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LAURA MARLING – I CAN SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN

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LAURA MARLING – I CAN SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN

2009 must have been a strange year for Laura Marling. Although she didn't release anything herself, she watched her backing band Mumford & Sons outflank the rest of the nu-folk flock and break through to the mainstream with a formula that eschewed rustic introspection in favour of something closer to Coldplay with mandolins. She also found her love life dragged into the public eye, with the fall-out from her break-up with Charlie Fink of Noah And The Whale splattered all over his band's endearingly maudlin second album, The First Days Of Spring (sample song titles: "My Broken Heart", "I Have Nothing"). In fairness, Marling actually came out of the episode pretty well, if she is indeed the girl whose voice Fink claimed could "summon the angels" and whose beauty could "waken the dead". Marling limits her response here to the song "Blackberry Stone", in which she gently admonishes an ex-lover (let's assume it's Fink, because everybody else will): "You never did learn to let the little things go... You never did learn to let little people grow". She does, however, offer closure: "I whisper that I love this night... To your soul as it floats out of the window." Accompanied by acoustic guitar and viola, joined only by piano and lightly brushed drums for the final chorus, it's actually a rare moment of clarity on a "coming-of-age" album where the now 20-year-old Marling - having traded in her waifish blonde locks for a stern, schoolmistress look - seems to be trying a bit too hard to prove herself. Her lyrics are often bound up in unnecessary layers of allegory and riddle, making it hard to gauge the emotional intent beneath. She starts off promisingly on "Devil's Spoke", sounding unusually fervent as she imagines being "Eyes to eyes, nose to nose/Ripping off each others' clothes". Second track, "Made By Maid" is equally fine, but for opposite reasons, Laura retelling an old English folk tale, letting the words tumble out ahead of the beat with charming nonchalance. It's almost as if the quieter tracks allow her to relax, while the full band numbers - fleshed out rather over-eagerly by a group containing several Mumfords and a Whale - subdue and constrain her. "Alpha Swallows" is a rather oppressive one-chord wallow about wanting to escape from London and the clutches of a destructive relationship. It's followed by "Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)", a paean to the Hampshire countryside that Laura instead considers home. It's a pretty song, but the sentiment veers towards the twee. Elsewhere "Hope In The Air" and "Darkness Descends" juggle handfuls of folk song cliches (mute prophets, lighting candles, leaving when the sun comes up) without anchoring them to strong enough melodies. We're not currently short on folky female singer-singwriters, but where Marling has the edge on most of her contemporaries is in the vocal department. Throughout the album, her voice is startling in its casual power and versatility, its Arcadian purity bolstered by a knowing pop confidence. Charlie Fink might have been right about its ability to summon angels. Now she just needs a set of songs that are as compelling as her voice; maybe the fact that she's already announced another new album for later this year is a tacit admission that she's not yet the finished article. Sam Richards Q&A LAURA MARLING Which song on the LP are you proudest of? Perhaps "Made By Maid" - it's the truest folk song I've ever written because it's a story from start to finish. I heard this old folk tale about a child being abandoned in the woods on the day it was born, and having to raise itself, then years later finding itself in a town and realising it's totally alien from everyone else. I thought that was a very interesting analogy for how the way you're brought up and what you know is the only thing that can define you. Are you more comfortable using fable and analogy that writing directly about your own experience? I don't think I'd ever write a word-for-word story about something that happened in my life - nobody needs or wants to hear about that. If I were to write completely first-hand I don't think I'd be expressing anything other than what I know has already happened. Why are you planning to release another album so soon after this one? It's been a while since the first album, so there's been a lot of time to write songs. We're half in the process of recording the next one. There was a kind of cut-off after the last song on this album, "I Speak Because I Can" - it felt like a natural end, and the songs written after it just seemed to be different, so they're on the next album. INTERVIEW: SAM RICHARDS

2009 must have been a strange year for Laura Marling.

Although she didn’t release anything herself, she watched her backing band Mumford & Sons outflank the rest of the nu-folk flock and break through to the mainstream with a formula that eschewed rustic introspection in favour of something closer to Coldplay with mandolins.

She also found her love life dragged into the public eye, with the fall-out from her break-up with Charlie Fink of Noah And The Whale splattered all over his band’s endearingly maudlin second album, The First Days Of Spring (sample song titles: “My Broken Heart”, “I Have Nothing”). In fairness, Marling actually came out of the episode pretty well, if she is indeed the girl whose voice Fink claimed could “summon the angels” and whose beauty could “waken the dead”.

Marling limits her response here to the song “Blackberry Stone“, in which she gently admonishes an ex-lover (let’s assume it’s Fink, because everybody else will): “You never did learn to let the little things go… You never did learn to let little people grow”. She does, however, offer closure: “I whisper that I love this night… To your soul as it floats out of the window.”

Accompanied by acoustic guitar and viola, joined only by piano and lightly brushed drums for the final chorus, it’s actually a rare moment of clarity on a “coming-of-age” album where the now 20-year-old Marling – having traded in her waifish blonde locks for a stern, schoolmistress look – seems to be trying a bit too hard to prove herself. Her lyrics are often bound up in unnecessary layers of allegory and riddle, making it hard to gauge the emotional intent beneath.

She starts off promisingly on “Devil’s Spoke”, sounding unusually fervent as she imagines being “Eyes to eyes, nose to nose/Ripping off each others’ clothes”. Second track, “Made By Maid” is equally fine, but for opposite reasons, Laura retelling an old English folk tale, letting the words tumble out ahead of the beat with charming nonchalance. It’s almost as if the quieter tracks allow her to relax, while the full band numbers – fleshed out rather over-eagerly by a group containing several Mumfords and a Whale – subdue and constrain her.

“Alpha Swallows” is a rather oppressive one-chord wallow about wanting to escape from London and the clutches of a destructive relationship. It’s followed by “Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)”, a paean to the Hampshire countryside that Laura instead considers home. It’s a pretty song, but the sentiment veers towards the twee. Elsewhere “Hope In The Air” and “Darkness Descends” juggle handfuls of folk song cliches (mute prophets, lighting candles, leaving when the sun comes up) without anchoring them to strong enough melodies.

We’re not currently short on folky female singer-singwriters, but where Marling has the edge on most of her contemporaries is in the vocal department. Throughout the album, her voice is startling in its casual power and versatility, its Arcadian purity bolstered by a knowing pop confidence. Charlie Fink might have been right about its ability to summon angels. Now she just needs a set of songs that are as compelling as her voice; maybe the fact that she’s already announced another new album for later this year is a tacit admission that she’s not yet the finished article.

Sam Richards

Q&A LAURA MARLING

Which song on the LP are you proudest of?

Perhaps “Made By Maid” – it’s the truest folk song I’ve ever written because it’s a story from start to finish. I heard this old folk tale about a child being abandoned in the woods on the day it was born, and having to raise itself, then years later finding itself in a town and realising it’s totally alien from everyone else. I thought that was a very interesting analogy for how the way you’re brought up and what you know is the only thing that can define you.

