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Line-up revealed for UK Americana Awards 2023

Michael Bonner
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Line-up revealed for UK Americana Awards 2023
The line-up have been revealed for next year's UK Americana Awards, which take place on January 26 at London's Hackney Empire. ORDER NOW: Neil Young is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut Confirmed performers including Allison Russell, Passenger, Nickel Creek, Lady Nade, The Hanging St...

The line-up have been revealed for next year’s UK Americana Awards, which take place on January 26 at London’s Hackney Empire.

Confirmed performers including Allison Russell, Passenger, Nickel Creek, Lady Nade, The Hanging Stars, The Heavy Heavy, Ferris and Sylvester, Simeon Hammond Dallas, Elles Bailey and Miko Marks join previously announced artists, Judy Collins and Mike Scott.

In addition, the Awards show will honour Loretta Lynn in a multi-artist tribute.

Meanwhile, Allison Russell will deliver The Keynote Speech at UK Americana Music Week Conference, which takes place between January 23 – 26 in Hackney.

Awards only tickets are available here.

Delegate passes and showcase wristbands are available here.

See a full list of nominees below for the awards show at Hackney Empire.

UK Album of the Year
• Birds That Flew and Ships That Sailed by Passenger (Produced by Mike Rosenberg and Chris Vallejo)
• Blue Hours by Bear’s Den (Produced by Ian Grimble)
• Shining In The Half Light by Elles Bailey (Produced by Dan Weller)
• Superhuman by Ferris and Sylvester (Produced by Ryan Hadlock and Michael Rendall)

International Album Of The Year
• In These Silent Days by Brandi Carlile (produced by Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings)
• Pohorylle by Margo Cilker (produced by Sera Cahoone)
• Raise The Roof by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (produced by T Bone Burnett)
• The Man From Waco by Charley Crockett (produced by Bruce Robison)

UK Song Of The Year
• Car Crash by Hannah White (Written by Hannah White)
• Grace by Marcus Mumford (Written by Blake Mills and Marcus Mumford)
• Make It Romantic by Simeon Hammond Dallas (Written by Simeon Hammond Dallas)
• The Right Place by Danny George Wilson (written by Danny Wilson)

International Song Of The Year
• I Don’t Really Care for You by CMAT (Written by Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson)
• Something in the Orange by Zach Bryan (Written by Zachary Lane Bryan)
• Take It Like A Man by Amanda Shires (Written by Amanda Shires and Lawrence Rothman)
• You’re Not Alone by Allison Russell feat. Brandi Carlile (Written by Allison Russell)

UK Artist Of The Year
• Bear’s Den
• Elles Bailey
• Ferris and Sylvester
• Lady Nade

International Artist of the Year
• Allison Russell
• Brandi Carlile
• Margo Cilker
• The Dead South

UK Instrumentalist of the Year
• Holly Carter
• Joe Coombs
• Joe Wilkins
• Mark Lewis

UK Live Act of the Year
• Beans On Toast
• Elles Bailey
• Ferris & Sylvester
• Holy Moly & The Crackers
• Noble Jacks
• The Heavy, Heavy

Bruce Springsteen – Only the Strong Survive (Covers Vol 1)

Richard Williams
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Bruce Springsteen – Only the Strong Survive (Covers Vol 1)
Listening to Walter Orange and JD Nicholas sing “Nightshift” can still make you cry, 37 years after they recorded the song with their group, the Commodores. The two lead singers each take a verse. Orange begins with the one about Marvin Gaye. Nicholas takes the one about Jackie Wilson. It’s a ...

Listening to Walter Orange and JD Nicholas sing “Nightshift” can still make you cry, 37 years after they recorded the song with their group, the Commodores. The two lead singers each take a verse. Orange begins with the one about Marvin Gaye. Nicholas takes the one about Jackie Wilson. It’s a hymn to a pair of recently departed heroes, quoting from their best-known songs, but it’s not a pastiche. The rich synth textures and the finely detailed percussion are a reminder that this was made in 1985, not 1965. The voices are filled with love and loss. When Orange begins with “Marvin, he was a friend of mine”, it’s more than just a reference to Gaye’s hit version of “Abraham, Martin And John”. It’s a statement of cultural kinship, of brotherhood.

By making “Nightshift” one of the 15 old soul songs he tackles on his new album, Bruce Springsteen is setting himself quite a challenge. In strictly musical terms, he does a decent job of reproducing the original. The rhythm track is convincing, he sings with passion, and there’s a flourish of B3 on the fade that Dennis Lambert, the Commodores’ producer, might wish he’d thought of. But what does such a thing mean in 2022, all those decades after first Elvis recorded Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right Mama” and The Beatles covered Barrett Strong’s “Money”? They were appropriating black music in order to build a platform for their own world-changing means of expression. Does it still work – is it still right – for a famous white singer to present us with his version of black music in quite so straightforwardly imitative a form?

Like many of his contemporaries, Springsteen began his career performing covers, playing black or black-derived songs for a young white audience. A generation was borrowing the syntax and grammar of the music, and the best used it to mould a language of their own. In the bones of almost every song Springsteen ever wrote is the DNA of R&B and soul music, and in a sense it’s honourable of him to want to acknowledge the debt so explicitly. But will the hundreds of thousands who buy his covers album bother to delve back and listen to the 1968 recording of Jerry Butler singing the title song, or William Bell singing “I Forgot To Be Your Lover” that same year? Some might, just as Long John Baldry’s version of “Hoochie Coochie Man”, the Stones’ “Honest I Do” or The Animals’ “I’m Mad Again” certainly led many to the work of Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker in the early ’60s. But we live in a world in which there are still people who can seriously express a preference for Rod Stewart’s perfectly decent cover of “(I Know) I’m Losing You” over the Temptations’ sublime original, suggesting that we might not have come as far as we thought.

The specific motives that led him to record Only The Strong Survive are understandable and legitimate. He wanted to see how his voice worked on this material, detached from the meaning of the songs he writes himself, and to measure himself against a generation of great singers, such as Ben E King (“Don’t Play That Song”), Tyrone Davis (“Turn Back The Hands Of Time”) and the Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs (“7 Rooms Of Gloom”). The homage would be implicit. In the process he might also rediscover the sense of mingled joy and pain that great soul music contains, and with which he infused crowd-stirring songs of his own, so effectively in something like “Hungry Heart”.

Covers were always a feature of his live act, from “When You Walk In The Room” and “Pretty Flamingo”, choices that exposed the roots of his own songwriting in the early touring days, to “Dream Baby Dream” and “Friday On My Mind” – and, of course, the ecstatic encores: “Twist And Shout”, “Quarter To Three” and the Mitch Ryder medley. The new studio album, however, is a sustained exercise in interpretation, a test both for himself and for his audience, who are invited to enjoy the sound of him stepping outside his own myth.

