Page 741 – UNCUT

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG – IRM

Uncut

-

27th January 2010

In the last year, cinema audiences will have seen Charlotte Gainsbourg starring in Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, playing a woman who loses her child, tortures her husband, rampages around a German forest and then mutilates herself with a pair of scissors. But despite numerous awards and huge critical acclaim as an actress, she is still primarily remembered for two earlier screen appearances, both made with her father Serge Gainsbourg. One is home-movie footage of her aged about eight, playing a complicated exercise on the piano while her beaming father hums along in encouragement. The other is a rather less benign promotional video for her father's worst single, "Lemon Incest", in which the 13-year-old duets with the king of sleazy listening, lying beside him on a bed, wearing only a blouse and knickers. Perhaps mindful of the latter image, Charlotte Gainsbourg has been reluctant to pursue a career in music. It took around two decades before she got around to recording her first album as an adult, 2006's well-received 5:55, in which she was assisted by celebrity Serge-ophiles such as Air, Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon. Yet still she seemed awed by her father's shadow. "I might think in French, but I cannot sing in French," she said. "It's too heavy for me, because of my father." This follow-up is her most explicit embrace of her father's musical legacy. It pairs her with another Serge-ophile, Beck, whose 2002 album Sea Change saw him borrowing from Serge's seminal album, Histoire De Melody Nelson. Here Beck plays Serge to Charlotte's Jane Birkin, co-writing and producing the entire album and attempting to stamp it with his scruffy brand of futurist Americana. He even shares vocals on the lead single "Heaven Can Wait", a thing of ramshackle beauty that should, by rights, be Beck's biggest hit in more than a decade. Charlotte's whispery, well-enunciated, jolly-hockey-sticks voice is an obvious echo of her mother's, although there is a deadpan, newsreader-ish quality. It's immediately apparent that Charlotte Gainsbourg is no blank canvas, in the way that her father's ingenues (Birkin, Brigitte Bardot, France Gall, Franoise Hardy, Michle Arnaud) might have been. She had a pivotal role in the album's writing, particularly the title track, "IRM", the French translation of an MRI scan (that's Imagerie par Resonance Magnitique). Charlotte apparently had 20 such scans after suffering a brain haemorrhage in 2007. The lyrics serve as a poetic reportage of the incident ("leave my head unmagnetised/tell me where the trauma lies"), but the pulsating backing track - a barrage of pounding tom toms and jarring sound effects - genuinely sounds like an MRI scan, albeit one in which these orientating electronic noises have been processed into a thrilling slice of junkyard punk in the style of The Flying Lizards. Her other lyrics are nothing like the pun-heavy, ultra-literate couplets her father wrote, but the album certainly sees her and Beck explore Serge-ish musical textures. "Le Chat Du Cafe Des Artistes", a cover version of a 1970 song by Quebecois songwriter Jean-Pierre Ferland, sees Beck couch the melody in creepy minor-key strings that certainly recall Jean-Claude Vannier's arrangements for ...Melody Nelson. The eerie verse/jolly chorus of the lovely "Time Of The Assassins" recalls Serge's dreamy "69 AnnŽe ƒrotique", while the Bolan boogie of "Dandelion" has a touch of "Rock Around The Bunker" to it. "Voyage", with its mix of African drums and American trash-culture references, is a nod to Serge's early 1960s world music flirtations like "New York USA". Even the hints of Bjork-ish post-punk, like "IRM" and "Trick Pony" often recall Serge's more minimal experiments, such as "Requiem Por Un Con". Ever since her father's death in 1991, Charlotte has kept Serge's house on the Rue du Verneil as he left it, and has sought permission from authorities to turn it into a museum. In a way, this album serves as a fitting sonic museum to Serge, one that plunders from his past while maintaining his relentlessly forward-looking, hybridised pop vision. John Lewis

In the last year, cinema audiences will have seen Charlotte Gainsbourg starring in Lars Von Trier‘s Antichrist, playing a woman who loses her child, tortures her husband, rampages around a German forest and then mutilates herself with a pair of scissors. But despite numerous awards and huge critical acclaim as an actress, she is still primarily remembered for two earlier screen appearances, both made with her father Serge Gainsbourg. One is home-movie footage of her aged about eight, playing a complicated exercise on the piano while her beaming father hums along in encouragement. The other is a rather less benign promotional video for her father’s worst single, “Lemon Incest“, in which the 13-year-old duets with the king of sleazy listening, lying beside him on a bed, wearing only a blouse and knickers.

Perhaps mindful of the latter image, Charlotte Gainsbourg has been reluctant to pursue a career in music. It took around two decades before she got around to recording her first album as an adult, 2006’s well-received 5:55, in which she was assisted by celebrity Serge-ophiles such as Air, Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon. Yet still she seemed awed by her father’s shadow. “I might think in French, but I cannot sing in French,” she said. “It’s too heavy for me, because of my father.”

This follow-up is her most explicit embrace of her father’s musical legacy. It pairs her with another Serge-ophile, Beck, whose 2002 album Sea Change saw him borrowing from Serge’s seminal album, Histoire De Melody Nelson. Here Beck plays Serge to Charlotte’s Jane Birkin, co-writing and producing the entire album and attempting to stamp it with his scruffy brand of futurist Americana. He even shares vocals on the lead single “Heaven Can Wait”, a thing of ramshackle beauty that should, by rights, be Beck’s biggest hit in more than a decade.

Charlotte’s whispery, well-enunciated, jolly-hockey-sticks voice is an obvious echo of her mother’s, although there is a deadpan, newsreader-ish quality. It’s immediately apparent that Charlotte Gainsbourg is no blank canvas, in the way that her father’s ingenues (Birkin, Brigitte Bardot, France Gall, Franoise Hardy, Michle Arnaud) might have been. She had a pivotal role in the album’s writing, particularly the title track, “IRM”, the French translation of an MRI scan (that’s Imagerie par Resonance Magnitique). Charlotte apparently had 20 such scans after suffering a brain haemorrhage in 2007. The lyrics serve as a poetic reportage of the incident (“leave my head unmagnetised/tell me where the trauma lies”), but the pulsating backing track – a barrage of pounding tom toms and jarring sound effects – genuinely sounds like an MRI scan, albeit one in which these orientating electronic noises have been processed into a thrilling slice of junkyard punk in the style of The Flying Lizards.

Her other lyrics are nothing like the pun-heavy, ultra-literate couplets her father wrote, but the album certainly sees her and Beck explore Serge-ish musical textures. “Le Chat Du Cafe Des Artistes”, a cover version of a 1970 song by Quebecois songwriter Jean-Pierre Ferland, sees Beck couch the melody in creepy minor-key strings that certainly recall Jean-Claude Vannier’s arrangements for …Melody Nelson. The eerie verse/jolly chorus of the lovely “Time Of The Assassins” recalls Serge’s dreamy “69 AnnŽe ƒrotique”, while the Bolan boogie of “Dandelion” has a touch of “Rock Around The Bunker” to it. “Voyage”, with its mix of African drums and American trash-culture references, is a nod to Serge’s early 1960s world music flirtations like “New York USA”. Even the hints of Bjork-ish post-punk, like “IRM” and “Trick Pony” often recall Serge’s more minimal experiments, such as “Requiem Por Un Con”.

Ever since her father’s death in 1991, Charlotte has kept Serge’s house on the Rue du Verneil as he left it, and has sought permission from authorities to turn it into a museum. In a way, this album serves as a fitting sonic museum to Serge, one that plunders from his past while maintaining his relentlessly forward-looking, hybridised pop vision.

John Lewis

EELS – END TIMES

Uncut

-

27th January 2010

0

Eels' Mark Everett, usually known as E, has not deployed an unconsidered word in seven previous albums, but the title of his eighth is exquisite even by his standards. End Times, to adherents of the Abrahamic faiths, are the tribulations that presage the apocalypse; an event which some 50 million of E's fellow Americans confidently expect to witness in their lifetime. While these people are wrong or, at least, will be unable to dispute that assertion if it turns out they're not, most of them, and most of the rest of us will at least have some appreciation of what it feels like when one's own world ends. Long story short: she's ditched him. While desolation and loneliness are hardly new subjects for E, he has never before explored and mapped them with this forensic exactitude: tellingly, the usually cheerfully confessional E is refusing interviews about End Times, apparently believing it too personal to discuss. It's doubtless no consolation, but this latest disappointment might well have prompted Eels' masterpiece. It starts, logically enough, with "The Beginning", a snapshot of the contented optimism of a man who believes he has found what, or, more precisely, who he was looking for. It's all downhill from there. Like other distinguished chroniclers of middle-aged heartbreak (Randy Newman, say) End Times understands that the grief, rage, and desperation that attend such calamity are ruthlessly magnified by the knowledge that the carousel has finite further rotations left in it. "In My Younger Days" notes that a man with less grey in his beard "would've just chalked it up/As part of my ongoing education/But I've had enough/Been through some stuff/And I don't need any more misery". Sonically, End Times contains no digressions from the template Eels established on their 1996 debut single "Novocaine For The Soul". This is no bad thing. Eels got it right the first time, and perceive no virtue in fooling untowardly with what works: they're the AC/DC of consumptive electro-indie. This album was recorded in E's basement studio, and produced and substantially played by him. As ever, the songs are insidiously melodic despite their simplicity, evocative despite their directness, and E's careworn growl reliably affecting, despite its limitations. The few eccentric excursions are perfectly judged. "High & Lonesome" is a minute-long collage of suitably portentous sounds thunder, rain, church bells, an engaged tone. "Apple Trees" is a wistful answerphone monologue over a pretty toytown backing (the wilful naivety of some of the instrumentation is one of several echoes of Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man). At the start of the Mark Eitzel-ish lament "Nowadays", a snippet of studio babble provides what might be a subtitle for the album: "Something's not right. I don't understand." For all its bleakness, End Times offers a few dimly glimmering, redemptive reprieves. E is not oblivious to the absurd humour of his situation: as a summation of domestic dischord, Tom Waits would applaud the opening of "A Line In The Dirt": "She locked herself in the bathroom again/So I am pissing in the yard." And though he has to contort himself painfully to perceive it, E can appreciate the haven of perspective ("I take small comfort in a dying world," he offers on "Gone Man", "I'm not the only one who is feeling this pain"). He finishes with the only song on the album that clears three and a half minutes. -The six-and-a-half minute elegy "On My Feet" is a dispatch from a man who has learnt the hard way that much of the energy we choose to expend is squandered on things that couldn't matter less: "So many thousands of days in my life that I don't remember/And a small handful of days that I do hold near to my heart." End Times is not merely Eels' best album yet, but in the highest rank of breakup albums, seething with the anguished fury of Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker, sighing with the stoic resignation of Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel Of Love. It's the sound of a man getting older, and wiser, but already wise enough only to marvel at how little you ever learn. It'll be the last thing E wishes to hear, but he should get divorced more often. Andrew Mueller

