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ANOTHER YEAR

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ANOTHER YEAR
Directed by Mike Leigh Starring Lesley Manville, Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen Increasingly fine-tuned over the years, Mike Leigh’s films – once prone to Dickensian cartoonishness – now display a remarkable complexity in capturing the rhythms of ordinary experience. That’s rarely been the cas...

Directed by Mike Leigh

Starring Lesley Manville, Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen

Increasingly fine-tuned over the years, Mike Leigh’s films – once prone to Dickensian cartoonishness – now display a remarkable complexity in capturing the rhythms of ordinary experience.

That’s rarely been the case so beautifully as in Another Year, as close as cinema comes to modern British Chekhov.

His central characters are London couple Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), long and happily married, and their friend Mary (Lesley Manville), a woman who trails her faded glamour, unhappy love life and drink problem behind her.

Another Year tracks these three – plus friends and family members – over the course of four seasons.

By the end, Leigh’s method – creating characters by building up entire life stories for them – is magnificently vindicated in the depth that we perceive to these people.

Leslie Manville’s performance, poignant but crackling with nervous energy, is nothing short of magnetic.

Jonathan Romney

SANDY DENNY – SANDY DENNY

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SANDY DENNY – SANDY DENNY

Like the dimensions of the world’s tallest skyscraper or the coordinates of a military invasion, to comprehend the sheer scale of this undertaking requires recourse to facts and figures. Comprising 316 tracks spread over 19 CDs, Sandy Denny offers over 21 hours of music. Discs 1-11 cover all Denny’s previously released work, from her earliest recordings with Alex Campbell, Johnny Silvo, and The Strawbs, through to Fairport Convention, Fotheringay and her solo albums, augmented with additional content – outtakes, BBC recordings – from the relevant era. Then there’s a further eight discs of bonus material, much of it unreleased, encompassing everything from stark home demos to an entire 1974 concert with Fairport Convention at the Troubadour. Sandy Denny, then, is for life, not just for Christmas. That this almost insanely comprehensive, lavishly produced boxed behemoth is the last word in all things Denny is beyond question. Determining its value, however, is another matter. Even those of us who long ago surrendered to her endlessly enchanting voice and haunting songs, once definitively described by her as “dusk-like trances”, are bound to wonder if they really need almost an entire day’s worth of them. The good news is that Sandy Denny is not simply an act of consolidation. Yes, every facet of her career is covered in long-shot, two-shot and close-up, but new angles are also revealed. Denny was such an instinctively gifted performer that much of what she threw away is at least as good as – and often better than – what was released, a fact that becomes more obvious the further into her career this collection delves. Perhaps its most valuable contribution is to offer an eloquent corrective to the notion that Denny’s creativity was in irreversible decline when she died in 1978. Her judgements may have become wayward – semaphored by a schlocky cover of “Candle In The Wind” – but her instincts were as vital as ever, and at just 31 she clearly had a huge amount more to give. It’s particularly terrific to hear the songs from her over-cooked final album, Rendezvous (1977), stripped of the production fuss that tended to obscure some excellent songs. Inevitably there’s considerable repetition of material, but much of it is justified by the fact that Denny rarely approached a song the same way twice. Featuring a peerless, precarious first attempt at Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” and a wonderful voice and piano reading of “The Lady”, hearing the entirety of the ace Sandy (1972) in demo form feels like unwrapping a whole new album. Likewise, just when you think could live for a year or three without hearing “Blackwaterside” again, along comes the lovely, tentative outtake from The North Star Grassman And The Ravens, with Denny and Richard Thompson feeling their way into the arrangement. Many of the live recordings are also revelatory. A solo piano version of the just-written “No More Sad Refrains”, performed on a TV show in 1975, kicks every other version of the song into the long grass. But the real goose pimples stuff is to be found on the disc of solo demos, mostly previously unreleased, recorded at home between 1966 and 1968. These unfashioned recordings reveal just how advanced Denny was at a young age. Discarded early compositions like the bluesy “Gerrard Street” are highly accomplished, while her rendition of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” might just be the greatest-ever version of the song. If you think by now you know every nuance of her inimitable voice then wait until you hear it here, so close and unguarded that listening feels like eavesdropping. Soft and sorrowful, stripped of any hint of conceit or triumph, she takes the melody to extraordinary places. We also discover what a fine guitar player she was: the first ever recorded version of “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” is played in rumbling open-tuning, more Nick Drake than Judy Collins. A final disc of home demos from 1977 acts as a bookend and includes a moving tilt at her last-ever composition, “Makes Me Think Of You”. Sandy Denny doesn’t just cover every inch of a familiar fable; it rewrites the accepted narrative of her career. We already knew she was a fabulously expressive singer, a unique songwriter and a highly creative interpreter, but I’m not sure it was clear until now just how deep and wide her talents ran, or for how long. It’s a fact this brilliant and wholly justified collection hammers home on disc after disc, song after glorious song. Graeme Thomson

Like the dimensions of the world’s tallest skyscraper or the coordinates of a military invasion, to comprehend the sheer scale of this undertaking requires recourse to facts and figures.

Comprising 316 tracks spread over 19 CDs, Sandy Denny offers over 21 hours of music. Discs 1-11 cover all Denny’s previously released work, from her earliest recordings with Alex Campbell, Johnny Silvo, and The Strawbs, through to Fairport Convention, Fotheringay and her solo albums, augmented with additional content – outtakes, BBC recordings – from the relevant era. Then there’s a further eight discs of bonus material, much of it unreleased, encompassing everything from stark home demos to an entire 1974 concert with Fairport Convention at the Troubadour.

Sandy Denny, then, is for life, not just for Christmas. That this almost insanely comprehensive, lavishly produced boxed behemoth is the last word in all things Denny is beyond question. Determining its value, however, is another matter. Even those of us who long ago surrendered to her endlessly enchanting voice and haunting songs, once definitively described by her as “dusk-like trances”, are bound to wonder if they really need almost an entire day’s worth of them.

The good news is that Sandy Denny is not simply an act of consolidation. Yes, every facet of her career is covered in long-shot, two-shot and close-up, but new angles are also revealed. Denny was such an instinctively gifted performer that much of what she threw away is at least as good as – and often better than – what was released, a fact that becomes more obvious the further into her career this collection delves. Perhaps its most valuable contribution is to offer an eloquent corrective to the notion that Denny’s creativity was in irreversible decline when she died in 1978.

Her judgements may have become wayward – semaphored by a schlocky cover of “Candle In The Wind” – but her instincts were as vital as ever, and at just 31 she clearly had a huge amount more to give. It’s particularly terrific to hear the songs from her over-cooked final album, Rendezvous (1977), stripped of the production fuss that tended to obscure some excellent songs.

Inevitably there’s considerable repetition of material, but much of it is justified by the fact that Denny rarely approached a song the same way twice. Featuring a peerless, precarious first attempt at Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” and a wonderful voice and piano reading of “The Lady”, hearing the entirety of the ace Sandy (1972) in demo form feels like unwrapping a whole new album. Likewise, just when you think could live for a year or three without hearing “Blackwaterside” again, along comes the lovely, tentative outtake from The North Star Grassman And The Ravens, with Denny and Richard Thompson feeling their way into the arrangement. Many of the live recordings are also revelatory. A solo piano version of the just-written “No More Sad Refrains”, performed on a TV show in 1975, kicks every other version of the song into the long grass.