For a certain kind of listener, this is also an invitation to play amateur A&R man, questioning his choices. Why did he select two songs – “Only The Strong Survive” and “Hey Western Union Man” – from the same Jerry Butler album (The Iceman Cometh)? Perhaps he could have been more adventurous: why two songs from William Bell and none from, say, Frederick Knight, Philip Mitchell or Sam Dees? Or Curtis Mayfield, whose “Gypsy Woman” he covered on a tribute album in 1994?

What Springsteen doesn’t do is produce a caricature of soul music. It may be hard for somebody of his level of fame to affect the modesty that characterised many (not all) great soul singers, but for this he can rely on our knowledge of his own personality, in which a frontman’s natural extroversion has never shaded into brashness. If he can’t reproduce the sense Tyrone Davis brought to a song of being a country boy landed in the big city, then he can treat his “Turn Back The Hands Of Time” with proper respect; if he wasn’t raised in the black church, then he can bring restraint and finesse to the pathos of Bell’s “I Forgot To Be Your Lover”.

There are several shades of soul music on show here. “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore”, sung by Frankie Valli before the Walker Brothers, is New Jersey’s version of Brill Building orchestral pop-soul. The Supremes’ “Someday We’ll Be Together” is Motown at its sweetest. Both the Butler songs echo the gliding Philly Sound invented by their producers and co-composers, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Adding the responses of the veteran Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave) to “I Forgot To Be Your Lover” and Dobie Gray’s “Soul Days” is a nice touch, evoking and saluting the voices of the past.

Sometimes enthusiasm is not enough. “7 Rooms…” is taken a hair too fast and Stubbs’ majestic agony is beyond Springsteen’s reach. “When She Was My Girl”, the Four Tops’ first hit after leaving Motown, simply isn’t worth the trouble. Over the long fade of “What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted”, Springsteen repeats “I’m gonna find my way” as if this were “Backstreets”, making you want to reach for Jimmy Ruffin, who was decidedly less sure about whether he’d ever escape his existential woe. And there are times when, while applauding Springsteen’s attempts to stay faithful to the originals, you wish he’d taken more chances; listening to the rawness of the bluesman Bobby Rush’s 1979 cover of “Hey Western Union Man” might have sent him off in more surprising directions.

But that was not his intention, and it becomes hard to carp when he brings off something as triumphantly as his note-perfect version of Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)”, the zenith of northern soul, a surviving copy of which famously fetched £25,742 at auction in 2009. Singing as though he knows exactly how it felt to be among the dancers at Wigan Casino or Blackpool Mecca, he doesn’t just capture the details – the vibes, the baritone sax, the four-to-the-bar snare drum, the choir – of the recording conjured up in a Los Angeles studio by the producers Hal Davis and Marc Gordon in 1965: he inhabits its spirit.

The Welcome Wagon – Esther

Rob Hughes
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The Welcome Wagon – Esther
Monique Aiuto and her husband, Presbyterian pastor Vito Aiuto, tend to operate by their own clock. Since 2008’s Welcome To…, their arresting debut as The Welcome Wagon, produced by Sufjan Stevens on his own Asthmatic Kitty label, the pair have released just two albums, suggesting that artistic ...

Monique Aiuto and her husband, Presbyterian pastor Vito Aiuto, tend to operate by their own clock. Since 2008’s Welcome To…, their arresting debut as The Welcome Wagon, produced by Sufjan Stevens on his own Asthmatic Kitty label, the pair have released
just two albums, suggesting that artistic inspiration can be a fickle companion.

Much of the impetus for their latest came from Monique’s decision to take up painting again after a decade of inactivity. The collage materials she used were taken from the collection of her late grandmother, Esther, whose readings from the Bible (home-recorded onto cassette during the ’90s) kept her company. As Vito’s tentative new songs gathered shape, with Monique’s accompanying artwork, it became apparent that home, family and faith were the three interlocking themes of what became Esther.

Simplicity is key to the Welcome Wagon sound. Vito’s guitar is gentle and politic, allowing for their voices – either trading leads or paired in intimate harmony – to carry the soft weight of these devotional songs. A winding acoustic pattern forms the basis of “Isaiah, California”, a missive to both their son and the importance of belonging. “In the morning / By the fire / We’re going home”, sings Monique in an almost confidential hush.

Occasional samples of Esther’s voice provide a kind of narrative thread, linking Vito’s originals to sacred hymnals like “Noble Tree” and “Bethlehem, A Noble City”, while “Nunc Dimittis” is a canticle from the Gospel of Luke in traditional Latin. With subtle embellishments of brass, strings and piano, Esther sometimes resembles the work of The Innocence Mission or Stevens himself: charming, understated and often very beautiful. And while a couple of these songs tend to merely drift by, the more muscular “Matthew 7:7” mirrors the unshakeable faith of its central message – essentially, seek and you will find.

Similarly, the sterling “Lebanon” addresses memory and transfiguration via shifting bursts of electric guitar and a resolute drum pulse, sounding not unlike Joy Zipper, another New York-based duo prone to going to ground.

New Order share classic Haçienda performance of “Sunrise”

Tom Skinner
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New Order share classic Haçienda performance of “Sunrise”
New Order have shared a live performance of "Sunrise" from The Haçienda in 1985. ORDER NOW: Neil Young is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut The song appeared on the Manchester band's third studio album Low-Life, which is set to be repackaged and reissued as a special expanded box-se...

New Order have shared a live performance of “Sunrise” from The Haçienda in 1985.

The song appeared on the Manchester band’s third studio album Low-Life, which is set to be repackaged and reissued as a special expanded box-set on January 27, 2023 (pre-order/pre-save here).

Multiple versions of “Sunrise” will feature in the upcoming collection, including a “writing session recording” and a rough instrumental mix.

There’ll also be live airings of the song from Low-Life-era concerts in Tokyo, Rotterdam, Toronto and Manchester.

The latter performance came as part of a-BBC filmed Whistle Test session at the legendary Haçienda venue. On December 8, New Order released a video of that outing on their official YouTube channel – see it here:

The new Low-Life reissue is due to arrive in LP, 2CD and 2DVD formats, along with a special book.

Also being released are a number of 12-inch singles, including “Shellshock”, “Sub-Culture” and “The Perfect Kiss”. Those limited edition records are available to order now here.

New Order released a special boxset for their seminal second album Power Corruption & Lies in 2020. The 1983 record features the tracks “Blue Monday”, “Age Of Consent” and “Your Silent Face”.

This summer saw New Order embark on a joint North American headline tour with Pet Shop Boys.

The Stranglers drummer Jet Black has died

Damian Jones
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The Stranglers drummer Jet Black has died
The Stranglers drummer Jet Black has died, aged 84. The sticksman, who was born Brian Duffy, was a founding member of the Guildford band and performed with them until 2015. He announced his retirement a few years later due to ill health. ORDER NOW: Neil Young is on the cover of the latest is...

The Stranglers drummer Jet Black has died, aged 84.

The sticksman, who was born Brian Duffy, was a founding member of the Guildford band and performed with them until 2015. He announced his retirement a few years later due to ill health.

He passed away at his home on Tuesday (December 6) at his country home in Wales. He leaves behind his wife Ava, and his two children Charlotte and Anthony.