Eels’ Mark Everett, usually known as E, has not deployed an unconsidered word in seven previous albums, but the title of his eighth is exquisite even by his standards. End Times, to adherents of the Abrahamic faiths, are the tribulations that presage the apocalypse; an event which some 50 million of E’s fellow Americans confidently expect to witness in their lifetime. While these people are wrong or, at least, will be unable to dispute that assertion if it turns out they’re not, most of them, and most of the rest of us will at least have some appreciation of what it feels like when one’s own world ends.

Long story short: she’s ditched him. While desolation and loneliness are hardly new subjects for E, he has never before explored and mapped them with this forensic exactitude: tellingly, the usually cheerfully confessional E is refusing interviews about End Times, apparently believing it too personal to discuss. It’s doubtless no consolation, but this latest disappointment might well have prompted Eels’ masterpiece.

It starts, logically enough, with “The Beginning”, a snapshot of the contented optimism of a man who believes he has found what, or, more precisely, who he was looking for. It’s all downhill from there. Like other distinguished chroniclers of middle-aged heartbreak (Randy Newman, say) End Times understands that the grief, rage, and desperation that attend such calamity are ruthlessly magnified by the knowledge that the carousel has finite further rotations left in it. “In My Younger Days” notes that a man with less grey in his beard “would’ve just chalked it up/As part of my ongoing education/But I’ve had enough/Been through some stuff/And I don’t need any more misery”.

Sonically, End Times contains no digressions from the template Eels established on their 1996 debut single “Novocaine For The Soul”. This is no bad thing. Eels got it right the first time, and perceive no virtue in fooling untowardly with what works: they’re the AC/DC of consumptive electro-indie. This album was recorded in E’s basement studio, and produced and substantially played by him.

As ever, the songs are insidiously melodic despite their simplicity, evocative despite their directness, and E’s careworn growl reliably affecting, despite its limitations.

The few eccentric excursions are perfectly judged. “High & Lonesome” is a minute-long collage of suitably portentous sounds thunder, rain, church bells, an engaged tone. “Apple Trees” is a wistful answerphone monologue over a pretty toytown backing (the wilful naivety of some of the instrumentation is one of several echoes of Leonard Cohen‘s I’m Your Man). At the start of the Mark Eitzel-ish lament “Nowadays”, a snippet of studio babble provides what might be a subtitle for the album: “Something’s not right. I don’t understand.”

For all its bleakness, End Times offers a few dimly glimmering, redemptive reprieves. E is not oblivious to the absurd humour of his situation: as a summation of domestic dischord, Tom Waits would applaud the opening of “A Line In The Dirt”: “She locked herself in the bathroom again/So I am pissing in the yard.” And though he has to contort himself painfully to perceive it, E can appreciate the haven of perspective (“I take small comfort in a dying world,” he offers on “Gone Man”, “I’m not the only one who is feeling this pain”). He finishes with the only song on the album that clears three and a half minutes. -The six-and-a-half minute elegy “On My Feet” is a dispatch from a man who has learnt the hard way that much of the energy we choose to expend is squandered on things that couldn’t matter less: “So many thousands of days in my life that I don’t remember/And a small handful of days that I do hold near to my heart.”

End Times is not merely Eels’ best album yet, but in the highest rank of breakup albums, seething with the anguished fury of Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker, sighing with the stoic resignation of Bruce Springsteen‘s Tunnel Of Love. It’s the sound of a man getting older, and wiser, but already wise enough only to marvel at how little you ever learn. It’ll be the last thing E wishes to hear, but he should get divorced more often.

Andrew Mueller

BUDDY HOLLY – NOT FADE AWAY

Uncut

-

26th January 2010

0

In a 50-year recording career, Buddy Holly, who died last Christmas at the age of 74, influenced everyone from The Beatles to Bob Dylan, and worked with everyone from, well, The Beatles to Bob Dylan (he famously turned down Kanye West for "reasons of old age"). He leaves behind a legacy of more than 40 albums, all of which were both genre-defying and genre-defining. Inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame three times - as a solo artist, as one of The Crickets, and as a member of Holly, Diddy, Nash & Young - Buddy also made the headlines when he refused the chance to join the Traveling Wilburys, telling George Harrison, "That'll be the day...". We wish. In real life Buddy Holly made just three albums and released hardly enough singles to fill out one side of a Greatest Hits collection. Those few songs alone - and the ones remixed, buffed up and orchestrafied after his death, at 23, in a plane crash - were enough to literally save rock music from its oncoming novelty death as everyone from, yes, The Beatles to Bob Dylan, along with The Rolling Stones and a quarry of other lesser acts, realised that you could be melodic, witty, and intelligent, and still rock like a burning caveman. We can't ever really know if Holly's early brilliance would have sustained a long career (although I will always continue to have a slight fantasy about Holly not joining the Traveling Wilburys), but it's reasonable to suppose that he would have continued to be a very major figure in popular music. In the event what we have is literally this, 203 tracks which are apparently everything he ever recorded in a studio, or in several cases, an apartment. There are instrumentals here, there are early country and western numbers, there are fragments of conversation with his wife Maria Elena, there are tracks overdubbed for posthumous release from the 1960s and the 1980s, there are outtakes - goodness me, there are outtakes - but most of all, there are some of the most three-dimensional, living, enthusiasmic (it's a word now) songs in the history of popular music. These songs leap at you like jangling Labradors with their sheer joy in just existing. "That'll Be The Day", "Peggy Sue", "Maybe Baby", "Rocking With Ollie Vee", "Rave On"... songs that must have sounded like classic rock'n'roll the day they were released but also redefined what rock'n'roll was. Yes, you can hear someone who loved Elvis Presley and Hank Williams in these songs (and you can also hear tons of what the best Beatles songs would be in these songs), but you also hear an authentic new voice, someone who took the sounds of Texas, of R'n'B, of country and everything on the radio and made his own music. Even the lyrics sound like nothing else - there's a brilliant self -confidence even in potentially soupy ballads like "True Love Ways", while the sheer shagdaftness of "Oh Boy!" proves that girls do make passes at boys who wear glasses. The casual buyer - a phrase which always conjures up in Uncut terms someone who only buys two Lambchop albums a week and is wondering if they should get those Flaming Lips records where you need 10 CD players to play them - will point out that, musically, all of the above indicates that you and me and he and she should surely be perfectly well off with a decent Buddy Holly Greatest Hit s compilation. And I can only say yes to that: unlike other artists whose outtakes show massive leaps and experimentation before coming to a final, musically shattering, releasable conclusion, Holly tended to rework songs in not massively different ways and so the many, many outtakes of "Think It Over", "Have You Ever Been Lonely" and "Don't Come Back Knockin'" are very much for the completist. But if you want to hear, and maybe you should, everything recorded by the greatest popular songwriter never to have the career he deserved, this is very much the place. David Quantick

In a 50-year recording career, Buddy Holly, who died last Christmas at the age of 74, influenced everyone from The Beatles to Bob Dylan, and worked with everyone from, well, The Beatles to Bob Dylan (he famously turned down Kanye West for “reasons of old age”). He leaves behind a legacy of more than 40 albums, all of which were both genre-defying and genre-defining. Inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame three times – as a solo artist, as one of The Crickets, and as a member of Holly, Diddy, Nash & Young – Buddy also made the headlines when he refused the chance to join the Traveling Wilburys, telling George Harrison, “That’ll be the day…”.

We wish. In real life Buddy Holly made just three albums and released hardly enough singles to fill out one side of a Greatest Hits collection. Those few songs alone – and the ones remixed, buffed up and orchestrafied after his death, at 23, in a plane crash – were enough to literally save rock music from its oncoming novelty death as everyone from, yes, The Beatles to Bob Dylan, along with The Rolling Stones and a quarry of other lesser acts, realised that you could be melodic, witty, and intelligent, and still rock like a burning caveman. We can’t ever really know if Holly’s early brilliance would have sustained a long career (although I will always continue to have a slight fantasy about Holly not joining the Traveling Wilburys), but it’s reasonable to suppose that he would have continued to be a very major figure in popular music.

In the event what we have is literally this, 203 tracks which are apparently everything he ever recorded in a studio, or in several cases, an apartment. There are instrumentals here, there are early country and western numbers, there are fragments of conversation with his wife Maria Elena, there are tracks overdubbed for posthumous release from the 1960s and the 1980s, there are outtakes – goodness me, there are outtakes – but most of all, there are some of the most three-dimensional, living, enthusiasmic (it’s a word now) songs in the history of popular music. These songs leap at you like jangling Labradors with their sheer joy in just existing. “That’ll Be The Day“, “Peggy Sue”, “Maybe Baby”, “Rocking With Ollie Vee”, “Rave On”… songs that must have sounded like classic rock’n’roll the day they were released but also redefined what rock’n’roll was.