But the real goose pimples stuff is to be found on the disc of solo demos, mostly previously unreleased, recorded at home between 1966 and 1968. These unfashioned recordings reveal just how advanced Denny was at a young age. Discarded early compositions like the bluesy “Gerrard Street” are highly accomplished, while her rendition of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” might just be the greatest-ever version of the song. If you think by now you know every nuance of her inimitable voice then wait until you hear it here, so close and unguarded that listening feels like eavesdropping. Soft and sorrowful, stripped of any hint of conceit or triumph, she takes the melody to extraordinary places. We also discover what a fine guitar player she was: the first ever recorded version of “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” is played in rumbling open-tuning, more Nick Drake than Judy Collins. A final disc of home demos from 1977 acts as a bookend and includes a moving tilt at her last-ever composition, “Makes Me Think Of You”.

Sandy Denny doesn’t just cover every inch of a familiar fable; it rewrites the accepted narrative of her career. We already knew she was a fabulously expressive singer, a unique songwriter and a highly creative interpreter, but I’m not sure it was clear until now just how deep and wide her talents ran, or for how long. It’s a fact this brilliant and wholly justified collection hammers home on disc after disc, song after glorious song.

Graeme Thomson

GIANT SAND – BLURRY BLUE MOUNTAIN

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GIANT SAND – BLURRY BLUE MOUNTAIN

It’s a fair bet that Paul Weller finds that whole “Modfather” thing pretty tedious. By the same token, you suspect that Howe Gelb must get fed up being referred to as “the Godfather of Alt.Country”. After all, Gelb’s 25-year recording career with Giant Sand (30 if you count its original incarnation as Giant Sandworms, the Arizona troupe he founded with late guitarist Rainer Ptacek) has seen him trade jazz, blues and folk with punk, Mexicali and Morricone – plenty of alternatives, in fact, to country music. Giant Sand’s roots in the Southwestern desert may afford them rights to the authentic twang of lo-plains country, but Gelb likens himself more to a jazz musician. He’s happiest heading up a loose collective of like-minded souls, his largely improvised songs informed by a wanderlust, a search for happy accidents. It’s made for some of the most hallucinatory music of the last three decades, either as Giant Sand or solo, sometimes with offshoots like The Band Of Blacky Ranchette – all of these fronted by Gelb’s unique voice, an instrument that’s become more steadfastly laidback as the years have crept by. It has to be said, before we get too carried away, that the same approach has also resulted in some less memorable, rather more ponderous moments. But that’s all part of Gelb’s enigmatic appeal. His influence is sizeable. Though now partly resident in Denmark, he was for many years the mainstay of the underground Tucson scene. Joey Burns and John Convertino began in Giant Sand, before striking out as Calexico, while other protégés and collaborators have included M.Ward, Grandaddy, PJ Harvey, Vic Chesnutt and Neko Case. Blurry Blue Mountain marks the beginning of a concentrated flurry of Giant Sand activity. The next 12 months will see a comprehensive reissue programme – one already begun with their 1985 debut, Valley Of Rain – and on through solo work, various side projects and a couple of hefty boxsets. One thing you’re likely to notice is that, essentially, Giant Sand haven’t changed much. Nowadays there are more Danes than Americans in the band, but the essence is the same. Shuffling rhythms suddenly break sweat into something more immediate yet indistinct. Sad-slow plinks of piano make way for cowboy choruses; train songs rumble into percussive, jazzy numbers. There’s walking bass, swamp blues and Gelb himself, for the most part singing like a man still stirring from slumber and groping for the nearest lamp. That said, as with 2008’s Provisions, Giant Sand are a more urgent proposition these days, as if age has somehow sharpened Gelb’s appetite. Outlaw tale “Thin Line Man” is a case in point, a thrillingly concise remake of an old ’80s song that clocks in at half the length of his seven-minute original. “Ride The Rail” fairly rattles along too, recounting the tale of the Molly Macguires – the Irish emigrant coal miners who took on the authorities in 19th century Pennsylvania, Gelb’s home state. The soft gait of “Fields Of Green” often appears to be a meditation on time and the ageing process. And his own unwitting/unwilling role as patriarch of some larger musical family, country or not. “Now I amble over 50/And the longest hours move so swiftly/Such young fresh folk look to me as a pathfinder,” murmurs Gelb, before telling everyone to just be quiet and listen to their own hearts instead. Playfulness abounds here. Anyone familiar with Gelb’s propensity for wordplay will admire the way he elects to rhyme “prayer” with “Leo Sayer”. Or conjure a fireside tale wherein Daddy’s out back listening to Haggard while Momma’s getting down to Thunderclap Newman. Suffice to say that Blurry Blue Mountain is a lovely, oddly charming record. And in the unlikely event that it doesn’t move you, there’s a whole heap of past glories just waiting to be discovered. ROB HUGHES Q+A HOWE GELB How has your approach to making music changed now you’re into your fifties? On this LP I show off an acquired appreciation for the simple lyric. Kinda haiku at times, like flamenco verse, or the blues. I can focus more as it’s obvious there’s only so much time left – that has a production value all its own. “Fields Of Green” suggests that upcoming musicians tend to see you as an elder statesman. Do they ask for advice? Most of my advice is on record. I can only reveal what I wish someone would’ve revealed to me along the way. If the older me met up with the younger me, I’d now know what to do with me. But back then, getting this old seemed out of the question. There’s a mammoth Giant Sand reissue campaign under way. Did you ever think you’d last this long? 30 years ago, living in the desert made it hard to get music recorded and released. The goal was a vow between myself and Rainer Ptacek not to make records that would embarrass ourselves 20 years on. I can at least say I achieved that, but Rainer’s records do more. They still release a stunning amount of information embedded like a time capsule, encoded within every track. INTERVIEW: ROB HUGHES

It’s a fair bet that Paul Weller finds that whole “Modfather” thing pretty tedious. By the same token, you suspect that Howe Gelb must get fed up being referred to as “the Godfather of Alt.Country”.

After all, Gelb’s 25-year recording career with Giant Sand (30 if you count its original incarnation as Giant Sandworms, the Arizona troupe he founded with late guitarist Rainer Ptacek) has seen him trade jazz, blues and folk with punk, Mexicali and Morricone – plenty of alternatives, in fact, to country music.

Giant Sand’s roots in the Southwestern desert may afford them rights to the authentic twang of lo-plains country, but Gelb likens himself more to a jazz musician. He’s happiest heading up a loose collective of like-minded souls, his largely improvised songs informed by a wanderlust, a search for happy accidents.

It’s made for some of the most hallucinatory music of the last three decades, either as Giant Sand or solo, sometimes with offshoots like The Band Of Blacky Ranchette – all of these fronted by Gelb’s unique voice, an instrument that’s become more steadfastly laidback as the years have crept by. It has to be said, before we get too carried away, that the same approach has also resulted in some less memorable, rather more ponderous moments.