Are you more comfortable using fable and analogy that writing directly about your own experience?

I don’t think I’d ever write a word-for-word story about something that happened in my life – nobody needs or wants to hear about that. If I were to write completely first-hand I don’t think I’d be expressing anything other than what I know has already happened.

Why are you planning to release another album so soon after this one?

It’s been a while since the first album, so there’s been a lot of time to write songs. We’re half in the process of recording the next one. There was a kind of cut-off after the last song on this album, “I Speak Because I Can” – it felt like a natural end, and the songs written after it just seemed to be different, so they’re on the next album.

INTERVIEW: SAM RICHARDS

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS – THE BIG TO-DO

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DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS – THE BIG TO-DO

When he afterwards fetched up in New York, Bob Dylan liked to tell people he'd arrived there via a stint doing who knows what in a circus he'd run away from home to join, in search of adventure and the roustabout life. It was no doubt typical of many boys in the long ago days of Dylan's youth, growing up in places far from anywhere, to dream of fleeing the uneventful ho-hum of smalltown existence for a new world of gallivanting itinerancy, a life on the open road and the buck and roar of the fabled Big Top. It was one way, at least, of finding out what the country was made of. Growing up much later, down there in Alabama, restless teenage friends Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley shared a similar roaming yen for the endless highway and the horizon beyond it. Of course, by then, the lure of the Big Top had been replaced for them, and the many like them, with the beckoning holler of rock'n'roll, otherwise known in Drive-By Trucker mythology as The Big To-Do. Hood and Cooley signed up for it as soon as the recruitment office was open and from the start were in for the long haul, whatever the cost. Nearly 20 years after hitting, as they say, the road, they're still on it. It's often been a rough ride. They've had their share of set-backs, seen a lot of the same hard times as the people they've played their music to and for, with many comings and goings in the line-ups around them. The most recent departure, in 2007, after five years with the band, was the talented Jason Isbell, who brought to their already formidable repertoire knock-out numbers like "Outfit" and "Danko/Manuel", highlights of Decoration Day (2003) and The Dirty South (2004). Isbell's leaving, after 2006's A Blessing And A Curse, during an especially troubled time for the group, could have been a mortal blow. But they rallied, as they always have, driven as they are by the laudable conviction that as well as entertaining, their songs have something worth saying about more than merely this and that, like America and the turmoil therein, songs that have given voice to what Hood describes as "desperate people in troubled times". The Big To-Do is their 10th album, the second without the formerly totemic Isbell, and follows 2008's Brighter Than Creation's Dark, short-listed for the inaugural Uncut Music Award. Brighter... was their most diverse collection to date, a 19-track song-writing master class that on cuts like the bitterly sardonic "The Righteous Path", "The Man I Shot" and "The Home Front" took a hard and angry look at what America had become under George Bush. Some long-standing DBT fans were, however, vexed by the relative absence of the roaring guitar rock of earlier albums. Patterson now describes the album as "introverted". The Big To-Do, it's pleasing to report, rocks as hard and loud as anything they've previously done. The Truckers do here what they do better than almost anyone else - which is blow the fucking roof off, with Cooley, especially, on howlingly great form. Like Dylan's Together Through Life, however, the album's unfettered musical rambunctiousness only thinly disguises the harsh realities its songs variously confront. Searing opener, "Daddy Learned To Fly", for instance, with Hood and Cooley sounding as unstoppable as a Mack truck or Neil Young in headlong flight, is a song about overwhelming grief, perhaps inspired by the deaths last year of Southern legends Jerry Wexler and Jim Dickinson, both friends and supporters of the band. Elsewhere, there's much seething anger at America's economic meltdown and the havoc consequently wrought in hard-pressed communities, where unemployment was already, in a word, rife. Cooley's rockabilly tear-up, "Get Downtown", addresses this with typical bleak drollery, as does his fabulously no-holds-barred rocker "Birthday Boy". Hood's "This Fucking Job", though, is a furious maelstrom, powered by the riff from The Who's "I Can't Explain", that lays bare a terrible desperation. Redundancy of another kind concerns Patterson's yearning "After The Scene Dies", which imagines the closing down of the rock'n'roll club circuit that has for so long supported the Truckers and road warriors like them. On other fronts, there are vivid, blackly comic vignettes by Hood, like "The Fourth Night Of My Drinking", "Drag The Lake Charlie" and "The Wig He Made Her Wear" that recall the toxic humour of Warren Zevon, plus one of Patterson's most tender ballads, "Sante Fe". Bassist Shonna Tucker, whose "I'm Sorry Houston" was a highlight of Brighter Than Creation's Dark, contributes two more fine songs here - the melodramatic pounder, "You Got Another" and the irresistible "It's Gonna Be (I Told You So)". Where does the circus theme come into all this? Principally, via Wes Freed's album artwork and a song by Patterson called "The Flying Wallendas", about the legendary high-wire act of daredevil Big Top legend, who refused to perform with a safety net, even when it started costing them their lives in fatal accidents. Karl Wallenda, the troupe's founder, many of his family already dead, continued to perform, refusing to retire, until he too fell to his death. He was 73, and in his obduracy, Hood clearly sees something of his extraordinary band's own rugged determination to never give a fucking inch. Allan Jones Q&A PATTERSON HOOD We've just met in a bar. You're telling me about The Big To-Do. How would you describe it? It's a Big Rock record. It's dark and spooky at times, but also big, loud and hopefully a lot of fun. It's our most melodic album and probably comes closer to capturing some of the energy of our live show than anything we've recorded in a long time. Great to hear the guitars turned up to 11 again. What inspired that? We always want to move forward, but every now and then it's good to circle back and see where it all stands. It's a new decade and after all we've been through, this one could be construed as the rock'n'roll equivalent to a State of the Union address. You have enough material for a second album this year. Will that be The Big To-Do Part 2 or something different? About as radically different as this band can get. It's called Go-Go Boots and if The Big To-Do moves in a fairly straight line (for us) then GGB is the drunk driver weaving all over the place. I've also referred to it as our album of R'n'B murder ballads, but that's probably a little wishful thinking. If it were a movie it would be some kind of dark twisted noir, certainly more David Lynch than David Lean. INTERVIEW: ALLAN JONES

When he afterwards fetched up in New York, Bob Dylan liked to tell people he’d arrived there via a stint doing who knows what in a circus he’d run away from home to join, in search of adventure and the roustabout life.

It was no doubt typical of many boys in the long ago days of Dylan’s youth, growing up in places far from anywhere, to dream of fleeing the uneventful ho-hum of smalltown existence for a new world of gallivanting itinerancy, a life on the open road and the buck and roar of the fabled Big Top. It was one way, at least, of finding out what the country was made of.

Growing up much later, down there in Alabama, restless teenage friends Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley shared a similar roaming yen for the endless highway and the horizon beyond it. Of course, by then, the lure of the Big Top had been replaced for them, and the many like them, with the beckoning holler of rock’n’roll, otherwise known in Drive-By Trucker mythology as The Big To-Do. Hood and Cooley signed up for it as soon as the recruitment office was open and from the start were in for the long haul, whatever the cost.