Yes, you can hear someone who loved Elvis Presley and Hank Williams in these songs (and you can also hear tons of what the best Beatles songs would be in these songs), but you also hear an authentic new voice, someone who took the sounds of Texas, of R’n’B, of country and everything on the radio and made his own music. Even the lyrics sound like nothing else – there’s a brilliant self -confidence even in potentially soupy ballads like “True Love Ways”, while the sheer shagdaftness of “Oh Boy!” proves that girls do make passes at boys who wear glasses.

The casual buyer – a phrase which always conjures up in Uncut terms someone who only buys two Lambchop albums a week and is wondering if they should get those Flaming Lips records where you need 10 CD players to play them – will point out that, musically, all of the above indicates that you and me and he and she should surely be perfectly well off with a decent Buddy Holly Greatest Hit s compilation. And I can only say yes to that: unlike other artists whose outtakes show massive leaps and experimentation before coming to a final, musically shattering, releasable conclusion, Holly tended to rework songs in not massively different ways and so the many, many outtakes of “Think It Over”, “Have You Ever Been Lonely” and “Don’t Come Back Knockin'” are very much for the completist. But if you want to hear, and maybe you should, everything recorded by the greatest popular songwriter never to have the career he deserved, this is very much the place.

David Quantick

Supergrass working on ‘drone rock’ album

News

Uncut

-

26th January 2010

0

Supergrass working on ‘drone rock’ album

Supergrass have spoken about the recording of their new album, which the band say is now nearing completion. The fourpiece, whose last album 'Diamond Hoo Haa' was released in 2008, revealed that they've been listening to krautrock and drone music while making the album, with Can and The Beatles' 'T...

Supergrass have spoken about the recording of their new album, which the band say is now nearing completion.

The fourpiece, whose last album ‘Diamond Hoo Haa’ was released in 2008, revealed that they’ve been listening to krautrock and drone music while making the album, with Can and The Beatles‘ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ proving particularly inspirational.

Frontman Gaz Coombes added that they’ve been so influenced by drones that they’re thinking of calling the album ‘Release The Drones’.

“We’re using bits of drones through the tracks,” he told NME.COM, adding that the record has been “very collaborative”, with the bandmembers even swapping instruments on several tracks.

Supergrass are set to release the album this May on new label Cooking Vinyl. Coombes said they “mutually agreed to part ways” with Parlophone and EMI in 2008.

Meanwhile, Coombes and drummer Danny Goffey‘s sideproject The Hot Rats released their debut album ‘Turns Ons’ yesterday (January 25). The covers album, which also features Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, sees the band tackle tracks including Pink Floyd‘s ‘Bike’ and ‘E.M.I’ by The Sex Pistols.

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

VAMPIRE WEEKEND – CONTRA

Uncut

-

26th January 2010

0

Ahead of the release of Vampire Weekend's second album, singer Ezra Koenig has taken, a little improbably, to protesting his band's punk authenticity: "When people try to frame us as spoiled rich kids, I want to say, 'Well, hold up. You don't know anything about my family...' I mean, I grew up in New Jersey listening to the Ramones, The Clash, Elvis Costello..." And, unlikely as it might seem, you really can hear echoes of The Clash on the new Vampire Weekend album. In response to Sandinista!, the Clash's sprawling 1980 triple album of international rebel songs named in honour of the Nicaraguan socialist party, Ezra and his pals have released a discreetly globe-trotting 37-minute album of diffident haute bourgeoisie synth pop named after the Contras, the CIA-backed Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary insurgents. What's more, the longest song on the album is called "Diplomat's Son", a bittersweet tale of a failed fling in 1981, backed by the kind of reggae you might associate with the theme tune to QI. It reminds you that Joe Strummer first got his taste for world music as the son of a British diplomat based in Turkey, Egypt and Mexico. Complicating things even further, "Diplomat's Son" mischievously samples a snatch of MIA, the Hounslow-born, St Martins-educated, would-be queen of international shanty-House. Authenticity, once you get down to it, is never as simple as it seems. And Contra, in Vampire Weekend's case, might just be short for "contrary". Despite their well-heeled poise and sense of diligent historical revision (What if one of those jangling UK indie bands who shared Peel playlists with the Bhundu Boys back in 1987 had tried to emulate Zimbabwean Jit or Congolese Soukous?), the sheer infectiousness and impeccable craft of Vampire Weekend's debut overwhelmed its contrivance. Eventually, it seduced even the most suspicious listeners. But as with so many immaculately conceived, fully-formed groups in the noughties, you wondered whether would they be able to repeat the trick for a second album. What's immediately striking about Contra is how little guitar there is on it. It's almost as though, having made the most moreish electric guitar pop album since the Strokes' debut, sheer chutzpah has led them to banish the instrument and prove they can make tunes just as absurdly infectious from digital bass, kalimbas, sequencers, synth pads and drum machines . And yet - with its melodic beauty, orchestral invention, rhythmic subtlety and metaphysical wit - it's still unmistakeably Vampire Weekend. The opening track, "Horchata", suggests the band might look to continue in the diamond-soled footsteps of Paul Simon, following an album of African-inspired pop with one based in Latin America - horchata being a Mexican rice drink. But the song's not so easy to place: they go on to rhyme it with "Aranciata" (the orangeade variety of San Pellegrino) and "Masada" (the ancient Israeli fortified mesa). The track is largely played on an African thumb piano, and the chorus brings in a massed choir. With wistful lyrics about how "years go by and hearts start to harden", altogether the effect is something curiously like the opening section of TS Eliot's The Waste Land adapted for the score of a Dora The Explorer movie. The first single, "Cousins", is more familiar and more urgent: a frantic yet still somehow dainty two-minute dash that suggests the Penguin Cafe Orchestra having a bash at "Miserlou". But the lyrics, when you can make them out above the subterranean homesick rush, seem to hint at generational belatedness: "Your dad was a risk-taker, his was a shoe-maker, you're a 2006 greatest hits little list-maker." This little hint, on the album's most irrepressibly upbeat number, pervades Contra as a whole. On a couple of tracks, the terrific "Giving Up The Gun" and the teasingly titled "Run", the band seem to have channelled some of the spirit of New Order, where irresistably huge synthetic rhythms glide by with a melancholy undertow. The slowest, saddest songs on the album, "Taxi Cab" and "I Think Ur A Contra", are the best, Koenig singing of romantic might-have-beens and never-weres amid swirling synth pads, his voice drifting free into an affecting falsetto . Typically contrary, the most suggestive line on the album might be on the most apparently throwaway song. "Holiday" is another upbeat almost-ska number, the kind that might be cynically written to get a sluggish festival crowd moving. Koenig sings of a girl who's been "a vegetarian since the invasion/She'd never seen the word BOMBS blown up to 96 pt Futura". (Futura, of course, is Vampire Weekend's typeface of choice.) The image of the churning world of terror and destruction erupting so graphically into the aesthetic cocoon of hipster typophilia is ironic and incisive. It's not The Clash or MIA, but neither is it simply concerned with Oxford commas. "You wanted rock and roll/ You wanted complete control," croons Koenig on the closing "I Think Ur A Contra". There is very little in the way of rock'n'roll on Contra - and in truth it's all the better for it. But, bold, beautiful and carefully contrary, it's an album by a band in complete control. Stephen Trousse

Ahead of the release of Vampire Weekend‘s second album, singer Ezra Koenig has taken, a little improbably, to protesting his band’s punk authenticity: “When people try to frame us as spoiled rich kids, I want to say, ‘Well, hold up. You don’t know anything about my family…’ I mean, I grew up in New Jersey listening to the Ramones, The Clash, Elvis Costello…”

And, unlikely as it might seem, you really can hear echoes of The Clash on the new Vampire Weekend album. In response to Sandinista!, the Clash’s sprawling 1980 triple album of international rebel songs named in honour of the Nicaraguan socialist party, Ezra and his pals have released a discreetly globe-trotting 37-minute album of diffident haute bourgeoisie synth pop named after the Contras, the CIA-backed Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary insurgents.

What’s more, the longest song on the album is called “Diplomat’s Son”, a bittersweet tale of a failed fling in 1981, backed by the kind of reggae you might associate with the theme tune to QI. It reminds you that Joe Strummer first got his taste for world music as the son of a British diplomat based in Turkey, Egypt and Mexico. Complicating things even further, “Diplomat’s Son” mischievously samples a snatch of MIA, the Hounslow-born, St Martins-educated, would-be queen of international shanty-House. Authenticity, once you get down to it, is never as simple as it seems. And Contra, in Vampire Weekend’s case, might just be short for “contrary”.

Despite their well-heeled poise and sense of diligent historical revision (What if one of those jangling UK indie bands who shared Peel playlists with the Bhundu Boys back in 1987 had tried to emulate Zimbabwean Jit or Congolese Soukous?), the sheer infectiousness and impeccable craft of Vampire Weekend’s debut overwhelmed its contrivance. Eventually, it seduced even the most suspicious listeners. But as with so many immaculately conceived, fully-formed groups in the noughties, you wondered whether would they be able to repeat the trick for a second album.

What’s immediately striking about Contra is how little guitar there is on it. It’s almost as though, having made the most moreish electric guitar pop album since the Strokes’ debut, sheer chutzpah has led them to banish the instrument and prove they can make tunes just as absurdly infectious from digital bass, kalimbas, sequencers, synth pads and drum machines . And yet – with its melodic beauty, orchestral invention, rhythmic subtlety and metaphysical wit – it’s still unmistakeably Vampire Weekend.

The opening track, “Horchata”, suggests the band might look to continue in the diamond-soled footsteps of Paul Simon, following an album of African-inspired pop with one based in Latin America – horchata being a Mexican rice drink. But the song’s not so easy to place: they go on to rhyme it with “Aranciata” (the orangeade variety of San Pellegrino) and “Masada” (the ancient Israeli fortified mesa). The track is largely played on an African thumb piano, and the chorus brings in a massed choir. With wistful lyrics about how “years go by and hearts start to harden”, altogether the effect is something curiously like the opening section of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land adapted for the score of a Dora The Explorer movie.

