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DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS – SEARCHING FOR THE YOUNG SOUL REBELS SE

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DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS – SEARCHING FOR THE YOUNG SOUL REBELS SE

Time – and its faithful attendant, nostalgia – tends to work on music the way a pumice stone works on rough skin, eventually smoothing all that once seemed compellingly odd and idiosyncratic into something softer and more approachable. Few records retain the ability to be truly confrontational a full 30 years after first release, but Dexys Midnight Runners’ debut, which hit shops in July 1980, still bristles with an awkward and inimitable intensity. From the moment the opening blare of “Burn It Down” emerges from a jumble of radio static, the impact of this record remains remarkably undimmed by age. It’s easy to forget how incongruous it was in the post-Pistols musical landscape for a band to immerse themselves so utterly in ’60s soul. Dexys’ refusal to be second-rate punks, instead acting like a law unto themselves, was emblematic of their entire ethos. A 10-deep firm of misfits formed in Birmingham in the image of their gang leader, Kevin Rowland, they seethed with outsider energy and a deep hostility, making the lyric to “I’m Just Looking”, one of the highlights, sound like a manifesto: “Don’t come any closer”. Rowland’s lyrics on Searching For The Young Soul Rebels are a mixture of punchy bravado, deep disgust and a rather heroic flaunting of his insecurities, sobbed rather than sung. The music – played by a sprawling revue centred around guitarist Kevin Archer, trombonist ‘Big’ Jim Paterson, keyboardist Mick Talbot and bassist Pete Williams – locates a whole other vibe: buzzing on the energy and intensity of Motown and Stax, though picking up precious little of the sex. It’s occasionally a little stiff, but it’s always rousing. Partly it’s this tension between the soulful uplift of the music and Rowland’s naked striving that keeps the album sounding so alive. “Thankfully Not Living In Yorkshire It Doesn’t Apply” at first seems a light hearted romp – Rowland’s quick-fire falsetto, the comical stabs of organ – until you tune into the sentiment being expressed. Likewise, “Tell Me When My Light Turns Green”, with its talk of being “manic depressive” and “spat on and shat on”, is raw discontent set to bottled exhilaration, with Rowland straining away like a greyhound in the traps. And the irresistibly speedy cover of Chuck Wood’s “Seven Days Too Long”, a doffed cap to their Northern Soul influences, twists heartache into a sweet thrill. But it’s not all about attitude, posture and passion. These are truly great songs. “Geno” may now be woven into the musical fabric of Britain, but its message about outpunching your youthful heroes still resonates quite powerfully . The two ballads – “I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried” (where Rowland channels Van Morrison’s babbling, inarticulate speech of the heart) and “I’m Just Looking” – form not only the emotional spine of the record, but also an umbilical link to “Until I Believe To My Soul” and “Liars A To E”, the centrepieces on 1982’s Too-Rye-Ay. “Keep It” and the closing “There There, My Dear”, meanwhile, are fiery and oddly euphoric. Only “Love Part One” hasn’t worn well, with Rowland, like a Brummie Ginsberg, intoning over free-form saxophone. He would only master the spoken word form – and reveal his sense of humour – on Dexys’ brilliant and fatally ambitious 1985 swan song, Don’t Stand Me Down. This new edition of Searching For The Young Soul Rebels comes with a second disc which features 21 additional tracks: a- and b-sides, BBC sessions with John Peel and ‘Kid’ Jensen, and previously unreleased demos from EMI’s Manchester Square studio, including a tilt at Sam and Dave’s “Hold On I’m Comin’”. Much of it has been aired before, and inevitably there is repetition, but it contains some terrific performances from a band firing at full power, however briefly. This blazing incarnation of Dexys barely survived the album’s release before fracturing under the eccentricities of their leader, who subsequently assembled new gangs for the following Too-Rye-Ay and Don’t Stand Me Down before the whole thing fell apart. But ultimately, the myth-making around Kevin Rowland tends to obscure the fact that he’s been responsible for some truly soul-scorching music, much of it featuring on this record. At 30 years of age, Searching For The Young Soul Rebels continues to burn. Graeme Thomson

Time – and its faithful attendant, nostalgia – tends to work on music the way a pumice stone works on rough skin, eventually smoothing all that once seemed compellingly odd and idiosyncratic into something softer and more approachable.

Few records retain the ability to be truly confrontational a full 30 years after first release, but Dexys Midnight Runners’ debut, which hit shops in July 1980, still bristles with an awkward and inimitable intensity. From the moment the opening blare of “Burn It Down” emerges from a jumble of radio static, the impact of this record remains remarkably undimmed by age.

It’s easy to forget how incongruous it was in the post-Pistols musical landscape for a band to immerse themselves so utterly in ’60s soul. Dexys’ refusal to be second-rate punks, instead acting like a law unto themselves, was emblematic of their entire ethos. A 10-deep firm of misfits formed in Birmingham in the image of their gang leader, Kevin Rowland, they seethed with outsider energy and a deep hostility, making the lyric to “I’m Just Looking”, one of the highlights, sound like a manifesto: “Don’t come any closer”.

Rowland’s lyrics on Searching For The Young Soul Rebels are a mixture of punchy bravado, deep disgust and a rather heroic flaunting of his insecurities, sobbed rather than sung. The music – played by a sprawling revue centred around guitarist Kevin Archer, trombonist ‘Big’ Jim Paterson, keyboardist Mick Talbot and bassist Pete Williams – locates a whole other vibe: buzzing on the energy and intensity of Motown and Stax, though picking up precious little of the sex. It’s occasionally a little stiff, but it’s always rousing.

Partly it’s this tension between the soulful uplift of the music and Rowland’s naked striving that keeps the album sounding so alive. “Thankfully Not Living In Yorkshire It Doesn’t Apply” at first seems a light hearted romp – Rowland’s quick-fire falsetto, the comical stabs of organ – until you tune into the sentiment being expressed. Likewise, “Tell Me When My Light Turns Green”, with its talk of being “manic depressive” and “spat on and shat on”, is raw discontent set to bottled exhilaration, with Rowland straining away like a greyhound in the traps. And the irresistibly speedy cover of Chuck Wood’s “Seven Days Too Long”, a doffed cap to their Northern Soul influences, twists heartache into a sweet thrill.

But it’s not all about attitude, posture and passion. These are truly great songs. “Geno” may now be woven into the musical fabric of Britain, but its message about outpunching your youthful heroes still resonates quite powerfully . The two ballads – “I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried” (where Rowland channels Van Morrison’s babbling, inarticulate speech of the heart) and “I’m Just Looking” – form not only the emotional spine of the record, but also an umbilical link to “Until I Believe To My Soul” and “Liars A To E”, the centrepieces on 1982’s Too-Rye-Ay. “Keep It” and the closing “There There, My Dear”, meanwhile, are fiery and oddly euphoric. Only “Love Part One” hasn’t worn well, with Rowland, like a Brummie Ginsberg, intoning over free-form saxophone. He would only master the spoken word form – and reveal his sense of humour – on Dexys’ brilliant and fatally ambitious 1985 swan song, Don’t Stand Me Down.

This new edition of Searching For The Young Soul Rebels comes with a second disc which features 21 additional tracks: a- and b-sides, BBC sessions with John Peel and ‘Kid’ Jensen, and previously unreleased demos from EMI’s Manchester Square studio, including a tilt at Sam and Dave’s “Hold On I’m Comin’”. Much of it has been aired before, and inevitably there is repetition, but it contains some terrific performances from a band firing at full power, however briefly.