Announcing his death on Twitter, the band said: “It is with heavy hearts we announce the passing of our dear friend, colleague and band elder statesman Jet Black. Jet died peacefully at home surrounded by his family. Fond adieu, fly straight JB.”

Bassist and co-frontman JJ Burnel added: “The welcoming committee has doubled. After years of ill health Jet has finally been released. He was a force of nature. An inspiration. The Stranglers would not have been if it wasn’t for him. The most erudite of men. A rebel with many causes. Say hi to [late keyboard player] Dave [Greenfield] for me.”

Baz Warne, the band’s guitarist and co-frontman also expressed his sadness.

He said: “I loved Jet. He took me under his wing over two decades ago and I never really came out from under it. I’m so very sad he’s gone. He hadn’t been too well for a while, but when I spoke to him most recently, three weeks ago, he was laughing and wanting to hear all the news…still interested and involved. It’s been my privilege to have known and worked with him, and to have called him a friend, and I’ll miss him until the end of my days. Rest in peace big man.”

Former frontman Hugh Cornwall who left the band in 1990, also posted a statement on Twitter.

He wrote: “It is with great sadness I have learnt that Jet Black has passed away. We shared a special period of our lives when we strived to become professional musicians. The Stranglers success was founded on his determination and drive. His timing was faultless. All power to him and his legacy.”

When The Stranglers formed in west Surrey in 1974, Black owned a fleet of ice cream vans which the band used as a tour bus during one of their early tours. They also used his shop as their headquarters.

In 2007, the band announced that Black was suffering with heart issues and he took a step back from performing, being temporarily replaced by his drum technician.

He resumed his duties full-time for the band’s tours in 2010 and 2011, but the following year he was taken to hospital after falling ill just before he was due on stage in Oxford. He finally retired after he stopped performing in 2015.

 

Black’s death came over two years keyboardist Dave Greenfield died at the age of 71 after testing positive for COVID-19.

Lana Del Rey announces new album and single “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd”

Damian Jones
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Lana Del Rey announces new album and single “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd”
Lana Del Rey has announced her new album Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd and shared the record's title track. ORDER NOW: Neil Young is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut It comes after the singer-songwriter recently teased her new ninth studio album last week. In ...

Lana Del Rey has announced her new album Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd and shared the record’s title track.

It comes after the singer-songwriter recently teased her new ninth studio album last week. In a snippet of an interview with HOLA TV, the singer said: “I won’t tell you when it’s coming out, but I can tell you I’m making an announcement about it on the seventh, so what do we have, a week? Seven days? I’m very excited.”

Now, details of her new album have arrived with Del Rey sharing the artwork for the record, which you can view below, and the release of March 10, 2023. Fans can pre-order for Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd here.

The singer-songwriter has also shared the title track, which was written by herself and Mike Hermosa. It was produced by Del Rey, Jack Antonoff, Drew Erickson and Zach Dawes.

The singer’s last album Blue Banisters was released in October last year. It followed her March 2021 album, Chemtrails Over The Country Club.

Mostly recently, the singer featured on Taylor Swift’s “Snow On The Beach” from the latter’s new album Midnights, which was released last month. Del Rey also covered Father John Misty’s “Buddy’s Rendezvous” in June this year.

We’re New Here – Eve Adams

Stephen Dalton
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We’re New Here – Eve Adams
LA-based noir songwriter Eve Adams talks about “making something beautiful out of something tragic” on her album Metal Bird, previously in our FEBRUARY 2022 issue of Uncut, available to buy here. For as long as she can remember, Eve Adams has been drawn to the darkness on the edge of town. In...

LA-based noir songwriter Eve Adams talks about “making something beautiful out of something tragic” on her album Metal Bird, previously in our FEBRUARY 2022 issue of Uncut, available to buy here.

For as long as she can remember, Eve Adams has been drawn to the darkness on the edge of town. In her tender torch songs and fatalistic folk-noir ballads, the singer-songwriter inhabits an intoxicating twilight zone of romantic ruin and dreamy despair. Love is tortuous and fleeting, bluesy heartache just around the corner, and death forever lurking in the shadows.

Growing up between her mother’s family farm in Oklahoma and her father’s LA base, Adams came to music young. “I’ve always loved to sing, since I was a little girl,” she says. “The first song I wrote was when I was around 12 and it was called “I’ve Seen It All”, which I find pretty funny. It’s so incredibly sad and I don’t know where the hell it came from! At that point I hadn’t experienced anything traumatic, I had a great childhood. But even then I was fascinated by the darkness.”

On her latest album, Metal Bird, Adams is processing real grief and loss rather than macabre juvenile yearnings. The title was inspired by the frequent plane journeys the singer undertook during the LP’s gestation, travelling from her then-home in Montreal to deal with a family tragedy in LA. Flying for her came to symbolise the liminal state between life and death. “There is something heart-wrenching about flying,” she offers. “You’re participating in this long history and mythology of mankind’s dream to take to the sky, to overcome the gravity of the earth, to be as free as a bird. That resonated with me at a difficult time.”

Adopting a knowingly retro aesthetic that recalls Lana Del Rey or Julee Cruise at times, Adams conjures up swooning, love-damaged narrators in her songs, who could have stepped out of a vintage film noir. Indeed, she cites Marlene Dietrich’s elusive temptress Concha Pérez in The Devil Is A Woman (1935) and Isabella Rossellini’s tormented femme fatale Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet (1986) as key inspirations. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t really belong in this era. I’m sure a lot of people feel that way nowadays, though – these are hard times.”

This cinematic mood also extends to lustrous monochrome videos and stylish sleeve artwork for Metal Bird, designed by Adams herself. “My music is inspired by visual art and my visual art is inspired by music, so it’s a nice little ouroborus.”

Metal Bird nudges Adams deeper into classic country-folk Americana than her lightly experimental early albums, In Hell (2017) and Candy Colored Doom (2019). “I wrote most of In Hell while I was 18 and 19, and I feel like it was coming from a much darker and sparser place,” she explains. “As I’ve grown and stepped into womanhood, the music has changed with me.”

Long before the family trauma that inspired Metal Bird, Adams was writing songs filled with darkness. Accepting that loss and grief are universal experiences, she says, is strangely consoling. “Death is universal and I have never wanted to shy away from it. I remember when I got my driver’s licence, I started to photograph roadkill. I’d see a dead skunk or deer and have to pull over to take a picture. I’d have this initial feeling of grief, then I’d transform that into an act of remembrance, making something beautiful out of something tragic. People thought I was a freak, ha! Music is the same kind of process for me. It starts with a feeling and becomes a need to turn it into something else, like an alchemist.”

Metal Bird is released digitally by Basin Rock now.

St. Vincent launches new podcast about history of rock music

Charlotte Krol
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St. Vincent launches new podcast about history of rock music
St. Vincent is hosting a new podcast about the history of rock music called History Listen Rock. ORDER NOW: Neil Young is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: St Vincent – Daddy’s Home review It marks the second time that the musician – real name Annie Clark – has ...