The first single, “Cousins”, is more familiar and more urgent: a frantic yet still somehow dainty two-minute dash that suggests the Penguin Cafe Orchestra having a bash at “Miserlou”. But the lyrics, when you can make them out above the subterranean homesick rush, seem to hint at generational belatedness: “Your dad was a risk-taker, his was a shoe-maker, you’re a 2006 greatest hits little list-maker.”

This little hint, on the album’s most irrepressibly upbeat number, pervades Contra as a whole. On a couple of tracks, the terrific “Giving Up The Gun” and the teasingly titled “Run”, the band seem to have channelled some of the spirit of New Order, where irresistably huge synthetic rhythms glide by with a melancholy undertow. The slowest, saddest songs on the album, “Taxi Cab” and “I Think Ur A Contra”, are the best, Koenig singing of romantic might-have-beens and never-weres amid swirling synth pads, his voice drifting free into an affecting falsetto .

Typically contrary, the most suggestive line on the album might be on the most apparently throwaway song. “Holiday” is another upbeat almost-ska number, the kind that might be cynically written to get a sluggish festival crowd moving. Koenig sings of a girl who’s been “a vegetarian since the invasion/She’d never seen the word BOMBS blown up to 96 pt Futura”. (Futura, of course, is Vampire Weekend’s typeface of choice.) The image of the churning world of terror and destruction erupting so graphically into the aesthetic cocoon of hipster typophilia is ironic and incisive. It’s not The Clash or MIA, but neither is it simply concerned with Oxford commas.

“You wanted rock and roll/ You wanted complete control,” croons Koenig on the closing “I Think Ur A Contra”. There is very little in the way of rock’n’roll on Contra – and in truth it’s all the better for it. But, bold, beautiful and carefully contrary, it’s an album by a band in complete control.

Stephen Trousse

Muse, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys lead Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 nominations

News

Uncut

-

26th January 2010

0

Muse, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys lead Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 nominations

The nominations for the Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 have been announced, with Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian leading the way. Muse, Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective and Biffy Clyro have also received nominations for the awards, while Oasis – who split up in August 2009 – bagged several nods too. The awards themselves take place at London's O2 Academy Brixton on February 24, and you can vote for who you want to win by heading to NME.COM/awards now. The Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 nominations are: Best British Band (sponsored by Shockwaves) Arctic Monkeys Biffy Clyro Kasabian Muse Oasis Best International Band (sponsored by 4music/T4) Green Day Kings Of Leon Paramore Vampire Weekend Yeah Yeah Yeahs Best Solo Artist Dizzee Rascal Florence And The Machine Jamie T Julian Casablancas Lady Gaga Best New Band (sponsored by USC) The Big Pink Bombay Bicycle Club Mumford & Sons The xx La Roux Best Live Band (sponsored by Tuborg) Arctic Monkeys Kasabian Muse Radiohead Them Crooked Vultures Best Album (sponsored by HMV) Arctic Monkeys – 'Humbug' Kasabian – 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum' Muse – 'The Resistance' The Cribs – 'Ignore The Ignorant' The Horrors – 'Primary Colours' Best Track (sponsored by NME Radio) Animal Collective – 'My Girls' Arctic Monkeys – 'Crying Lightning' Florence And The Machine – 'Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)' Jamie T – 'Sticks N' Stones' The Big Pink – 'Dominos' Best Video (sponsored by NME TV) Arctic Monkeys – 'Cornerstone ' Biffy Clyro – 'The Captain' Kasabian – 'Fire' The Maccabees – 'Can You Give It' Oasis – 'Falling Down' Best Live Event Blur at Hyde Park Jay-Z at Alexandra Palace Muse at Teignmouth Oasis at Heaton Park The Dead Weather at Shoreditch Church Best Festival Download Glastonbury Reading And Leeds Festivals T In The Park V Festival Best Dancefloor Filler Dizzee Rascal And Armand Van Helden – 'Bonkers' Florence And The Machine – 'You've Got The Love' La Roux – 'In For The Kill' (Skream Remix) Lady Gaga – 'Poker Face' Yeah Yeah Yeahs – 'Zero' Best TV Show The Inbetweeners Never Mind The Buzzcocks Peep Show Skins True Blood Best Film (500) Days Of Summer In The Loop Inglourious Basterds The Twilight Saga: New Moon Where The Wild Things Are Best DVD Kings Of Leon – Live At The The O2 Arena Flight Of The Conchords – Complete HBO Second Season The Killers – Live From The Royal Albert Hall The Mighty Boosh – Future Sailors Nirvana – Live At Reading Giving It Back Fan Award Kasabian and Noel Fielding for free 'Vlad The Impaler' video Danger Mouse for leaking 'Dark Night Of The Soul' Lily Allen for her Twitter ticket treasure hunt Arctic Monkeys for their Oxfam golden tickets Vampire Weekend for giving away 'Horchata' from the album 'Contra' Hero Of The Year Beyoncé Knowles Noel Gallagher Rage Against The Machine Matt Bellamy Alex Turner Villain Of The Year Noel Gallagher Liam Gallagher Simon Cowell Kanye West Lady Gaga Best Dressed Lady Gaga Liam Gallagher Noel Fielding Florence Welch Karen O Worst Dressed Lady Gaga Matt Bellamy Katy Perry Liam Gallagher Elly Jackson, La Roux Worst Album Green Day – '21st Century Breakdown' Lady Gaga – 'The Fame' The Jonas Brothers – 'Lines Vines Trying Times' U2 – 'No Line On The Horizon' Arctic Monkeys – 'Humbug' Worst Band Green Day Oasis Jonas Brothers Paramore JLS Hottest Man Head to NME.COM now to rate possibles including Alex Turner, Liam Gallagher, Peter Doherty, Matt Bellamy, Brandon Flowers and Julian Casablancas Hottest Woman Head to NME.COM now to rate possibles including Lily Allen, Alison Mosshart, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Florence Welch and Karen O Best Website (excluding NME.COM) Muse.mu YouTube Facebook Twitter Greenday.com Best Album Artwork Muse – 'The Resistance' Green Day – '21st Century Breakdown' Kasabian – 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum' The Cribs – 'Ignore The Ignorant' Manic Street Preachers – 'Journal For Plague Lovers ' Best Band Blog Muse (Muse.mu and Twitter.com/muse) Radiohead (Radiohead.com/deadairspace) Noel Gallagher (Oasisinet.com) Los Campesinos! (Loscampesinos.com) Paramore (Paramore.net) Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

The nominations for the Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 have been announced, with Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian leading the way.

Muse, Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective and Biffy Clyro have also received nominations for the awards, while Oasis – who split up in August 2009 – bagged several nods too.

The awards themselves take place at London‘s O2 Academy Brixton on February 24, and you can vote for who you want to win by heading to NME.COM/awards now.

The Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 nominations are:

Best British Band (sponsored by Shockwaves)

Arctic Monkeys

Biffy Clyro

Kasabian

Muse

Oasis

Best International Band (sponsored by 4music/T4)

Green Day

Kings Of Leon

Paramore

Vampire Weekend

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Best Solo Artist

Dizzee Rascal

Florence And The Machine

Jamie T

Julian Casablancas

Lady Gaga

Best New Band (sponsored by USC)

The Big Pink

Bombay Bicycle Club

Mumford & Sons

The xx

La Roux

Best Live Band (sponsored by Tuborg)

Arctic Monkeys

Kasabian

Muse

Radiohead

Them Crooked Vultures

Best Album (sponsored by HMV)

Arctic Monkeys – ‘Humbug’

Kasabian – ‘West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum’

Muse – ‘The Resistance’

The Cribs – ‘Ignore The Ignorant’

The Horrors – ‘Primary Colours’

Best Track (sponsored by NME Radio)

Animal Collective – ‘My Girls’

Arctic Monkeys – ‘Crying Lightning’

Florence And The Machine – ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’

Jamie T – ‘Sticks N’ Stones’

The Big Pink – ‘Dominos’

Best Video (sponsored by NME TV)

Arctic Monkeys – ‘Cornerstone ‘

Biffy Clyro – ‘The Captain’

Kasabian – ‘Fire’

The Maccabees – ‘Can You Give It’

Oasis – ‘Falling Down’

Best Live Event

Blur at Hyde Park

Jay-Z at Alexandra Palace

Muse at Teignmouth

Oasis at Heaton Park

The Dead Weather at Shoreditch Church

Best Festival

Download

Glastonbury

Reading And Leeds Festivals

T In The Park

V Festival

Best Dancefloor Filler

Dizzee Rascal And Armand Van Helden – ‘Bonkers’

Florence And The Machine – ‘You’ve Got The Love’

La Roux – ‘In For The Kill’ (Skream Remix)

Lady Gaga – ‘Poker Face’

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘Zero’

Best TV Show

The Inbetweeners

Never Mind The Buzzcocks

Peep Show

Skins

True Blood

Best Film

(500) Days Of Summer

In The Loop

Inglourious Basterds

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Where The Wild Things Are

Best DVD

Kings Of Leon – Live At The The O2 Arena

Flight Of The Conchords – Complete HBO Second Season

The Killers – Live From The Royal Albert Hall

The Mighty Boosh – Future Sailors

Nirvana – Live At Reading

Giving It Back Fan Award

Kasabian and Noel Fielding for free ‘Vlad The Impaler’ video

Danger Mouse for leaking ‘Dark Night Of The Soul’

Lily Allen for her Twitter ticket treasure hunt

Arctic Monkeys for their Oxfam golden tickets

Vampire Weekend for giving away ‘Horchata’ from the album ‘Contra’