This blazing incarnation of Dexys barely survived the album’s release before fracturing under the eccentricities of their leader, who subsequently assembled new gangs for the following Too-Rye-Ay and Don’t Stand Me Down before the whole thing fell apart. But ultimately, the myth-making around Kevin Rowland tends to obscure the fact that he’s been responsible for some truly soul-scorching music, much of it featuring on this record. At 30 years of age, Searching For The Young Soul Rebels continues to burn.

Graeme Thomson

BOB DYLAN – THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL 9

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BOB DYLAN – THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL 9

“Let’s just put this one down for kicks,” enthuses 22-year-old Bob Dylan, before letting out a couple of clumsy vocal hums and fumbling with the tuning of his guitar. Soon enough, he launches into one called “All Over You”, a ribald, biblical, rollin’ and tumblin’ hillbilly love song set to a cascading chain of imagery that ranges from slyly philosophical to patently absurd. “Well, if I had to do it all over again,” he hollers out, “babe I’d do it all over you.” “All Over You”, evidently, wasn’t much more than a whim. Never considered for an album proper, nor (apparently) performed on stage, it was essentially just dropped off at Witmark’s New York publishing office in 1963, for posterity’s sake. Over time, it attracted a smattering of blink-and-you-miss-them cover versions (pop groups The McCoys and The Raiders, old Village friend Dave Van Ronk), none of which managed to rescue it from oblivion. It’s a moment of levity, sharply at odds with Dylan’s serious 1963 public image, the young man scowling from the cover of his third LP, The Times They Are A-Changin’ – and one never intended for public consumption. But within Columbia’s 20-year effort to document, deconstruct, and redefine Bob Dylan with the Bootleg Series, it’s priceless. As contrasted with album sessions or live performances, an entirely different aesthetic was at work with the material collected here. With the 47 tracks now collected as The Witmark Demos 1962-1964 (the album also contains the earlier, so-called “Leeds demos”) the idea was simply to document the existence of a song, and provide a transcription and a guide version so that other artists might record them. It was a successful business move (credit Dylan’s cagey manager Albert Grossman) bringing not only a groundswell of chart-bound Dylan records but, in time, shattering the longstanding Tin Pan Alley songwriting model. One wouldn’t ordinarily expect musical revelations in this setting, and to be fair, a number of the Witmark demos fall flat, the singer rushing the tempo or getting bored (a situation which manifests itself with “Let Me Die In My Footsteps”, Dylan abandoning his Cold War epic three verses in). Yet The Witmark Demos is a kind of alternate early history of Dylan’s songwriting process, “writing five new songs before breakfast,” as he once famously quipped. Immortal compositions – “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, “Blowin’ In The Wind”, “The Times They Are A-Changin’” – are here, credible proxies for their illustrious studio counterparts. Witmark duly filed these demos away, readying them for stamp-of-approval covers by The Seekers, The Silkie, Peter, Paul & Mary – as if Dylan’s versions were inadequate somehow. Still, moments of serendipity are liable to appear at any moment. “Ballad For A Friend”, among the earliest compositions here, is one such gem. Set up with gently hypnotic bottleneck guitar and an exquisitely wistful, melancholy vocal, its tale of innocence lost unfolds in panorama, reflecting a certain cinematic quality. “Paths Of Victory”, slowed down and gospelised, is equally divine, distilling the essence of hopeful, better-world-a-comin’ Woody Guthrie. Other substantial, ‘lost’ non-LP songs – the heartbreaking “Seven Curses”, a spellbinding “Tomorrow Is A Long Time”, a primordial piano workout of “I’ll Keep It With Mine” – inarguably deepen the Dylan canon. Besides “All Over You” and “Ballad For a Friend”, Witmark also presents another dozen-odd songs composed, then kicked to the kerb. Some (“Bound To Lose, Bound To Win”) are instantly forgettable, barely more than sketches. The fetching rambler’s tale “Gypsy Lou” is decidedly minor, too, but conjures a likeably restless mood and atmosphere. Others – the brooding “Long Time Gone”, the doleful “Guess I’m Doing Fine” – are lonesome, shaggy-dog tales par excellence. Judgment-day songs “Watcha Gonna Do?” and “I’d Hate To Be You On That Dreadful Day” scraping at the morals of a world gone wrong, emerge as fascinating working drafts, foreshadowing substantial works to come, like “When The Ship Comes In”. Then there’s “The Ballad Of Emmett Till” and “John Brown”, devastating protest songs both, but perhaps over the line, too didactic and ham-fisted for ongoing attention. Yet that’s the beauty here: even grandiloquence served a useful purpose – as a sounding for Dylan’s more artful later drafts. It’s a mixed set: a fuller view could have included the contemporaneous “Broadside” demos, or even further Columbia outtakes. But in the jigsaw puzzle that is Bob Dylan, The Witmark Demos are crucial pieces, and it’s easy to get lost in the depths, the sheer audacity and beauty, of this music. Luke Torn

“Let’s just put this one down for kicks,” enthuses 22-year-old Bob Dylan, before letting out a couple of clumsy vocal hums and fumbling with the tuning of his guitar. Soon enough, he launches into one called “All Over You”, a ribald, biblical, rollin’ and tumblin’ hillbilly love song set to a cascading chain of imagery that ranges from slyly philosophical to patently absurd. “Well, if I had to do it all over again,” he hollers out, “babe I’d do it all over you.”

“All Over You”, evidently, wasn’t much more than a whim. Never considered for an album proper, nor (apparently) performed on stage, it was essentially just dropped off at Witmark’s New York publishing office in 1963, for posterity’s sake. Over time, it attracted a smattering of blink-and-you-miss-them cover versions (pop groups The McCoys and The Raiders, old Village friend Dave Van Ronk), none of which managed to rescue it from oblivion.

It’s a moment of levity, sharply at odds with Dylan’s serious 1963 public image, the young man scowling from the cover of his third LP, The Times They Are A-Changin’ – and one never intended for public consumption. But within Columbia’s 20-year effort to document, deconstruct, and redefine Bob Dylan with the Bootleg Series, it’s priceless.

As contrasted with album sessions or live performances, an entirely different aesthetic was at work with the material collected here. With the 47 tracks now collected as The Witmark Demos 1962-1964 (the album also contains the earlier, so-called “Leeds demos”) the idea was simply to document the existence of a song, and provide a transcription and a guide version so that other artists might record them.

It was a successful business move (credit Dylan’s cagey manager Albert Grossman) bringing not only a groundswell of chart-bound Dylan records but, in time, shattering the longstanding Tin Pan Alley songwriting model. One wouldn’t ordinarily expect musical revelations in this setting, and to be fair, a number of the Witmark demos fall flat, the singer rushing the tempo or getting bored (a situation which manifests itself with “Let Me Die In My Footsteps”, Dylan abandoning his Cold War epic three verses in).

Yet The Witmark Demos is a kind of alternate early history of Dylan’s songwriting process, “writing five new songs before breakfast,” as he once famously quipped. Immortal compositions – “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, “Blowin’ In The Wind”, “The Times They Are A-Changin’” – are here, credible proxies for their illustrious studio counterparts. Witmark duly filed these demos away, readying them for stamp-of-approval covers by The Seekers, The Silkie, Peter, Paul & Mary – as if Dylan’s versions were inadequate somehow. Still, moments of serendipity are liable to appear at any moment. “Ballad For A Friend”, among the earliest compositions here, is one such gem. Set up with gently hypnotic bottleneck guitar and an exquisitely wistful, melancholy vocal, its tale of innocence lost unfolds in panorama, reflecting a certain cinematic quality. “Paths Of Victory”, slowed down and gospelised, is equally divine, distilling the essence of hopeful, better-world-a-comin’ Woody Guthrie. Other substantial, ‘lost’ non-LP songs – the heartbreaking “Seven Curses”, a spellbinding “Tomorrow Is A Long Time”, a primordial piano workout of “I’ll Keep It With Mine” – inarguably deepen the Dylan canon.