Nearly 20 years after hitting, as they say, the road, they’re still on it. It’s often been a rough ride. They’ve had their share of set-backs, seen a lot of the same hard times as the people they’ve played their music to and for, with many comings and goings in the line-ups around them. The most recent departure, in 2007, after five years with the band, was the talented Jason Isbell, who brought to their already formidable repertoire knock-out numbers like “Outfit” and “Danko/Manuel”, highlights of Decoration Day (2003) and The Dirty South (2004).

Isbell’s leaving, after 2006’s A Blessing And A Curse, during an especially troubled time for the group, could have been a mortal blow. But they rallied, as they always have, driven as they are by the laudable conviction that as well as entertaining, their songs have something worth saying about more than merely this and that, like America and the turmoil therein, songs that have given voice to what Hood describes as “desperate people in troubled times”.

The Big To-Do is their 10th album, the second without the formerly totemic Isbell, and follows 2008’s Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, short-listed for the inaugural Uncut Music Award. Brighter… was their most diverse collection to date, a 19-track song-writing master class that on cuts like the bitterly sardonic “The Righteous Path”, “The Man I Shot” and “The Home Front” took a hard and angry look at what America had become under George Bush. Some long-standing DBT fans were, however, vexed by the relative absence of the roaring guitar rock of earlier albums. Patterson now describes the album as “introverted”.

The Big To-Do, it’s pleasing to report, rocks as hard and loud as anything they’ve previously done. The Truckers do here what they do better than almost anyone else – which is blow the fucking roof off, with Cooley, especially, on howlingly great form. Like Dylan’s Together Through Life, however, the album’s unfettered musical rambunctiousness only thinly disguises the harsh realities its songs variously confront. Searing opener, “Daddy Learned To Fly”, for instance, with Hood and Cooley sounding as unstoppable as a Mack truck or Neil Young in headlong flight, is a song about overwhelming grief, perhaps inspired by the deaths last year of Southern legends Jerry Wexler and Jim Dickinson, both friends and supporters of the band.

Elsewhere, there’s much seething anger at America’s economic meltdown and the havoc consequently wrought in hard-pressed communities, where unemployment was already, in a word, rife. Cooley’s rockabilly tear-up, “Get Downtown”, addresses this with typical bleak drollery, as does his fabulously no-holds-barred rocker “Birthday Boy”. Hood’s “This Fucking Job”, though, is a furious maelstrom, powered by the riff from The Who‘s “I Can’t Explain”, that lays bare a terrible desperation. Redundancy of another kind concerns Patterson’s yearning “After The Scene Dies”, which imagines the closing down of the rock’n’roll club circuit that has for so long supported the Truckers and road warriors like them.

On other fronts, there are vivid, blackly comic vignettes by Hood, like “The Fourth Night Of My Drinking”, “Drag The Lake Charlie” and “The Wig He Made Her Wear” that recall the toxic humour of Warren Zevon, plus one of Patterson’s most tender ballads, “Sante Fe”. Bassist Shonna Tucker, whose “I’m Sorry Houston” was a highlight of Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, contributes two more fine songs here – the melodramatic pounder, “You Got Another” and the irresistible “It’s Gonna Be (I Told You So)”.

Where does the circus theme come into all this? Principally, via Wes Freed’s album artwork and a song by Patterson called “The Flying Wallendas”, about the legendary high-wire act of daredevil Big Top legend, who refused to perform with a safety net, even when it started costing them their lives in fatal accidents. Karl Wallenda, the troupe’s founder, many of his family already dead, continued to perform, refusing to retire, until he too fell to his death. He was 73, and in his obduracy, Hood clearly sees something of his extraordinary band’s own rugged determination to never give a fucking inch.

Allan Jones

Q&A PATTERSON HOOD

We’ve just met in a bar. You’re telling me about The Big To-Do. How would you describe it?

It’s a Big Rock record. It’s dark and spooky at times, but also big, loud and hopefully a lot of fun. It’s our most melodic album and probably comes closer to capturing some of the energy of our live show than anything we’ve recorded in a long time.

Great to hear the guitars turned up to 11 again. What inspired that?

We always want to move forward, but every now and then it’s good to circle back and see where it all stands. It’s a new decade and after all we’ve been through, this one could be construed as the rock’n’roll equivalent to a State of the Union address.

You have enough material for a second album this year. Will that be The Big To-Do Part 2 or something different?

About as radically different as this band can get. It’s called Go-Go Boots and if The Big To-Do moves in a fairly straight line (for us) then GGB is the drunk driver weaving all over the place. I’ve also referred to it as our album of R’n’B murder ballads, but that’s probably a little wishful thinking. If it were a movie it would be some kind of dark twisted noir, certainly more David Lynch than David Lean.

INTERVIEW: ALLAN JONES

JOANNA NEWSOM – HAVE ONE ON ME

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JOANNA NEWSOM – HAVE ONE ON ME