Hero Of The Year

Beyoncé Knowles

Noel Gallagher

Rage Against The Machine

Matt Bellamy

Alex Turner

Villain Of The Year

Noel Gallagher

Liam Gallagher

Simon Cowell

Kanye West

Lady Gaga

Best Dressed

Lady Gaga

Liam Gallagher

Noel Fielding

Florence Welch

Karen O

Worst Dressed

Lady Gaga

Matt Bellamy

Katy Perry

Liam Gallagher

Elly Jackson, La Roux

Worst Album

Green Day – ’21st Century Breakdown’

Lady Gaga – ‘The Fame’

The Jonas Brothers – ‘Lines Vines Trying Times’

U2 – ‘No Line On The Horizon’

Arctic Monkeys – ‘Humbug’

Worst Band

Green Day

Oasis

Jonas Brothers

Paramore

JLS

Hottest Man

Head to NME.COM now to rate possibles including Alex Turner, Liam Gallagher, Peter Doherty, Matt Bellamy, Brandon Flowers and Julian Casablancas

Hottest Woman

Head to NME.COM now to rate possibles including Lily Allen, Alison Mosshart, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Florence Welch and Karen O

Best Website (excluding NME.COM)

Muse.mu

YouTube

Facebook

Twitter

Greenday.com

Best Album Artwork

Muse – ‘The Resistance’

Green Day – ’21st Century Breakdown’

Kasabian – ‘West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum’

The Cribs – ‘Ignore The Ignorant’

Manic Street Preachers – ‘Journal For Plague Lovers ‘

Best Band Blog

Muse (Muse.mu and Twitter.com/muse)

Radiohead (Radiohead.com/deadairspace)

Noel Gallagher (Oasisinet.com)

Los Campesinos! (Loscampesinos.com)

Paramore (Paramore.net)

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

Pavement announce Best Of album tracklisting

News

Uncut

-

26th January 2010

0

Pavement announce Best Of album tracklisting

Pavement have revealed the tracklisting of their new Best Of album 'Quarantine The Past'. Released on March 8, the 23-track album spans the band's entire career. The tracklisting of 'Quarantine The Past' is: 'Gold Soundz' 'Frontwards' 'Mellow Jazz Docent' 'Stereo' 'In The Mouth A Desert' ...

Pavement have revealed the tracklisting of their new Best Of album ‘Quarantine The Past’.

Released on March 8, the 23-track album spans the band’s entire career.

The tracklisting of ‘Quarantine The Past’ is:

‘Gold Soundz’

‘Frontwards’

‘Mellow Jazz Docent’

‘Stereo’

‘In The Mouth A Desert’

‘Two States’

‘Cut Your Hair’

‘Shady Lane’/’J vs. S’

‘Here’

‘Unfair’

‘Grounded’

‘Summer Babe (Winter Version)’

‘Range Life’

‘Date With IKEA’

‘Debris Slide’

‘Shoot The Singer (1 Sick Verse)’

‘Spit On A Stranger’

‘Heaven Is A Truck’

‘Trigger Cut’/’Wounded-Kite At :17’

‘Embassy Row’

‘Box Elder’

‘Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence’

‘Fight This Generation’

The band are scheduled to visit the UK in May as part of their reunion tour.

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

Invictus

Film
Reviews

Uncut

-

26th January 2010

0

Directed by Clint Eastwood Starring Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon The 1995 Rugby World Cup final was, to most viewers around the world, just a pretty good game. To South Africa, who beat New Zealand 15-12, it was a momentous historical occasion, helping to heal deep wounds and invest blacks and white...

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon

The 1995 Rugby World Cup final was, to most viewers around the world, just a pretty good game. To South Africa, who beat New Zealand 15-12, it was a momentous historical occasion, helping to heal deep wounds and invest blacks and whites alike with a spirit of hope. A great big symbolic handshake, if you like. Nelson Mandela had invested a lot of his political capital – unwisely, many thought – in urging his country to get behind their team, the Springboks, previously loathed by black South Africans as a potent symbol of apartheid. “Forgiveness liberates the soul,” declared Mandela. He was fortunate, you might argue, that the team, led by Francois Pienaar, improved beyond recognition in the months leading up to the event, providing the story with a classic against-the-odds climax and the kind of ending that makes sports movies so disarmingly uplifting.

Eastwood will have borne this in mind: there are few directors who could have got the green light from a US studio to make a major film about a foreign leader and a foreign sport in a foreign country. Yet if the final third of Invictus is (extremely well shot and choreographed) gung-ho jock action, the first two thirds are a thoughtful examination of Mandela’s early years in power and the problems he faced in appeasing both sides of an argument. It’s possible that Eastwood saw parallels between Mandela’s struggles and those of Obama in the US today: matching unrealistic expectations while avoiding alienating half the country (though this is kept implicit.) He bravely displayed with Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima that he’s aware that most issues have two sides. Here, he makes his first “political” film (albeit one that resolutely refuses to question received history), and revisits the sporting world for the first time since Million Dollar Baby.

The strange marriage is conservatively boxed – as a director Eastwood is a master craftsman, but no visionary – but oddly effective. The opening scenes suggest something more incendiary. As Mandela’s motorcade passes in 1990, a white South African grumbles to his son, “This is the day our country went to the dogs.” Civil war remains just a shot away. Mandela has a tough job “balancing black aspirations and white fears”. Facing flak for spending too much time overseas, he learns about the scale of the forthcoming World Cup, which South Africa is to host, and his eyes light up. “A billion people watching us? This is a great opportunity!”

Morgan Freeman, who bought the screenplay rights, was Mandela’s choice to play him, and persuaded Eastwood to direct. His performance is not ideal, however. Maybe he has the accent, mannerisms and speech-patterns spot-on, but he never convincingly becomes a physically smaller man. Indeed, even at 72, he seems too proud, too perky. Moments that should resonate, revealing Mandela’s dislike of bright light after 27 years of incarceration, or of others subserviently pouring his tea, are laid rather thick. Winnie Mandela is sidelined completely. And some of Mandela’s glee at the timely sporting fillip makes him seem like a keen-eyed PR guru on a charm offensive, rather than one of the greatest martyrs of the 20th century.

Nonetheless, the build-up holds. Mandela invites Pienaar to meet him and impresses him with his desire for a uniting cause. It’s unclear how this chat led to a team that were used to being roundly beaten suddenly improving into fearless world-beaters, but, despite a script laden with clunky extrapolation, Eastwood maintains momentum. Eschewing, in the main, “inspirational” montages, he has Mandela send the team to the townships, where, in coaching black boys, they develop morale and togetherness. Matt Damon is a strange piece of casting – Pienaar was a blond hulk of a man, several inches taller – but the actor’s innate likeability helps, as does the knack he’s shown in several recent films for shrewd understatement. Pienaar’s family, like the media, retain doubts, yet as the team start winning on the pitch these are cast aside. The one black player is lionised. Even in England we know this is plausible – in Sport World, zeroes become heroes overnight (and vice versa). Yet it’s also why the film, for all its merits, leaves you unfulfilled. Is the giddy, fleeting, escapist euphoria of sport a viable symbol for a watershed in politics and race?

Two key decisions by Eastwood lend the tale gravitas. Mandela presents Pienaar with his favourite poem, “Invictus” (which roughly translates as “unconquered”) by Victorian poet William Ernest Henley. It was the poem that Mandela said helped to get him through his years in jail, and the film’s best off-the-pitch scene sends the team on a boat to Robben Island to visit his old cell. It’s a very moving, quiet sequence, and Damon plays it brilliantly, almost involuntarily stretching his arms out in awe at how small the cell is.

It’s contrasted with the size of the rugby stadium, which now becomes our arena for the run of games that see South Africa’s team grow from underdogs to finalists. The population, swept up, gets behind them. The atmosphere is as good as any sports movie ever made. For obvious reasons, rugby’s faint similarities with American football are amplified when possible. And after Pienaar has uttered cringe-worthy pep talks like “This is it, our destiny” and even “Not on our watch”, it’s a small irreverent joy when, facing the “unstoppable” All-Blacks and star player Jonah Lomu, he gathers the players into a huddle and growls, “Just hit the fucking guy.”

That the team’s triumph bonded a populace more swiftly than years of diplomacy is undeniable. Equally indisputable is that South Africa today is again a mess of corruption and distrust, and this isn’t addressed. Eastwood has opted for the “greater good” theory. Showing men at their best, be it the saintly Mandela or the victorious players, he smuggles a compressed take on “the Nelson Mandela story” into being. And perhaps encourages many to want to learn more about what happened either side of this glorious moment, expertly brought to life again.

