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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

A perfectly chilly Cold War thriller...Directed by Tomas Alfredson Starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong Tomas Alfredson’s murky adaptation of John Le Carré’s novel gives Gary Oldman his first leading role in a British film for 25 years. As the spymaster George Smiley, Oldman is barely recognisable: a quiet, almost anonymous presence with grey skin and grey hair, he peers pensively from behind thick spectacles. We are a long way from the volatile characters he played in a run of mid-’80s British movies, the crazed cops, drug dealers and campy Transylvanian counts from his ’90s Hollywood phase, or his recent supporting roles in the Harry Potter and Batman movies. Smiley is a man of slow, diligent methods. Fortunately, this is not an action film. The events in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy occur largely as conversations in darkened rooms between middle-aged men. Sometimes, pipes are smoked. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson brings the same lugubrious air to this adaptation that he deployed so memorably in his 2008 vampire film, Let The Right One In. The colours are grey, the weather overcast. The year is 1974, and the British secret service is not what it once was. The Empire is gone, the Americans are the dominant superpower, and nostalgia for the Second World War haunts the corridors of the Circus, home to le Carré’s secret service. “It was a good time,” reflects retired researcher Connie Sachs (Kathy Burke) glumly. “A real war. Englishmen could be proud.” The Circus is run like the common room of an English private school, with its clever-clever nicknames for organisational divisions – scalphunters, babysitters, lamplighters – and operations named after nursery rhymes. It’s become sentimental and self-indulgent; “a leaky ship,” admits the Circus’ chief, Control (John Hurt). Indeed, there is a mole embedded high up in the service. Into this comes Smiley – formerly Control’s high chamberlain but evicted, along with Control, in a coup instigated by the reptilian Director of Operations, Percy Alleline (Toby Jones). Smiley is brought back because he is now “outside the family, and best placed to investigate” the mole. Smiley has appeared on screen before. He was briefly in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965), portrayed by Maigret actor Rupert Davis. James Mason played him for Sidney Lumet in The Deadly Affair (1966), adapted from the first Smiley novel, Call For The Dead; and Denholm Elliott in a 1991 TV production of A Murder Of Quality. Most famously, Alec Guinness took the role for the BBC’s adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) and Smiley’s People (1980). An air of sadness hangs around Smiley. Cuckolded by a work colleague and aware that the organisation to which he’s given most of his working life is no longer in the peak of health, he seems only to find calm when studying stolen files in a grubby hotel room near St Paul’s cathedral. Alfredson shoots the film like a police procedural – a focus on Smiley’s dogged accumulation and assimilation of facts, and the revelations he unearths that lead to Operation Witchcraft, a Russian source codenamed Merlin and Karla, Smiley’s counterpart at the KGB’s Moscow Centre. Around Oldman, Alfredson has assembled a commendable cast – Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Ciarán Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy – who keenly bring to life Le Carré’s labyrinthine story of empire-building, treason, petty rivalries and adultery. At two hours, the film doesn’t quite feel long enough to fully serve the 400-odd page novel; consequently some key characters are underdeveloped and part of the plot feels pared back to the point of abstraction. Apart from two flashbacks detailing a botched operation in Czechoslovakia and a dicey attempt to pull a potential Russian defector out of Istanbul, there is very little action here; yet Alfredson gradually, imperceptibly ratchets up the tension. A sequence where Smiley’s lieutenant, Peter Guillam (Cumberbatch), steals files from the Circus is sweaty stuff. Yet it always comes back – brilliantly – to Oldman’s Smiley, sitting in his hotel room, unravelling Karla’s devious plot. In a paranoid, shifting culture where “nothing is genuine”, we admire Smiley’s vigilant pursuit of the truth. Michael Bonner

A perfectly chilly Cold War thriller…Directed by Tomas Alfredson

Starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong

Tomas Alfredson’s murky adaptation of John Le Carré’s novel gives Gary Oldman his first leading role in a British film for 25 years. As the spymaster George Smiley, Oldman is barely recognisable: a quiet, almost anonymous presence with grey skin and grey hair, he peers pensively from behind thick spectacles. We are a long way from the volatile characters he played in a run of mid-’80s British movies, the crazed cops, drug dealers and campy Transylvanian counts from his ’90s Hollywood phase, or his recent supporting roles in the Harry Potter and Batman movies.

Smiley is a man of slow, diligent methods. Fortunately, this is not an action film. The events in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy occur largely as conversations in darkened rooms between middle-aged men. Sometimes, pipes are smoked. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson brings the same lugubrious air to this adaptation that he deployed so memorably in his 2008 vampire film, Let The Right One In. The colours are grey, the weather overcast. The year is 1974, and the British secret service is not what it once was. The Empire is gone, the Americans are the dominant superpower, and nostalgia for the Second World War haunts the corridors of the Circus, home to le Carré’s secret service. “It was a good time,” reflects retired researcher Connie Sachs (Kathy Burke) glumly. “A real war. Englishmen could be proud.”

The Circus is run like the common room of an English private school, with its clever-clever nicknames for organisational divisions – scalphunters, babysitters, lamplighters – and operations named after nursery rhymes. It’s become sentimental and self-indulgent; “a leaky ship,” admits the Circus’ chief, Control (John Hurt). Indeed, there is a mole embedded high up in the service.

Into this comes Smiley – formerly Control’s high chamberlain but evicted, along with Control, in a coup instigated by the reptilian Director of Operations, Percy Alleline (Toby Jones). Smiley is brought back because he is now “outside the family, and best placed to investigate” the mole. Smiley has appeared on screen before. He was briefly in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965), portrayed by Maigret actor Rupert Davis. James Mason played him for Sidney Lumet in The Deadly Affair (1966), adapted from the first Smiley novel, Call For The Dead; and Denholm Elliott in a 1991 TV production of A Murder Of Quality. Most famously, Alec Guinness took the role for the BBC’s adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) and Smiley’s People (1980).

An air of sadness hangs around Smiley. Cuckolded by a work colleague and aware that the organisation to which he’s given most of his working life is no longer in the peak of health, he seems only to find calm when studying stolen files in a grubby hotel room near St Paul’s cathedral. Alfredson shoots the film like a police procedural – a focus on Smiley’s dogged accumulation and assimilation of facts, and the revelations he unearths that lead to Operation Witchcraft, a Russian source codenamed Merlin and Karla, Smiley’s counterpart at the KGB’s Moscow Centre.

Around Oldman, Alfredson has assembled a commendable cast – Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Ciarán Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy – who keenly bring to life Le Carré’s labyrinthine story of empire-building, treason, petty rivalries and adultery. At two hours, the film doesn’t quite feel long enough to fully serve the 400-odd page novel; consequently some key characters are underdeveloped and part of the plot feels pared back to the point of abstraction. Apart from two flashbacks detailing a botched operation in Czechoslovakia and a dicey attempt to pull a potential Russian defector out of Istanbul, there is very little action here; yet Alfredson gradually, imperceptibly ratchets up the tension. A sequence where Smiley’s lieutenant, Peter Guillam (Cumberbatch), steals files from the Circus is sweaty stuff.