St. Vincent is hosting a new podcast about the history of rock music called History Listen Rock.

It marks the second time that the musician – real name Annie Clark – has hosted a podcast, following on from 2020’s St. Vincent: Words + Music.

The podcast is produced by Audible Inc. and Double Elvis and launches on January 12, 2023.

It aims to explore the history of rock music by spotlighting specific moments within the genre’s evolution.

In a statement [via Clash] Clark said: “It’s been so fun going back through rock history and revisiting some of my favourite artists and songs, including a bunch that don’t get the recognition they should.

“When you put it all together, you can see how history repeats and echoes through generations, how music links the past to the present, artist-to-artist. And some of these stories are absolutely wild.”

Listeners will be treated to deep-dives including the Sex Pistols’ doomed US tour and the moment that Jimi Hendrix and Patti Smith met. Check out a preview below.

Co-Founder of Double Elvis Brady Sadler said: “At Double Elvis, we tell stories about music to entertain and provoke audiences to think differently.

“History Listen will do both of these things by taking listeners on a journey through the historical and cultural progression of music, and we couldn’t be more excited to collaborate with Audible on this groundbreaking series given their history as a true pioneer in spoken-word audio.”

Listen to previously unreleased Sparklehorse song “It Will Never Stop”

Damian Jones
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Listen to previously unreleased Sparklehorse song “It Will Never Stop”
A previously unreleased Sparklehorse song has been shared by the brother of late frontman Mark Linkous. ORDER NOW: Neil Young is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut The track, "It Will Never Stop", was unearthed by Matt Linkous while overseeing his brother's estate and archiving his re...

A previously unreleased Sparklehorse song has been shared by the brother of late frontman Mark Linkous.

The track, “It Will Never Stop”, was unearthed by Matt Linkous while overseeing his brother’s estate and archiving his recordings. The Sparklehorse frontman died by suicide in 2010, at the age of 47.

“Great care has been taken to archive and preserve Mark’s music,” Matt said. “We are very thankful for Mark and the beauty he brought to this world.” You can listen to the track below.

Since Linkous’ passing, unreleased and new tracks have been shared in tribute to the late frontman.

In 2018, PJ Harvey and John Parish shared the song “Sorry For Your Loss” in tribute to Linkous.

Linkous formed Sparklehorse in 1995, and would later collaborate with Harvey and Parish on the 2001 album It’s A Wonderful Life.

A year later, Danger Mouse shared an unreleased track from his project with the late Sparklehorse frontman – 2010’s Dark Night Of The Soul.

The pair worked on the track “Ninjarous” in 2009 alongside rapper MF Doom and The Black Keys‘ Patrick Carney.

“Mark [Linkous] and I worked on a lot of music together,” Danger Mouse previously said. “But it was the song that he and I wrote and recorded with MF DOOM that really resonated with him. It was one of his favourites, so I’m happy to have this opportunity to pay tribute to him by getting it out there.”

Dark Night Of The Soul also featured contributions from the likes of Julian Casablancas, Iggy Pop, and The Flaming Lips. Its visuals were provided by David Lynch.

Meanwhile, a feature-length documentary about Linkous, titled This Is Sparklehorse, was released in October. It was made by UK filmmakers Alex Crowton and Bobby Dass of Bo-Ho Films, and featured Lynch along with Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle and Portishead’s Adrian Utley.

Neil Young: “Have you secured your load correctly?”

Damien Love
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Neil Young: “Have you secured your load correctly?”
NEIL YOUNG is out there in the wilderness, travelling on his bus back towards his Canadian homeland. This literal journey into his past also seems a suitable metaphor for Young’s peripatetic 2022. Over the past 12 months, this most capricious of musicians has hurtled backwards and forwards through...

NEIL YOUNG is out there in the wilderness, travelling on his bus back towards his Canadian homeland. This literal journey into his past also seems a suitable metaphor for Young’s peripatetic 2022. Over the past 12 months, this most capricious of musicians has hurtled backwards and forwards through his history and the present day – from 1970s ‘bootlegs’ via mythic lost albums and powerful new recordings with his doughty lieutenants Crazy Horse before arriving, finally, at a 50th-anniversary edition of his celebrated album Harvest. In this exclusive interview, Young – accompanied by Crazy Horse and producer Rick Rubin – looks back over a prolific year and attempts to make sense of the different, sometimes contradictory Neil Youngs who have emerged along the way. “I got a lot of stuff to clean up,” he tells Damien Love. “I’ve got a big mess that I left behind”, in the latest issue of Uncut magazine – in UK shops from Thursday, December 8 and available to buy from our online store.

Neil Young is out there somewhere. The only problem is, nobody seems to know where. Two minutes before Uncut is due to meet Young on Zoom to talk over his astonishingly productive 2022, there’s a call from his team. “Neil asks can we put it back a little? He’s driving right now.”

No problem. Whereabouts is he?

“Yeah… Not actually sure.”

Some hours later, another of Young’s ground crew struggles heroically – but in vain – to hook up a connection. As various technical options are attempted then aborted, Uncut asks where Neil is right now?

“Uh, East Coast somewhere… I think.”

Eventually, we’re given the number of the phone Young carries in his pocket – a device, as he will later explain, that was fundamental in the creation of his remarkable new album,
World Record, his 42nd studio album and, significantly, the third he’s made in a row now with his most redoubtable collaborators, Crazy Horse. With a sudden quickening of pace, World Record has arrived less than 12 months after their previous album, Barn. In the stubborn on-off partnership that has endured for over half a century – and bears all the scars and passion to prove it – it’s the first time Young has ever gone into the studio with the band three times back-to-back like this.

“Yeah,” nods Horse bass player Billy Talbot when that’s put to him a few days later. He leans forward, raises his eyebrows. “Interesting, huh?”

The number works. Young is finally there, the sounds of the highway swishing by him. But where exactly is he?

“Where I am? I’m in Canada. I’m on my bus, in Canada.”

Not East Coast USA after all, then, but on the road, heading into the mythic landscape of his childhood. Hearing him say it – especially while considering World Record’s cover, which features a striking photograph of his father, the writer Scott Young, in earlier days – instantly brings to mind one of Young’s most fragile and forlorn songs: “Now I’m goin’ back to Canada, on a journey through the past”.

In one way, that’s what much of 2022 has been for Young, as he has continued the herculean project of wrangling his sprawling archive into an order that satisfies him, both at his extraordinary, ever-evolving online repository – neilyoungarchives.com – and via a series of physical releases. This year alone, in addition to making World Record, Young has issued four historical live albums – two from 1971, one from 1974, one from 2019; resurrected 1989’s hair-raisingly brilliant Eldorado EP, a maelstrom of electric guitar originally released only in Japan; and, at long last, revealed Toast, an album he cut with Crazy Horse back in 2000 and then immediately shelved, for clouded reasons. Unveiled 22 years later, it turns out to be one of the most magnificent things they’ve ever done.

“I knew Toast was great,” Young concedes. “I knew it would come out someday.
I mean – we finished it, y’know. We cared enough about it to finish it. So that says something right there. But it just didn’t seem, like, important for it to come out at that time. Or it would have.”