Chris Roberts

It Might Get Loud

Film
Reviews

Uncut

-

26th January 2010

0

Guitar-wise we live in times that are at once nostalgic and aspirational. Every other middle-class teenage boy has a Stratocaster or a Les Paul in his converted attic bedroom, or he's pretending to be Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain on the Guitar Hero game. Watching It Might Get Loud - Davis Guggenheim's absorbing film about a summit meeting in January 2008 between three generations of six-string gunslingers - makes you realise how commonplace and dilettantish our rock dreams have become. In their varying ways Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White had to struggle through early years of obsession and apprenticeship to get anywhere at all. Today's Wii wunderkinder could learn a lot from their views and their memories. Released on DVD after a limited cinematic run, It Might Get Loud is about the way the electric guitar and the amplifier combine to create a kind of superpower, transforming the player into a sonic god. Opening with a long shot of Jack White building an aboriginally primitive one-string instrument in his Tennessee backyard, the film shuffles back and forth along the timelines of - loosely - the Led Zeppelin, U2 and White Stripes stories, documenting the breakthrough moments in each man's musical growth. Despite one or two awkward edits (e.g. The Edge talking about the Troubles, which dissolves inexplicably into Page remembering the day he quit the lucrative London session scene) the intertwined narratives work well. Given that White is so clearly an heir to the blues-boom sorcery of sometime skiffle prodigy James Patrick Page, The Edge is something of an odd man out here, devoid of dirty blues spirit and barricaded by his effects apparatus. But the contrast between his hi-tech fetishism and the relative primitivism of Page and White in fact makes for a more compelling film. White uses the film partly as a platform to attack technology at its most gratuitously flashy, but concedes, en route to meeting his elders, that he intends to trick them both into giving up secrets he can steal. And however much one might revile U2, it's hard to argue with the majesty of The Edge's glassily chiming "infinite guitar". The film's most powerful moment might just be when it segues from cassette demos for The Joshua Tree to a full-blown stadium version of the "Where The Streets Have No Name". At one point Edge talks of riffs and sounds "invoking location", and Guggenheim takes our august power trio back to key places on their musical journeys: Page to Headley Grange in a black cab; White to decimated southwest Detroit; Edge himself to the Dublin comprehensive where U2 formed. There are lovely moments of reconnection with influences: White listening to a hallowed Son House LP, Page breaking out in a huge smile at a slashing vibrato chord on Link Wray's "Rumble". There's also wild footage of Stripes template the Flat Duo Jets and priceless home-movie scenes of Zeppelin at play in Headley Grange's garden. Along with drooling dolly shots of necks and frets and gleaming pickups, there is conversation between the three men on an LA soundstage and enjoyable jams on "Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground" and the ominous Delta slide-swarm of Zeppelin's "In My Time Of Dying". Though White is the commanding star of the show - as the only frontman of the three, that's to be expected - he's duly deferential, not to mention rapt as Page cranks out "Whole Lotta Love". Resembling a genial Asian Zen master, Page's timing has become a tad fuzzy but the feel is still there. "Whether I took it on or it took me on, I don't know," he says of the primal urge to transform oneself through amplification. "The jury's out on that. But I don't care: I've just really, really enjoyed it. That's it." Occasionally It Might Get Loud turns into one of the more plodding BBC4 docs - at the juncture of prog-rock pomposity and punk insurrection, for instance - but in the main it's an engaging study of guitar heroism as a shared passion. Listening to Jack White on his back porch, throttling his customised Gretsch and wrenching emotion from its hollow body, makes you realise how many possibilities the hoary old thing still offers. EXTRAS: Deleted scenes, Toronto Film Festival footage, commentary, Page/Edge/White discussions on music. Barney Hoskyns

Guitar-wise we live in times that are at once nostalgic and aspirational. Every other middle-class teenage boy has a Stratocaster or a Les Paul in his converted attic bedroom, or he’s pretending to be Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain on the Guitar Hero game.

Watching It Might Get Loud – Davis Guggenheim’s absorbing film about a summit meeting in January 2008 between three generations of six-string gunslingers – makes you realise how commonplace and dilettantish our rock dreams have become. In their varying ways Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White had to struggle through early years of obsession and apprenticeship to get anywhere at all. Today’s Wii wunderkinder could learn a lot from their views and their memories.

Released on DVD after a limited cinematic run, It Might Get Loud is about the way the electric guitar and the amplifier combine to create a kind of superpower, transforming the player into a sonic god. Opening with a long shot of Jack White building an aboriginally primitive one-string instrument in his Tennessee backyard, the film shuffles back and forth along the timelines of – loosely – the Led Zeppelin, U2 and White Stripes stories, documenting the breakthrough moments in each man’s musical growth. Despite one or two awkward edits (e.g. The Edge talking about the Troubles, which dissolves inexplicably into Page remembering the day he quit the lucrative London session scene) the intertwined narratives work well.

Given that White is so clearly an heir to the blues-boom sorcery of sometime skiffle prodigy James Patrick Page, The Edge is something of an odd man out here, devoid of dirty blues spirit and barricaded by his effects apparatus. But the contrast between his hi-tech fetishism and the relative primitivism of Page and White in fact makes for a more compelling film. White uses the film partly as a platform to attack technology at its most gratuitously flashy, but concedes, en route to meeting his elders, that he intends to trick them both into giving up secrets he can steal. And however much one might revile U2, it’s hard to argue with the majesty of The Edge’s glassily chiming “infinite guitar”. The film’s most powerful moment might just be when it segues from cassette demos for The Joshua Tree to a full-blown stadium version of the “Where The Streets Have No Name”.

At one point Edge talks of riffs and sounds “invoking location”, and Guggenheim takes our august power trio back to key places on their musical journeys: Page to Headley Grange in a black cab; White to decimated southwest Detroit; Edge himself to the Dublin comprehensive where U2 formed. There are lovely moments of reconnection with influences: White listening to a hallowed Son House LP, Page breaking out in a huge smile at a slashing vibrato chord on Link Wray‘s “Rumble”. There’s also wild footage of Stripes template the Flat Duo Jets and priceless home-movie scenes of Zeppelin at play in Headley Grange’s garden.

Along with drooling dolly shots of necks and frets and gleaming pickups, there is conversation between the three men on an LA soundstage and enjoyable jams on “Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground” and the ominous Delta slide-swarm of Zeppelin’s “In My Time Of Dying”. Though White is the commanding star of the show – as the only frontman of the three, that’s to be expected – he’s duly deferential, not to mention rapt as Page cranks out “Whole Lotta Love”. Resembling a genial Asian Zen master, Page’s timing has become a tad fuzzy but the feel is still there. “Whether I took it on or it took me on, I don’t know,” he says of the primal urge to transform oneself through amplification. “The jury’s out on that. But I don’t care: I’ve just really, really enjoyed it. That’s it.”

Occasionally It Might Get Loud turns into one of the more plodding BBC4 docs – at the juncture of prog-rock pomposity and punk insurrection, for instance – but in the main it’s an engaging study of guitar heroism as a shared passion. Listening to Jack White on his back porch, throttling his customised Gretsch and wrenching emotion from its hollow body, makes you realise how many possibilities the hoary old thing still offers.

EXTRAS: Deleted scenes, Toronto Film Festival footage, commentary, Page/Edge/White discussions on music.

Barney Hoskyns

The Fourth Uncut Playlist Of 2010

John Mulvey

-

26th January 2010

0

After last week’s fairly hapless dip into the mainstream (Marina & The Diamonds, incidentally), a more familiar-looking list this week – though there are still a couple of less-than-great albums lurking in this lot among the marquee new entries. First honours go to The White Stripes, predictably I guess, but please note the Autechre and Drive-By Truckers records, both of which I initially prefer to their last albums (though I’m not sure whether I like the latter enough to write about; cue another attack from some of their more committed fans, doubtless). Also, goodness me, Paul Weller. 1 Autechre – Oversteps (Warp) 2 The Magnetic Fields – Realism (Nonesuch) 3 Harappian Night Recordings – The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele (Bo’Weavil) 4 Valgeir Sigurdsson – Dreamland (Bedroom Community) 5 The White Stripes – Under Great White Northern Lights (XL) 6 Yep, Still Can’t Reveal What This One Is (I’m As Fed Up As You) 7 Crushed Butler – Uncrushed (RPM) 8 Pantha Du Prince – Black Noise (Rough Trade) 9 Black Francis – Nonstoperotik (Cooking Vinyl) 10 John Kongos – He’s Gonna Step On You Again (Fly) 11 Charlotte Gainsbourg – IRM (Because) 12 Paul Weller – Wake Up The Nation (Island) 13 Nice Nice –Extra Wow (Warp) 14 Drive-By Truckers – The Big To Do (PIAS) 15 Carolina Chocolate Drops – Genuine Negro Jig (Nonesuch) 16 Pavement – Quarantine The Past (Domino)

After last week’s fairly hapless dip into the mainstream (Marina & The Diamonds, incidentally), a more familiar-looking list this week – though there are still a couple of less-than-great albums lurking in this lot among the marquee new entries.

Continue

Oil City Confidential

Film
Reviews

Uncut

-

25th January 2010

0

Directed by Julien Temple Starring Lee Brilleaux, Wilko Johnson, John Martin, John B Sparks, Chris Fenwick The galvanising impact of Dr Feelgood on mid-1970s music - an influence hitherto underplayed - was down to two things. Firstly, they were a hard-ass, back-to-basics R'n'B band boasting two gi...

Directed by Julien Temple

Starring Lee Brilleaux, Wilko Johnson, John Martin, John B Sparks, Chris Fenwick

The galvanising impact of Dr Feelgood on mid-1970s music – an influence hitherto underplayed – was down to two things. Firstly, they were a hard-ass, back-to-basics R’n’B band boasting two gifted frontmen: guitarist Wilko Johnson, spraying incendiary riffs from his Telecaster while strutting like a dysfunctional robot; and singer Lee Brilleaux, a menacing growler with a handy line in microphone technique.

Secondly, and as importantly, the Feelgoods, as they quickly became known, provided an antidote to a music industry still clinging to the fall-out of the hippy ’60s. Where Pink Floyd sang doleful, epic laments to old England, the Feelgoods celebrated its gritty realities in three-minute songs delivered in grimy pubs. They were, as various Pistols, Blondies and other interviewees acknowledge here, punk before punk.

That much partly explains the interest of director Julien Temple, for whom Oil City Confidential continues a sequence of music docs stretching from The Filth And The Fury (2000), his portrait of the Sex Pistols, to Glastonbury (2006) and The Future Is Unwritten (2007), his tribute to Joe Strummer. The Feelgoods would seem small beer by comparison – they imploded before they could crack the US, and never made the album their talents threatened – but, as much as music, Oil City… is about the eccentricity of small-town England as seen through the prism of Canvey, a clapped-out seaside resort turned oil refinery, a place fancifully dubbed “the Thames Delta” by Wilko Johnson.

Central to the Feelgoods’ success was their image. In an era of loon pants and long hair, they wore slept-in suits and barber-shop haircuts. “They looked like four guys who’d just done a bank job,” says fellow pub rocker Will Birch, “with a smash-and-grab approach to the London music scene.”