But that’s all part of Gelb’s enigmatic appeal. His influence is sizeable. Though now partly resident in Denmark, he was for many years the mainstay of the underground Tucson scene. Joey Burns and John Convertino began in Giant Sand, before striking out as Calexico, while other protégés and collaborators have included M.Ward, Grandaddy, PJ Harvey, Vic Chesnutt and Neko Case. Blurry Blue Mountain marks the beginning of a concentrated flurry of Giant Sand activity. The next 12 months will see a comprehensive reissue programme – one already begun with their 1985 debut, Valley Of Rain – and on through solo work, various side projects and a couple of hefty boxsets.

One thing you’re likely to notice is that, essentially, Giant Sand haven’t changed much. Nowadays there are more Danes than Americans in the band, but the essence is the same. Shuffling rhythms suddenly break sweat into something more immediate yet indistinct. Sad-slow plinks of piano make way for cowboy choruses; train songs rumble into percussive, jazzy numbers. There’s walking bass, swamp blues and Gelb himself, for the most part singing like a man still stirring from slumber and groping for the nearest lamp.

That said, as with 2008’s Provisions, Giant Sand are a more urgent proposition these days, as if age has somehow sharpened Gelb’s appetite. Outlaw tale “Thin Line Man” is a case in point, a thrillingly concise remake of an old ’80s song that clocks in at half the length of his seven-minute original. “Ride The Rail” fairly rattles along too, recounting the tale of the Molly Macguires – the Irish emigrant coal miners who took on the authorities in 19th century Pennsylvania, Gelb’s home state. The soft gait of “Fields Of Green” often appears to be a meditation on time and the ageing process. And his own unwitting/unwilling role as patriarch of some larger musical family, country or not. “Now I amble over 50/And the longest hours move so swiftly/Such young fresh folk look to me as a pathfinder,” murmurs Gelb, before telling everyone to just be quiet and listen to their own hearts instead.

Playfulness abounds here. Anyone familiar with Gelb’s propensity for wordplay will admire the way he elects to rhyme “prayer” with “Leo Sayer”. Or conjure a fireside tale wherein Daddy’s out back listening to Haggard while Momma’s getting down to Thunderclap Newman.

Suffice to say that Blurry Blue Mountain is a lovely, oddly charming record. And in the unlikely event that it doesn’t move you, there’s a whole heap of past glories just waiting to be discovered.

ROB HUGHES

Q+A HOWE GELB

How has your approach to making music changed now you’re into your fifties?

On this LP I show off an acquired appreciation for the simple lyric. Kinda haiku at times, like flamenco verse, or the blues. I can focus more as it’s obvious there’s only so much time left – that has a production value all its own.

“Fields Of Green” suggests that upcoming musicians tend to see you as an elder statesman. Do they ask for advice?

Most of my advice is on record. I can only reveal what I wish someone would’ve revealed to me along the way. If the older me met up with the younger me, I’d now know what to do with me. But back then, getting this old seemed out of the question.

There’s a mammoth Giant Sand reissue campaign under way. Did you ever think you’d last this long?

30 years ago, living in the desert made it hard to get music recorded and released. The goal was a vow between myself and Rainer Ptacek not to make records that would embarrass ourselves 20 years on. I can at least say I achieved that, but Rainer’s records do more. They still release a stunning amount of information embedded like a time capsule, encoded within every track.

INTERVIEW: ROB HUGHES

Liam Gallagher lends support to London’s 100 Club

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Liam Gallagher lends support to London’s 100 Club
Liam Gallagher has given his support to the campaign to save London's 100 Club from closure. In a handwritten note posted on Savethe100club.co.uk, the ex-Oasis singer wrote that the iconic club is "very rock'n'roll" and that it "sorts the men out from the boys". He stated that the potential closur...

Liam Gallagher has given his support to the campaign to save London‘s 100 Club from closure.

In a handwritten note posted on Savethe100club.co.uk, the ex-Oasis singer wrote that the iconic club is “very rock’n’roll” and that it “sorts the men out from the boys”.

He stated that the potential closure, which is due to increased rent[/url], is “a real shame”, adding that he “fancied playing there again with the mighty Beady Eye“.

Gallagher played the venue with Oasis in 1994.

Other musicians backing the campaign include Mick Jagger, Paul Weller, Carl Barat, Mick Jones and Pixies‘ Frank Black, who has pledged to donate £100,000 to help save it.

Buzzcocks‘ Steve Diggle has also lent his support, saying: “The 100 Club is as important as St Paul’s Cathedral!”

A fundraiser for the campaign featuring Chas & Dave‘s Chas Hodges is being held at the venue on November 25.

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.

Patti Smith laments modern book technology

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Patti Smith laments modern book technology
Patti Smith has called on publishers and readers not to let technology kill off traditional books. The singer made the statement after winning a National Book Award for her memoir, Just Kids. She collected a $10,000 (£6,250) prize for winning the non-fiction category at the awards ceremony in New ...

Patti Smith has called on publishers and readers not to let technology kill off traditional books.

The singer made the statement after winning a National Book Award for her memoir, Just Kids. She collected a $10,000 (£6,250) prize for winning the non-fiction category at the awards ceremony in New York last night (November 17), reports BBC News.

“There is nothing more beautiful than the book, the paper, the font, the cloth,” she said. “Please never abandon the book.”

Her memoir, which won the non-fiction prize, trails her youth in New York in the 1960s.

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.

Paul McCartney to broadcast Apollo Theatre show

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Paul McCartney to broadcast Apollo Theatre show
Paul McCartney is set to play his first show at New York's iconic Apollo Theatre on December 13. The former Beatle will play an invite-only show at the Harlem venue for radio service Sirius XM, which will be broadcasting the gig live. The non-profit venue is currently celebrating its 75th annivers...

Paul McCartney is set to play his first show at New York‘s iconic Apollo Theatre on December 13.

The former Beatle will play an invite-only show at the Harlem venue for radio service Sirius XM, which will be broadcasting the gig live.

The non-profit venue is currently celebrating its 75th anniversary. In the 1960s it became famous for breaking artists such as James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and many others.

See Sirius.com for more information about the broadcast.

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.

New Joe Strummer biopic on the way

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New Joe Strummer biopic on the way

A new biopic about The Clash's late frontman Joe Strummer is in the works. Film4 is backing the project, entitled Joe Public. Screenwriter Paul Viragh, who wrote Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, will be in charge of the script, reports Screendaily.com. No-one has been cast to play the lead role yet. Strummer was the subject of Julien Temple's 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten and Don Letts' recent film Strummerville. 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.

A new biopic about The Clash‘s late frontman Joe Strummer is in the works.

Film4 is backing the project, entitled Joe Public. Screenwriter Paul Viragh, who wrote Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, will be in charge of the script, reports Screendaily.com.

No-one has been cast to play the lead role yet.

Strummer was the subject of Julien Temple‘s 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten and Don Letts‘ recent film Strummerville.

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.

Neil Young loses musical equipment in fire

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Neil Young loses musical equipment in fire
Neil Young has blamed a fire at his San Francisco warehouse on a fault in a fuel-efficient car he had been working on. The music legend lost musical instruments and memorabilia as a result of the fire, which took place on November 9 and resulted in an estimated $850,000-worth (£534,000) of damage,...