It may be a stretch to call Joanna Newsom's third LP her down-to-earth pop record. Have One On Me does, after all, extend across three CDs of generally very long songs, features a harp duelling with a kora, and a dream sequence in which the singer arrives before her lover "on a palanquin made of the many bodies of beautiful women." On the back of an elephant. Nevertheless, there's a distinct sense that Newsom has moved on after the crenellated extravagances of her last album, 2006's Ys. There are no lavish orchestrations by Van Dyke Parks this time, instead Newsom fronts a more compact and mobile ensemble led by her live band's guitarist, Ryan Francesconi. The Pre-Raphaelite damselry has been superseded by some fiercely directional haute couture. Piano takes over from harp on five of the 18 tracks. An evasive indie boyfriend, Bill Callahan, has gone, replaced by a mainstream comedian, Andy Samberg, whose own musical endeavours include the rap "Jizz In My Pants". And where Newsom's voice was once an uncanny, shrill blend of the childlike and ancient, she now sings with a composure and soulfulness that stands comparison with Laura Nyro. Old, somewhat arbitrary categorisations for Newsom - acid-folk, say - have less use than ever when it comes to considering Have One On Me. "Good Intentions Paving Company", for instance, finds Newsom at the piano, leading her band off at a jaunty canter before sliding into an ineffably lovely, bluesy refrain. It's an intricate song, certainly, but there's a linear momentum which hasn't previously been evident in her songwriting. A passionate lyrical directness is more pronounced, too: after five minutes of gripping prevarications on love, performance and a plainly emotional car trip, she announces, "I only want for you to pull over, and hold me/Till I can't remember my own name." It's a classic Newsom epiphany - one of a good dozen on the album -and the formal end of the song, but the track rolls on gloriously for another 90 seconds or so: some wordless multitracked harmonies; limber drumming from the consistently innovative Neal Morgan; a touch of banjo from Francesconi; and a woozy, jazzy trombone solo, of all wonderful things. Throughout, in fact, Have One On Me is suffused with space, invention and playfulness, even in the face of Newsom's sometimes unnerving intensity. It's also exceptionally beautiful, from the revenant sigh of "Easy", to the stark song of parting, "Does Not Suffice", Gospel-tinged and worthy of Nina Simone, that closes the album some two hours later. Faced with such a marathon, it's tempting to comb the three discs for extraneous songs. But Newsom's vision is so pervasive, and the quality of her songs so high, that the size of this indulgent-looking package seems utterly justified. Ryan Francesconi deserves to share some of the credit, for the imaginative but unobstrusive arrangements that provide such subtle variety. Four songs feature Newsom alone with her harp, in an echo of 2004's The Milk-Eyed Mender, and a handful more find her discreetly tracked by a small string section. Elsewhere, though, Francesconi pulls off more audacious tricks. In "Go Long", a kora (played by Seattle-based scholar Kane Mathis, rather than a Malian griot) slips adroitly into the mix, flitting around Newsom's harp and asserting her claims to be influenced by West African music. Francesconi, who mainly favours a Bulgarian tambura (a kind of lute), punctuates "Baby Birch" with some empathetic clangs of fuzzy electric guitar. The 11-minute "Have One On Me" (the whole album is studded with references to drink and drunkenness, intriguingly) is a skewed jig, of sorts; a relative to "Colleen", Newsom's first studio collaboration with Morgan and Francesconi on the 2007 "Ys Street Band" EP. A buccaneering horn section figures, too, a recurring feature that helps give Have One On Me its peculiar swing. Along with "Good Intentions Paving Company", "You And Me, Bess" and "In California" currently sound like the highlights from this embarrassment of riches. The first is a rapturous coupling of Newsom's harp with trumpet, horn and trombone, who elegantly break out into jazzy extempores: the point at 4:53 when Newsom sings, "It seems I have stolen a horse," is unaccountably moving. "In California", meanwhile, has the ravishing gravity of something by Joni Mitchell from the back end of the '70s - "Paprika Plains", perhaps? Newsom will always be a divisive figure, open to accusations of whimsy, and for all the relative directness of Have One On Me, lyrics like "Her faultlessly etiolated fishbelly-face" (from "No Provenance") will provide bejewelled ammunition for her detractors. To devotees, however, it sounds very much like a second masterpiece: a different kind of epic to Ys, and one with enough hooks and charms to ensnare at least a few Newsom agnostics. Palanquins constructed from naked women? Nothing you couldn't find in a Lady Gaga video, surely... John Mulvey

It may be a stretch to call Joanna Newsom‘s third LP her down-to-earth pop record.

Have One On Me does, after all, extend across three CDs of generally very long songs, features a harp duelling with a kora, and a dream sequence in which the singer arrives before her lover “on a palanquin made of the many bodies of beautiful women.” On the back of an elephant.

Nevertheless, there’s a distinct sense that Newsom has moved on after the crenellated extravagances of her last album, 2006’s Ys.

There are no lavish orchestrations by Van Dyke Parks this time, instead Newsom fronts a more compact and mobile ensemble led by her live band’s guitarist, Ryan Francesconi. The Pre-Raphaelite damselry has been superseded by some fiercely directional haute couture. Piano takes over from harp on five of the 18 tracks. An evasive indie boyfriend, Bill Callahan, has gone, replaced by a mainstream comedian, Andy Samberg, whose own musical endeavours include the rap “Jizz In My Pants”. And where Newsom’s voice was once an uncanny, shrill blend of the childlike and ancient, she now sings with a composure and soulfulness that stands comparison with Laura Nyro.

Old, somewhat arbitrary categorisations for Newsom – acid-folk, say – have less use than ever when it comes to considering Have One On Me. “Good Intentions Paving Company“, for instance, finds Newsom at the piano, leading her band off at a jaunty canter before sliding into an ineffably lovely, bluesy refrain. It’s an intricate song, certainly, but there’s a linear momentum which hasn’t previously been evident in her songwriting. A passionate lyrical directness is more pronounced, too: after five minutes of gripping prevarications on love, performance and a plainly emotional car trip, she announces, “I only want for you to pull over, and hold me/Till I can’t remember my own name.” It’s a classic Newsom epiphany – one of a good dozen on the album -and the formal end of the song, but the track rolls on gloriously for another 90 seconds or so: some wordless multitracked harmonies; limber drumming from the consistently innovative Neal Morgan; a touch of banjo from Francesconi; and a woozy, jazzy trombone solo, of all wonderful things.

Throughout, in fact, Have One On Me is suffused with space, invention and playfulness, even in the face of Newsom’s sometimes unnerving intensity. It’s also exceptionally beautiful, from the revenant sigh of “Easy”, to the stark song of parting, “Does Not Suffice”, Gospel-tinged and worthy of Nina Simone, that closes the album some two hours later. Faced with such a marathon, it’s tempting to comb the three discs for extraneous songs. But Newsom’s vision is so pervasive, and the quality of her songs so high, that the size of this indulgent-looking package seems utterly justified.

Ryan Francesconi deserves to share some of the credit, for the imaginative but unobstrusive arrangements that provide such subtle variety. Four songs feature Newsom alone with her harp, in an echo of 2004’s The Milk-Eyed Mender, and a handful more find her discreetly tracked by a small string section. Elsewhere, though, Francesconi pulls off more audacious tricks. In “Go Long”, a kora (played by Seattle-based scholar Kane Mathis, rather than a Malian griot) slips adroitly into the mix, flitting around Newsom’s harp and asserting her claims to be influenced by West African music. Francesconi, who mainly favours a Bulgarian tambura (a kind of lute), punctuates “Baby Birch” with some empathetic clangs of fuzzy electric guitar. The 11-minute “Have One On Me” (the whole album is studded with references to drink and drunkenness, intriguingly) is a skewed jig, of sorts; a relative to “Colleen”, Newsom’s first studio collaboration with Morgan and Francesconi on the 2007 “Ys Street Band” EP.

A buccaneering horn section figures, too, a recurring feature that helps give Have One On Me its peculiar swing. Along with “Good Intentions Paving Company”, “You And Me, Bess” and “In California” currently sound like the highlights from this embarrassment of riches. The first is a rapturous coupling of Newsom’s harp with trumpet, horn and trombone, who elegantly break out into jazzy extempores: the point at 4:53 when Newsom sings, “It seems I have stolen a horse,” is unaccountably moving. “In California”, meanwhile, has the ravishing gravity of something by Joni Mitchell from the back end of the ’70s – “Paprika Plains”, perhaps?

Newsom will always be a divisive figure, open to accusations of whimsy, and for all the relative directness of Have One On Me, lyrics like “Her faultlessly etiolated fishbelly-face” (from “No Provenance”) will provide bejewelled ammunition for her detractors. To devotees, however, it sounds very much like a second masterpiece: a different kind of epic to Ys, and one with enough hooks and charms to ensnare at least a few Newsom agnostics. Palanquins constructed from naked women? Nothing you couldn’t find in a Lady Gaga video, surely…

John Mulvey

Shaun Ryder to play career-spanning gig at one-off Manchester Easter gig

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Shaun Ryder to play career-spanning gig at one-off Manchester Easter gig
Shaun Ryder has announced details of a one off gig in Manchester featuring tracks spanning his career this Easter. Ryder is expected to debut new material alongside tracks by Black Grape and Happy Mondays at the gig, which takes place at the city's FAC 251 venue on Bank Holiday Sunday (April 4). H...