PICK UP THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT TO READ THE FULL STORY

Introducing the new Uncut: Neil Young exclusive, Stooges, our essential 2023 Preview and more

Michael Bonner
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Introducing the new Uncut: Neil Young exclusive, Stooges, our essential 2023 Preview and more
In this month’s review of John Cale’s new album, Mercy, Tom makes a good point about the creatively successful third acts enjoyed by many veteran Uncut favourites. Musicians, in other words, who are still making vital and exciting music that fulfils their early artistic promise. Celebrating the ...

In this month’s review of John Cale’s new album, Mercy, Tom makes a good point about the creatively successful third acts enjoyed by many veteran Uncut favourites. Musicians, in other words, who are still making vital and exciting music that fulfils their early artistic promise. Celebrating the evolving stories of artists like Cale is, of course, a critical part of what we do here.

We’ve been following the capricious career swerves of this month’s cover star for Uncut’s entire lifetime – and, as ever, Neil Young doesn’t disappoint this month, as he looks back on a characteristically busy 2022 that included a new album with Crazy Horse, a legendary unreleased record from the vaults and a 50th-anniversary release for one of his most beloved classics. I’d go so far as to claim it’s one of the best interviews we’ve ever run with Neil – stand up, Damien Love – and covers a lot of ground with the kind of depth and focus Young often isn’t always inclined towards. After some comedy gold at the start, involving Neil and modern technology, Damien soon digs into one of the most intriguing aspects of Young’s career.

Writes Damien, “You have to wonder whether juggling so many eras at once, and so many sometimes contradictory versions of Neil Young, he ever finds things blurring together – if echoes from his busy past can sometimes slip through to influence his present.”

“It doesn’t really work like that, I don’t think,” Young replies. “I got a lot of stuff to clean up. I’ve got a big mess that I left behind. I’ve created a lot of unfinished records, unfinished this and that. I now have the time to deal with it, focus on it. But at the same time, anything new takes precedent. Always. Once I start thinking about something new, I drop the old stuff right away and do the new thing.”

It’s a great way to bring to a close a huge year for Uncut. We celebrated our 300th issue (and our 25th birthday) in the spring – milestones for any magazine, especially during these challenging times. So on behalf of myself, John, Marc, Tom, Sam, Mick, Mike, Michael, Phil, Johnny, Lora and Mark, sincere thanks for all your support over the past 12 months. As you’d imagine, we have lots of big plans lined up for 2023 – including a legendary artist making their debut as a cover star next month – and we hope you’ll come along for the ride.

In the meantime, have a peaceful Christmas and New Year. See you in January!

Exclusive! Watch a video for The Wedding Present’s new song, “The Loneliest Time Of Year”

Sam Richards
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Exclusive! Watch a video for The Wedding Present’s new song, “The Loneliest Time Of Year”
A year ago, Uncut brought you the news that The Wedding Present were marking the 30th anniversary of their Hit Parade caper by repeating the feat of releasing a single every month throughout 2022. And having pulled it off once more with aplomb, where else to end but with a traditional seasonal weepi...

A year ago, Uncut brought you the news that The Wedding Present were marking the 30th anniversary of their Hit Parade caper by repeating the feat of releasing a single every month throughout 2022. And having pulled it off once more with aplomb, where else to end but with a traditional seasonal weepie?

Watch the video for “The Loneliest Time Of Year” below:

“Ah, the old ‘Christmas song’,” writes bandleader David Gedge. “To be honest, I’ve kind of been one of those ‘bah, humbug’ types ever since I realised that the only thing we’re really celebrating on 25 December is capitalism! ‘Thanks for the list of stuff you want me to buy for you, here’s a list of stuff I want you to buy for me.’ There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but, for me, one of the most appealing things about the festive season is the way pop songs always seem more poignant when they’re also Christmas songs. It’s all about heightened expectation and disappointment, perhaps.

“I’ve had a go myself a couple of times over the years, of course, and it seemed fitting to have another crack at it for the grand finale of 24 Songs. Hence, ‘The Loneliest Time Of Year’ has a huge, melancholy chorus, sleigh bells, and an appropriately surreal video. The other song on our final 7” of 2022, ‘Memento Mori’, is a perkier affair which was written while I gazed admiringly at the snow-topped Cascade Mountain Range in Washington State.”

“The Loneliest Time Of Year” will be released on Friday December 16. You can buy the 7″ – either individually or as part of the complete box set of all 12 24 Songs singles – by clicking here.

Uncut – February 2023

Uncut
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Uncut – February 2023
HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME Neil Young, Margo Price, The Stooges, Mimi Parker, Lawrence, Cymande, The Meters, New Order, Mike Scott, Keith Levine and Ivor Cutler all feature in the new Uncut, dated February 2023 and in UK shops from December 8 or available to buy online now. This issu...

HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

Neil Young, Margo Price, The Stooges, Mimi Parker, Lawrence, Cymande, The Meters, New Order, Mike Scott, Keith Levine and Ivor Cutler all feature in the new Uncut, dated February 2023 and in UK shops from December 8 or available to buy online now. This issue comes with an exclusive free 15-track CD of the month’s best new music.

NEIL YOUNG: Neil Young is out there in the wilderness, travelling on his bus back towards his Canadian homeland. This literal journey into his past also seems a suitable metaphor for Young’s peripatetic 2022. Over the past 12 months, this most capricious of musicians has hurtled backwards and forwards through his history and the present day – from 1970s ‘bootlegs’ via mythic lost albums and powerful new recordings with his doughty lieutenants Crazy Horse before arriving, finally, at a 50th-anniversary edition of his celebrated album Harvest. In this exclusive interview, Young – accompanied by Crazy Horse and producer Rick Rubin – looks back over a prolific year and attempts to make sense of the different, sometimes contradictory Neil Youngs who have emerged along the way. “I got a lot of stuff to clean up,” he tells Damien Love. “I’ve got a big mess that I left behind.”

OUR FREE CD! THERE’S A WORLD: 15 tracks of the month’s best new music

This issue of Uncut is available to buy by clicking here – with FREE delivery to the UK and reduced delivery charges for the rest of the world.

Inside the issue, you’ll find:

MARGO PRICE: Back from the wilds of Topanga Canyon with a “psychedelic” new album fired by weed and tequila, Margo Price is moving far beyond her country-tonk roots. But will inner flight, personal loss and newfound wisdom tame her wayward impulses? “It’s been a long, weird road to get to the person that I am,” she tells Stephen Deusner. “But here I am.”

THE STOOGES: A band in disarray. A fancy hotel in West London. Heavy riffs and delinquent ballads. Fifty years since the release of Iggy and The Stooges’ Raw Power, Nick Hasted convenes a crack team of heads – including J Mascis, Jim Reid, Mark Arm and Bob Mould – to dig deep into one of the most influential records in rock history. “All three Stooges albums are equal to me,” says Iggy Pop. “But Raw Power, that’s the big one.”