Neil Young has blamed a fire at his San Francisco warehouse on a fault in a fuel-efficient car he had been working on.

The music legend lost musical instruments and memorabilia as a result of the fire, which took place on November 9 and resulted in an estimated $850,000-worth (£534,000) of damage, reports BBC News.

He has now said he believes the fire was caused by the charging system he had been using on his so-called LincVolt car – a project for which Young converted a 1959 Lincoln Continental car to run off battery power.

“The wall charging system was not completely tested and had never been left unattended. A mistake was made. It was not the fault of the car,” Young wrote on LincVolt.com.

He vowed to continue with the project, which aims to increase fuel-efficient travel, writing: “Our project is to demonstrate alternative energies for transportation that are clean. We’re still in a race against time. On a project like this, setbacks happen for a reason and we can see that very well from here.”

The LincVolt was severely damaged as a result of the fire, although Young says he hopes to rebuild it using parts from similar models.

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.

The 44th Uncut Playlist Of 2010

John Mulvey
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Bit of a dash today, since we’re finishing up the end-of-year issue, Top 50 Albums Of 2010 and all. Some good new things in here, as you can see; particularly taken with the Six Organs record. Before you ask, that’s not a new reissue of the first Fairports album; it just rolled around on my iTunes straight after the Fabulous Diamonds. 1 Mugstar – Lime (Important) 2 Six Organs Of Admittance – Asleep On The Floodplain (Drag City) 3 The Jayhawks – Hollywood Town Hall: Legacy Edition (American/Sony) 4 Gruff Rhys – Shark Infested Waters (Turnstile) 5 Neville Skelly – He Looks A Lot Like Me (Setanta) 6 Various Artists – Said I Had A Vision: Songs & Labels of David Lee, 1960-1988 (Paradise Of Bachelors) 7 Highlife – Best Bless (The Social Registry) 8 Fabulous Diamonds – Fabulous Diamonds II (Siltbreeze) 9 Fairport Convention – Fairport Convention (Polydor) 10 International Hello – International Hello (Holy Mountain) 11 The Human League – Night People (Wall Of Sound) 12 Tim Hardin – Tim Hardin I/II (Raven) 13 Iron & Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean (4AD) 14 The Sexual Objects – Cucumber (Creeping Bent/Aktion Und Spass) 15 The Limiñanas - The Limiñanas (Trouble In Mind) 16 Up – Rising (Applebush) 17 Bruce Springsteen – The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story (Columbia) 18 Lil B – Everything Based (Self-Released)

Bit of a dash today, since we’re finishing up the end-of-year issue, Top 50 Albums Of 2010 and all. Some good new things in here, as you can see; particularly taken with the Six Organs record.

Continue

Liam Gallagher’s post-Oasis band Beady Eye air debut video

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Liam Gallagher’s post-Oasis band Beady Eye air debut video
Beady Eye have premiered the music video for their debut song 'Bring The Light' online. The song from Liam Gallagher's post-Oasis band was released as a free download last week (November 10). Watch it on YouTube now. Beady Eye's debut album was recorded this summer and is expected to be released i...

Beady Eye have premiered the music video for their debut song ‘Bring The Light’ online.

The song from Liam Gallagher‘s post-Oasis band was released as a free download last week (November 10). Watch it on YouTube now.

Beady Eye‘s debut album was recorded this summer and is expected to be released in early 2011.

Some fans have criticised the band over the track, with Alan McGee, the man who signed Oasis in 1993, defending the group, saying they should not be judged on their first effort.

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.

Jarvis Cocker and Ray Davies confirmed for Southbank Centre’s Christmas programme

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Jarvis Cocker and Ray Davies confirmed for Southbank Centre’s Christmas programme
Jarvis Cocker and Ray Davies are among the acts set perform at London's Southbank Centre shows this Christmas. Cocker, who has reformed Pulp to play a gigs in 2011, will narrate a live stage version of children's tale Peter And The Wolf on December 29 and 30. Davies will appear with the Crouch End ...

Jarvis Cocker and Ray Davies are among the acts set perform at London‘s Southbank Centre shows this Christmas.

Cocker, who has reformed Pulp to play a gigs in 2011, will narrate a live stage version of children’s tale Peter And The Wolf on December 29 and 30. Davies will appear with the Crouch End Festival Chorus to sing The Kinks‘ classics on December 19.

A host of other live events take place at the Centre throughout the Christmas period, with confirmed acts including Kate Rusby (December 8) and Camille O’Sullivan (18).

See Southbankcentre.co.uk 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.

The Beatles music made available to download on iTunes

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The Beatles music made available to download on iTunes
The Beatles' back catalogue has become available on iTunes for the first time today (November 16). All 13 albums by the band, along with their officially-released compilations plus assorted live footage, have been added to the download service, making it the first time their music has been legally ...

The Beatles‘ back catalogue has become available on iTunes for the first time today (November 16).

All 13 albums by the band, along with their officially-released compilations plus assorted live footage, have been added to the download service, making it the first time their music has been legally available to download.

Paul McCartney praised the deal, saying: “It’s fantastic to see the songs we originally released on vinyl receive as much love in the digital world as they did the first time around.”

Yoko Ono said she thought it “so appropriate that we are doing this on John [Lennon]’s 70th birthday year,” while George Harrison‘s widow Olivia said: “The Beatles on iTunes – bravo!”

Ringo Starr referenced the lengthy time it has taken for The Beatles‘ music to appear on the service. “I am particularly glad to no longer be asked when The Beatles are coming to iTunes,” he said. “At last, if you want it – you can get it now – The Beatles from Liverpool to now!”

The deal is thought to bring to an end the dispute between iTunes‘ parent company Apple Inc, The Beatles‘ Apple Corps and their record label EMI. The two Apple companies have traded lawsuits over each other’s brand name and logo use since 1978.

Steve Jobs, Apple Inc‘s CEO, said: “It has been a long and winding road to get here. Thanks to The Beatles and EMI, we are now realising a dream we’ve had since we launched iTunes 10 years ago.”

Songs have been priced at 99p individually, and fans can buy The Beatles‘ entire back catalogue for £125.

The news marks the end of years of negotiations between EMI, and Apple Inc. Earlier this year Paul McCartney suggested it was EMI‘s fault for the delay, saying there were “all sorts of reasons” why chiefs at the company were reluctant to sign a deal.

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.