Shaun Ryder has announced details of a one off gig in Manchester featuring tracks spanning his career this Easter.

Ryder is expected to debut new material alongside tracks by Black Grape and Happy Mondays at the gig, which takes place at the city’s FAC 251 venue on Bank Holiday Sunday (April 4). He will be backed by a new live band for the gig.

Tickets for the gig go on sale at noon this Friday (March 19). See Factorymanchester.com for more information.

Meanwhile, Ryder is also due to play his first gig with Black Grape since 1997 on the Easter weekend in London.

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

Phil Spector to launch appeal against murder conviction

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Phil Spector to launch appeal against murder conviction
Phil Spector is to launch an appeal against his murder conviction on the grounds of judicial error and prosecutorial misconduct. The producer is currently serving a 19-years-to-life jail sentence for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, which he started in 2009. His lawyers now claim that he didn't...

Phil Spector is to launch an appeal against his murder conviction on the grounds of judicial error and prosecutorial misconduct.

The producer is currently serving a 19-years-to-life jail sentence for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, which he started in 2009. His lawyers now claim that he didn’t have a fair trial, reports BBC News.

Spector‘s appeal was launched on Wednesday (March 10) in Los Angeles, with the lawyers arguing: “None of the… evidence involved events in which Mr Spector put a gun in someone’s mouth, much less fired it.”

They added that the prosecution in the case improperly asserted that Spector “had a history and propensity of violence against women and thus should be convicted based on his bad character and evil propensities”.

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

Metallica fans riot at Bogota gig

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Metallica fans riot at Bogota gig

Roughly 160 Metallica fans were arrested on Wednesday (March 10) following riots outside their gig in Bogota, Colombia. The troubles flared after hundreds of ticketless fans turned up to the US group's concert at Simón Bolívar Park and tried to breach barriers, reports Sky News. A 45-minute riot ensued, during which 1,500 police officers fought fans, backed up with trucks and tanks. Four fans and four police officers were injured. One was treated for a knife wound. Local police chief Ruben Castillo said: "The presence of police and riot teams was necessary because these misfits – there's no other name for them – damaged some windows in the surrounding area." Despite the trouble, the Metallica gig was not disrupted. Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Roughly 160 Metallica fans were arrested on Wednesday (March 10) following riots outside their gig in Bogota, Colombia.

The troubles flared after hundreds of ticketless fans turned up to the US group’s concert at Simón Bolívar Park and tried to breach barriers, reports Sky News.

A 45-minute riot ensued, during which 1,500 police officers fought fans, backed up with trucks and tanks. Four fans and four police officers were injured. One was treated for a knife wound.

Local police chief Ruben Castillo said: “The presence of police and riot teams was necessary because these misfits – there’s no other name for them – damaged some windows in the surrounding area.”

Despite the trouble, the Metallica gig was not disrupted.

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

Bob Dylan rumoured to play Hop Farm festival 2010

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Bob Dylan rumoured to play Hop Farm festival 2010
Bob Dylan is rumoured to be on the bill for this year's Hop Farm festival in Kent. A number of Dylan fansites, including Expectingrain.com are reporting that the songwriter will appear at the event, which is usually held every July. However, nothing official has been confirmed yet. A Hop Farm spok...

Bob Dylan is rumoured to be on the bill for this year’s Hop Farm festival in Kent.

A number of Dylan fansites, including Expectingrain.com are reporting that the songwriter will appear at the event, which is usually held every July. However, nothing official has been confirmed yet.

A Hop Farm spokesperson would neither confirm or deny that the singer will play the festival.

Dylan is set to play at Thomond Park Stadium in Limerick, Ireland on July 5, suggesting he could also play other gigs in the UK and Ireland around that time too.

Keep checking Uncut.co.uk for the latest Hop Farm news.

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

The 10th Uncut Playlist Of 2010

John Mulvey
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Quite a lot of major action in the playlist this week, but before we get there, a quick plug for two Club Uncut shows in London we’ve just had confirmed. First up, we have Port O’Brien and Laura Gibson at the Borderline on April 6. Then, on May 12, I’m especially pleased to welcome Endless Boogie over for a show Upstairs@The Relentless Garage. For more details and a link for tickets, please have a look here. Here we go, anyway. Among the marquee names I’d like to draw attention to the terrific Loscil record that I’ll try and write about next week. Have fun… 1 Coconuts – Coconuts (No Quarter) 2 The National – High Violet (4AD) 3 Nicolai Dunger – Play (Fargo) 4 Harlem – Hippies (Matador) 5 Zalman Yanovsky – Alive And Well In Argentina (Rev-Ola) 6 Fleet Foxes – On A Good Day (Youtube) 7 Loscil – Endless Falls (Kranky) 8 Blinding Sunlight – Colder (Against It) 9 Crystal Antlers – Little Sister/Dead Horses (www.crystalantlers.com) 10 Rolo Tomassi – Cosmology (Hassle) 11 Shawn David McMillen – Dead Friends (Tompkins Square) 12 Mushroom – Naked, Stoned & Stabbed (4Zero/The Royal Potato Family) 13 LCD Soundsystem – Untitled Third Album (DFA/Parlophone) 14 Robert Wyatt – His Greatest Misses (Domino) 15 The Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street (Polydor) 16 Caribou – Swim (City Slang)

Quite a lot of major action in the playlist this week, but before we get there, a quick plug for two Club Uncut shows in London we’ve just had confirmed.

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Gary Numan announces intimate London gig

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Gary Numan announces intimate London gig

[a]Gary Numan[/a] has announced details of a one-off London gig this April. Numan will play the capital's Scala venue on April 13 as a warm-up to his performance at this year's Coachella festival on April 18 and subsequent US tour. Tickets for the gig are on sale now. Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

[a]Gary Numan[/a] has announced details of a one-off London gig this April.

Numan will play the capital’s Scala venue on April 13 as a warm-up to his performance at this year’s Coachella festival on April 18 and subsequent US tour.

Tickets for the gig are on sale now.

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

Gorillaz to tour with The Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon?

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Gorillaz to tour with The Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon?

[a]Gorillaz[/a] are to tour a series of intimate venues across the UK later this month. [a]Damon Albarn[/a] is rumoured to be recruiting former members of [a]The Clash[/a] Paul Simonon (who Albarn played with in [a]The Good, The Bad And The Queen[/a]) and Mick Jones to play live with the band for the dates. Both Simonon and Jones appear on [a]Gorillaz[/a] new album 'Plastic Beach'. [a]Gorillaz[/a] play: Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms (March 21) Bristol Trinity (22) Cambridge Junction (23) Brighton Old Market (25) Birmingham Irish Centre (26) Lincoln Engine Shed (27) Tickets are only available to members of [a]Gorillaz[/a]' official fan club, G-Club. See Gorillaz.com for more information. Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

[a]Gorillaz[/a] are to tour a series of intimate venues across the UK later this month.