Yet it always comes back – brilliantly – to Oldman’s Smiley, sitting in his hotel room, unravelling Karla’s devious plot. In a paranoid, shifting culture where “nothing is genuine”, we admire Smiley’s vigilant pursuit of the truth.

Michael Bonner

THE JAYHAWKS – MOCKINGBIRD TIME

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THE JAYHAWKS – MOCKINGBIRD TIME
The Jayhawks always were a band out of time. Appearing in Minneapolis at the same time as The Replacements and Hüsker Dü, they eschewed their punk and British rock influences, and arrived – by accident, almost – at a lush, country-influenced sound in which the key ingredient was harmony, and t...

The Jayhawks always were a band out of time. Appearing in Minneapolis at the same time as The Replacements and Hüsker Dü, they eschewed their punk and British rock influences, and arrived – by accident, almost – at a lush, country-influenced sound in which the key ingredient was harmony, and the way the voices of Gary Louris and Mark Olson blended. It was a sweet-and-sour confection with an aftertaste of melancholy, which has hard to categorise. The rock classicism at the heart of The Jayhawks’ sound meant they didn’t quite fit with what later became alt. country.

Some caveats, then, about the significance of this band revival. Hardcore fans – and virtually no-one else – will be aware that Olson and Louris reunited in 2008, for the fine Ready For The Flood album. It captured perfectly the sweet sadness of The Jayhawks, and showed the qualities which departed when Olson split 16 years ago. (A certain folk sensibility and a dose of wistfulness to sweeten Louris’ melodic acid). This, though, is the first reunion of the band’s full lineup, with bassist Marc Perlman, Karen Grotberg on keyboards, and drummer Tim O’Reagan (who only overlapped with Olson for eight months).

After Ready For The Flood, Mockingbird Time feels dense, and somewhat cluttered. Neither does it pick up where the band left off. 1995’s Tomorrow The Green Grass boasted a pop sensibility; it had “Blue”, and “Miss Williams’ Guitar”, which were hits in another world (not this one). Now, with Louris producing, The Jayhawks seem to have all-but shed their country influences, and what remains is a dark, neurotic rock sound, and songs which eschew traditional structures in favour of a maelstrom of harmonies, Beatles strings and pernickety picking. The Jayhawks were always old souls, but here, in the dark eddies of “Black-eyed Susan” or “High Water Blues”, they sound merely weary.

In one sense, the tempestuous mood is logical. Previously, The Jayhawks were an amalgam of Bob Dylan and The Beatles. Now, they carry echoes of late-period Byrds: pretty folk harmonies one minute, psychedelic torpor the next. “Guilder Annie” has it all, being a folk strummer with a plaintive pedal steel and a gorgeous melody which is punctured suddenly by a squall of neurotic guitar. More simple, and more immediately appealing, is “She Walks In So Many Ways” which laces a coil of regret through a classic Byrds’ 12-string harmony.

Echoes of The Beatles are still evident, of course, not least in the strings which threaten to overwhelm the opening tune, “Hide Your Colors”, though the song’s sentiment just about survives thanks to an adhesive chorus. “Closer To Your Side” is similarly adorned – the strings are joined by a micro “Eight Miles High” guitar break – but it succeeds, thanks to the urgency of Olson’s vocal.

But repeated plays do bring rewards. The penultimate song, “Pouring Rain At Dawn” is a sweet lament, lightened by a shuffling rhythm and some gentle country guitar, in which the lyrics are oblique enough to remain mysterious beyond the obvious sense of love, and some regret, being expressed in a complicated affair. The title track is a joyous love song, which gloriously celebrates a moment of recaptured innocence.

But the stand-out is “Tiny Arrows”, a six-minute meander along dusty desert highways. It’s a soaring gospel blues which reveals its bewildered charms in cinemascope. As in all of this group’s best songs, there is a play-off between hope and despair, in which resilience just about carries the day. What is new is the nagging sense of lost time. That thought should stir the The Jayhawks’ second wind. Onwards and downwards. And upwards again.

Alastair McKay

Tarwater: “Inside The Ships”

John Mulvey
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The press release that comes with Tarwater’s “Inside The Ships” reveals that this is the duo’s 11th album – a slightly alarming number, which suggests I’ve rather lost touch with the band over the past few years. “Inside The Ships”, however, has an instantly and satisfyingly familiar sound, not too different from Tarwater in 1998, when their “Silur” album seemed to be part of a small glut of German records (by The Notwist, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler, Mouse On Mars, Pluramon and so on) that sat in an appealing space halfway between electronica and post-rock. At the time, I think I used to write a lot, portentously, about a new wave of Krautrock. Now, though, with Tarwater on Bureau B – the label which seems to find a bunch of Cluster-related albums to reissue most months, and which provides a good context – the Krautrock tag seems pretty off-beam. What Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram do share with at least some of their German predecessors is a distinctly cerebral approach to their music, not least in their frequent use of found texts as lyrics. On “Inside The Ships”, words are taken from a DAF song, a Baudelaire poem and, on “Do The Oz”, a comparatively obscure Lennon track, thoroughly recontextualised here thanks in no small part to Lippok’s absurdist deadpan. It’d be easy to stereotype Tarwater, consequently, as chill theoreticians, but the delicate layering and cumulative atmospheres are much more compelling than such a reductive description might suggest. At best, Tarwater are a meticulously textural band, where it’s often hard to delineate what is programmed, sampled or live. Jazz horns, of uncertain provenance, punctuate a few of the tracks here, but they never detract from the calm-eyed insistency that remains the band’s fine default. That’s apparent, at its most evolved, on the superb title track, a ticking, humming, twanging interzone where some kind of middle-eastern drone pipe cuts a swathe through the mix, and Lippok’s sullen intonations seem to allude to a selection of unlikely dance crazes: “Do the quicksand… Do the chocolate phone” and so on. It’s right up there with my old favourite Tarwater song, “The Watersample”. Check out "Inside The Ships" here; I’d be interested to know what you think.

The press release that comes with Tarwater’s “Inside The Ships” reveals that this is the duo’s 11th album – a slightly alarming number, which suggests I’ve rather lost touch with the band over the past few years. “Inside The Ships”, however, has an instantly and satisfyingly familiar sound, not too different from Tarwater in 1998, when their “Silur” album seemed to be part of a small glut of German records (by The Notwist, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler, Mouse On Mars, Pluramon and so on) that sat in an appealing space halfway between electronica and post-rock.