The Sexual Objects: “Cucumber”

John Mulvey
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0

To be honest, I more or less gave up on The Nectarine No 9 over the last few years of their career. Not sure why: maybe Davy Henderson’s personal interpretation of the obtuse became a bit much. Could be wrong here, because I certainly don’t know the albums well enough to pass real comment, but I suspect he strayed too far into the curmudgeonly. That’s not always a problem, of course, but I’d say Henderson has generally been at his best when a pop imperative has shined through the wilful knottiness. His first album fronting The Sexual Objects doesn’t quite find Henderson retracing his steps to the heyday of Win; where would he find the money to do that again, for a start? Nevertheless, “Cucumber” is just about the most accessible and enjoyable record I can remember him making since “A Sea With Three Stars” (maybe the sexual allusion provides a link between the two albums?). The press blurb mentions The Move and The Modern Lovers, and how “echoes of John Cale’s early solo work and Lou Reed’s 'Transformer' pervade the overall sound of the album.” Certainly I can pick up Lou Reed and Jonathan Richman, and I like how John Robinson’s review in the current Uncut talks about “A kind of post-glam, pre-punk delight in the electric guitar.” John talks plenty about Television and The Voidoids, but I keep thinking more about how so many Scottish bands – not all involving Henderson – have run with this sound: skinny, cocky, exuberant, blessed with a sort of unfunky funkiness. It’s a sequence which kicked off with The Fire Engines and their contemporaries, and which was last heard, maybe, in the underrated 1990s (on their first album, at least). One Scottish band seemingly untouched by this sound, at least overtly, have been Boards Of Canada. But the duo produced the first track on “Cucumber”, “Here Comes The Rubber Cops” which, background noise notwithstanding, doesn’t sound much different from the other tracks, produced by Russell Burn from The Fire Engines and John Disco, from Bis (Have BOC done any other production work besides remixes, by the way? I’m struggling to recall any). It is, though, one of the best songs on a neat album. Henderson is not one to resort to contemplative stocktaking in middle-age, so “Cucumber” points up his priapic interests more than ever. It’d be easy for all this to come across as a conceptual art project about the language of desire; or, perhaps, a portrait of a sleazy and desperate man of a certain age. But Henderson and his bandmates (most of whom have figured in at least some of his previous vehicles) are too gleeful and uninhibited for that: “Full Penetration”, especially, is a fantastic romp. “Queen City Of The 4th Dimension” is terrific, too, not least because it sounds like T.Rex, after a fashion. Meanwhile, “Come, come, all through the night,” begins “Midnight Boycow”, a song packed with the sort of pinched hooks – if not the lavish set-dressing – that graced the two Win albums, and prompted a lot of hacks to wring hands about “perfect” pop music which barely sells a copy. No-one’s going to make those claims about The Sexual Objects; not when corporate British indie-rock is barely selling, let alone the cantankerous original model. Henderson, though, seems to be one of those musicians who ploughs on regardless; evidently, he wants to keep it up forever.

To be honest, I more or less gave up on The Nectarine No 9 over the last few years of their career. Not sure why: maybe Davy Henderson’s personal interpretation of the obtuse became a bit much. Could be wrong here, because I certainly don’t know the albums well enough to pass real comment, but I suspect he strayed too far into the curmudgeonly.

Continue

Kings Of Leon to headline Isle Of Wight 2011

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Kings Of Leon to headline Isle Of Wight 2011

[a]Kings Of Leon[/a] are set to play a headline slot at next year's Isle Of Wight Festival - their only UK festival appearance of 2011. The band will play the Friday night (June 10) of the three-day event, which runs from June 10-12, with festival chief John Giddings saying that it would be their only festival appearance in the country next year. They are the first act announced to play the event, with more expected to be revealed this week (beginning November 15). Last year [a]Jay-Z[/a], [a]The Strokes[/a] and [a]Paul McCartney[/a] headlined the festival. See Isleofwightfestival.com for more information. Tickets go on sale at 9am (GMT) on Friday. 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.

[a]Kings Of Leon[/a] are set to play a headline slot at next year’s Isle Of Wight Festival – their only UK festival appearance of 2011.

The band will play the Friday night (June 10) of the three-day event, which runs from June 10-12, with festival chief John Giddings saying that it would be their only festival appearance in the country next year.

They are the first act announced to play the event, with more expected to be revealed this week (beginning November 15). Last year [a]Jay-Z[/a], [a]The Strokes[/a] and [a]Paul McCartney[/a] headlined the festival.

See Isleofwightfestival.com for more information.

Tickets go on sale at 9am (GMT) on Friday.

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.

Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood offers update on band’s new album

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Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood offers update on band’s new album
Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has given fans an update on the band's new album and future touring plans. Writing on their official blog at Radiohead.com/deadairspace, Greenwood explained that the band are currently "in the studio" but that they "haven't quite finished" the follow-up to 2007's...

Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has given fans an update on the band’s new album and future touring plans.

Writing on their official blog at Radiohead.com/deadairspace, Greenwood explained that the band are currently “in the studio” but that they “haven’t quite finished” the follow-up to 2007’s ‘In Rainbows’ yet.

He referenced an interview he gave with Rolling Stone Italy recently, claiming he had been misquoted as saying that the album would contain 10 songs, and that they would play live soon.

“I think this Italian writer has, either through over-enthusiasm or frustration at all my non-committal answers, mistranslated me a little,” Greenwood explained. “In fact we haven’t quite finished the album – in the studio at the moment.”

Greenwood added that they had not considered any new live plans yet. “…Nor have we yet considered any touring,” he outlined. “The plan is to have no plan until the record is finished.”

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.

Damon Albarn reveals Blur’s future plans

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Damon Albarn reveals Blur’s future plans
Damon Albarn has said that Blur have discussed doing something "small" as a band together in January. The frontman is currently on tour with Gorillaz in the UK, but he told Sky News that the four-piece could convene again in the new year. "We [Blur] did talk about doing something in January," he s...

Damon Albarn has said that Blur have discussed doing something “small” as a band together in January.

The frontman is currently on tour with Gorillaz in the UK, but he told Sky News that the four-piece could convene again in the new year.

“We [Blur] did talk about doing something in January,” he said. “Something small, no career-based world domination ideas.”

Earlier this year Albarn told Uncut‘s sister site [url=http://www.nme.com/news/blur/51007]NME[/url] that he was planning on releasing further one-off Blur singles[/url] after they released a new song, ‘Fool’s Day’, for Record Store Day in April. Last month he said: “I’ve got a lot of songs that will always only be comfortable in the context of Blur.”

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.

LET ME IN

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LET ME IN
Directed by Matt Reeves Starring Chloë Moretz, Kodi Smit-McPhee Thomas Alfredson’s artful bloodsucker movie, Let The Right One In, was one of last year’s best films. That it’s been remade so quickly says as much, post-Twilight, about the insatiable appetite of American cinema audiences for...

Directed by Matt Reeves

Starring Chloë Moretz, Kodi Smit-McPhee

Thomas Alfredson’s artful bloodsucker movie, Let The Right One In, was one of last year’s best films.

That it’s been remade so quickly says as much, post-Twilight, about the insatiable appetite of American cinema audiences for the undead as it does about the fine qualities of the original.

To his credit, Cloverfield director Matt Reeves makes a good fist of this. Instead of the wintry suburbs of Stockholm, we’re in New Mexico in 1983, where Abby (Chloë Moretz), an eternally young girl, moves into an apartment block with a man (Richard Jenkins), who kills locals to provide her with the blood she needs.

She befriends a local boy, Owen, and teaches him to stand up to the school bullies. Elements downplayed in the original are made overt here – the “vampire” word is used, for example. But mostly Reeves stays true to Alfredson’s film. For fans of Let The Right One In, you might feel happier with the original’s bite.