The analogy provides Temple with his central conceit – a gang of Essex geezers turned R’n’B raiders – and allows him to plunder the archives of Brit noir, Brighton Rock et al, for playful montages of screeching Jags and Ford Zephyrs to play over what is essentially a familiar tale – four mates form a band (a fifth becomes manager), tour hard and get successful before substance abuse and the road take their toll. The group survived Johnson’s abrupt departure in 1977 – indeed, with Gypie Mayo as his replacement, they scored their biggest hit with 1979’s “Milk And Alcohol” – but without Wilko’s musical invention they were never the same creative force, and early hits such as “Roxette” and “She Does It Right” still define their appeal.

Temple revels in the juxtaposition of Canvey’s bleak oil refinery with the ramshackle seaside chalets and pubs left from its previous incarnation as cockney playground; projecting footage of the band on the giant oil tanks is a particularly clever stunt. Canvey has had its share of tragedy, too; the 1953 Essex floods claimed hundreds of lives, an event etched into the childhoods of the future Feelgoods.

Behind the band’s glowering stage presence lay another reality. Offstage, Brilleaux (real name Lee Collinson) was the perfect gentleman, terse but gracious, qualities captured here in old interviews (he died in 1994). Both drummer John Martin and bassist Sparko were genial chancers, while Wilko’s back story included a trek on the hippy trail and a spell as an English teacher.

The precise reason for Wilko leaving the band isn’t nailed down, but substance-assisted paranoia surely played its part; alone of the quartet, his recreational tastes ran to powders rather than booze. These days, Johnson plays the part of nutty professor, grieving for his late wife, wrapped up in astronomy (a small observatory tops his Canvey home), but still able to conjure the right spiky chops from his Fender. It’s Wilko’s peremptory, offbeat monologues that provide Oil City Confidential with its through-line and several of its funniest moments, not least when he describes the clouds and flames of the Shell Haven Refinery as “Miltonic”, quoting Paradise Lost in support.

Neil Spencer

Black Francis announces new solo album

News

Uncut

-

25th January 2010

0

Pixies' frontman Black Francis is to release a new solo-album this April. 'NonStopErotik' is out on April 5, and has been produced by Francis and Eric Drew Feldman. The tracklisting for 'NonStopErotik' is: 'Lake Of Sin' 'O My Tidy Sum' 'Rabbits' 'Wheels' 'Dead Man's Curve' 'Corrina' 'Six ...

Pixies‘ frontman Black Francis is to release a new solo-album this April.

‘NonStopErotik’ is out on April 5, and has been produced by Francis and Eric Drew Feldman.

The tracklisting for ‘NonStopErotik’ is:

‘Lake Of Sin’

‘O My Tidy Sum’

‘Rabbits’

‘Wheels’

‘Dead Man’s Curve’

‘Corrina’

‘Six Legged Man’

‘Wild Son’

‘When I Go Down On You’

‘Nonstoperotik’

‘Cinema Star’

Pixies have also announced that they will be play a series of shows in Europe, Australia and New Zealand this spring.

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

Pantha Du Prince: “Black Noise”

John Mulvey

-

25th January 2010

0

If the accelerating success of Animal Collective in 2009 was weird enough, the level of anticipation surrounding their projects for 2010 must be astronomical, following the placing of “Merriweather Post Pavilion” at Number One in so many end-of-year polls. It’s predictable, then, that the band seem to be beginning the new year with solo projects that may, at least partially, defuse some of the hype. Deakin has been playing the odd solo show without too much fuss, though a recent Panda Bear gig where he previewed almost entirely new material (presumably from the fairly imminent follow-up to “Person Pitch”) has been drawing a good deal more heat. Before that, however, Panda Bear – Noah Lennox, that is – crops up applying vocals to “Stick To My Side”, a track on the new album by Pantha Du Prince, a German producer. If Animal Collective – and Lennox’s solo work – have reached out towards dance music in recent years, it’s still striking to hear him placed into a more-or-less pure techno context. Pantha Du Prince – Hendrik Weber – is often described as a creator of minimalist techno, but here, and for most of the excellent “Black Noise”, he artfully and meticulously layers various subtle bell-like melodies and rhythms beneath Lennox’s relatively straight vocal melody, as it gradually multiplies and expands into a characteristically yearning series of loops. It’s lovely, as is the whole album. There’s something silvery and hard to pin down about much of Weber’s music here, not insubstantial, but insidious in a very discreet way which can be hard to articulate. “Stick To My Side” might seem to stand out as his big stab at indie crossover or whatever (he's now on Rough Trade, too), but actually it blends fairly seamlessly into the whole immersive experience of the album. Weber’s often categorised alongside a bunch of Kompakt artists, and I can see certain affinities with, say, parts of The Field’s music. But there’s something a little different, precious but not fey, about the way he favours a certain glistening, bobbling sound palate, which reminds me of some ‘90s IDM stuff on Warp, and also a more graceful iteration of the work done by James Holden (another Warp throwback in some ways, I guess) on “The Idiots Are Winning”. Tracks habitually begin abstractedly and ringing, then gradually resolve themselves into rich, gently pulsating marvels; “Bohemian Forest” being a classic case in point. Inscrutable but not alienating, perhaps, and the cover painting, of an alpine church, set on the edge of a mirror-like lake, seems nebulously apposite. Weber’s last album, “This Bliss”, is reputedly even better: to my shame, I’ve not heard it. But check out “The Splendour” on his MySpace and see what you think.

If the accelerating success of Animal Collective in 2009 was weird enough, the level of anticipation surrounding their projects for 2010 must be astronomical, following the placing of “Merriweather Post Pavilion” at Number One in so many end-of-year polls.

Continue

Radiohead: ‘Recording ‘In Rainbows’ half killed us’

News

Uncut

-

22nd January 2010

0

Radiohead: ‘Recording ‘In Rainbows’ half killed us’

Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien has revealed the band nearly split up during the recording of 2007 album 'In Rainbows'. O'Brien cited the lengthy recording process of the album as the cause of the tension. He told Midem.com that at one point, the band's future was "in the balance". However, the albu...

Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien has revealed the band nearly split up during the recording of 2007 album ‘In Rainbows’.

O’Brien cited the lengthy recording process of the album as the cause of the tension. He told Midem.com that at one point, the band’s future was “in the balance”. However, the album’s reception and forward-thinking release made Radiohead vow to carry on.

“The recording of the album took three years,” O’Brien said. “Which is a long time by anybody’s standards. It’ pretty much half killed us. Whether the band would continue was very much in the balance.”

He added: “It was empowering [the release format]. You can’t put it into a balance sheet, this feeling of empowerment. It completely rejuvenated us as a band. It got the creative juices flowing. You can’t put a price on that. That’s the stuff that keeps you going.”

Radiohead, who are currently working on the follow-up to ‘In Rainbows’, have also announced that they are to play a benefit gig this Sunday (January 24) in Los Angeles at The Music Box Theatre At The Fonda. It’s in aid of Oxfam’s Haiti earthquake emergency response appeal.

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

The White Stripes announces live album release details

News

Uncut

-

22nd January 2010

0

The White Stripes announces live album release details

The White Stripes have announced details of their ever official live album. Jack and Meg White are set to release the 16-song album on CD and vinyl on March 15. It will accompany the regular DVD release of the band's Canadian tour documentary, 'Under Great White Northern Lights'. The film, directed...

The White Stripes have announced details of their ever official live album.

Jack and Meg White are set to release the 16-song album on CD and vinyl on March 15. It will accompany the regular DVD release of the band’s Canadian tour documentary, ‘Under Great White Northern Lights’. The film, directed by Emmett Malloy will be released as a standard DVD on the same day.

Like the DVD, the CD release draws on material taken from The White Stripes‘ 2007 Canada tour.

The album’s tracklisting is as follows:

‘Let’s Shake Hands’

‘Black Math’

‘Little Ghost’

‘Blue Orchid’

‘The Union Forever’

‘Ball And Biscuit’

‘Icky Thump’

‘I’m Slowly Turning Into You’

‘Jolene’

‘300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues’

‘We Are Going to Be Friends’

‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’

‘Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn’

‘Fell In Love With A Girl’

‘When I Hear My Name’

‘Seven Nation Army’

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

REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ to be used as Simon Cowell’s Haiti charity single

News

Uncut

-

22nd January 2010

0

REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ to be used as Simon Cowell’s Haiti charity single

REM's 'Everybody Hurts' has been selected by Simon Cowell as his charity single to raise money for the Haiti earthquake appeal. Prime Minister Gordon Brown encouraged Cowell to release a Live Aid-style single to raise money for the country, and acts rumoured to have been approached to appear on the...

REM‘s ‘Everybody Hurts’ has been selected by Simon Cowell as his charity single to raise money for the Haiti earthquake appeal.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown encouraged Cowell to release a Live Aid-style single to raise money for the country, and acts rumoured to have been approached to appear on the new version of the track include Paul McCartney, Coldplay, Take That and George Michael.

REM‘s manager Bertis Downs told The Sun that the band are waiving all royalties for the song, which is raising money for the Helping Haiti fund and the Disasters Emergency Committee.

“We are deeply touched the song has been chosen for this Haiti campaign,” Downs said. “It means a lot that the song the guys wrote all those years ago will be used for such an important appeal.”

The single is set to be rush-released later this month.

Meanwhile, acts including Damon Albarn, Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay and Pet Shop Boys are auctioning items on eBay to raise money for Oxfam’s Haiti Appeal.

