And inspired by the demolition of Giants Stadium in New Jersey, “Wrecking Ball” itself was written some years ago, and first performed on the Working On A Dream tour, which perhaps explains the truculent tone of the song’s resolute fatalism, which employs the failing building as a metaphor for the doomed nobility of human endeavour: “When all this steel and these stories drift away to rust, and all our youth and beauty has been given to the dust”.

“Land Of Hope And Dreams”, one of several songs employing the kind of white gospel choir vocals used by Dylan on “All The Tired Horses“, was written even earlier, back in the late ’90s. A full-blown Springsteen anthem with added mandolin wistfulness, incorporating Clarence Clemons‘ final solo for The Boss, it’s an updated version of those Woody Guthrie dustbowl ballads anticipating a new life in California; it’s typically resolute and uplifting, but in this context its exultant spirit seems a touch bogus, though it’s understandable he would want to end the album on a more positive note. Which gives the concluding “We Are Alive” which follows the run-out groove crackle an unexpected mordancy, as Springsteen gives voice to the graveyard dead: “If we put our ears to the cold grey stones, this is what they’d sing: we are alive”. Set to a chipper Johnny Cash-style mariachi groove of banjo, whistle and horns, it’s a strange but redemptive affirmation of the human spirit, and, in the face of endemic depression of all kinds, of endurance as the defining heroic act of our age.

Andy Gill

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!

Metallica hint that they could release next album without a record label

Tom Goodwyn
-
0
Metallica hint that they could release next album without a record label
Metallica's Lars Ulrich has hinted that the band could release their next album without a record label. In an interview with Spin, the drummer confirmed that their deal with Warner had now expired following the release of their last studio album 'Death Magnetic' in 2008, and said that the metal l...

Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich has hinted that the band could release their next album without a record label.

In an interview with Spin, the drummer confirmed that their deal with Warner had now expired following the release of their last studio album ‘Death Magnetic’ in 2008, and said that the metal legends were discussing different release strategies for the next LP.

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.”

He went on to add: “We’re writing music and we’re going to be recording very soon. At some point we’re going to want to share that with people that are interested in listening to it. So we gotta figure out ways we want to do that, from giving it away in cereal boxes to getting people to do handstands for it. We could come up with something wacky.”

However, Ulrich did insist that the band wouldn’t employ an unusual distribution model for the sake of it. “This whole thing about who can come up with the coolest [release strategy] so it can be written about on 12 different blogs for six hours – mean sure, that’s all pretty cool and hip,” he said. “But at the same time you have to remember we have a very global audience. We have fans in India and the UAE and Russia. In a lot of these places there are still more conventional ways of getting music to people.”

Metallica will play a headline slot at this summer’s Download Festival as well as a series of other large European shows, performing 1991’s ‘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.

Earlier this year, meanwhile, the band said that their next LP would be like a “heavier version” of ‘The Black Album’.

Hear Arcade Fire’s new track ‘Abraham’s Daughter’ from ‘The Hunger Games’ soundtrack

Tom Goodwyn
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0
Hear Arcade Fire’s new track ‘Abraham’s Daughter’ from ‘The Hunger Games’ soundtrack

You can hear Arcade Fire's new track 'Abraham's Daughter', which is taken from the soundtrack to the new fantasy film The Hunger Games, by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking. The track will be play over the dystopian thriller's closing credits and was recorded by the Canadian band last month. The film itself will also feature a track titled 'Horn Of Plenty' which has been written and recorded by Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Regine Chassagne. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the track, Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler said: "Our whole approach was to get into the world and try to create something that serves the story and the film. There's something in the story of Abraham and Isaac that I think resonates with the themes in the film, like sacrificing children. So we made a weird, alternate-universe version of that." He added that the band wanted to create a song that could be played in the film's fictional fascist state of Capitol and an anthem that could be played at a huge sporting event. He said of this: "We were interested in making music that would be more integral in the movie, just as a mental exercise. And there's an anthem that runs throughout the books, the national anthem of the fascist Capitol. So as a thought experiment, we tried to write what that might sound like. It's like the Capitol's idea of itself, basically." Butler continued: "It's not a pop song or anything. More of an anthem that could be playing at a big sporting event like the Games. So we did a structure for that, and then James Newton Howard made a movie-score version of it that happens in several places in the film." Taylor Swift, The Decemberists, Kid Cudi and The Low Anthem wil also feature on 'The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond'. The Hunger Games is set to be released on March 23 in the UK and stars Winter's Bone actress Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N9qiDigLWI

You can hear Arcade Fire‘s new track ‘Abraham’s Daughter’, which is taken from the soundtrack to the new fantasy film The Hunger Games, by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking.