Besides “All Over You” and “Ballad For a Friend”, Witmark also presents another dozen-odd songs composed, then kicked to the kerb. Some (“Bound To Lose, Bound To Win”) are instantly forgettable, barely more than sketches. The fetching rambler’s tale “Gypsy Lou” is decidedly minor, too, but conjures a likeably restless mood and atmosphere. Others – the brooding “Long Time Gone”, the doleful “Guess I’m Doing Fine” – are lonesome, shaggy-dog tales par excellence.

Judgment-day songs “Watcha Gonna Do?” and “I’d Hate To Be You On That Dreadful Day” scraping at the morals of a world gone wrong, emerge as fascinating working drafts, foreshadowing substantial works to come, like “When The Ship Comes In”. Then there’s “The Ballad Of Emmett Till” and “John Brown”, devastating protest songs both, but perhaps over the line, too didactic and ham-fisted for ongoing attention. Yet that’s the beauty here: even grandiloquence served a useful purpose – as a sounding for Dylan’s more artful later drafts.

It’s a mixed set: a fuller view could have included the contemporaneous “Broadside” demos, or even further Columbia outtakes. But in the jigsaw puzzle that is Bob Dylan, The Witmark Demos are crucial pieces, and it’s easy to get lost in the depths, the sheer audacity and beauty, of this music.

Luke Torn

KINGS OF LEON – COME AROUND SUNDOWN

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KINGS OF LEON – COME AROUND SUNDOWN

Though the temptation to rest on their laurels must be great – multi-million successes and all – on their fifth album, it’s something that Kings Of Leon emphatically refuse to do. Instead, Come Around Sundown finds the band energetically grounding themselves. Rather than losing itself in some vaguely decadent anomie, the album is all about grit and groove, the stature and accomplishment of their present brought to bear on the influences of their earliest days. As you might expect, Come Around Sundown is a family affair, about old traditions, and what the younger generation make of them. Having changed up their production team for 2008’s 2.5 million-selling, stadium friendly Only By The Night, here the reins are again taken by Angelo Petraglia and Jacquire King. What’s most persuasive about this album, however, is that it honours both the band’s most recent and earliest incarnations. In its inspirations and lifeblood, Come Around Sundown takes Kings Of Leon back to the source. Not widely exposed to old records when they formed in 2002, the band began their musical education with Petraglia, a failed rock’n’roller from Boston who’d reinvented himself as a Nashville songwriter for hire. Petraglia introduced the kids to Exile On Main St, Beggars Banquet, The Velvet Underground and other sacred texts. All round, it seemed it was the band’s very innocence of rock basics contributed to their freshness – and that same quality is again present here. If 2003 debut Youth And Young Manhood had a concise, sparky promise, each of the subsequent Kings Of Leon albums represented an exponential growth spurt. Aha Shake Heartbreak (2005) was plain exhilarating, 2007’s Because Of The Times an invigorating further leap. For all the successes of Only By The Night and the inescapable singles “Use Somebody” and “Sex On Fire”, Come Around Sundown demonstrates just how ready the band are to reconnect with their first musical loves, and how boldly they’ve integrated classic moves into their own singular style. Now, finally, we can hear Kings Of Leon’s link to the great Southern bands that came before them. The Followills make the connection most overtly and gratifyingly on the album’s two defining tracks: the rough-and-tumble “Back Down South” and the closing blue-collar rhapsody “Pickup Truck”. On the former, Caleb breaks out his most cornpone drawl and Matthew plays a Marshall Tucker-like fiddle jig on a slide guitar, while the DNA-powered rhythm section of Jared and oldest brother Nathan, a monster drummer, bang out a vintage Allmans groove. Here, finally, is a cut that can be readily embraced by rednecks and Baby Boomers without alienating a younger fanbase. The same can be said for “Pickup Truck”, wherein Caleb breaks out his preternatural yelp, at once wounded and resilient, in a deep-cured slice of down-home magical realism. Somewhere, Gram Parsons is smiling. The transitional “Radioactive” is a thrusting rocker, on which drums, bass and guitar engage in a breathless sprint from end to end; little wonder the record company chose it as the first single. Otherwise, though, Come Around Sundown sees Kings Of Leon immersing themselves in the sounds of old records as if they’d just discovered the motherlode. Which indeed they have. This child-like sense of novelty permeates “Mary”, an astounding melange of doo-wop, Sun-era rock’n’roll and early Beatles that may be the album’s most bizarro and thrilling piece of work. On “Pyro”, Caleb elbows his way through the hammering dual-guitar riffage to bray out a righteously Stax-style vocal under clouds of dirty choirboy harmonies, in an inversion of Exile’s female gospel chorale. The echo-chamber melodrama “The Face” is like a Roy Orbison ballad on steroids. The band keep the pedal to the metal with “The Immortals”, a massive slab of mutated Southern boogie with a funky groove in the transitions leading into a stately cadence under mushroom-cloud choruses. “Beach Side”, which evokes classic songs of summers past, is a sultry but propulsive track in which Matthew’s left hand keeps threatening to slide into dissonance. “Pony Up” turns on a sparkling guitar riff right out of Mickey & Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange”. True to its title, “Mi Amigo” cruises south of the border on a swaying tempo and faux-mariachi horns. This time out, the band want you to have an experience, and that’s what you get, on a record that’s over the top, wildly inventive and satisfying in the ever-deepening way of landmark longplayers from the last century. Sure, Come Around Sundown honours their elders. But it also finds Kings Of Leon remaining utterly true to themselves. Bud Scoppa

Though the temptation to rest on their laurels must be great – multi-million successes and all – on their fifth album, it’s something that Kings Of Leon emphatically refuse to do. Instead, Come Around Sundown finds the band energetically grounding themselves. Rather than losing itself in some vaguely decadent anomie, the album is all about grit and groove, the stature and accomplishment of their present brought to bear on the influences of their earliest days.

As you might expect, Come Around Sundown is a family affair, about old traditions, and what the younger generation make of them. Having changed up their production team for 2008’s 2.5 million-selling, stadium friendly Only By The Night, here the reins are again taken by Angelo Petraglia and Jacquire King. What’s most persuasive about this album, however, is that it honours both the band’s most recent and earliest incarnations.

In its inspirations and lifeblood, Come Around Sundown takes Kings Of Leon back to the source. Not widely exposed to old records when they formed in 2002, the band began their musical education with Petraglia, a failed rock’n’roller from Boston who’d reinvented himself as a Nashville songwriter for hire. Petraglia introduced the kids to Exile On Main St, Beggars Banquet, The Velvet Underground and other sacred texts. All round, it seemed it was the band’s very innocence of rock basics contributed to their freshness – and that same quality is again present here.