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Kurt Vile, “So Outta Reach”, The War On Drugs, “Slave Ambient”

John Mulvey
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Looking back at my blog on “Smoke Ring For My Halo”, I started with an Uncut quote from Kurt Vile that is salient here, too. “We recorded a lot of rockers,” he said of “Smoke Ring”, “but they just didn’t seem to fit.” “So Outta Reach” is an EP of reworked outtakes that, one would assume, might provide a rockier correlative to the predominantly mellow drift of “Smoke Ring”. But as “The Creature” gently works its way through some trademark Vile ambulations over nearly six minutes, that doesn’t immediately seem to be the case. Hard to say quite why, but “The Creature” and much else here feels at once looser and more intricate than much of “Smoke Ring”, if that’s possible. I know a good few of you love that record – it came out top, you might remember, when we did the maths to find 2011’s Halftime Best Album. If you haven’t picked it up, bear in mind that a deluxe edition appears to be scheduled for November, with the original set bundled with “So Outta Reach” (and there's a good feature on him in the next Uncut, while I think about it). Anyhow, “It’s Alright” keeps going at the same gradually tumbling, more or less somnabulent pace. But the sound is fractionally denser and heavier, somewhat ominous even, and the extended closing jam is richer and more elaborate than ever. In another one of those awkward Vile contradictions, he and his band sound more confident, while retaining a tentative air. Even something as stunned and dazed as “Laughing Stock” seems palpably more robust: indeed, it seems to solidify and take shape as it goes on, one of those occasions when Vile engagingly seems to be writing a song and recording it simultaneously. As ever, though, these are deceptively crafted songs – “Life’s A Beach” especially, this morning – at least the equal of anything on “Smoke Ring…” There is a cover of Springsteen’s “Downbound Train”, too, on “So Outta Reach”, just to make the connection between Vile and The War On Drugs more explicit than ever. The absence here of a blog on “Slave Ambient” is more down to slackness rather than apathy. It’d be rather inconsistent to be a Vile fan and not find a few things to cherish in Adam Granduciel’s work: “Brothers”, in particular, could have been smuggled pretty effectively onto “Smoke Ring” without much of a disturbance. Nevertheless, Granduciel mostly seems to focus his concept in a much more overtly self-conscious way. It’d be naïve to imagine that Vile’s flakey, charming affectlessness and apparent spontaneity wasn’t in some way contrived, but the War On Drugs seem inordinately wedded to their big idea; to that marriage of guyish classic rock and downy, layered ambience. Much of the time, of course, it works brilliantly. It’s interesting, though, to forget about the purported Krautrock vibes that underpin Granduciel’s fine songs. Then, occasionally, they can sound, in the cases of “I Was There” and "Baby Missiles" in particular, far away from experimentation and closer to a muted take on the heavily-produced ‘80s Springsteen. There’s a moment, too (somewhere in that sequence of “Your Love Is Calling My Name”/”The Animator”/”Come To The City” maybe?), when an uncomfortable antecedent comes to mind. Trad man hurt, and whooping, in an expansive, unearthly soundscape, with big drums? Didn’t U2, Eno and Lanois write the book on that at some point in the mid ‘80s?

Looking back at my blog on “Smoke Ring For My Halo”, I started with an Uncut quote from Kurt Vile that is salient here, too. “We recorded a lot of rockers,” he said of “Smoke Ring”, “but they just didn’t seem to fit.”

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Uncut Playlist 34, 2011

John Mulvey
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Quickly today, because we’re finishing the next issue. Very much liking the Steve Hauschildt (from Emeralds) album at the moment. What are you all playing at the moment, by the way? Been a while since we shared. 1 Wooden Wand & The Briarwood Virgins – Briarwood (Fire) 2 Bert Jansch – Angie: The Collection (Spectrum) 3 Chrisma – Lola/Black Silk Stocking (Polydor) 4 James Ferraro – Far Side Virtual (Hippos In Tanks) 5 Brad Mehldau – Modern Music (Nonesuch) 6 Currensy – Weekend At Burnie’s (Warners) 7 Ariel Pink – Witchhunt Suite For WWIII (4AD) 8 Bill Ryder-Jones – If… (Domino) 9 Bill Orcutt – How The Thing Sings (Editions Mego) 10 Ólõf Arnalds – Ólõf Sings (One Little Indian) 11 Steve Hauschildt – Tragedy & Geometry (Kranky) 12 Omar Souleyman – Haflat Gharbia: The Western Concerts (Sublime Frequencies) 13 Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Wolfroy Goes To Town (Domino) 14 Dirty Projectors + Bjõrk – Mount Wittenberg Orca (Domino) 15 Mark McGuire – Get Lost (Editions Mego)

Quickly today, because we’re finishing the next issue. Very much liking the Steve Hauschildt (from Emeralds) album at the moment.

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THE SMITHS – COMPLETE

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THE SMITHS – COMPLETE
The further we travel from the ’80s, the less it seems to matter to people, sadly, that The Smiths were once the underdogs, the opposition to all that was hateful. Their achievements were our victories; their crossover was our landslide. The year they emerged – 1983 – was a time for grabbing ...

The further we travel from the ’80s, the less it seems to matter to people, sadly, that The Smiths were once the underdogs, the opposition to all that was hateful.

Their achievements were our victories; their crossover was our landslide. The year they emerged – 1983 – was a time for grabbing at morsels: a Fall session on Peel; two good tracks on a Lou Reed album; Monday night repeats of The Prisoner on Channel 4. Politics? Terrifying. The media? About to go into yuppie overdrive. Thank heavens The Smiths came along.

Few bands in any era have seemed to stand for so much. The north. The ‘angry young men’ of ’60s cinema and literature. The celebration of language, wit and singularity (not to mention their gladioli and cardigan subcultures). The constant cache of cultural reference points: Warhol, Kes-like sadistic gamesmasters, “spend, spend, spend”. And the legions of the likeminded: the bashful, the thwarted, the endlessly sensitive.

It took one single (“Hand In Glove”) to make them seem interesting, another (“This Charming Man”) to confirm that they were special, and then an early 1984 B-side (“These Things Take Time”) to prove that they were magnificent. Morrissey – as epigrammatic as Wilde, as nonparticipatory as Flaubert – could elevate the concept of passion-free isolation to a fine art (“I need advice! I need advice! Nobody ever looks at me twice!”), but referred so frequently to death, with the clear implication that suicide might be his ultimate gesture, that any given lyric could leave you conflicted between amusement and shock. “He is the most self-actualised person I know,” his friend James Raymonde once commented; and sure enough, here came the selfs: self-condemnation (“I’m the most inept that ever stepped”), self-glorification (“learn to love me, assemble the ways”), self-exposure (“Do you see me when we pass? I half-die”). As for self-validation, he already had the rhyme ready for it: “just meet me in the alley by the railway station.”