[a]Damon Albarn[/a] is rumoured to be recruiting former members of [a]The Clash[/a] Paul Simonon (who Albarn played with in [a]The Good, The Bad And The Queen[/a]) and Mick Jones to play live with the band for the dates.

Both Simonon and Jones appear on [a]Gorillaz[/a] new album ‘Plastic Beach’.

[a]Gorillaz[/a] play:

Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms (March 21)

Bristol Trinity (22)

Cambridge Junction (23)

Brighton Old Market (25)

Birmingham Irish Centre (26)

Lincoln Engine Shed (27)

Tickets are only available to members of [a]Gorillaz[/a]’ official fan club, G-Club. See Gorillaz.com for more information.

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

Pink Floyd win royalties dispute against EMI

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Pink Floyd win royalties dispute against EMI

[a]Pink Floyd[/a]'s former members have won their High Court battle against record label EMI in a case relating to the online sales of their songs. A judge at the High Court in London today (March 11) ruled that the label was wrong to allow Pink Floyd songs to be sold individually on online sites like iTunes, reports BBC News. The band had taken EMI to court over a contract negotiated in 1998 and 1999 which stipulated that their songs should not allowed to be sold individually without prior permission. Lawyers for EMI had argued that the contract did not apply to online sales, because sites like iTunes were not launched when the contract was signed. EMI has now been ordered to pay £40,000 ($60,000) in costs, with a further fine to be decided in the future. Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

[a]Pink Floyd[/a]’s former members have won their High Court battle against record label EMI in a case relating to the online sales of their songs.

A judge at the High Court in London today (March 11) ruled that the label was wrong to allow Pink Floyd songs to be sold individually on online sites like iTunes, reports BBC News.

The band had taken EMI to court over a contract negotiated in 1998 and 1999 which stipulated that their songs should not allowed to be sold individually without prior permission. Lawyers for EMI had argued that the contract did not apply to online sales, because sites like iTunes were not launched when the contract was signed.

EMI has now been ordered to pay £40,000 ($60,000) in costs, with a further fine to be decided in the future.

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

Port O’Brien To Headline Club Uncut

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Port O’Brien To Headline Club Uncut

April’s Club Uncut will be headlined by Port O’Brien. The nautically-obsessed Californians drop anchor at London’s Borderline on April 6. Support on the night comes from Laura Gibson. Tickets are £9.50, available from seetickets.com. A reminder, too, that our May Club Uncut will feature Endless Boogie. That one is on May 12, Upstairs @ The Relentless Garage in London. Tickets cost £7, and are available from seetickets.com. To read more about Endless Boogie, click here. Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

April’s Club Uncut will be headlined by Port O’Brien. The nautically-obsessed Californians drop anchor at London’s Borderline on April 6.

Support on the night comes from Laura Gibson. Tickets are £9.50, available from seetickets.com.

A reminder, too, that our May Club Uncut will feature Endless Boogie. That one is on May 12, Upstairs @ The Relentless Garage in London.

Tickets cost £7, and are available from seetickets.com.

To read more about Endless Boogie, click here.

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

Coconuts’ “Coconuts” and Mushroom’s “Naked, Stoned & Stabbed”

John Mulvey
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A couple of neat psych-ish things today that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. First up, Coconuts, an Australian group relocated to New York, whose scouring dirges make them one of the more incongruously-named I’ve come across recently. “Coconuts” is a short and pleasantly intense debut album, amusingly described by No Quarter thus: “Words that come to mind while listening to Coconuts' debut album include 'ugliness', 'despair' and unmarketability'.” Fair to say, then, that it’s at the more wracked, less idealistic end of psych: imagine a peculiarly slothful, tribally-adjusted Loop, maybe, cosying up to the Not Not Fun roster (in particular the slightly gothic moments of Pocahaunted). The press notes by Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never)also mention The Dead C, which makes sense. The stunned agonies of “Lost Bitches” are a particular pleasure right now, while “Dark World” has cacophonous scraping affinities with “Venus In Furs” and points towards a refreshed, radicalised take on dronerock which Coconuts possibly share with another interesting new band, Disappears, who I’ll write about soon. Somewhat less harrowing, “Naked, Stoned & Stabbed” is the latest album by Mushroom, apparently a San Francisco collective with allegiances to Citay and Brightblack Morning Light, and centred on drummer Pat Thomas, who works for the excellent Water reissue label. Perhaps inevitably, a diligent handling of rock history pervades much of the album, from the jazz-folk reverie of “Celebration At Big Sur (The Sound Of The Gulls Outside Of Room 124)”, rich with the vibes – instrumentally – of earlyish Tim Buckley, to the closing singalong take on Kevin Ayers’ “Singing A Song In The Morning”. Reading the tracklisting is an enjoyable business in itself, actually: namechecks to Jerry Rubin and Tariq Ali; wry nods to contemporaries (“All The Guitar Players Around Sean Smith Say He’s Got It Coming, But He Gets It While He Can”; “The Freak Folk Walk By, Dressed Up For Each Other”); a song pithily christened “Indulgence”. A lot of this looks perilously like in-jokes, of course, a bunch of West Coast scenesters snickering among themselves. But happily, the music is nothing like that; the aforementioned “Sean Smith…” track, for instance, is a baked, rippling steel string guitar meditation, and the prevailing vibes are inclusive and laidback, a less thrusting cousin to Citay’s ‘70s pastoralia, with plenty of flute weaving through the fingerpicking and organ jams. How about some listening? Coconuts are here, and here are Mushroom.

A couple of neat psych-ish things today that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. First up, Coconuts, an Australian group relocated to New York, whose scouring dirges make them one of the more incongruously-named I’ve come across recently.

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Squeeze gig venue to receive ‘blue plaque’

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Squeeze gig venue to receive ‘blue plaque’
Squeeze's first gig venue is to receive its own unique 'blue plaque' later this month (March 23). Band members Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford are set to unveil the plaque at Greenwich Dance Hall in London on March 23 at 2:30pm (GMT). The plaque commemorates the group's first show in 1975, and is...

Squeeze‘s first gig venue is to receive its own unique ‘blue plaque’ later this month (March 23).

Band members Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford are set to unveil the plaque at Greenwich Dance Hall in London on March 23 at 2:30pm (GMT).

The plaque commemorates the group’s first show in 1975, and is part of a scheme set up by the Performance Rights Society For Music. Dire Straits, Jethro Tull and Blur already received the honour.

“It’s a pleasure to return to the place where we performed as Squeeze way back in 1975,” Tilbrook explained. “I still buy my cheese just up the road.”

Visit PRSforMusic.com for more information on the scheme.

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

Pink Floyd sue EMI over royalty dispute

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Pink Floyd sue EMI over royalty dispute
Pink Floyd's former members are suing their record label EMI over a dispute regarding royalty payments for tracks sold online. The band's lawyer Rupert Howe took their case – which was originally filed last April – to a court hearing in London yesterday (March 9), and said that his clients want...