MIMI PARKER: Uncut pays tribute to Mimi Parker as friends and collaborators including Jeff Tweedy and Steve Albini celebrate the music and influence of Low’s beloved vocalist, songwriter and instrumentalist. “She was the calmest of oceans,” learns Stephen Deusner. “She was the ebb and flow of it all.”

2023 ALBUMS PREVIEW: One is a three-act rock opera about artists being exiled into space, another is influenced by Uzbekistani disco, while a third features a song called “Layla” inspired by its creator’s apparent “Oedipal hatred of Eric Clapton”. Join us, then, for Uncut’s essential guide to many of 2023’s key albums. Brace yourselves for news of The Cure, Blondie, The Rolling Stones, Dexys, Lucinda Williams, Elvis Costello, Robert Forster, The Damned, Natalie Merchant, Margo Cilker, Modern Nature, Graham Nash, Sparks and more…

LAWRENCE: The Felt, Denim and now Mozart Estate mainman on baseball caps, Record Store Day and his elusive quest for fame: “I’m prepared to pay a price for that, yes”

CYMANDE: The making of “Bra”.

THE METERS: Funk session supremo Leo Nocentelli looks back on a stellar career

NEW ORDER: The Waterboys skipper on the records that forever rock his boat: “I wanted to live in music”

CLICK TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

In our expansive reviews section, we take a look at new records from John Cale, Meg Baird, Guided By Voices, Whitehorse and more, and archival releases from New Order, Gong, Lightships, and others. We catch the Cat Power live; among the films, DVDs and TV programmes reviewed are Glass Onion, Corsage, Peter Von Kant, Pigdy and Alcarràs; while in books there’s Bez and Trevor Horn.

Our front section, meanwhile, features Keith Levine, Ivor Cutler, Complete Mountain Almanac, Harvey Mandel, while, at the end of the magazine, Mike Scott shares his life in music.

You can pick up a copy of Uncut in the usual places, where open. But otherwise, readers all over the world can order a copy from here.

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Echo and the Bunnymen to play Ocean Rain in full with orchestra on four UK shows

Emma Wilkes
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Echo and the Bunnymen to play Ocean Rain in full with orchestra on four UK shows
Echo and the Bunnymen have announced a special UK tour for autumn 2023. ORDER NOW: Neil Young is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Will Sergeant: “I don’t hate The Beatles, but we were sick of hearing about them” The band will be playing their fourth album Ocean R...

Echo and the Bunnymen have announced a special UK tour for autumn 2023.

The band will be playing their fourth album Ocean Rain in full for four shows around the country in Nottingham, Edinburgh, their hometown of Liverpool and London’s Royal Albert Hall in September 2023. They will be accompanied by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ocean Rain was released in 1984 and was recorded mostly in Paris with a 35-piece orchestra. It features songs such as “The Killing Moon”, “Silver” and “Seven Seas”.

Tickets will go on sale at 10am on Friday (December 9) – check out the full list of dates below.

SEPTEMBER 2023
12 – Nottingham, Royal Concert Hall
14 – Edinburgh, Usher Hall
16 – Liverpool, M&S Bank Arena
18 – London, Royal Albert Hall

Echo & The Bunnymen
Will Sergeant and Ian McCulloch of Echo & The Bunnymen perform onstage headling day 2 of Rockaway Festival 2019 at Butlins on January 12, 2019 in Bognor Regis. Image: Ollie Millington / Redferns

Echo and the Bunnymen are also set to appear on the Sunday of next year’s Isle of Wight Festival, which will be headlined by Pulp, George Ezra, The Chemical Brothers and Robbie Williams. The post-punk legends have also been confirmed for the lineup of next year’s Bearded Theory, which will take place in Derbyshire in May 2023.

Elsewhere, the band’s frontman, Ian McCulloch, recently sang at the funeral of Happy Mondays bassist Paul Ryder, who passed away in August at the age of 58.

Back in June, Echo and the Bunnymen supported The Rolling Stones at their first show in Liverpool for 50 years as part of their SIXTY UK and European anniversary tour.

Paul McCartney – Ultimate Music Guide

Uncut
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Paul McCartney – Ultimate Music Guide
In the year of his 80th birthday, our latest Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide celebrates the songwriting genius of Paul McCartney - over a massive 148 pages. Buy the issue from our online store and you’ll receive an exclusive alternate cover, and a free poster! Buy a copy of the magazine here. Misse...

In the year of his 80th birthday, our latest Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide celebrates the songwriting genius of Paul McCartney – over a massive 148 pages. Buy the issue from our online store and you’ll receive an exclusive alternate cover, and a free poster!

Buy a copy of the magazine here. Missed one in the series? Bundles are available at the same location…

Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Paul McCartney

John Robinson
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Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Paul McCartney
BUY THE PAUL MCCARTNEY DELUXE ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE As anyone who has been to see him live in the last few years will know, Paul McCartney does a very good job indeed of managing his past and his present. Before he even left the Beatles he’d written a song implying how difficult it would be...

BUY THE PAUL MCCARTNEY DELUXE ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE

As anyone who has been to see him live in the last few years will know, Paul McCartney does a very good job indeed of managing his past and his present. Before he even left the Beatles he’d written a song implying how difficult it would be to live a life outside them – but in the room he makes it look pretty easy. Classic Beatles number follows huge-selling Wings song. Something from the new album dropped in there to change the pace. Even if you were compiling a mixtape you’d hesitate putting “Live and Let Die” before “Hey Jude” (too much? Too strong?), but McCartney, inevitably, pulls it off.

He has a huge wealth of music to draw on, and that’s what we’re celebrating in this overdue new deluxe edition of our Ultimate Music Guide. 2022 hasn’t only been the year Paul celebrated his 80th birthday, it’s also marked 60 years of top-flight recording, and here we look back on a substantial chunk of it. On the following pages, you’ll find in-depth reviews of every Paul solo album from the experimental, intimate debut McCartney from 1970, all the way to his most recent rockdown, 2020’s McCartney III.

It’s been an incredible 52 years solo so far and the variety of material Paul has issued reflects the ebb and flow of some enduring themes. The interest in being in a band which might get back on the road, and back to basics. There’s the engagement with contemporary recording trends, and working with vogue producers. You will have enjoyed the respectful nods to his matchless past career, and to his departed colleagues. Then there’s the joy of the off-piste self-titled albums, in which, released from his high expectations of himself, McCartney does very much his own thing.

What’s just as gratifying is that when the time has been right, Paul has also taken the time to talk to us about what he’s been doing. This doesn’t generally mean a tour of the new album, but a generous and extended roam around the rolling estate of his entire career – and how being in the Beatles has informed who he is now. In his wide-reaching 2020 interview with Uncut included here, for example, Paul tells Michael Bonner about how John Lennon is never far from his thoughts when he’s writing new songs. Specifically, thinking back on his guidance about when to persevere, and when to completely rethink something.

“We collaborated for so long, I think, ‘Okay, what would he think of this?” Paul remembered. “What would be say now?’”