If 2003 debut Youth And Young Manhood had a concise, sparky promise, each of the subsequent Kings Of Leon albums represented an exponential growth spurt. Aha Shake Heartbreak (2005) was plain exhilarating, 2007’s Because Of The Times an invigorating further leap. For all the successes of Only By The Night and the inescapable singles “Use Somebody” and “Sex On Fire”, Come Around Sundown demonstrates just how ready the band are to reconnect with their first musical loves, and how boldly they’ve integrated classic moves into their own singular style. Now, finally, we can hear Kings Of Leon’s link to the great Southern bands that came before them.

The Followills make the connection most overtly and gratifyingly on the album’s two defining tracks: the rough-and-tumble “Back Down South” and the closing blue-collar rhapsody “Pickup Truck”. On the former, Caleb breaks out his most cornpone drawl and Matthew plays a Marshall Tucker-like fiddle jig on a slide guitar, while the DNA-powered rhythm section of Jared and oldest brother Nathan, a monster drummer, bang out a vintage Allmans groove.

Here, finally, is a cut that can be readily embraced by rednecks and Baby Boomers without alienating a younger fanbase. The same can be said for “Pickup Truck”, wherein Caleb breaks out his preternatural yelp, at once wounded and resilient, in a deep-cured slice of down-home magical realism. Somewhere, Gram Parsons is smiling.

The transitional “Radioactive” is a thrusting rocker, on which drums, bass and guitar engage in a breathless sprint from end to end; little wonder the record company chose it as the first single. Otherwise, though, Come Around Sundown sees Kings Of Leon immersing themselves in the sounds of old records as if they’d just discovered the motherlode. Which indeed they have.

This child-like sense of novelty permeates “Mary”, an astounding melange of doo-wop, Sun-era rock’n’roll and early Beatles that may be the album’s most bizarro and thrilling piece of work. On “Pyro”, Caleb elbows his way through the hammering dual-guitar riffage to bray out a righteously Stax-style vocal under clouds of dirty choirboy harmonies, in an inversion of Exile’s female gospel chorale. The echo-chamber melodrama “The Face” is like a Roy Orbison ballad on steroids.

The band keep the pedal to the metal with “The Immortals”, a massive slab of mutated Southern boogie with a funky groove in the transitions leading into a stately cadence under mushroom-cloud choruses. “Beach Side”, which evokes classic songs of summers past, is a sultry but propulsive track in which Matthew’s left hand keeps threatening to slide into dissonance. “Pony Up” turns on a sparkling guitar riff right out of Mickey & Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange”. True to its title, “Mi Amigo” cruises south of the border on a swaying tempo and faux-mariachi horns.

This time out, the band want you to have an experience, and that’s what you get, on a record that’s over the top, wildly inventive and satisfying in the ever-deepening way of landmark longplayers from the last century. Sure, Come Around Sundown honours their elders. But it also finds Kings Of Leon remaining utterly true to themselves.

Bud Scoppa

Ask Joanna Newsom!

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Ask Joanna Newsom!

One of our favourite artists, Joanna Newsom, will soon be in the Uncut hot seat for our An Audience With… feature. And as ever, we’re after your questions to put to her. So, is there anything you’ve wanted to ask the harp queen, occasional Armani model and consummate songwriter? What are her favourite memories of growing up in Nevada City? Apparently, she spent a year in high school obsessed with Fleetwood Mac. So, who’s better – Stevie Nicks or Christine McVie? She’s appeared on a track on the new Roots album. How on earth did that come about? Send your questions to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com/ by Tuesday, October 19. We’ll put the best questions to Joanna and her answers will appear in a forthcoming edition of Uncut.

One of our favourite artists, Joanna Newsom, will soon be in the Uncut hot seat for our An Audience With… feature. And as ever, we’re after your questions to put to her.

So, is there anything you’ve wanted to ask the harp queen, occasional Armani model and consummate songwriter?

What are her favourite memories of growing up in Nevada City?

Apparently, she spent a year in high school obsessed with Fleetwood Mac. So, who’s better – Stevie Nicks or Christine McVie?

She’s appeared on a track on the new Roots album. How on earth did that come about?

Send your questions to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com/ by Tuesday, October 19.

We’ll put the best questions to Joanna and her answers will appear in a forthcoming edition of Uncut.

Michael Jackson’s videos to be re-released

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Michael Jackson’s videos to be re-released

All of Michael Jackson's videos are being released on DVD for the first time. A collection featuring the singer's 40 videos, including an unreleased film for 2003 single 'One More Chance', entitled 'Michael Jackson's Vision' will be released on November 22, reports Billboard.com. The boxset release includes the full version of 'Thriller' along with the rarely screened 'Ghosts'. 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.

All of Michael Jackson‘s videos are being released on DVD for the first time.

A collection featuring the singer’s 40 videos, including an unreleased film for 2003 single ‘One More Chance’, entitled ‘Michael Jackson’s Vision’ will be released on November 22, reports Billboard.com.

The boxset release includes the full version of ‘Thriller’ along with the rarely screened ‘Ghosts’.

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.

Coldplay named songwriters of the year at ASCAP awards

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Coldplay named songwriters of the year at ASCAP awards
Coldplay have been named songwriters of the year by The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, commonly know as ASCAP, at their annual awards last night (October 13). The band's song 'Viva La Vida' was also given the Song Of The Year award at the London ceremony at the Grosvenor Hou...

Coldplay have been named songwriters of the year by The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, commonly know as ASCAP, at their annual awards last night (October 13).

The band’s song ‘Viva La Vida’ was also given the Song Of The Year award at the London ceremony at the Grosvenor House hotel.

Taio Cruz won the Vanguard Award For Departure and Scouting For Girls picked up the College Award for their song ‘Everybody Wants To Be On TV’, reports BBC News.

Coldplay did not attend the event as they are working on a new album with producer Brian Eno.

See Ascap.com for a full list of winners.

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.