Michael Bonner

BRIAN ENO – SMALL CRAFT ON A MILK SEA

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BRIAN ENO – SMALL CRAFT ON A MILK SEA

Brian Eno’s last two albums – 2006’s Another Day On Earth and 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the latter recorded with David Byrne – have seen him return to The Song. While warmly received in some quarters, there remain some of us who don’t really like Eno’s “proper songs” or his rather affected voice, and prefer it when he’s doing what he does best – making spookily beautiful ambient instrumentals. Small Craft On A Milk Sea sees Eno revert to what he’s spent most of the last three decades doing, providing soundtracks for imaginary films. He has found an appropriate home for it on the Warp label, home of like-minded sonic explorers such as Aphex Twin, Broadcast, Battles and Boards Of Canada. But where Eno’s previous ambient music – using generative computer software, tape loops, phase systems and so on – saw him working solo from purely electronic sources, this project sees him collaborating with “proper musicians”. Eno subjects them to some of the methods he’s used in the past as a producer of David Bowie, Talking Heads, Coldplay and U2 (game theory, Oblique Strategy cards, getting them to swap instruments), all the time deploying the “direct inject anti-jazz raygun” method that he once used with Robert Wyatt (manipulating the sounds with effects and digital delay units). His accomplices here are two multi-instrumentalists, Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams, both contributors to previous Eno projects. Both are seasoned session men – Abrahams is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and arranger who appears to be the first port of call for numerous pop stars (including Carl Barât, Brett Anderson, Ed Harcourt and Paloma Faith) who require someone to flesh out their unfinished ideas. For more than a decade, Abrahams and Hopkins have played completely improvised gigs – you can sometimes see them in small venues, going on stage without any pre-prepared ideas and performing hypnotic, drone laden instrumental jams. This project sees Eno putting a peculiarly Eno-esque twist to such improvisations. He gets them to play freely, puts effects on their instruments, joins in on the keyboards and then goes through the recordings to isolate the most interesting passages. You can hear how songs like “Complex Heaven” or “Horse” – based around drones, repetitive basslines, simple guitar riffs and slowly mutating melodies – were created in this way. Some of the more interesting compositions employ even weirder working methods. Eno would write down a series of chords on a whiteboard and then point randomly at one, getting Hopkins and Abrahams to improvise on that chord before pointing randomly at another chord and then another, not knowing whether or not the ensuing sequence of chords would work together or not. It’s the kind of sky-blue thinking that only a “non-musician” like Eno would ever come up with, and the approach works dividends on tracks such as “Emerald And Lime” and “Emerald And Stone”, both compelling modern classical miniatures allied to lovely melodies. All this makes the album sound like an arid conservatoire experiment, but it’s more than that. Many of its tracks, like the Morricone-feeling “Written, Forgotten”, are designed to drift into the background – upmarket mood music, if you will – but others demand your attention. The proggy trip hop of “Bone Jump”, the drum’n’bass chase sequence of “Flint March”, the frankly terrifying “Forms Of Anger” – all rumbling bass, tribal percussion and spooky guitar effects – will leap out of the speakers. Interestingly, the final track, “Late Anthropocene”, sees Eno, Abrahams and Hopkins improvising together and producing the kind of floaty soundscapes that resemble something produced on Eno’s specially designed pieces of generative music software. To get humans to recreate some of the world’s most complicated computer programmes must, in Eno’s world, presumably rank as a triumph. John Lewis Q+A I came across a comment on a blog saying “Brian Eno signing to Warp is like if Miles Davis had signed to ECM”… Yeah. Well that’s quite encouraging. Home at last! It’s surprisingly noisy in places... Oh good! Well I’m a big Battles fan as you may know, I really like them a lot. And I’m actually a big Warp fan. I like the spectrum they represent and where that particular spectrum is. What particular qualities do Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams have as musicians which made you want to work with them? They are both very interested in sonic worlds. This is an argument I always have with classically trained people. Because they just do not get that this is the major difference between pop music and what they do. The major difference isn’t that we syncopate rhythms or play instruments. The major difference is that we work with sound as our material. Not with melody or rhythm or lyrics. But with sound. This is why you can have thousands of records with essentially the same chords, which all sound different... INTERVIEW: STEPHEN TROUSSÉ

Brian Eno’s last two albums – 2006’s Another Day On Earth and 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the latter recorded with David Byrne – have seen him return to The Song. While warmly received in some quarters, there remain some of us who don’t really like Eno’s “proper songs” or his rather affected voice, and prefer it when he’s doing what he does best – making spookily beautiful ambient instrumentals.

Small Craft On A Milk Sea sees Eno revert to what he’s spent most of the last three decades doing, providing soundtracks for imaginary films. He has found an appropriate home for it on the Warp label, home of like-minded sonic explorers such as Aphex Twin, Broadcast, Battles and Boards Of Canada. But where Eno’s previous ambient music – using generative computer software, tape loops, phase systems and so on – saw him working solo from purely electronic sources, this project sees him collaborating with “proper musicians”. Eno subjects them to some of the methods he’s used in the past as a producer of David Bowie, Talking Heads, Coldplay and U2 (game theory, Oblique Strategy cards, getting them to swap instruments), all the time deploying the “direct inject anti-jazz raygun” method that he once used with Robert Wyatt (manipulating the sounds with effects and digital delay units).

His accomplices here are two multi-instrumentalists, Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams, both contributors to previous Eno projects. Both are seasoned session men – Abrahams is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and arranger who appears to be the first port of call for numerous pop stars (including Carl Barât, Brett Anderson, Ed Harcourt and Paloma Faith) who require someone to flesh out their unfinished ideas.

For more than a decade, Abrahams and Hopkins have played completely improvised gigs – you can sometimes see them in small venues, going on stage without any pre-prepared ideas and performing hypnotic, drone laden instrumental jams. This project sees Eno putting a peculiarly Eno-esque twist to such improvisations. He gets them to play freely, puts effects on their instruments, joins in on the keyboards and then goes through the recordings to isolate the most interesting passages. You can hear how songs like “Complex Heaven” or “Horse” – based around drones, repetitive basslines, simple guitar riffs and slowly mutating melodies – were created in this way.

Some of the more interesting compositions employ even weirder working methods. Eno would write down a series of chords on a whiteboard and then point randomly at one, getting Hopkins and Abrahams to improvise on that chord before pointing randomly at another chord and then another, not knowing whether or not the ensuing sequence of chords would work together or not. It’s the kind of sky-blue thinking that only a “non-musician” like Eno would ever come up with, and the approach works dividends on tracks such as “Emerald And Lime” and “Emerald And Stone”, both compelling modern classical miniatures allied to lovely melodies.

All this makes the album sound like an arid conservatoire experiment, but it’s more than that. Many of its tracks, like the Morricone-feeling “Written, Forgotten”, are designed to drift into the background – upmarket mood music, if you will – but others demand your attention. The proggy trip hop of “Bone Jump”, the drum’n’bass chase sequence of “Flint March”, the frankly terrifying “Forms Of Anger” – all rumbling bass, tribal percussion and spooky guitar effects – will leap out of the speakers.