If Morrissey was brilliant, Johnny Marr – his writing partner and musical enabler – was in the same league. Marr looked like a member of Orange Juice but played more like someone in Fairport Convention. It was novel to find a guitar-fixated songwriter-musician in the synthesiser age, when pop music to most people in Britain meant The Thompson Twins: someone singing, someone dancing and someone doing fuck-all. Morrissey and Marr wrote separately, the singer adding lyrics to backing tracks, but there was comprehensive unity in the finished results. Try to imagine the chords Morrissey heard when Marr gave him “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”, and then just marvel at the inspiration that could have put such a melody – a joyous dance for the voice – into the singer’s head. According to the accounts of bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce, Morrissey’s vocals invariably came as a total surprise to everyone in the studio. But surely Marr knew, when he wrote the music for “The Headmaster Ritual”, that Morrissey would time his entrance thrillingly late.

In the eight remastered albums that comprise the box set Complete, you’ll hear all four members of The Smiths, not just the songwriting team, make what 10cc called “a gradual graduation”. Recorded for the independent label Rough Trade (whose founder, Geoff Travis, ended up on the receiving end of Morrissey’s pen in “Frankly, Mr Shankly”), the albums came thick and fast, reflecting a headlong creative momentum that made The Smiths one of the most prolific and pace-setting bands of the ’80s. It wasn’t unusual for a new single (“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”, “Shakespeare’s Sister”, “Panic”) to emerge within a month or two of an album, and for 12-inch versions to feature two new B-sides. As a result, the career of The Smiths was uncommonly exciting to follow, but meant that consolidation was necessary at times. The compilation Hatful Of Hollow (1984) was released in the same year as the debut album (The Smiths) after demand for recordings of the band’s 1983 Peel sessions became insatiable. A second compilation (The World Won’t Listen) and even a third (Louder Than Bombs) rounded up their multiple singles and B-sides of 1985-87.

By playing the songs chronologically, one gets the true sense of how it was. The Smiths begin life as a kind of folk-rockabilly group (Hatful Of Hollow), finding lusher pastures (The Smiths) and moving into darker atmospheres (Meat Is Murder), before an autumn ’85 epiphany (“The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”) points the way towards Marr’s almost orchestral arrangements on The Queen Is Dead and Strangeways, Here We Come. Marr seldom concerned himself with guitar solos – the intro of “This Charming Man” is one of his rare ones – preferring to knit together beautiful, oddly African-sounding patterns and textures inside which a sparkling single note would duck and weave. But he could also be tough. His glam-rock phase (“Panic”, “Sheila Take A Bow”) wasn’t just a homage, it was an attempt to compete with the T. Rex singles he and Morrissey adored. Among the teenage guitarists who studied Marr obsessively were two – Graham Coxon and Bernard Butler – who would have a profound impact on the ’90s.

We are told that the eight albums on Complete (four studio, three compilations, one live) have been personally remastered by Johnny Marr, though it’s likely that the principal work was done by engineer Frank Arkwright, who remastered the 2008 compilation The Sound Of The Smiths. That album divided opinion between fans who enjoyed hearing Rourke’s bass loud and clear, and those who felt the songs sounded too harsh. These new remasters (which are due to be released individually in the spring of 2012) seem ‘softer’, less abrasive, not so teeth-rattling. It depends how you want to listen. If he can tear himself away from footballer Joey Barton, Morrissey might care to give them a spin himself. And remember a time when, like a pop version of Tracey Emin’s bed, he laid bare the minutiae and momentousness of his life, and watched himself become a source of infinite fascination.
David Cavanagh

Mick Jagger: ‘Being in SuperHeavy is easier than The Rolling Stones’

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Mick Jagger: ‘Being in SuperHeavy is easier than The Rolling Stones’
Mick Jagger has revealed that he finds it easier being in his supergroup SuperHeavy than he does with The Rolling Stones. In an interview with Spinner, the singer revealed that he was having "fun" not being the band's sole frontman and was enjoying having less responsibility – although he did cl...

Mick Jagger has revealed that he finds it easier being in his supergroup SuperHeavy than he does with The Rolling Stones.

In an interview with Spinner, the singer revealed that he was having “fun” not being the band’s sole frontman and was enjoying having less responsibility – although he did claim he had kept busy by making the other members of the group cups of tea.

SuperHeavy, who recently revealed the tracklisting for their eponymous debut album, which is set for release on September 20, also count Joss Stone, Damian Marley, Eurythmics‘ Dave Stewart and composer AR Rahman amongst their number. When asked how he was finding sharing vocal duties, Jagger said: “Well, it’s a lot easier for me, to be honest. That’s one of the things Dave [Stewart] sold me on in the beginning. ‘You know, it won’t be so hard for you, because you won’t have to do everything all the time’, and I said, ‘Yeah, right’. But of course, you’re present the whole time. When I wasn’t singing I was playing the guitar, and when I wasn’t playing the guitar, I was playing harmonica, and when I wasn’t doing any of that, I was producing, and when wasn’t doing that, I was making the tea.”

He went on to add: “But you know, I’m not singing all the time, so what I have to do is work out what harmonies I’m going to do and when Joss is going to sing. “OK, it’s your turn, sing this, and now we sing the chorus.” It’s quite easy to do that with Joss, and yeah, it’s fun not having to do the whole thing, but you can’t abdicate responsibility. You have to be there.”

Jagger also hinted that the band may be tempted to play live shows once the album is released, revealing: “We talked about doing some special shows for it. I don’t think it’s a band you’d want to go out on a 100-city tour with and do theaters, and everyone’s very busy and got their own careers, so I think we’d be up for something if it seemed to fit.”

Mick Jagger recently claimed that if The Rolling Stones were to celebrate their 50th anniversary next year, then guitarist Keith Richards would not be invited. The pair fell out when Richards mocked the size of Jagger’s manhood in his million-selling 2010 autobiography Life.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Ryan Adams announces October UK shows

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Ryan Adams announces October UK shows
Ryan Adams has announced two more UK dates for October. The singer, who releases a brand new album, 'Ashes & Fire' later this year, will play an intimate date at London's Union Chapel on October 27 and a larger show at York's Grand Opera House on the day after, October 28. 'Ashes & Fire'...

Ryan Adams has announced two more UK dates for October.

The singer, who releases a brand new album, ‘Ashes & Fire’ later this year, will play an intimate date at London‘s Union Chapel on October 27 and a larger show at York‘s Grand Opera House on the day after, October 28.

‘Ashes & Fire’, which is Adams‘ 13th studio album, will be released on the singer’s own own label, PAX-AM on October 10.

Recorded at Hollywood‘s Sunset Sound, the album was produced by Glyn Johns, father of Ethan Johns, who worked on Adams‘ albums ‘Heartbreaker’, ‘Gold’ and ’29’.