London Film Festival – Never Let Me Go

Michael Bonner
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To the capital’s glamorous West End, then, and the Opening Night Gala of this year’s London Film Festival at the Odeon Leicester Square. Introducing this film adaptation of his novel Never Let Me Go, the author Kazuo Ishiguro hailed the film’s stars – Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield – as being at the forefront of a new generation of actors. Arguably, Ishiguro was whipping up a bit of hyperbole, but Never Let Me Go is part of a slow shift away from heritage Brit drama towards a more subversive and questioning style of movie-making. I suppose it would be easy to compare Never Let Me Go to Atonement. Both films are based on acclaimed novels; both figure a typically photogenic stately home inside which secrets lie; both figure a typically photogenic stately Keira Knightley; both deal in feelings of guilt and the attempts of one character to redeem herself for past crimes. And, as with Atonement, Never Let Me Go initially presents a reassuringly familiar and comfortable set-up – only for the rug to get pulled out from underneath you. I should point out now that there’s going to be spoilers ahead. The stately home here is Hailsham, an elite English boarding school presided over by the imperious Miss Emily (Charlotte Rampling), where pupils are encouraged in artistic pursuits, their best work submitted to “the gallery” for approval. No one goes outside the school perimeter; we hear one story of a pupil who left the grounds and was later found tied to tree, their hands and feet having been cut off. There is little, if any contact with the outside world. In this strange, creepy place we meet Ruth, Kathy and Tommy. It’s the 1970s, and the three protagonists are young, not quite in their teens, but still they’re fumbling with nascent adolescent feelings; Ruth and Tommy for each other, while Kathy sets her sights on having Tommy for herself. You might think at this point we’re going to flash forward 10 or 15 years and fall into a thoughtful, high-end relationship drama, with some stiff upper lippery and plenty of unrequited love. Which we sort of do, but not quite as you might expect. This isn’t England as we know it; this is a sort of alternate reality, an England where the state has eradicated illness and disease by cloning human beings and farming out their organs until such time as they “complete” – Ishiguro’s euphemism for death. The children of Hailsham are bred specifically to save lives. But what of their own lives and their own feelings? Their eventual fate is revealed to them while they’re still at Hailsham, and what follows – when the adult Ruth (Knightley), Kathy (Mulligan) and Tommy (Garfield) are living in remote “cottages”, still shielded from the real world – provides moments of heartbreak, tenderness and false hopes. Mulligan, who apart from an early role in a Doctor Who episode, is not an actress I warm to tremendously – she was, frankly, punchable in An Education – and Knightley has rarely offered much suggestion of range. Garfield, though, who was tremendous in The Social Network, is equally good here, as the slow-witted, vulnerable centre of the love triangle. He works hard with Mulligan to create a believable dynamic; she becomes a “carer”, looking after donors as they undergo their operations, and you suspect it’s her childhood relationship with the boy Tommy that brought this out in her. Knightley, as the manipulative Ruth, does a lot to move beyond her comfort zone; the scenes where she’s in hospital, her body beginning to fail from multiple donations, clinging on to a walking frame, is – for once – proper acting. Ruth's own moment of atonement, to let Kathy and Tommy be together, is beautifully pitched. And the glimmer of hope – that Kathy and Tommy can defer donating by proving that they love each other – is heartbreakingly played out by Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland. There is, intriguingly, no ethical debate here. Ishiguro and Garland make the tacit point that if we grow up with a particular horror - in this case, farmed human beings - then human nature will accept it. Most of the Hailsham students, it seems, accept their fate, because they know no other set of circumstances. When Kathy and Tommy visit Miss Emily, she says there is no lung cancer, no breast cancer, anymore - who would want to return to darker times when such diseases existed? That she says all this from a wheelchair seems strangely incongruous, but no matter. Romanek shoots the Hailsham scenes in warm, summer tones; the children basking in the apparent promise of youth. Later, when they reach adulthood, everything is shot in muted, shabby beiges and greys. It perpetually rains. It’s like a Morrissey b-side, particularly when they take a day trip to the Norfolk coast and spend an afternoon on a desolate, windswept pier. It all feels dreadfully hopeless. I suspect it’s not the kind of period drama that will travel – remember, of course, Ishiguro’s more traditional The Remains Of The Day picked up eight Academy Award nominations. This is too a bleak film, however tasteful and restrained Romanek makes it. Never Let Me Go opens in the UK on January 21, 2011

To the capital’s glamorous West End, then, and the Opening Night Gala of this year’s London Film Festival at the Odeon Leicester Square. Introducing this film adaptation of his novel Never Let Me Go, the author Kazuo Ishiguro hailed the film’s stars – Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield – as being at the forefront of a new generation of actors. Arguably, Ishiguro was whipping up a bit of hyperbole, but Never Let Me Go is part of a slow shift away from heritage Brit drama towards a more subversive and questioning style of movie-making.

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Fleet Foxes delay second album release

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Fleet Foxes delay second album release
Fleet Foxes have revealed that they are heading "back into the cave" to finish work on their second album. Writing on the band's Facebook page yesterday (October 12), frontman Robin Pecknold said that they still had "ways to go" before finishing the follow-up to their 2008 self-titled debut. "I g...

Fleet Foxes have revealed that they are heading “back into the cave” to finish work on their second album.

Writing on the band’s Facebook page yesterday (October 12), frontman Robin Pecknold said that they still had “ways to go” before finishing the follow-up to their 2008 self-titled debut.

“I guess I spoke too soon,” Pecknold wrote. “The record, while close to being done, still has a ways to go. Would have been nice to have realized this before flying to New York to finish it, but so it goes.”

He added: “This is how the first record went too, I think two songs were kept from the first batch of 12 we recorded for that album. Back into the cave. Thanks for waiting/caring, we just want it to be really great.”

The band previously announced that they had finished recording their new album and were due to begin mastering and mixing it in New York.

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Rolling Stones to tour ‘until we drop’, says Ronnie Wood

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Rolling Stones to tour ‘until we drop’, says Ronnie Wood
The Rolling Stones' guitarist Ronnie Wood has said he does not believe the band will ever stop playing live. The guitarist, who has been battling alcohol addiction, told BBC Radio 4's Front Row that the mood in the band is good at present. Asked if he thought The Rolling Stones will continue play...

The Rolling Stones‘ guitarist Ronnie Wood has said he does not believe the band will ever stop playing live.

The guitarist, who has been battling alcohol addiction, told BBC Radio 4’s Front Row that the mood in the band is good at present.

Asked if he thought The Rolling Stones will continue playing live for as long as possible, he replied, “Yeah. Oh definitely. The old frays. We will rock ’til we drop!”

Speaking of his rehabilitation, Wood said he is now seven months sober. He added: “I’ve never felt so comfortable with it.”

Meanwhile, The Rolling Stones have announced they will release two limited-edition vinyl boxsets in November spanning their career between 1964-1969 and 1971-2005.

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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.

Magic Lantern, Ben Nash/Sophie Cooper

John Mulvey
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Very taken by the Blackest Rainbow label at the moment, thanks to things like the Wooden Wand album I blogged about last week, the Beggin’ Your Pardon Miss Joan album and various Natural Snow Buildings projects. A couple more good ones from them today, beginning with a split vinyl from Magic Lantern and a British musician called Ben Nash. Magic Lantern, and especially Cameron ‘Sun Araw’ Stallones from the band, have figured here plenty over the past year or so, and sketching out my albums of the year the other day, their valedictory “Platoon” looked it’d be sitting pretty high. After “Platoon”, word was that Magic Lantern had gone on hiatus, Stallones concentrating his energies on Sun Araw. The two big tracks here don’t exactly contradict that – “Mosquito Coast” dates from 2008, “Long Way Down” from 2009 – but they do hold out the promise that there may be more to come from the archive. Listening to these two, it’s strange to think they were recorded a year apart, since they work together so neatly. “Mosquito Coast” is essentially a percolating warm-up, a scene-setter, a jamming band coming into focus, which acts as a low-key overture for “Long Way Down”, a more obviously produced piece, recorded by Best Coast's Bobb Bruno. “Long Way Down” is one of those heavy, trancey processionals so beloved of Stallones; an obliterated march/trudge with Crazy Horse beats, Black Ark organ and fx, muffled incantations and a thicket of guitars that owe something, at a push, to Funkadelic. It’s his familiar trick, but no less potent here. On the flip, Ben Nash is a new name on me, but his micro-detailed, droneish pieces are mighty effective, too (the second, “For Johnny Standon/Caradon Figure”, features Cam Deas, who’s also got an interesting newish album on Blackest Rainbow). Better still, though, is “Alchemy”, a CD Nash has out in collaboration with Sophie Cooper. Two tracks, each clocking in between 15 and 20 minutes, and both some of the best drone/out/free folk stuff I’ve heard in a while. “Alchemy” itself starts placidly enough, a clinking and scraping meditation, with pipes and guitars, in the neighbourhood of the Dream Syndicate, possibly with some affinities to the Vibracathedral Orchestra. Towards the midpoint, however, it subtly shifts towards something more discomforting, as sustained keyboard tones come to the fore. “Natural Liberation Through Naked Vision” is marvellous too, initially dominated by some kind of disconsolate horn (I’m reminded of Kim Gordon’s playing on “Lightnin’”), before Nash’s guitar takes over for a lovely passage reminiscent of Ben Chasny. Need to find out more about Nash and Cooper, I guess.