Interestingly, the final track, “Late Anthropocene”, sees Eno, Abrahams and Hopkins improvising together and producing the kind of floaty soundscapes that resemble something produced on Eno’s specially designed pieces of generative music software. To get humans to recreate some of the world’s most complicated computer programmes must, in Eno’s world, presumably rank as a triumph.

John Lewis

Q+A

I came across a comment on a blog saying “Brian Eno signing to Warp is like if Miles Davis had signed to ECM”…

Yeah. Well that’s quite encouraging. Home at last!

It’s surprisingly noisy in places…

Oh good! Well I’m a big Battles fan as you may know, I really like them a lot. And I’m actually a big Warp fan. I like the spectrum they represent and where that particular spectrum is.

What particular qualities do Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams have as musicians which made you want to work with them?

They are both very interested in sonic worlds. This is an argument I always have with classically trained people. Because they just do not get that this is the major difference between pop music and what they do. The major difference isn’t that we syncopate rhythms or play instruments. The major difference is that we work with sound as our material. Not with melody or rhythm or lyrics. But with sound. This is why you can have thousands of records with essentially the same chords, which all sound different…

INTERVIEW: STEPHEN TROUSSÉ

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – THE PROMISE, THE DARKNESS…STORY

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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – THE PROMISE, THE DARKNESS…STORY

In 1978, Springsteen broke the three-year silence that had followed Born To Run by releasing that album’s polar opposite – the stark, unsettled Darkness On The Edge Of Town. The long break hadn’t been by choice. In July of ’76, nine months after the release of Born To Run, he had entered into a legal battle with his former manager, Mike Appel. It took almost a year of acrimonious negotiations for Bruce to get his catalogue back in an out-of-court settlement. Only then, in June of 1977, was he free to move on. And move on he did, with gusto. Bruce, the E Street Band, manager/producer Jon Landau and engineer Jimmy Iovine spent the better part of a year holed up in New York’s Record Plant (where most of Born To Run had been cut), working up and recording around 70 tracks, written during his forced exile at his Holmdel, New Jersey farm. Eventually, he settled on the 10 that would comprise Darkness… The songs that made up the album were much of a piece. Rather than once again conjuring up the feverishly romanticised America of the first three LPs, Springsteen decided “to write about life in the close confines of the small towns I grew up in”, as he explains in Thom Zimny’s captivating documentary, included on this 3CD/3DVD boxset The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story. Against the backdrop of the decaying beach towns and rutted highways lining the Jersey Shore, these songs are inhabited by struggling yet resilient characters drawn from the working-class people he knew best. Hardscrabble anthems like “Racing In The Street”, “Badlands” and “Prove It All Night” set the template for Springsteen’s approach on subsequent works both widescreen (The River) and intimate (Nebraska). “By the end of Darkness…, I’d found my adult voice,” he writes in the book accompanying this set. Of the 60 or so songs he’d set aside from the Darkness… LP, a handful saw the light of day, most famously Patti Smith’s Iovine-produced cover of “Because The Night” and the Pointer Sisters’ slicked-up take on “Fire”, both of them major hits, as the originals undoubtedly would’ve been. Among the original recordings, five Darkness… outtakes, including “Rendezvous” , wound up on the 1998 rarities box Tracks, while “The Promise” itself found its way onto the 1999 collection, 18 Tracks. Practically everything else has remained hidden – until now. Inside the boxset are the digitally remastered original LP on one CD, with the 21 outtakes broken out on two more discs. It also contains six hours of visuals over its three DVDs, including the Zimny doc, a video of a complete show from Houston in ’78, live and studio footage, and a 2009 performance of Darkness… from Asbury Park. While completists will find the boxset endlessly fascinating, the 21 unearthed songs, also available separately as a 2CD set, The Promise, are the motherlode. They comprise what is unequivocally the great lost Springsteen album, containing just under 90 minutes of music. Though recorded during the same extended sessions, this archival LP is the polar opposite of its fraternal twin: big, bold, vibrantly coloured and laced with sweeping chorus hooks and towering middle eights. In a word, spectacular. If The Boss’ visceral guitar work provided Darkness… with its instrumental focal point, the tracks of The Promise, newly mixed by Bob Clearmountain, ring with echo, pumping up Max Weinberg’s pummelling snare and kick, and Roy Bittan’s shimmering piano runs. The set opens with a discarded version of “Racing In The Street” on which the band explodes to life following a harmonica-driven, scene-setting intro, a far cry from the bleached-out take that appears on Darkness. The record then powers into “Gotta Get That Feeling”, a kitchen-sink opus that seems to contain the entire contents of a mid-’60s jukebox, from Ben E King to Jay & The Americans, in its 3:20 duration. The track has everything: hyperactive drum rolls, gleaming Latin horns, sax solo, call-and-response backing vocals, all topped off by a breathtaking modulation into a final chorus. That’s the first of a parade of architecturally constructed, masterfully executed tracks – “Outside Looking In”, with its racing “Peggy Sue” beat; the finger-snapping “Wrong Side Of The Street”; big ballads like “Someday (We’ll Be Together)”, with a choir further ramping up the grandeur of Bruce’s chest-pumping, Orbisonian lead vocal; and, of course, the original “Because The Night”. You get a feeling he could knock off these paeans to the golden age of AM radio ad infinitum. Listening to them one after another, you realise why they didn’t fit on Darkness…. They belong to another album altogether. This one. The second disc begins as thrillingly as the first, with “Save My Love”, which, like “Gotta Get That Feeling”, “Because The Night” and “Fire”, is a killer woulda-been/shoulda-been Top 40 smash. A few songs later, we get the first hint of the direction Springsteen would focus in on for Darkness…, in the dirge-like form of “Come On (Let’s Go Tonight)”, with its weeping country fiddle and lyrical reference to Elvis’ death. After the Spector-scaled set- piece “The Little Things (My Baby Does)”, darkness does indeed begin closing in, but not before we experience a spectacular sunset with the Technicolor ballad “Breakaway”, set off by summery, sha-la-la backing, leading into the orchestrated, bittersweet “The Promise”, the album’s true climax, followed by the atmospheric coda, “City Of The Night”. As Springsteen points out in the archival materials here, The Promise would have fitted perfectly between Born To Run and Darkness. Seeing the light of day at long last, 32 years hence, this music seems to have arrived from some parallel universe, enriching the history of a supreme artist at his very peak, during a vital era in rock history. What might have been, in all its overarching splendour, now is. Bud Scoppa

In 1978, Springsteen broke the three-year silence that had followed Born To Run by releasing that album’s polar opposite – the stark, unsettled Darkness On The Edge Of Town. The long break hadn’t been by choice. In July of ’76, nine months after the release of Born To Run, he had entered into a legal battle with his former manager, Mike Appel. It took almost a year of acrimonious negotiations for Bruce to get his catalogue back in an out-of-court settlement. Only then, in June of 1977, was he free to move on.

And move on he did, with gusto. Bruce, the E Street Band, manager/producer Jon Landau and engineer Jimmy Iovine spent the better part of a year holed up in New York’s Record Plant (where most of Born To Run had been cut), working up and recording around 70 tracks, written during his forced exile at his Holmdel, New Jersey farm.