Pink Floyd‘s former members are suing their record label EMI over a dispute regarding royalty payments for tracks sold online.

The band’s lawyer Rupert Howe took their case – which was originally filed last April – to a court hearing in London yesterday (March 9), and said that his clients wanted clarification on a contract with EMI that they negotiated in 1998 and 1999.

The contract is said to state that Pink Floyd albums should be sold as one and not separated into individual songs, reports Businessweek.com. Since the signing of contract, Pink Floyd songs were made available from download clients including iTunes.

Howe said of the contract, “It was unclear whether record companies would be selling direct to the consumer or through retailers.”

He added, “It’s a matter of fact that the defendant has been permitting individual tracks to be downloaded online and that therefore they have been allowing albums not to be sold in their original configuration.”

EMI lawyer Elizabeth Jones said that the contract did not cover online sales of the band’s music.

The case continues.

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

Belle And Sebastian, Vampire Weekend to headline Latitude Festival 2010

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Belle And Sebastian, Vampire Weekend to headline Latitude Festival 2010
Belle And Sebastian, Vampire Weekend and Florence And The Machine will headline this year's Latitude festival. The three acts play the Suffolk bash on July 16, 17 and 18 respectively. Other acts playing the main Obelisk Arena area include Empire Of The Sun, The Maccabees and Rodrigo Y Gabriela. Gr...

Belle And Sebastian, Vampire Weekend and Florence And The Machine will headline this year’s Latitude festival.

The three acts play the Suffolk bash on July 16, 17 and 18 respectively. Other acts playing the main Obelisk Arena area include Empire Of The Sun, The Maccabees and Rodrigo Y Gabriela.

Grizzly Bear, Charlotte Gainsbourg, The xx, The Horrors and The National will play in The Word Arena at the event.

See Latitudefestival.co.uk for more information.

Tickets for Latitudefestival.co.uk are on sale now.

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

Mark Linkous interviewed: NME, June 8, 1996

John Mulvey
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I’m sure most of you have heard the grim news about Mark Linkous in the past few days. I can’t really add much to the memorials that have accumulated about him and his music; on the odd occasion when I met him – all well over a decade ago now – he always came across as a gentle and reserved man, who told harrowing personal stories but at the same time didn’t seem to give that much away about what he was actually like. I have, though, dug out this Sparklehorse piece I wrote for NME in 1996. As is so often the way of these things, it’s hard not to see an awful poignancy in his last couple of quotes. Every night for a week last January, Mark Linkous’ grandmother woke up crying. Every night she’d be terrified out of the dream state and wake traumatized, unsure of exactly what she found so troubling. After a few days, it became clearer, so she called Mark’s father: “Something is wrong with one of the boys,” she told him, convinced. “It’s OK,” he said, and revealed that one of Mark’s stepbrothers had broken his elbow playing football. Prescience confirmed, she relaxed for the first time in days. It was OK. But that night it happened again. And the next night. Then, at the weekend, the bad news reached her home deep in Virginia mining country. Grandson, former heroin addict and eccentric musical genius Mark had collapsed in a London hotel bathroom. Had lain unconscious for 14 hours with his legs trapped beneath him. Had been found by a maid, after his fellow Sparklehorse members had called round and been reassured when they heard his snoring. Had cut off the circulation in his legs and suffered a cardiac arrest when the medics tried moving him. Had, well, died for two minutes. Was now in St Mary’s Hospital, London, the place where they first discovered penicillin. Might never walk again. “My grandmother’s real witchy,” observes Mark four months later in San Francisco. From his wheelchair. He’s going to be alright now. Across the bay from San Francisco lies the substantially less glamorous city of Oakland, the scuzzy yang to its neighbour’s utterly languid yin. Mean Marshall’s is a big shed in a particularly desolate corner of the city; the place where old motorbikes go to die and – if they’re lucky – to be resurrected. There’s a beguilingly spooky mortuary air to the place on this sweltering May day, as great clouds of dust rise off the countless Triumphs and Nortons in varying stages of wellbeing. One of the healthier specimens featured in the first episode of Happy Days, reveals Marshall, an amiable old greaser with a greying thicket of beard. One day, Arnold Schwarzenegger turned up with $20,00 to try to buy it for one of his Planet Hollywood hellholes. Marshall just laughed. “Fuck them,” he said. This is where Sparklehorse choose to spend a free afternoon on their American tour. Tonight they will play the grand ballroom of psychedelia, the Fillmore West in San Francisco. Bill Graham and Jerry Garcia’s ghosts will not show up, but Mark Linkous will invoke the spirits of his Virginia homeland in his sad, funny, tender and wonderfully cranky little country pop songs. In the meantime, though, there are beautifully wrecked old bikes to dream about… “I’ve had motorcycles all my life,” explains Mark in his tiny, sleepy southern voice. “ My parents broke up and me and my kid brother lived with my mother for a while. She worked all the time in a factory and I started hanging out with motorcycle gangs like The Pagans. I thought I was, y’know, a bad boy. “My mom couldn’t really handle me so she sent me to live with my grandfather, for him to straighten me out, so I wasn’t allowed to have my dirt bike. After a coupla months I started going insane. When they did let me have my bike back I realised how therapeutic it is. I get really bad migraine headaches and if I have one I get on my bike and ride ‘til I get rid of it. It feels like flying.” As a little kid, Mark was “a pyromaniac in training”, pouring lighter fluid all over his toy guitar and torching it. By the time his strict but generous grandfather relented and bought him a proper guitar, he was more serious. First he played Led Zeppelin songs, the he turned punk, then he dropped out of school (only class enjoyed: parapsychology), moved to New York and joined a garage-pop band, The Dancing Hoods. They did OK, moving to LA in search of a deal where they were “big for about two minutes”, but never quite got signed. By some time in the late ‘80s (Linkous is enormously vague about dates), the singer was working for a record company, the bassist was on some sordid and unspecified downward spiral that would see him end up in Ryker’s Island jail, and the guitarist – Mark, of course – was living in a van, a heroin addict. “I got really bad,” he says ruefully. “I called my parents – they just thought I drank a lot – and I told them I’d been doing that shit for a long time and I needed help, so they flew me home and I went into hospital for a month, then went through rehab and all that shit. “But when I started getting straight, I started noticing all these things I’d forgotten about. I remember I was outside the rehabilitation place and I noticed a grasshopper, and I’d forgotten about grasshoppers. I just stared at it for a long time thinking, ‘Man, this is amazing, it’s like a little dinosaur or something.’ I just had this new perception of things I’d been oblivious to. So I started writing, writing a lot.” Cleaned up, Mark and his wife Theresa moved to an old house on a plantation one hour out of Richmond, Virginia. He wrote songs, hung out with David Lowery from Cracker (and once from Camper Van Beethoven), recorded them at Lowery’s studio and, via a suitably torturous route, was signed to Capitol. The rest is history, sort of. Those songs form the basis of ‘Vivadixisubmarinetransmissionplot’, Sparklehorse’s remarkable debut album. The title comes from a dream Mark had about swimming towards a submarine built by Civil War hero General Lee, and hearing an “old-timey band” playing inside it, distorted by the water. Dream logic inspires him a lot. There’s a surreal edge to many of the songs, as if the world’s being described by dazed and wondering eyes. So he “wants to make literal things poetic. That grasshopper seemed so beautiful to me – not to sound hippy – but being near death you just really appreciate and have to keep a close eye for things that are beautiful, y’know.“ And then there’s the eerie, creaky atmosphere to songs like ‘Spirit Ditch’, that Mark ascribes to coming from the south-western part of Virginia, where people live in dark hollows between the mountains. His cousins in the hills would tell of a witch who’d stop you from breathing when she walked by, and his grandfather reeled off ghost stories about dead miners asking for a light for their cigarettes. “I was walking along this strip mine when I was a kid,” Mark remembers. “They leave these big man-made cliffs where they’ve excavated for coal. It was in the snow, and up on the cliff there was this black horse. And as far as I walked, it walked with me the whole time. I’ll never forget that. It was really spooky…” In the past couple of years, Mark’s come to terms with being depressive. But last time he was in Britain, playing an NME Brats gig with the Tindersticks, he mixed a lot of Valium – to combat nerves and jet lag – with his prescription anti-depressants. That was when he passed out in the hotel bathroom, legs pinned under his torso. “I think when they straightened out your legs,” he explains, “from all the circulation getting cut off, those limbs produce all this potassium or something, and when they straighten your legs it goes to your heart and you have a heart attack. So I had a cardiac arrest when they took me to the hospital. I flatlined for a coupla minutes, then they shocked me and got me back going. I was there for three months, on dialysis for a while, and they ended up doing nine operations on my legs. “ Did you ever think you’d lose them? “Yeah, I was fucking terrified. I asked the doctor and he said, ‘I can’t promise you you’re not.’ That was at the time when they went in again and got all the dead tissue out, so luckily they didn’t need to amputate, but I lost the muscles that keep my feet straight, so these things come round like that…” He grasps the straps round his shins and explains how he should be able to walk again by September, maybe even in time for Sparklehorse’s show on the NME stage at Reading in late August. Then he explains, in his fractured, woozy, winning way (“I’m sorry, I lose my train of though – I’m still on medication”) exactly why this “thing”, as he refers to, happened: “Taking too many Valium was like trying to be free of your body in a way, just overindulging. It had everything to do with the drug problem, the whole idea of getting high. I have to get over that. After you’ve been intoxicated, you have to try really hard to function in the world the way it really is. It’s really hard to do that sometimes.” And you feel you have to do that more than ever? “ Yeah. Because, I mean, I never realized how many people love me.” Maybe there’s a realisation you’re lucky to be here now? “Yeah, there is,” he agrees, and he’s very, very quiet now. “I’m glad to be here now. I’m really glad to be here, y’know.” *(Thanks to Benoît Rajalu for helping me out with this)