Very taken by the Blackest Rainbow label at the moment, thanks to things like the Wooden Wand album I blogged about last week, the Beggin’ Your Pardon Miss Joan album and various Natural Snow Buildings projects.

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Wire add London date to UK tour

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Wire add London date to UK tour
Wire have announced details of an upcoming London show to be added to their UK tour. The legendary punk band will play the Scala on February 2, 2011. They are currently working on the follow-up to 2008 album 'Object 47'. Wire will play the following: London The Lexington (November 8, 9) Oxford T...

Wire have announced details of an upcoming London show to be added to their UK tour.

The legendary punk band will play the Scala on February 2, 2011. They are currently working on the follow-up to 2008 album ‘Object 47’.

Wire will play the following:

London The Lexington (November 8, 9)

Oxford The Jericho (10)

London Scala (February 2)

Tickets for the Scala show go on sale this Friday (October 15) at 9am (BST).

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The Rolling Stones to release remastered box sets

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The Rolling Stones to release remastered box sets
The Rolling Stones have announced details of two limited edition vinyl box sets to be released this November. The remastered releases, which come out on November 22, group together 23 studio albums as well as compilation albums and EPs. Each box set is split chronologically, with the first collecti...

The Rolling Stones have announced details of two limited edition vinyl box sets to be released this November.

The remastered releases, which come out on November 22, group together 23 studio albums as well as compilation albums and EPs. Each box set is split chronologically, with the first collecting the band’s releases between 1964-69, and the second from 1971-2005.

The box sets contain the following:

1964-1969 Vinyl Box Set:

‘The Rolling Stones’ (EP)

‘The Rolling Stones’

‘Five By Five’ (EP)

‘The Rolling Stones No. 2’

‘Out Of Our Heads’

‘Aftermath’

‘Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)’

‘Between The Buttons’

‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’

‘Beggars Banquet’

‘Through The Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2)’

‘Let It Bleed’

‘Metamorphosis’

1971-2005 Vinyl Box Set:

‘Sticky Fingers’

‘Exile On Main Street’

‘Goats Head Soup’

‘It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll’

‘Black And Blue’

‘Some Girls’

‘Emotional Rescue’

‘Tattoo You’

‘Undercover’

‘Dirty Work’

‘Steel Wheels’

‘Voodoo Lounge’ (2 LPs)

‘Bridges To Babylon’ (2 LPs)

‘A Bigger Bang’ (2 LPs)

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The 39th Uncut Playlist Of 2010

John Mulvey
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Plenty new here, though that might not be the right word for the Dylan mono versions which turned up here on a USB stick last week. Best new arrival, I think, is the unexpected last album by the Sun City Girls. Jonny, meanwhile, is a duo of Euros Childs and Norman Blake, and “Extra Width” is part of a hefty Jon Spencer reissue programme. Couple I don’t like out of this lot, before you ask. 1 Wooden Wand – Wither Thou Goest, Cretin (Blackest Rainbow) 2 The Vaccines – Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra) (Marshall Teller) 3 Bjorn Torske – Kokning (Smalltown Supersound) 4 Sidi Touré – Sahel Folk (Thrill Jockey) 5 Hot Chip, Bernard Sumner & Hot City – Didn’t Know What Love Was (Converse) 6 Sun City Girls – Funeral Mariachi (Abduction) 7 Jonny – Jonny (Turnstile) 8 The Go! Team – Rolling Blackouts (Memphis Industries) 9 The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Extra Width (Shove) 10 Various Artists – Tradi-Mods Vs Rockers: Alternative Takes On Congotronics (Crammed Discs) 11 Hiss Golden Messenger – Bad Debt (Blackmaps) 12 Bob Dylan – Blonde On Blonde (Mono) (Columbia)

Plenty new here, though that might not be the right word for the Dylan mono versions which turned up here on a USB stick last week.

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Solomon Burke’s family thank fans following his death

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Solomon Burke’s family thank fans following his death
Solomon Burke's family have announced that he died of natural causes. The 70 year-old singer's passing was announced yesterday (October 10), although a cause of death was not confirmed at the time. Writing on Thekingsolomonburke.com, Burke's family explained that "the legendary King of Rock & ...

Solomon Burke‘s family have announced that he died of natural causes.

The 70 year-old singer’s passing was announced yesterday (October 10), although a cause of death was not confirmed at the time.

Writing on Thekingsolomonburke.com, Burke‘s family explained that “the legendary King of Rock & Soul, Solomon Burke, our father, passed away due to natural causes. Solomon had just arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands for a sold-out show at Paradiso with Dutch band, De Dijk. He was on his way to spread his message of love as he loved to do.”

The family – Burke had 21 children and 90 grandchildren – also thanked fans for their support following the announcement of the singer’s death.

“This is a time of great sorrow for our entire family. We truly appreciate all of the support and well wishes from his friends and fans,” they wrote. “Although our hearts and lives will never be the same, his love, life and music will continue to live within us forever. As our family grieves during this time of mourning, thank you for respecting our privacy.”

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The Jam to reissue ‘Sound Affects’

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The Jam to reissue ‘Sound Affects’
The Jam's 1980 album 'Sound Affects' is set to be reissued. The album, which includes classics 'That's Entertainment' and UK chart-topper 'Start!', has been remastered and will be re-released on November 1 along with a host of previously unreleased rarities. As well as the original album it will i...

The Jam‘s 1980 album ‘Sound Affects’ is set to be reissued.

The album, which includes classics ‘That’s Entertainment’ and UK chart-topper ‘Start!’, has been remastered and will be re-released on November 1 along with a host of previously unreleased rarities.

As well as the original album it will include a second disc of rarities including covers of songs by The Kinks and The Beatles, as well as a selection of demos.

The tracklisting for the re-release of ‘Sound Affects’ is:

Disc 1:

‘Pretty Green’

‘Monday’

‘But I’m Different Now’

‘Set The House Ablaze’

‘Start!’

‘That’s Entertainment’

‘Dream Time’

‘Man In The Corner Shop’

‘Music For The Last Couple’

‘Boy About Town’

‘Scrape Away’

Disc 2:

‘Start!’ (single version)

‘Liza Radley’ (B-side of ‘Start!’)

‘Dreams Of Children’ (B-side of ‘Going Underground’)

‘That’s Entertainment’ (alternate version from ‘Direction, Reaction, Creation’ box set)

‘Pretty Green’ (demo with overdubs – previously unreleased)

‘Pop Art Poem’ (Jam fan club flexi-disc, from ‘Extras’)

‘Rain’ (demo from ‘Direction, Reaction, Creation’)

‘Boy About Town’ (demo – previously unreleased)

‘Dream Time’ (demo from ‘Direction, Reaction, Creation’)

‘Dead End Street’ (demo from ‘Direction, Reaction, Creation’)

‘But I’m Different Now’ (demo from ‘Extras’)

‘Scrape Away’ (instrumental version – previously unreleased)

‘Start!’ (demo – previously unreleased)

‘Liza Radley’ (demo from ‘Extras’)

‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ (demo from ‘Extras’)

‘Monday’ (alternate version – previously unreleased)

‘Get Yourself Together’ (from ‘Extras’)

‘Set The House Ablaze’ (alternate ‘dub ending’ version – previously unreleased)

‘Boy About Town’ (alternate version – Jam fan club flexi from ‘Extras’)

‘No One In The World’ (demo from ‘Extras’)

‘Instrumental’ (demo – previously unreleased)

‘Waterloo Sunset’ (demo – previously unreleased)

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.