Norah Jones features on ‘Ashes & Fire’, singing backing vocals on a number of songs on the album, including ‘Come Home’, ‘Save Me’ and ‘Kindness’.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Kate Bush to release new album ’50 Words For Snow’ in November

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Kate Bush to release new album ’50 Words For Snow’ in November
Kate Bush has announced that she will release her new studio album '50 Words For Snow' later this year. '50 Words For Snow', has been given a release date of November 21. It will be released on Bush's own record label Fish People. You can view the album's artwork by scrolling up to the top of the ...

Kate Bush has announced that she will release her new studio album ’50 Words For Snow’ later this year.

’50 Words For Snow’, has been given a release date of November 21. It will be released on Bush‘s own record label Fish People. You can view the album’s artwork by scrolling up to the top of the page.

The LP is made up of just seven tracks, but is 65 minutes in length, with each song set against the background of constant falling snow. It is Bush‘s 10th studio album.

’50 Words For Snow’ is the second album Bush will release this year after she put out ‘Director’s Cut’ in May. ‘Director’s Cut’ was a collection of re-recorded versions of tracks from her 1989 album ‘The Sensual World’ and 1993’s ‘The Red Shoes’. She last released a new studio album of entirely new material in 2005 with ‘Aerial’.

The tracklisting for ’50 Words For Snow’ is as follows:

‘Snowflake’

‘Lake Tahoe’

‘Misty’

‘Wildman’

‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’

’50 Words For Snow’

‘Among Angels’

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Hear Coldplay’s new single ‘Paradise’

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Hear Coldplay’s new single ‘Paradise’
Coldplay have posted their new single 'Paradise' online, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to hear it. The track, which is the second single to be taken from their fifth studio album 'Mylo Xyloto', is available for sale today (September 12). The band have also revealed the tracklis...

Coldplay have posted their new single ‘Paradise’ online, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to hear it.

The track, which is the second single to be taken from their fifth studio album ‘Mylo Xyloto’, is available for sale today (September 12).

The band have also revealed the tracklisting for ‘Mylo Xyloto’, which includes recent single ‘Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall’.

The album, which features 14 tracks, also includes ‘Hurts Like Heaven’, ‘Charlie Brown’, ‘Us Against The World’ and ‘Major Minus’, all of which the band debuted during their summer live shows, including a headline spot at Glastonbury Festival.

The tracklisting for ‘Mylo Xyloto’ is as follows:

‘Mylo Xyloto’

‘Hurts Like Heaven’

‘Paradise’

‘Charlie Brown’

‘Us Against The World’

‘M.M.I.X’

‘Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall’

‘Major Minus’

‘U.F.O.’

‘Princess Of China’

‘Up In Flames’

‘A Hopeful Transmission’

‘Don’t Let It Break Your Heart’

‘Up With The Birds’

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

ROLLING STONES’ NEW DVD & BLU-RAY ANNOUNCED

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ROLLING STONES’ NEW DVD & BLU-RAY ANNOUNCED
The Rolling Stones are set to release a new concert title on November 21. Some Girls Live In Texas 1978 will be available Eagle Vision/Rolling Stones enterprizes on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as Special Edition DVD + CD and Blu-ray + CD digipacks. It's the latest release from the Stones' vaults, aft...

The Rolling Stones are set to release a new concert title on November 21.

Some Girls Live In Texas 1978 will be available Eagle Vision/Rolling Stones enterprizes on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as Special Edition DVD + CD and Blu-ray + CD digipacks.

It’s the latest release from the Stones’ vaults, after the celebrated release of Exile On Main Street last year and Ladies & Gentlemen… The Rolling Stones earlier this year.

Teasingly, the Stones had tweeted on their official Twitter account, Stones_dot_com, on September 7: ‘Remember the summer of ‘78, where were you?’

The band were in Fort Worth, in fact, on July 18, 1978, where this show was recorded, where they played a set including classics “Honky Tonk Woman“, “Miss You”, “Brown Sugar” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” alongside “All Down The Line”, “Star Star” and “Happy”.

We’ll be reviewing the DVD/Blu-ray in a forthcoming edition of Uncut.

WIN TICKETS TO SEE BRIAN WILSON

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WIN TICKETS TO SEE BRIAN WILSON
Brian Wilson is playing three dates at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank, on September 16, 17 and 18. He will be performing his latest album, Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin, in full – as well as plenty of Beach Boys and solo hits. We have a pair of tickets to give away to the sh...

Brian Wilson is playing three dates at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank, on September 16, 17 and 18.

He will be performing his latest album, Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin, in full – as well as plenty of Beach Boys and solo hits.

We have a pair of tickets to give away to the show of your choice, as well as a signed vinyl copy of the …Gershwin album.

We also have 5 copies of the …Gershwin album on CD to give away as consolation prizes.

To be in with a chance of winning one of these great prizes, just answer the question below correctly:

Which Beach Boys album is soon to going to be released, 45 years after it was recorded?

Email your name, address, a daytime contact number and specify which show you’d like to attend to:

uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com

We’ll need your entries by noon, September 14. The editor’s decision is final. Neither Uncut nor the South Bank Centre will provide transport or accommodation.

You can find more information here about the Brian Wilson show plus other events on the South Bank at:

www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Ask David Lynch

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Ask David Lynch
David Lynch, long a hero of ours here at Uncut, will soon be answering your questions in our regular An Audience With... feature. There's so much to talk about - coffee, Transcendental Meditation, his new album, oh and perhaps some movies. So what would you like to ask him? What really happened t...

David Lynch, long a hero of ours here at Uncut, will soon be answering your questions in our regular An Audience With… feature.

There’s so much to talk about – coffee, Transcendental Meditation, his new album, oh and perhaps some movies.

So what would you like to ask him?

What really happened to Agent Cooper at the end of Twin Peaks?

Where’s the most unusual place he’s drunk a cup of coffee?

Was he really going to direct Return Of The Jedi?

Send your questions to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com by Tuesday, September 13. We’ll print the best ones – and Lynch’s answers – in a forthcoming edition of Uncut.

Good luck!

LAURA MARLING – A CREATURE I DON’T KNOW

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LAURA MARLING – A CREATURE I DON’T KNOW
Laura Marling was born in Hampshire in 1990, the year of the Stone Roses at Spike Island, of Ride’s Nowhere, of the gathering wave of grunge – post-Bleach, pre-Nevermind – beginning its roll towards the mainstream. Yet she might just as easily have been born in Brooklyn in 1950, or Liverpool i...

Laura Marling was born in Hampshire in 1990, the year of the Stone Roses at Spike Island, of Ride’s Nowhere, of the gathering wave of grunge – post-Bleach, pre-Nevermind – beginning its roll towards the mainstream. Yet she might just as easily have been born in Brooklyn in 1950, or Liverpool in the 1980. From the moment Marling emerged, aged 18, with her remarkably assured debut, Alas I Cannot Swim, her music seemed to float high above the specifics of time, age and place.