Eventually, he settled on the 10 that would comprise Darkness… The songs that made up the album were much of a piece. Rather than once again conjuring up the feverishly romanticised America of the first three LPs, Springsteen decided “to write about life in the close confines of the small towns I grew up in”, as he explains in Thom Zimny’s captivating documentary, included on this 3CD/3DVD boxset The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story.

Against the backdrop of the decaying beach towns and rutted highways lining the Jersey Shore, these songs are inhabited by struggling yet resilient characters drawn from the working-class people he knew best. Hardscrabble anthems like “Racing In The Street”, “Badlands” and “Prove It All Night” set the template for Springsteen’s approach on subsequent works both widescreen (The River) and intimate (Nebraska). “By the end of Darkness…, I’d found my adult voice,” he writes in the book accompanying this set.

Of the 60 or so songs he’d set aside from the Darkness… LP, a handful saw the light of day, most famously Patti Smith’s Iovine-produced cover of “Because The Night” and the Pointer Sisters’ slicked-up take on “Fire”, both of them major hits, as the originals undoubtedly would’ve been. Among the original recordings, five Darkness… outtakes, including “Rendezvous” , wound up on the 1998 rarities box Tracks, while “The Promise” itself found its way onto the 1999 collection, 18 Tracks. Practically everything else has remained hidden – until now.

Inside the boxset are the digitally remastered original LP on one CD, with the 21 outtakes broken out on two more discs. It also contains six hours of visuals over its three DVDs, including the Zimny doc, a video of a complete show from Houston in ’78, live and studio footage, and a 2009 performance of Darkness… from Asbury Park.

While completists will find the boxset endlessly fascinating, the 21 unearthed songs, also available separately as a 2CD set, The Promise, are the motherlode. They comprise what is unequivocally the great lost Springsteen album, containing just under 90 minutes of music. Though recorded during the same extended sessions, this archival LP is the polar opposite of its fraternal twin: big, bold, vibrantly coloured and laced with sweeping chorus hooks and towering middle eights. In a word, spectacular.

If The Boss’ visceral guitar work provided Darkness… with its instrumental focal point, the tracks of The Promise, newly mixed by Bob Clearmountain, ring with echo, pumping up Max Weinberg’s pummelling snare and kick, and Roy Bittan’s shimmering piano runs. The set opens with a discarded version of “Racing In The Street” on which the band explodes to life following a harmonica-driven, scene-setting intro, a far cry from the bleached-out take that appears on Darkness. The record then powers into “Gotta Get That Feeling”, a kitchen-sink opus that seems to contain the entire contents of a mid-’60s jukebox, from Ben E King to Jay & The Americans, in its 3:20 duration. The track has everything: hyperactive drum rolls, gleaming Latin horns, sax solo, call-and-response backing vocals, all topped off by a breathtaking modulation into a final chorus.

That’s the first of a parade of architecturally constructed, masterfully executed tracks – “Outside Looking In”, with its racing “Peggy Sue” beat; the finger-snapping “Wrong Side Of The Street”; big ballads like “Someday (We’ll Be Together)”, with a choir further ramping up the grandeur of Bruce’s chest-pumping, Orbisonian lead vocal; and, of course, the original “Because The Night”. You get a feeling he could knock off these paeans to the golden age of AM radio ad infinitum. Listening to them one after another, you realise why they didn’t fit on Darkness…. They belong to another album altogether. This one.

The second disc begins as thrillingly as the first, with “Save My Love”, which, like “Gotta Get That Feeling”, “Because The Night” and “Fire”, is a killer woulda-been/shoulda-been Top 40 smash. A few songs later, we get the first hint of the direction Springsteen would focus in on for Darkness…, in the dirge-like form of “Come On (Let’s Go Tonight)”, with its weeping country fiddle and lyrical reference to Elvis’ death. After the Spector-scaled set- piece “The Little Things (My Baby Does)”, darkness does indeed begin closing in, but not before we experience a spectacular sunset with the Technicolor ballad “Breakaway”, set off by summery, sha-la-la backing, leading into the orchestrated, bittersweet “The Promise”, the album’s true climax, followed by the atmospheric coda, “City Of The Night”.

As Springsteen points out in the archival materials here, The Promise would have fitted perfectly between Born To Run and Darkness. Seeing the light of day at long last, 32 years hence, this music seems to have arrived from some parallel universe, enriching the history of a supreme artist at his very peak, during a vital era in rock history. What might have been, in all its overarching splendour, now is.

Bud Scoppa

Slow Previewing 2: International Hello, Fabulous Diamonds, Highlife

John Mulvey
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Following on from Friday’s blog, another round-up today of some records that’ve taken me an embarrassingly long time to write up. First out of the traps today, the self-titled album from International Hello. As far as I know, this is technically the band’s debut, on Holy Mountain, though at least some of them have a past life as Monoshock, a North Californian psych band whose freeform ‘90s jams were very much the precursor of bands like Comets On Fire. “International Hello” pretty much gets going where 1995’s “Walk To The Fire” left off, mixing up ranty and intense outbursts of avant-MC5 ramalam with strung-out passages of soupy, churning, freaked-out dirge. I imagine they’ve probably listened to quite a few Hawkwind albums over the years but, even at their most horizontal, there’s something very visceral and punkish about International Hello; if your favourite Comets album is “Field Recordings From The Sun”, especially, maybe check this out. Another San Franciscan band who operate in Monoshock’s slipstream is Wooden Shijps, and an Australian duo, the Fabulous Diamonds, have certain dronepsych affinities with them; perhaps even more so with Ripley’s other band, Moon Duo. I must confess that Fabulous Diamonds’ first album didn’t register on my radar, but “Fabulous Diamonds II”, on Siltbreeze, is a gem: dulled, humming organ-led psych with a persistence reminiscent of The Silver Apples. Something very mantric about this one, too, in spite of the blunt functionality of its presentation (a typical song title is “12 Mins 15 Secs”), with a lot of phasing and tumbling tribal drums. Also, Nisa Venerosa’s sparing vocals have the sing-song potency of some post-punk incantations: kindred contemporary voices might be Rings or Effi Briest, but Fabulous Diamonds’ music is generally a lot more interesting. Finally, an EP from a very well-connected Englishman in New York. Highlife is the project of a guy called Sleepy Doug Shaw, who seems to have played alongside Mira Billotte in White Magic, and who’s accompanied on “Best Bless” by Billotte, Tim Koh from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and Jesse Lee, drummer in another band Shaw has played with, Gang Gang Dance. With such personnel on board, drawing comparisons between Highlife, Animal Collective and The Dirty Projectors might present Shaw as quite the scenester. But “Best Bless” has a loose, ecstatic life of its own, building up African loops (a Mahmoud Ahmed sample on the opening “War Fair”, for example) into some gorgeous songs: the first El Guincho album and Panda Bear’s “Person Pitch” are probably apt reference points, though Highlife’s songs feel more organic and handmade. Belatedly, I think “F Kenya Rip” might just be one of my favourite songs of the year. Please hunt it down and let me know how it works for you…

Following on from Friday’s blog, another round-up today of some records that’ve taken me an embarrassingly long time to write up.

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