Keith Richards gives Pete Doherty advice on drugs

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Keith Richards gives Pete Doherty advice on drugs
The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has said he has given Pete Doherty drug advice. Richards revealed he sees similarities between his own drug use and that of Doherty and Amy Winehouse. "Amy Winehouse and Pete take drugs for the same reasons we did," he told Anothermag.com. "All I'd say i...

The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has said he has given Pete Doherty drug advice.

Richards revealed he sees similarities between his own drug use and that of Doherty and Amy Winehouse.

“Amy Winehouse and Pete take drugs for the same reasons we did,” he told Anothermag.com. “All I’d say is take your drugs in your spare time, if that’s what you want to do, but don’t mix it up.”

Richards added that he had personally warned Doherty over the dangers of continuous drug use.

“I’ve had a word with Pete about this but it don’t make any difference,” he said. “If you mix it up you’re just gonna fall like a million others. I’ve seen too many friends gone that way.”

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.

Forest Swords: “Dagger Paths”

John Mulvey
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The set-up of this piece is a bit out of date, since I wrote it a month ago for the current issue of Uncut. Nevertheless, worth running here I think, not least because I've subsequently discovered Forest Swords' "Dagger Paths" is getting a CD release in the UK on No Pain In Pop. Woke up this morning to the pretty good news that The xx had won the Mercury Prize (see what I mean about out of date?). For those who are feeling anxious about some data from Music Week released the other day – only five of this year’s Top 100 singles classify as ‘rock’, apparently – The xx’s triumph will probably be hyped up as some great ray of hope in an embattled market. Not that The xx could particularly be categorised as rock, of course, but at least they’ve had the audacity to reconfigure various bits of minimalist R&B with spindly indie guitars. If indie/urban crossovers have often sounded determinedly lively – desperately so, perhaps – theirs is a fresher, pointedly downbeat attempt at a hybrid. It’s not the sort of thing to traditionally set an A&R pulse racing, but I can’t help thinking there might be a vague hunt on for The New xx over the next few months. The heart sinks at the sort of lower-case rubbish that might be dished up as cutting-edge as a result. But if anyone is daring enough to check some of the skankier areas of the British underground, there’s just a chance they might fish out the excellent Forest Swords. Since Forest Swords’ debut album, Dagger Paths, was released earlier in the year, information about its provenance has remained sketchy. The sleeve reveals that Dagger Paths was recorded “on the Wirral Peninsula and Liverpool, UK”, and that someone called M Barnes wrote all but one of the tunes. The exception is “If Your Girl Only Knew”, a Missy Elliott and Timbaland song originally recorded by that pivotal influence on The xx, Aaliyah. Like The xx – and I promise I’ll drop the comparison imminently – Forest Swords applies a spectral, gothic quality to R&B, but unlike The xx, he surrounds the song in a sort of psychedelic murk. Dagger Paths, in general, has an appealingly dank air (one track is evocatively titled “Hoylake Misst”), a sense of uncanny musical ritual being enacted in a wet English suburb. The opening “Miarches”, in particular, sounds like someone plugging in and jamming along to a Burial record in their bedroom; a mix of dubstep and stoned dronerock that looks contrived on paper, but turns out to be rather compelling in practice. Dagger Paths crept out on the arcane US vinyl label, Olde English Spelling Bee, but a single, “Rattling Cage”, has recently appeared on the London indie, No Pain In Pop. This one, with its sluggish reggae rhythm, creaking organ and heavy dub fx, firmly positions Forest Swords as a forlorn English analogue to Sun Araw, Cameron Stallones’ sticky project out of Southern California that I championed at length in Uncut 157. Also worth looking out for this month is a new EP from Rick Tomlinson’s Voice Of The Seven Thunders. Their self-titled album has been a big favourite since it was released at the start of the year, a dextrous and rousing blend of various psychedelic strains (Anatolian, Swedish, Germanic, acid-folk and so on) that’s deservedly found a place in the longlist of nominations for the Uncut Music Award. Tomlinson currently seems to be running with veteran avant-gardists Nurse With Wound (and compilers, in 1979, of a legendarily outlandish list of esoteric music), who he apparently played live with in May. Now, Nurse With Wound’s Andrew Liles has remixed four Seven Thunders tracks for an EP, “The Blue Comet Mixes”. To be honest, my knowledge of Nurse With Wound is sketchy, but these four tracks are superb, extending Tomlinson’s freakouts with all manner of Kraut buzz and free skronk, and sounding nothing like the industrial gruel with which the NWW brand – perhaps erroneously – tends to be associated.

The set-up of this piece is a bit out of date, since I wrote it a month ago for the current issue of Uncut. Nevertheless, worth running here I think, not least because I’ve subsequently discovered Forest Swords‘ “Dagger Paths” is getting a CD release in the UK on No Pain In Pop.

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WALL STREET – MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

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WALL STREET – MONEY NEVER SLEEPS
Directed by Oliver Stone Starring Shia LaBoeuf, Michael Douglas The return of Gordon Gekko couldn’t be better timed. As we emerge from the worst recession since the 1920s, the idea of dusting down a character synonymous with corporate greed seems appropriate. But, weirdly, with such resonant c...

Directed by Oliver Stone

Starring Shia LaBoeuf, Michael Douglas

The return of Gordon Gekko couldn’t be better timed.

As we emerge from the worst recession since the 1920s, the idea of dusting down a character synonymous with corporate greed seems appropriate.

But, weirdly, with such resonant context, Gekko’s resurrection is disappointing. This isn’t a savage satire on corrupt business practices. No. It’s a relationship drama.

One can often admire Oliver Stone for the bloody-minded way he does the exact opposite of what you expect. Here, though, the decision to sideline Gekko to focus on a by-numbers love story between LaBoeuf’s Wall St trader and Carey Mulligan, as Gekko’s estranged activist daughter, is questionable.

There are good performances, but LeBoeuf and Mulligan aren’t strong enough leads.

Only a colossal act of bastardy from Gekko lifts this anywhere close to the original.

Michael Bonner

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THE ROLLING STONES

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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THE ROLLING STONES