Friendships (and romances) with members of Noah And The Whale and Mumford & Sons, who backed Marling on her second album, I Speak Because I Can, ensured she was filed alongside the new wave of Brit-folk, but her story is less neat and more interesting than that. A young woman with a voice of solid silver rather than fine gossamer, her youthful precocity was backed up by opaque, literate songs. That Marling owed a debt to a long line of poetic singer-songwriters was clear, yet she possessed not only the stamp of originality, but also the sense of someone making music not simply because they could, but because they had to.

I Speak Because I Can (2010) traced Marling’s move towards womanhood with a cool, clear hand. Like her first it had moments of greatness and was almost excessively lauded, yet among the plaudits the suspicion lingered that the praise was as much for what Marling could be as what she actually was.

Her third album allows little scope for such equivocations. In the 18 months between I Speak Because I Can and A Creature I Don’t Know, Marling has moved from her late teens into her early twenties, a period of significant and accelerated growth. Now 21, there’s a powerful sense of her music keeping pace with her life. A Creature I Don’t Know feels like a more wayward, somewhat wanton older sister to her first two records. It pulls at the hems of her music, musses its hair, smudges its lipstick. The musical and vocal inflections are mostly American; the vibe looser; the rhythms more adventurous. In short, the bookish pallor of old has taken on a distinctly golden hue. And it suits her.

A new playfulness leaps from the opening two songs, which are almost skittish. “The Muse” skips along on a jumpy, jazzy rhythm, all banjo, piano rolls, scratchy brushes and splashing cymbals. “I Was Just A Card” is a similarly upbeat piece of Cali jazz-folk, and would simply be a parody of peak-period Joni Mitchell – the same pure falsetto, the same rattling open tuned guitar, the same ingeniously meandering structure – were it not done with such skill and verve.

What’s immediately apparent is that Marling’s vocals have become more stylised, more soulful, more sexual, more assured. She switches from musky jazz elisions to tart spoken asides, from a mischievousness that recalls Mary Margaret O’Hara to the plainly rendered purity of Natalie Merchant. There’s even a touch of Rufus Wainwright’s theatrical grandstanding on the rousing Bierkeller chorus of “Don’t Ask Me Why”, a Spanish-inflected ballad which drifts into “Salinas”, a bluesy, bawdy affair about a mother with “long blonde curly hair down to her thigh”.

This vocal adventurousness reflects the increased dynamism of the music. If her previous records tended towards cool and aloof, Marling, producer Ethan Johns and their admirably supple group of musicians ensure that A Creature I Don’t Know feels several degrees warmer without sacrificing any intensity.

These 10 songs are peopled by a rich cast of recurring characters – mothers, muses, sons, lovers, shape-shifting creatures – all of whom seem forever on the brink of something terrible. “The Beast”, a looming minor-chord crawl, is a six-minute exorcism of some violent, carnal urge. It begins as a whisper and rises to a nightmarish crescendo, guitars growling, drums like thunder on the mountain. Sonically it’s more PJ Harvey than Laura Nyro. Lyrically, Marling appropriates Judee Sill’s unsettling mix of the sexual and spiritual.

The beast also makes an appearance in “The Muse” and “Salinas”, but ultimately remains undefined. Marling isn’t keen on absolutes. She enjoys playing with the language of intimacy but shies away from the overtly confessional. She comes closest to revelation on “Night After Night”, five minutes of the artist alone with her gut string guitar and her darkness. Initially the song sails so close to Leonard’s Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” that when she sings “You were my speaker, my innocence keeper” the listener might be tempted to harmonise with “What can I tell you, my brother, my killer”. The song gradually stretches into the coming dawn, becoming almost indecently tormented – “my love is driven by rage” – as it does so. It’s a spell, an incantation, a confession which never quite makes clear exactly what’s being confessed. It might easily be the best thing she has ever done.

“Rest In My Bed” is similarly discomfiting, a gothic love song which promises that “the dark between my heart and his is as good as a diamond chain”. As if to restore some semblance of emotional balance, elsewhere the beauty runs clear and bright. The thrumming “My Friends” is a simple but joyous rush of accordion, banjo, cello and the kind of freight-train whoops which recall Fleet Foxes’ “Ragged Wood”; the closing passage feels like bursting out of some shaded copse into a patch of pure sunlight. “Sophia”, too, begins desultorily, the narrator “shy and tired-eyed”, but rises up on the back of Marling’s octave-leaping vocal before transforming itself, improbably but delightfully, into a lip-smacking country hoedown.

It’s deeply impressive. Not just because the songs and performances are stronger and more consistent than ever before, but because at 21 Marling seems so determined not to settle into a niche which could easily confine her. She has come a long way in a short time, and has undoubtedly got further to travel. For now, we should simply savour the sound of an artist setting herself new targets and hitting each one with real panache.

Graeme Thomson

JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE – WINTERLAND

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JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE – WINTERLAND