I’m sure most of you have heard the grim news about Mark Linkous in the past few days. I can’t really add much to the memorials that have accumulated about him and his music; on the odd occasion when I met him – all well over a decade ago now – he always came across as a gentle and reserved man, who told harrowing personal stories but at the same time didn’t seem to give that much away about what he was actually like. I have, though, dug out this Sparklehorse piece I wrote for NME in 1996. As is so often the way of these things, it’s hard not to see an awful poignancy in his last couple of quotes.

Continue

The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne recruits Justin Timberlake for new film

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The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne recruits Justin Timberlake for new film
The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne has started work on a new movie, which he says he wants Justin Timberlake to feature in. Coyne's last foray into movies was 2008's 'Christmas On Mars', and, like that film, his new project will mostly be shot with Coyne's bandmates, friends and family in Oklahoma City....

The Flaming Lips‘ Wayne Coyne has started work on a new movie, which he says he wants Justin Timberlake to feature in.

Coyne‘s last foray into movies was 2008’s ‘Christmas On Mars’, and, like that film, his new project will mostly be shot with Coyne‘s bandmates, friends and family in Oklahoma City.

However, the frontman has also spoken about Timberlake‘s planned cameo appearance.

“I’m going to try to get real actors too,” he told Billboard. “I’m in the process of begging Justin Timberlake to be part of it; if I’m lucky I’ll be able to wear him down in another year.”

Speaking about how long the project may take to finish, Coyne said: “I think everybody would be relieved if it all got done in six weeks and we could say, ‘Look at that!’ But because I get to do it with people I love and it’s my art, I don’t care how long it takes!”

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

Peter Hook announces spoken word tour

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Peter Hook announces spoken word tour
Peter Hook has announced a spoken word tour which will see him talk about his past, as well as showcase previously-unseen Joy Division and New Order footage. The tour, which is compared by Howard Marks, will take place across the UK in April and is billed as 'An Evening Of Unknown Pleasures'. Fans ...

Peter Hook has announced a spoken word tour which will see him talk about his past, as well as showcase previously-unseen Joy Division and New Order footage.

The tour, which is compared by Howard Marks, will take place across the UK in April and is billed as ‘An Evening Of Unknown Pleasures’. Fans will be able to quiz the bassist as part of the evening.

Peter Hook‘s ‘An Evening Of Unknown Pleasures’ will call at:

Birmingham Glee Club (April 11)

Bolton Albert Hall (12)

Worcester Huntingdon Hall (13)

Milton Keynes Stables (15)

Middlesbrough Town Hall (18)

Gateshead Sage (20)

Durham Gala (21)

Burnley Mechanics (22)

Cardiff Glee Club (25)

Oxford Academy (26)

Wakefield Theatre Royal (27)

Gloucester Guildhall (28)

Derby Assembly Rooms (29)

Norwich UEA (30)

Salford Lowry (May 1)

Hull Truck Theatre (2)

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

Beastie Boys to release new album in September?

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Beastie Boys to release new album in September?
Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch says the band are hoping to release their new album 'Hot Sauce Committee Part I' in September, as his treatment for cancer is going well. The band were due to release the album last year, but delayed it due to Yauch receiving treatment for cancer of the preaortic gland and ...

Beastie Boys‘ Adam Yauch says the band are hoping to release their new album ‘Hot Sauce Committee Part I’ in September, as his treatment for cancer is going well.

The band were due to release the album last year, but delayed it due to Yauch receiving treatment for cancer of the preaortic gland and lymph node.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the rapper said the band are likely to make a few changes to the album before its release.

“I feel better,” Yauch said. “It was touch and go there for a while, but I am finally getting my energy back.”

He added, “It was really disappointing to have to hold the record and postpone the tour, but doctor’s orders. We may or may not [release ‘Hot Sauce Committee Part I’] depending on how my health is come September. We want to but we have to play it by ear.”

Referring to the changes the band may make to the album, he said, “I was just talking to Adam [Horovitz, fellow band member] and Mike [D] today on the phone and we were talking about working on it a bit.

“We finished the record over a year ago, so we want to take a look at it and re-evaluate and make sure it is what we want to put out there and that we are still happy with it. I don’t think we will change it up too much.”

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

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