The track will be play over the dystopian thriller’s closing credits and was recorded by the Canadian band last month. The film itself will also feature a track titled ‘Horn Of Plenty’ which has been written and recorded by Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Regine Chassagne.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the track, Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler said: “Our whole approach was to get into the world and try to create something that serves the story and the film. There’s something in the story of Abraham and Isaac that I think resonates with the themes in the film, like sacrificing children. So we made a weird, alternate-universe version of that.”

He added that the band wanted to create a song that could be played in the film’s fictional fascist state of Capitol and an anthem that could be played at a huge sporting event.

He said of this: “We were interested in making music that would be more integral in the movie, just as a mental exercise. And there’s an anthem that runs throughout the books, the national anthem of the fascist Capitol. So as a thought experiment, we tried to write what that might sound like. It’s like the Capitol’s idea of itself, basically.”

Butler continued: “It’s not a pop song or anything. More of an anthem that could be playing at a big sporting event like the Games. So we did a structure for that, and then James Newton Howard made a movie-score version of it that happens in several places in the film.”

Taylor Swift, The Decemberists, Kid Cudi and The Low Anthem wil also feature on ‘The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond’.

The Hunger Games is set to be released on March 23 in the UK and stars Winter’s Bone actress Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks.

The Monkees see 3,000% increase in Spotify plays after the death of Davy Jones

Tom Goodwyn
-
0
The Monkees see 3,000% increase in Spotify plays after the death of Davy Jones

There has been a 3,000% increase in the number of plays of songs by The Monkees on Spotify following yesterday's death of singer Davy Jones. The music streaming site saw the increase from February 28 to 29, after news of the Manchester-born entertainer's death was announced. Jones died at his home in Florida, according to his publicist Deborah Robicheau. TMZ today reports that an autopsy was performed and doctors found that Jones died from "an abnormal heart rhythm caused by coronary artery atherosclerosis" or a severe heart attack. Jones' bandmate Micky Dolenz released a statement about his friend's passing, saying: "I am in a state of shock... The time we worked together and had together is something I'll never forget. He was the brother I never had and this leaves a gigantic hole in my heart. The memories have and will last a lifetime. My condolences go out to his family." Peter Tork, also of The Monkees released his own statement. He said: "It is with great sadness that I reflect on the sudden passing of my long-time friend and fellow-adventurer, David Jones. His talent will be much missed; his gifts will be with us always. My deepest sympathy to Jessica and the rest of his family. Adios, to the Manchester Cowboy."

There has been a 3,000% increase in the number of plays of songs by The Monkees on Spotify following yesterday’s death of singer Davy Jones.

The music streaming site saw the increase from February 28 to 29, after news of the Manchester-born entertainer’s death was announced.

Jones died at his home in Florida, according to his publicist Deborah Robicheau. TMZ today reports that an autopsy was performed and doctors found that Jones died from “an abnormal heart rhythm caused by coronary artery atherosclerosis” or a severe heart attack.

Jones’ bandmate Micky Dolenz released a statement about his friend’s passing, saying: “I am in a state of shock… The time we worked together and had together is something I’ll never forget. He was the brother I never had and this leaves a gigantic hole in my heart. The memories have and will last a lifetime. My condolences go out to his family.”

Peter Tork, also of The Monkees released his own statement. He said: “It is with great sadness that I reflect on the sudden passing of my long-time friend and fellow-adventurer, David Jones. His talent will be much missed; his gifts will be with us always. My deepest sympathy to Jessica and the rest of his family. Adios, to the Manchester Cowboy.”

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