It’s not exactly a new idea, but it’s still contrary to popular belief. What if Jimi Hendrix’s mythology rested on the sprightly concision and construction of his pop songs, rather than the entrail-sprawl of his extended guitar pyrotechnics? Never mind the solos, what about the tunes? It’s a thought that passes through the mind repeatedly during Winterland, (yet) a(nother) reissue from the Hendrix estate. A six-disc bootleg set, The Winterland Reels, has floated around for some time, but now Legacy have taken it upon themselves to make Winterland available as both a single-disc set, and a four-disc deluxe edition replete with booklet, interview, and heavy selections from Hendrix’s three-night stint at the storied venue, San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, from October 10–12, 1968. Performed just as the double album indulgence of Electric Ladyland was released, it captures the Experience just before their break, with guest appearances from, among others, the Airplane’s Jack Casady. It was also previously released in bowdlerised form, as a single disc, by Rhino back in 1987, and having gone the distance with the deluxe Winterland, there’s something to be said for tasting these live performances in a highlights-only, heavily edited context. That said, the best moments on the deluxe edition are almost worth laying down for. A beautifully poised “Little Wing”, from the October 12 show, is a great reminder of what an articulate, mythopoetic song writer Hendrix could be, and his solo, splitting the song’s happy-sad tenor wide open, is all hanging tones, diving into pools of wah-fuzz but mostly holding its breath above the water, the better to articulate the melancholy at the heart of what may still stand as Hendrix’s best song. The devastating, climbing-and-descending riff of “Manic Depression” has rarely seemed so drowsy, and the performance here from the 12th also shows off how limber Mitch Mitchell was, plotting a wild course across the song, accentuating its shape-shifting dynamics. On the other side of the fence, the guitar immolation of the 10th’s “Star Spangled Banner”, for a few disorienting minutes, is closer to Lee Ranaldo or Ascension’s Stefan Jaworzyn exploring the outer limits of what the guitar can do, the instrument in freefall until Hendrix pins it to the mast with the anthem’s melody. But it’s the playing on the October 11 set that’s particularly heady, with some great slabs of drone-out action scrawled across the jams: the version of “Tax Free” from this show slips in and out of rote blues meandering, but there’s a beautiful section at around the six-and-a-half-minute mark where Hendrix worries over a few notes, stretching them for all their overtonal properties while also tangling with the bass in a cat’s cradle of noise. Similarly, the ending of Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone”, the song already drawn and pulled like so much taffy over its 12 minutes, has Hendrix pulling out carillon notes, before driving the point home with hallucinogenic feedback. Winterland is full of such moments, where you’re reminded that another of Hendrix’s great skills was his understanding of the compulsive draw of the drone: that sometimes incremental shifts in tonal configurations could speak more eloquently than his trade-mark solos, hammer-ons and blues comping. So there’s some great music on here – but let’s not forget, there are also great portions of relative dead air. For example, the October 10 jams on “Tax Free” and “Sunshine Of Your Love” – which is stripped of its vocal melody, and thus the essential counterpoint to the monolithic riff that makes Cream’s original swing – may feature moments of rollercoaster-risky guitar playing, but by your third or fourth listen, they are, whisper it, deathly dull. This problem mars many live recordings from Hendrix and other musicians from this era – though considering the repeated alchemy the Grateful Dead pulled from the skies on their own Winterland set, it sometimes makes you think the Experience, at this point, weren’t quite as alchemical as we’re led to believe. The box itself seems a weird one, too – the single disc release acts as a good primer, but if Legacy are going to stretch to a ‘deluxe’ 4CD set, then why not stretch two further and make available the Winterland Reels 6CD bootleg in its entirety? There are more than enough Hendrix heads who would obsess over the full run, with its many peaks and troughs, goofy banter, go-nowhere jams, and then those moments of breathless suspension, when the Experience finally lock into space. Jon Dale

It’s not exactly a new idea, but it’s still contrary to popular belief. What if Jimi Hendrix’s mythology rested on the sprightly concision and construction of his pop songs, rather than the entrail-sprawl of his extended guitar pyrotechnics? Never mind the solos, what about the tunes?

It’s a thought that passes through the mind repeatedly during Winterland, (yet) a(nother) reissue from the Hendrix estate. A six-disc bootleg set, The Winterland Reels, has floated around for some time, but now Legacy have taken it upon themselves to make Winterland available as both a single-disc set, and a four-disc deluxe edition replete with booklet, interview, and heavy selections from Hendrix’s three-night stint at the storied venue, San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, from October 10–12, 1968. Performed just as the double album indulgence of Electric Ladyland was released, it captures the Experience just before their break, with guest appearances from, among others, the Airplane’s Jack Casady.

It was also previously released in bowdlerised form, as a single disc, by Rhino back in 1987, and having gone the distance with the deluxe Winterland, there’s something to be said for tasting these live performances in a highlights-only, heavily edited context. That said, the best moments on the deluxe edition are almost worth laying down for. A beautifully poised “Little Wing”, from the October 12 show, is a great reminder of what an articulate, mythopoetic song writer Hendrix could be, and his solo, splitting the song’s happy-sad tenor wide open, is all hanging tones, diving into pools of wah-fuzz but mostly holding its breath above the water, the better to articulate the melancholy at the heart of what may still stand as Hendrix’s best song. The devastating, climbing-and-descending riff of “Manic Depression” has rarely seemed so drowsy, and the performance here from the 12th also shows off how limber Mitch Mitchell was, plotting a wild course across the song, accentuating its shape-shifting dynamics. On the other side of the fence, the guitar immolation of the 10th’s “Star Spangled Banner”, for a few disorienting minutes, is closer to Lee Ranaldo or Ascension’s Stefan Jaworzyn exploring the outer limits of what the guitar can do, the instrument in freefall until Hendrix pins it to the mast with the anthem’s melody.

But it’s the playing on the October 11 set that’s particularly heady, with some great slabs of drone-out action scrawled across the jams: the version of “Tax Free” from this show slips in and out of rote blues meandering, but there’s a beautiful section at around the six-and-a-half-minute mark where Hendrix worries over a few notes, stretching them for all their overtonal properties while also tangling with the bass in a cat’s cradle of noise. Similarly, the ending of Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone”, the song already drawn and pulled like so much taffy over its 12 minutes, has Hendrix pulling out carillon notes, before driving the point home with hallucinogenic feedback. Winterland is full of such moments, where you’re reminded that another of Hendrix’s great skills was his understanding of the compulsive draw of the drone: that sometimes incremental shifts in tonal configurations could speak more eloquently than his trade-mark solos, hammer-ons and blues comping.

So there’s some great music on here – but let’s not forget, there are also great portions of relative dead air. For example, the October 10 jams on “Tax Free” and “Sunshine Of Your Love” – which is stripped of its vocal melody, and thus the essential counterpoint to the monolithic riff that makes Cream’s original swing – may feature moments of rollercoaster-risky guitar playing, but by your third or fourth listen, they are, whisper it, deathly dull. This problem mars many live recordings from Hendrix and other musicians from this era – though considering the repeated alchemy the Grateful Dead pulled from the skies on their own Winterland set, it sometimes makes you think the Experience, at this point, weren’t quite as alchemical as we’re led to believe.

The box itself seems a weird one, too – the single disc release acts as a good primer, but if Legacy are going to stretch to a ‘deluxe’ 4CD set, then why not stretch two further and make available the Winterland Reels 6CD bootleg in its entirety? There are more than enough Hendrix heads who would obsess over the full run, with its many peaks and troughs, goofy banter, go-nowhere jams, and then those moments of breathless suspension, when the Experience finally lock into space.

Jon Dale

TROLL HUNTER

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TROLL HUNTER
Directed by André Øvredal Starring Otto Jespersen, Hans Morten Hansen In this inspired horror, wild trolls go on the rampage in the Norwegian countryside, killing livestock and causing all manner of mischief. The government has gone to extreme lengths to keep their existence a secret. Howeve...

Directed by André Øvredal

Starring Otto Jespersen, Hans Morten Hansen

In this inspired horror, wild trolls go on the rampage in the Norwegian countryside, killing livestock and causing all manner of mischief.

The government has gone to extreme lengths to keep their existence a secret. However, one troll hunter, Hans (Otto Jespersen), is so peeved at his working conditions that he invites a student film crew to accompany him on a hunt for the creatures.

Jespersen, one of Norway’s most famous and controversial comedians, looks uncannily like white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche.

He plays his role in such a gruff and earnest way – and øvredal directs in such deadpan realist fashion – you soon forget the absurdity of the premise.