Meeting the other Beatles, he continues, gave him permission to find freedom through creativity. Surely these days, Uncut ventures, being Paul McCartney, he can do whatever he wants? Paul’s answer is tellingly humble.

He laughed. “I wish I knew I was Paul McCartney, it would be so much easier… Look, you can achieve a lot of fame, but you’re still the same person inside. Hopefully, you grow and learn things – but we’re all a bit fragile inside. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s life, isn’t it?”

Enjoy the magazine. Buy it from us here, and get an exclusive cover and free poster, while stocks last!

Enjoy the magazine.

Buy a copy of the magazine here. Missed one in the series? Bundles are available at the same location…

An audience with Michael Head: “I’ve been lucky – when things were tough, I’ve had a creative outlet”

Sam Richards
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An audience with Michael Head: “I’ve been lucky – when things were tough, I’ve had a creative outlet”
The creator of one of Uncut’s best albums of 2022 on his magical Mersey adventures with The Pale Fountains, Shack, Arthur Lee and Lee Mavers, in the latest issue of Uncut magazine – in UK shops from Thursday, November 10 and available to buy from our online store. It’s the morning after Li...

The creator of one of Uncut’s best albums of 2022 on his magical Mersey adventures with The Pale Fountains, Shack, Arthur Lee and Lee Mavers, in the latest issue of Uncut magazine – in UK shops from Thursday, November 10 and available to buy from our online store.

It’s the morning after Liverpool’s pulsating victory over Manchester City at Anfield, and Mick Head is understandably buzzing. “It feels good. I was listening on the radio and I heard a couple of pundits talking about the atmosphere and saying they’d never heard anything like it – and this was before the game!” Head has further cause for celebration when informed that his latest album with the Red Elastic Band, the triumphant Dear Scott, has been named one of Uncut’s best albums of 2022. “That’s amazing,” he beams. “It’s just recognition for what everyone’s put into it. We’re all really proud of it.” Earlier this year, the album became his first ever Top 10 record in a long career of heroic near-misses. “We were on tour when the album got released and that was brilliant. It was like being in the Paleys again: we’re all excited in the back of the van, listening to the charts. A real highlight.”

Is this the happiest he’s been? “Yeah. The world’s fucking mad, but creatively, if you put everything on the table and look down on it from above, then yeah. Maybe it’s ’cos I’ve got lucidity. I’m feeling good physically – surprisingly! Still functioning emotionally. And that has an impact on the songs. There’s no better feeling than when someone tells you what a particular song means to them. Somebody once told me they walked down the aisle to “As Long As I’ve Got You” and that blew me away. But that’s what songs are for. Music can do things. It’ll catch on.”

The new album sounds so fresh. Is songwriting getting easier the older you get – or harder? – Peter Livesey, Salford

I think it gets easier. A lot of it is down to the mindset. Obviously I’ve enjoyed songwriting all my life, ’cos it’s what I do. But I do find it’s getting easier as I get older, because I’m enjoying it more.

How did the collaboration with Bill Ryder-Jones for Dear Scott come about? – Tom Newton, via email

We all know Bill really well – Liverpool’s quite a small village, musically. Nat [Cummings] from the Red Elastic Band had been working in Bill’s studio in West Kirby and when he said, ‘What do you think about this as an idea?’ I bit his hand off. Because I’d met Bill at gigs, I loved The Coral, and I knew how talented he was. Bill has mentioned that he was into the Paleys and Shack growing up, which is always refreshing to hear. And it showed when we were recording because he kinda knows where I’m going. I had a lovely conversation with Bill last week, and I think we’ve got some [studio] time pencilled in early next year. There’s six, seven, eight songs that we wanna put down. It was a joy to work on the last album, so keep it simple. You don’t change a winning team!

Aside from a ride on “The Ten”, what other places to check out would you recommend for someone visiting Kensington in Liverpool? – Nick Cullen, via Twitter

There’s a necropolis on the corner of West Derby Road, where we used to play football. In the 19th century it was overflowing with dead bodies after the Napoleonic wars, so we built this amazing necropolis. You’ve got the Olympia where we played a couple of months ago. And Buffalo Bill and his travelling circus came down West Derby Road in the 1900s. But saying that, once you got there, you’d think, ‘What the fuck’s Mick Head on about?’ There’s not much there now, but it’s steeped in history.

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Jeff Tweedy honours Christine McVie with acoustic cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies”

Ellie Robinson
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Jeff Tweedy honours Christine McVie with acoustic cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies”
Jeff Tweedy has paid tribute to Fleetwood Mac’s late singer and keyboardist Christine McVie, covering the band’s 1987 track "Little Lies" during a show in Michigan. ORDER NOW: David Bowie is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Christine McVie remembered Tweedy perform...

Jeff Tweedy has paid tribute to Fleetwood Mac’s late singer and keyboardist Christine McVie, covering the band’s 1987 track “Little Lies” during a show in Michigan.

Tweedy performed at Three Oaks’ Acorn Theatre in Michigan last Friday (December 2), where his cover of “Little Lies” was the sixth song on his setlist. The track itself was co-written by McVie and her then-husband, Eddy Quintela, and first appeared on Fleetwood Mac’s 14th album, Tango In The Night.

Have a look at some footage of the cover, as well as the full setlist, below:

McVie died on Wednesday (November 30) at the age of 79. It isn’t yet known exactly how she passed, however in a statement, her family explained that it came “following a short illness”.

McVie was widely seen as one of Fleetwood Mac’s most integral members. She served three stints with the band – first from 1970 to 1996, then 1997 to 1998, and finally from 2014 until her death. In that time, she performed on 13 of the band’s 17 studio albums.

Other artists paying tribute to McVie have included bandmates Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, as well as Bill Clinton, Haim, LCD Soundsystem, Harry Styles, Keith Urban and many more.

David Byrne shares new Christmas song “Fat Man’s Comin'”

Damian Jones
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David Byrne shares new Christmas song “Fat Man’s Comin'”
David Byrne has shared a new festive song, "Fat Man’s Comin'". ORDER NOW: David Bowie is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: David Byrne’s American Utopia review The track, which you can listen to below, was written while he was working on his collaborative album with...

David Byrne has shared a new festive song, “Fat Man’s Comin'”.

The track, which you can listen to below, was written while he was working on his collaborative album with St. Vincent, Love This Giant. It was produced by Jherek Bischoff.

“I always wanted to write a holiday song,” the former Talking Heads frontman said in a press release (via Consequence). “I wouldn’t call it a Christmas song, as the visitation of Santa (formerly known as St. Nicholas, who mainly did punishing) seems to have evolved to be a more secular consumer moment than a religious or spiritual affair.”

The track is available on Bandcamp under a pay-what-you-can model here, with all proceeds going towards Reasons To Be Cheerful, the good-news-only publication Byrne founded in 2019.

Meanwhile, Byrne recently featured on an abortion rights benefit album alongside the likes of Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and Wet Leg.