When Ladies And Gentlemen The Rolling Stones opened at New York’s Ziegfeld theatre in 1974, there was pandemonium. Promoters of the film, a live document composed of four performances from the southern leg of the Stones’ ’72 American tour, had organised a street fair. There were to be jugglers, acrobats, a New Orleans band. Vendors would sell multi-coloured produce. There would be a motorcade of limos, the last of which, covered in rubber ducks, would disgorge Mick Jagger. If it sounds like a fantasy, that is exactly what it became. The street fair, for want of permits, never happened. The promised limos, much like the Stones, didn’t materialise (though Todd Rundgren did). And the subsequent history of Ladies And Gentlemen… has gone on in much the same fashion since: confused. Certainly, this is a film about which no-one seems to be able to get their story straight – but the main plot details run as follows. When he was assigned the task of documenting the tour, photographer/film-maker Robert Frank had no appetite for recording concert footage, and so commissioned out the work. Staying within the community of underground film-makers to which he and his co-filmmaker Daniel Seymour belonged, Frank chose Steve Gebhardt, a veteran of off-the-wall film-making with among others, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, to do the filming. Roland Binzer, an ad man, directed the finished piece. At the time of the ’72 tour, it seemed all parties were working on one film, a work where Frank’s candid backstage footage and the live shows caught by Gebhardt would seamlessly join. What in fact happened was a parting of the ways: Frank and Seymour keeping the faith with their version of events (thus starting the still-rumbling saga of their beautiful, freewheeling documentary Cocksucker Blues). By way of a salvage job, meanwhile, the live footage found life as Ladies And Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones. The plan was to create a “virtual concert experience” – even to the extent of the film, and the complex quad sound rig it required, itself going on tour in 1974. Keith Richards, apparently, worked closely with the film-makers to create an authentic quadraphonic sound (which is still, in its 5.1 rendering here, excellent). Jagger, however, seemed to have lost interest in the venture, and without his momentum behind it, the project vanished from view – it was last available on VHS, in Australia, sometime in the early 1980s. For this substantial DVD release, Jagger has worked up some enthusiasm. There he is in the DVD extras, having a brief chat to introduce the film, albeit preferring to talk about the subsequent, 1975 Stones tour of the USA – though he does say he quite liked Chip Monck’s lighting design for the 1972 tour. He’s not much more candid in a 1972 interview from The Old Grey Whistle Test (also included), but does reveal to Richard Williams that he’s not enormously concerned about the threat to the Stones’ pre-eminence being led by T.Rex. This thoughtfully-compiled package even has footage of the Stones rehearsing for the 1972 tour in a Swiss cinema . If the pedestrian fixed camera footage means this is not exactly for the casual viewer, for the Stones freak, Ladies And Gentlemen is fantastic stuff. It is, after all, the only official document of the full Exile band, Bobby Keys, Nicky Hopkins, Jim Price et al, in session. And it does give you an inkling what seeing that band might have been like. In his 2010 interview, Jagger says he feared the Stones were sometimes a “sloppy” band – but had been relieved to learn they weren’t always so. Ladies And Gentlemen… supports that view: from the opening “Brown Sugar” through “Bitch”, “Love In Vain” and “Sweet Virginia” the band are tight but loose, utterly in their element. The view extends to the wider picture, too. Though this was a promotional tour for Exile, and behind the scenes marked the debut of a hugely efficient touring machine, the set never seems geared to “plug” the new album, the explicit drama of the band’s 1969 concerts having evolved to a more intuitively swinging show. Ultimately, if Cocksucker Blues supplies the view of life behind the velvet rope, Ladies and Gentlemen supplies the below-stairs view of the Stones in 1972. This is the popcorn experience, the view of the T-shirt buyer, the $7 ticket holder. As the house lights go up, and Chip Monck announces “we’re through” there begins the sound of a Spitfire’s engines starting. A nod, perhaps, to the band’s private jet. Or maybe to the nature of the touring life itself. Per Ardua Ad Astra, you could say. EXTRAS: Jagger “introduction” interview, Jagger OGWT interview in 1972, Swiss rehearsals film. HHHH John Robinson

When Ladies And Gentlemen The Rolling Stones opened at New York’s Ziegfeld theatre in 1974, there was pandemonium. Promoters of the film, a live document composed of four performances from the southern leg of the Stones’ ’72 American tour, had organised a street fair. There were to be jugglers, acrobats, a New Orleans band. Vendors would sell multi-coloured produce. There would be a motorcade of limos, the last of which, covered in rubber ducks, would disgorge Mick Jagger.

If it sounds like a fantasy, that is exactly what it became. The street fair, for want of permits, never happened. The promised limos, much like the Stones, didn’t materialise (though Todd Rundgren did). And the subsequent history of Ladies And Gentlemen… has gone on in much the same fashion since: confused.

Certainly, this is a film about which no-one seems to be able to get their story straight – but the main plot details run as follows. When he was assigned the task of documenting the tour, photographer/film-maker Robert Frank had no appetite for recording concert footage, and so commissioned out the work. Staying within the community of underground film-makers to which he and his co-filmmaker Daniel Seymour belonged, Frank chose Steve Gebhardt, a veteran of off-the-wall film-making with among others, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, to do the filming. Roland Binzer, an ad man, directed the finished piece.

At the time of the ’72 tour, it seemed all parties were working on one film, a work where Frank’s candid backstage footage and the live shows caught by Gebhardt would seamlessly join. What in fact happened was a parting of the ways: Frank and Seymour keeping the faith with their version of events (thus starting the still-rumbling saga of their beautiful, freewheeling documentary Cocksucker Blues). By way of a salvage job, meanwhile, the live footage found life as Ladies And Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones.

The plan was to create a “virtual concert experience” – even to the extent of the film, and the complex quad sound rig it required, itself going on tour in 1974. Keith Richards, apparently, worked closely with the film-makers to create an authentic quadraphonic sound (which is still, in its 5.1 rendering here, excellent). Jagger, however, seemed to have lost interest in the venture, and without his momentum behind it, the project vanished from view – it was last available on VHS, in Australia, sometime in the early 1980s.

For this substantial DVD release, Jagger has worked up some enthusiasm. There he is in the DVD extras, having a brief chat to introduce the film, albeit preferring to talk about the subsequent, 1975 Stones tour of the USA – though he does say he quite liked Chip Monck’s lighting design for the 1972 tour. He’s not much more candid in a 1972 interview from The Old Grey Whistle Test (also included), but does reveal to Richard Williams that he’s not enormously concerned about the threat to the Stones’ pre-eminence being led by T.Rex. This thoughtfully-compiled package even has footage of the Stones rehearsing for the 1972 tour in a Swiss cinema .

If the pedestrian fixed camera footage means this is not exactly for the casual viewer, for the Stones freak, Ladies And Gentlemen is fantastic stuff. It is, after all, the only official document of the full Exile band, Bobby Keys, Nicky Hopkins, Jim Price et al, in session. And it does give you an inkling what seeing that band might have been like. In his 2010 interview, Jagger says he feared the Stones were sometimes a “sloppy” band – but had been relieved to learn they weren’t always so.

Ladies And Gentlemen… supports that view: from the opening “Brown Sugar” through “Bitch”, “Love In Vain” and “Sweet Virginia” the band are tight but loose, utterly in their element. The view extends to the wider picture, too. Though this was a promotional tour for Exile, and behind the scenes marked the debut of a hugely efficient touring machine, the set never seems geared to “plug” the new album, the explicit drama of the band’s 1969 concerts having evolved to a more intuitively swinging show.

Ultimately, if Cocksucker Blues supplies the view of life behind the velvet rope, Ladies and Gentlemen supplies the below-stairs view of the Stones in 1972. This is the popcorn experience, the view of the T-shirt buyer, the $7 ticket holder. As the house lights go up, and Chip Monck announces “we’re through” there begins the sound of a Spitfire’s engines starting. A nod, perhaps, to the band’s private jet. Or maybe to the nature of the touring life itself. Per Ardua Ad Astra, you could say.

EXTRAS: Jagger “introduction” interview, Jagger OGWT interview in 1972, Swiss rehearsals film. HHHH

John Robinson

Banksy does The Simpsons

Michael Bonner
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Just a little something that I thought would ease you into the week... Graffiti artist Banksy has storyboarded the opening credit sequence for the new episode of The Simpsons that airs in the States this evening... It's brilliant, so without any further ramblings from me, here it is: [youtube]DX1iplQQJTo[/youtube]

Just a little something that I thought would ease you into the week… Graffiti artist Banksy has storyboarded the opening credit sequence for the new episode of The Simpsons that airs in the States this evening…

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