The trolls themselves, feral beasts thrown into a rage whenever they smell Christians, appear a convincingly realistic menace. There have been many horror films since Blair Witch using the “found footage” conceit. This is one of the few to do so with any originality.

Geoffrey Macnab

Brett Anderson, Patrick Wolf to play shows in Oxfam shops

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Brett Anderson, Patrick Wolf to play shows in Oxfam shops
Brett Anderson and Patrick Wolf are among the artists set to play gigs in a London branch of the charity shop Oxfam. The shows will launch the fifth year of the charity’s Oxjam fundraising music festival and will take place at the end of September. Fatboy Slim, Charlie Simpson, Man Like Me and Me...

Brett Anderson and Patrick Wolf are among the artists set to play gigs in a London branch of the charity shop Oxfam.

The shows will launch the fifth year of the charity’s Oxjam fundraising music festival and will take place at the end of September. Fatboy Slim, Charlie Simpson, Man Like Me and Mercury Prize nominee Ghostpoet are also all set to take part. The shows will also see the launch of ‘Kinshasa One Two’, the album by DRC Music, which was recently recorded by Damon Albarn in the Democratic Republic of Congo to raise funds for Oxfam.

The shows will take place in an as-yet-unannounced London branch of Oxfam. The shop in which the gigs will take place will be revealed the week before the shows. It will sell second-hand records during the day and be converted into a venue in the evening.

Of the shows Brett Anderson said: “In the early-’90s, Suede bought most of their clothes in Oxfam shops. It was always somewhere you could find cheap, interesting old things that no-one else had and, for a few years, it pretty much defined our style, so I feel a massive sense of homecoming with the Oxjam gig. The Oxfam shop is a great British institution that no high street should be without, and the Oxjam gigs are an extension of this blend of philanthropy and offbeat style.”

The line-up so far is:

Fatboy Slim, Kissy Sell Out, Man Like Me (September 26)

Brett Anderson, Patrick Wolf, Ghostpoet (27)

Charlie Simpson plus more TBA (28)

DRC Music album launch feat. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Richard Russell (XL Records), Kwes (Warp Records) and more. (29)

Tickets are on sale now exclusively from wegottickets.com/oxjam

For more information visit Oxjam.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Foo Fighters, Mumford & Sons, Arcade Fire for Neil Young’s charity gig

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Foo Fighters, Mumford & Sons, Arcade Fire for Neil Young’s charity gig
Foo Fighters, Neil Young, Mumford & Sons and Arcade Fire are among the artists set to play the yearly Bridge School Benefit concert, which is arranged by Young himself alongside his wife Pegi. All the artists appearing at the shows, which take place October 22-23 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre i...

Foo Fighters, Neil Young, Mumford & Sons and Arcade Fire are among the artists set to play the yearly Bridge School Benefit concert, which is arranged by Young himself alongside his wife Pegi.

All the artists appearing at the shows, which take place October 22-23 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, will be performing acoustically. Other acts include Eddie Vedder, Tony Bennett, Beck, Jenny Lewis and Los Invisibles featuring Carlos Santana.

Profits from the weekend’s shows will go towards the Bridge School, which helps children with “severe physical impairments and complex communication needs”, reports Rolling Stone. The school was founded in 1986 by Neil Young and his wife to look after their son Ben and other children. The 1986 benefit show saw appearances from Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Don Henley.

David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Simon and Garfunkel, Elton John, The Who, Tom Waits and Metallica have all played the concert over the years.

Visit Bridge School Benefit for more information.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy to release new album in October

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Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy to release new album in October
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is set to release his new album, 'Wolfroy Goes To Town', on October 31 on the Domino label. The follow up to 2010's 'The Wonder Show Of The World' will be Will Oldham's ninth album release under the Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy name. Collaborators on the album include members o...

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy is set to release his new album, ‘Wolfroy Goes To Town’, on October 31 on the Domino label.

The follow up to 2010’s ‘The Wonder Show Of The World’ will be Will Oldham‘s ninth album release under the Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy name.

Collaborators on the album include members of Oldham‘s touring band, Van Campbell, Ben Boye, Shahzad Ismaily, Danny Kiely, Angel Olsen and Emmett Kelly. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy will be touring the album this autumn in North America and mainland Europe. However, no UK dates have yet been announced.

The tracklisting for ‘Wolfroy Goes To Town’ is:

‘No Match’

‘New Whaling’

‘Time To Be Clear’

‘New Tibet’

‘Black Captain’

‘Cows’

‘There Will Be Spring’

‘Quail And Dumplings’

‘We Are Unhappy’

‘Night Noises’

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy recently covered country legend Merle Haggard‘s ‘Because Of Your Eyes’, which you can hear below:

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

PJ Harvey wins 2011 Barclaycard Mercury Prize

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PJ Harvey wins 2011 Barclaycard Mercury Prize
PJ Harvey has won this year's [url=http://www.mercuryprize.com]Barclaycard Mercury Prize[/url]. The winner was announced last night (September 6) at a ceremony at the Grosvenor Hotel in London. This was the first time in the competition's history that every one of the nominated artists was schedule...

PJ Harvey has won this year’s [url=http://www.mercuryprize.com]Barclaycard Mercury Prize[/url].

The winner was announced last night (September 6) at a ceremony at the Grosvenor Hotel in London. This was the first time in the competition’s history that every one of the nominated artists was scheduled to perform at the ceremony itself, although Adele had to pull out due to illness.

Harvey accepted the award and £20,000 cash prize with a straightforward, composed speech, “First of all I’d like to say thank you very much for this award, and the recognition of my work on this album,” she said.

Harvey, the award’s first two-time winner, also made reference to her previous win, which famously took place on September 11, 2001, an event of course overshadowed by the terrorist attacks in the United States.

She said: “It’s nice to actually be here. I was in in Washington, DC, watching the Pentagon burning from my hotel window, so it’s good to be here. So much has happened since then. This album took me a long time write. It was very important to me, I wanted to make something that was meaningful not just for myself but for other people, hopefully to make something that would last.”

Harvey went on to thank “the people that have supported her throughout her career”: her manager, her record company Island, agents and “those who helped me make ‘Let England Shake'”.

The ceremony was broadcast on BBC Two and was hosted by Jools Holland.

The Barclaycard Mercury Prize was won in 2010 by The XX for their self-titled debut album.

The full list of nominees was:

Anna Calvi – ‘Anna Calvi’

Elbow – ‘Build A Rocket Boys!’

James Blake – ‘James Blake’

Katy B – ‘On A Mission’

Metronomy – ‘The English Riviera’

Tinie Tempah – ‘Disc-Overy’

PJ Harvey – ‘Let England Shake’

Gwilym Simcock – ‘Good Days At Schloss Elmau’

Everything Everything – ‘Man Alive’

Ghostpoet – ‘Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam’

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – ‘Diamond Mine’

Adele – ’21’

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

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