The compilation LP – Good Music To Ensure Safe Abortion Access To All also featured further contributions from Death Cab For Cutie, Animal Collective, My Morning Jacket, Fleet Foxes, King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, Mac DeMarco, Ty Segall, Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell.

100 per cent of the proceeds went to non-profit organisations working to provide abortion care access including Brigid Alliance – a referral-based service that provides travel, food, lodging, child care, and other logistical support for people seeking abortions and NOISE FOR NOW, which is working with Abortion Care Network to support independent abortion clinics.

It came in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade earlier this year, which meant abortion would no longer be protected as a federal right in the US for the first time since 1973, and each state would be able to decide individually whether to restrict or ban abortion.

The Beach Boys – Sail On Sailor 1972

John Robinson
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The Beach Boys – Sail On Sailor 1972
As hard as they swam against it, nostalgia always pulled The Beach Boys back. As we left them at the end-of-season cliffhanger of their last boxset, their new manager Jack Rieley had recently tried to bring the band up to date. They embraced ecological issues, politics and new technology; they grew ...

As hard as they swam against it, nostalgia always pulled The Beach Boys back. As we left them at the end-of-season cliffhanger of their last boxset, their new manager Jack Rieley had recently tried to bring the band up to date. They embraced ecological issues, politics and new technology; they grew their hair and played with the Grateful Dead. Even as it broke new ground, however, 1971’s wonderful Surf’s Up ended on familiar territory. Bruce Johnston wrote a song (“Disney Girls”) that hymned the very mom-and-pop America the band were allegedly trying to leave behind. The album concluded, meanwhile, with “Surf’s Up” itself, a song rescued from the abandoned Smile sessions of 1967 – and an image of children playing in the waves.

In this new box, we join the group in a period about which we are likely to have mixed feelings. Much of the music is still delightful, of course. But that joy is tinged with a certain sadness as we know what awaits them. Even with new blood in The Beach Boys, Carl Wilson having recently recruited Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar from South African rockers The Flames, we are aware that this is the band’s last substantial push forward before a flush of successful retrospective albums and tours sets them irrevocably on a path as an oldies act.

In the meantime, The Beach Boys (“a new Beach Boys…” as a radio ad included here calls them) are on a crusade to convert audiences to their new music. On two discs of the six here, we find The Beach Boys on stage at Carnegie Hall in November 1972. This is a previously unreleased show from the tour that gave us The Beach Boys In Concert album, and we hear how well they deliver newer stuff like “You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone” and “Only With You” and bring a deep instrumental swing to “Leaving This Town”. The crowd, though, are demonstrably more up for the smattering of hits that follow. “Save your requests,” says Mike Love at one point. The show, he says, is “not only for those who came to hear ‘Barbara Ann’…”.

If the band were concerned about people focusing on their older material, they might have done well to have a word with whoever decided to promote their then-current album, 1972’s Carl And The Passions – “So Tough”, by packaging it with a copy of Pet Sounds. The comparison was not so flattering. Recorded in Brian’s home studio, but without peak-fitness Brian, Carl… has influential fans among the members of Saint Etienne and its diaspora but it’s not widely loved beyond it. Album sessions were intimate and gave up some solid tracks (Brian’s “Marcella” and “You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone” are both good), but it feels a little slight. Try as Al Jardine and Mike Love might to make it a heavy number, “All This Is That” (where Robert Frost meets the Maharishi) feels more like an interesting outro to a bigger song that isn’t there. It’s not the suite of beautifully sequenced material that Surf’s Up has led us to hope for.

The record is named for Carl (in a nostalgic nod to an occasion when the band renamed itself in his honour for an early appearance at Hawthorne High School), but it’s other Beach Boys who emerge triumphantly. Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar’s “Hold On Dear Brother” is delightful – and also biographically on-brand for the company they now keep. Meanwhile, with Brian creatively recessive, Dennis volunteered songs destined for a speculative solo project called, semi-seriously, ‘Poops/Hubba Hubba’. “Make It Good” and more expansively the orchestral deep dive of “Cuddle Up”, written with his collaborator Daryl Dragon, give the album a vulnerable and introspective mood becoming to the new decade. Among the most important outtakes in this box is the superb, fractionally later “Carry Me Home” in which Dennis imagines himself as a US soldier in Vietnam.

By the time of Holland, however, it was clear that The Beach Boys had rallied. Even if Brian and Carl were devoting an inordinate amount of time to the “Mount Vernon And Fairway” concept, which hasn’t retained all the charm it was once thought to have, it was clear Dennis’ compositions would have to fight harder for their place. Quite why Jack Rieley decided that a way out of a creative impasse for The Beach Boys was to build a studio in Los Angeles at huge expense and then have it rebuilt in a Dutch barn isn’t entirely clear. Whatever the thinking, the ends justified the means.

While it felt as if Carl…, great titles notwithstanding, spread its inspiration thinly over its eight songs and long vamps, Holland is far more robust. It was, as it said on the sleeve “one and a half long-playing records” with songs to spare and the “Mount Vernon…” tale on a separate EP. There was also something more like a unifying concept: a suite of complementary songs that found The Beach Boys messing about in boats and on some accustomed coastal routes, but also navigating their way into deeper subjects.

If Brian’s “Sail On Sailor” joyously established the theme, “Steamboat” found Dennis on a boat trip to deep and melancholic reverie, all Sgt Pepper gear changes and Fender Rhodes. It’s such a wonderfully 1972 sound, you could swear it was David Gilmour on guitar. With the help of Mike Love, Al Jardine continued to channel Americana, exploring the natural wealth of the American West Coast and its “new-born fauns” in “California Saga”. Elsewhere, Carl came into his own magnificently with “The Trader”.

Along a melody that seems to have escaped from Surf’s Up, he investigates the morality of western expansion. At precisely halfway through the song, it is as if he remembers that he can be an expert manipulator of mood, and changes down a gear into two-and-a-half minutes of minimal, beautiful music (“Reason to live…”) up there with anything in the band’s recorded history. From this, the impeccably sequenced album flows into Ricky Fataar’s “Leaving This Town”, which sounds like Peter Gabriel guesting on a horizontal Steely Dan number.

There was more. Among the outtakes here are tracking tapes, another Chaplin/Fataar number (“We Got Love”) and long-rumoured but undeveloped extracts (“Spark In The Dark”, “Body Talk”, “Oh Sweet Something”). Oddly, given what seems to have been a creative outpouring, the exuberant opener “Sail On Sailor” was devised later and added to the mix after the band had returned to Los Angeles.

Particularly interesting among the demos (and these really are early sketches) is the entertaining “Out In The Country” (banjos, acoustic guitars, an Eagles vibe), which is taken two radically different ways; seeming to show that the band didn’t just have one route out of the perpetual summer of 1964 and into the introspective, soft-rock 1970s, they had several – this one even involving country rock.

The Beach Boys would record new music again, of course. But with Brian in uncertain condition, and a ready demand for offering the American Graffiti version of themselves to a happy public, their future was solely in the past and pleasing the crowds. Ultimately, in spite of all their pushing at their music’s limits, it was a formula that now just couldn’t be fucked with.

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