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

Harappian Night Recordings: “The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele”

John Mulvey

-

22nd January 2010

0

Not so much a preview, this one, since I believe “The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele” may have come out the best part of a year ago. Forgive the tardiness, anyhow: this pretty amazing album has only just showed up on my radar, shamefully. Harappian Night Recordings are, by all accounts (there’s an article in a recent Wire, which I must admit I missed), part of a very underground free psych scene focused on Sheffield, also involving Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides, Chora and The Hunter Gracchus. Again, I’m going to have to apologise for what I can best describe as a formative knowledge of this scene: Part Wild Horses are great on brief exposure; Chora and The Hunter Gracchus I’m going to investigate later today, all being well. Doubtless it would’ve been more sensible to wait until I was better informed about the whole scene, but “The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele” has exerted a strong pull this week, a heady, playful and intense piece of work by one Dr Syed Kamran Ali who knits (and I’m quoting Bo’Weavil’s label description) “Duelling ouds, whirling mizmars, screeching jouhikkos, tapping finger harps, rumbling monosynths, groaning harmoniums, a fist full of khene, talking gamelan.” There’s been a lot of talk lately, focused on Vampire Weekend’s “Contra”, about the perceived morality or immorality of using (or plundering, as those in the latter camp would argue) non-western musics as inspiration (I wrote about it a bit here). Seems like a healthy rather than malign trend to me; an argument reinforced by “The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele”. Harappian’s most obvious antecedents in their “ethnological forgeries”, if you like, are that Pacific Northwestern cluster of activity originally centred on the Sun City Girls, their Sublime Frequencies label, and the Master Musicians Of Bukkake (especially "The Visible Sign Of The Invisible Order"). Pasted together like a freestyled, headspinning collage, “The Glorious Gongs…” takes culturally diverse snippets of sound, smudges them with disorienting fuzz, applies found sounds, breaks and God knows what else, and comes up with an exhilarating fourth-world psychedelia. Like Sun City Girls, there’s a strange and sometimes unnerving tension between pranksterism and mysticism, but at heart there seems to be a liberated, adventurous relationship with the possibilities of music. We’re reminded here, too, of perhaps the rickety juxtapositions found on very early Cornershop records, plus the ghostly imprecations of someone like Third Eye Foundation. I suspect there might be connections with the subterranean improv world inhabited by the mighty Vibracathedral Orchestra, too. It’s all, as you might imagine, a hell of a long way from Vampire Weekend, MIA and other global fusionists. But when I hear something as exciting as, say, “Bare Cairo” or “Headless Mule” (and there’s another, only slightly inferior Harappian album called “Non Euclidean Elucidation of Shamanic Ecstasies” I’ve found; maybe more?), Harappian seems part of an upsurge in musical open-mindedness among musicians, from the top of the US charts to the most obscure leftfield explorers. Not, I suspect, that Harappian or their ilk would ever like to be categorised that way… Have a go on the Myspace, anyhow - www.myspace.com/harappiannightrecordings - some brilliant stuff there.

Not so much a preview, this one, since I believe “The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele” may have come out the best part of a year ago. Forgive the tardiness, anyhow: this pretty amazing album has only just showed up on my radar, shamefully.

Continue

‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll’, ‘Moon’ nominated for Bafta Awards

News

Uncut

-

21st January 2010

0

‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll’, ‘Moon’ nominated for Bafta Awards

The films Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, Nowhere Boy and Moon have each earned nominations for the 2010 Bafta Awards. Moon, which is directed by David Bowie's son Duncan Jones is nominated in two categories – Outstanding British Film and Outstanding Debut By British Writer, Director Or Producer. Nowhere Boy, the Sam Taylor-Wood-directed film about the early life of John Lennon, is also up for those two categories, while Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff from the film are nominated for Supporting Actress. Meanwhile, Andy Serkis, who plays Ian Dury in the recently-released biopic of the Dury's life, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, is nominated in the Leading Actor category, while the film also picked up a nod in the Music category. The awards themselves take place at London's Royal Opera House on February 21. The full list of nominations for the 2010 Bafta Awards are: BEST FILM Avatar An Education The Hurt Locker Precious Up In The Air OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM An Education Fish Tank In The Loop Moon Nowhere Boy OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER Lucy Bailey, Andrew Thompson, Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock, David Pearson (directors/producers): Mugabe and the White African Eran Creevy (writer/director): Shifty Stuart Hazeldine (writer/director): Exam Duncan Jones (director): Moon Sam Taylor-Wood (director): Nowhere Boy DIRECTOR James Cameron: Avatar Neill Blomkamp: District 9 Lone Scherfig: An Education Kathryn Bigelow: The Hurt Locker Quentin Tarantino: Inglourious Basterds ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Jon Lucas and Scott Moore: The Hangover Mark Boal: The Hurt Locker Quentin Tarantino: Inglourious Basterds Joel Coen and Ethan Coen: A Serious Man Bob Peterson and Pete Docter: Up ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell: District 9 Nick Hornby: An Education Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci and Tony Roche: In The Loop Geoffrey Fletcher: Precious Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner: Up In The Air FILM NOT IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE Broken Embraces Coco Before Chanel Let The Right One In A Prophet The White Ribbon ANIMATED FILM Coraline Fantastic Mr Fox Up LEADING ACTOR Jeff Bridges: Crazy Heart George Clooney: Up In The Air Colin Firth: A Single Man Jeremy Renner: The Hurt Locker Andy Serkis: Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll LEADING ACTRESS Carey Mulligan: An Education Saoirse Ronan: The Lovely Bones Gabourey Sidibe: Precious Meryl Streep: Julie & Julia Audrey Tautou: Coco Before Chanel SUPPORTING ACTOR Alec Baldwin: It's Complicated Christian McKay: Me and Orson Welles Alfred Molina: An Education Stanley Tucci: The Lovely Bones Christoph Waltz: Inglourious Basterds SUPPORTING ACTRESS Anne-Marie Duff: Nowhere Boy Vera Farmiga: Up In The Air Anna Kendrick: Up In The Air Mo'Nique: Precious Kristin Scott Thomas: Nowhere Boy MUSIC Avatar Crazy Heart Fantastic Mr Fox Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll Up CINEMATOGRAPHY Avatar District 9 The Hurt Locker Inglourious Basterds The Road EDITING Avatar District 9 The Hurt Locker Inglourious Basterds Up in the Air PRODUCTION DESIGN Avatar District 9 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Inglorious Basterds COSTUME DESIGN Bright Star Coco Before Chanel An Education A Single Man The Young Victoria SOUND Avatar District 9 The Hurt Locker Star Trek Up SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS Avatar District 9 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince The Hurt Locker Star Trek MAKE-UP & HAIR Coco Before Chanel An Education The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Nine The Young Victoria SHORT ANIMATION The Gruffalo The Happy Duckling Mother of Many SHORT FILM 14 I Do Air Jade Mixtape Off Searson ORANGE RISING STAR (voted by public) Jesse Eisenberg Nicholas Hoult Carey Mulligan Tahar Rahim Kristen Stewart Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

The films Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, Nowhere Boy and Moon have each earned nominations for the 2010 Bafta Awards.

Moon, which is directed by David Bowie‘s son Duncan Jones is nominated in two categories – Outstanding British Film and Outstanding Debut By British Writer, Director Or Producer. Nowhere Boy, the Sam Taylor-Wood-directed film about the early life of John Lennon, is also up for those two categories, while Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff from the film are nominated for Supporting Actress.

Meanwhile, Andy Serkis, who plays Ian Dury in the recently-released biopic of the Dury‘s life, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, is nominated in the Leading Actor category, while the film also picked up a nod in the Music category.

The awards themselves take place at London‘s Royal Opera House on February 21.

The full list of nominations for the 2010 Bafta Awards are:

BEST FILM

Avatar

An Education

The Hurt Locker

Precious

Up In The Air

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM

An Education

Fish Tank

In The Loop

Moon

Nowhere Boy

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER

Lucy Bailey, Andrew Thompson, Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock, David Pearson (directors/producers): Mugabe and the White African

Eran Creevy (writer/director): Shifty

Stuart Hazeldine (writer/director): Exam

Duncan Jones (director): Moon

Sam Taylor-Wood (director): Nowhere Boy

DIRECTOR

James Cameron: Avatar

Neill Blomkamp: District 9

Lone Scherfig: An Education

Kathryn Bigelow: The Hurt Locker

Quentin Tarantino: Inglourious Basterds

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Jon Lucas and Scott Moore: The Hangover

Mark Boal: The Hurt Locker

Quentin Tarantino: Inglourious Basterds

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen: A Serious Man

Bob Peterson and Pete Docter: Up

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell: District 9

Nick Hornby: An Education

Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci and Tony Roche: In The Loop

Geoffrey Fletcher: Precious

Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner: Up In The Air

FILM NOT IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Broken Embraces

Coco Before Chanel

Let The Right One In

A Prophet

The White Ribbon

ANIMATED FILM

Coraline

Fantastic Mr Fox

Up

LEADING ACTOR

Jeff Bridges: Crazy Heart

George Clooney: Up In The Air

Colin Firth: A Single Man

Jeremy Renner: The Hurt Locker

Andy Serkis: Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

LEADING ACTRESS

Carey Mulligan: An Education

Saoirse Ronan: The Lovely Bones

Gabourey Sidibe: Precious

Meryl Streep: Julie & Julia

Audrey Tautou: Coco Before Chanel

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Alec Baldwin: It’s Complicated

Christian McKay: Me and Orson Welles

Alfred Molina: An Education

Stanley Tucci: The Lovely Bones

Christoph Waltz: Inglourious Basterds

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Anne-Marie Duff: Nowhere Boy

Vera Farmiga: Up In The Air

Anna Kendrick: Up In The Air

Mo’Nique: Precious

Kristin Scott Thomas: Nowhere Boy

MUSIC

Avatar

Crazy Heart

Fantastic Mr Fox

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

Up

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Avatar

District 9

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

The Road

EDITING

Avatar

District 9

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Up in the Air

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Avatar

District 9

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Inglorious Basterds

COSTUME DESIGN

Bright Star

Coco Before Chanel

An Education

A Single Man

The Young Victoria

SOUND

Avatar

District 9

The Hurt Locker

Star Trek

Up

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS

Avatar

District 9

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The Hurt Locker

Star Trek

MAKE-UP & HAIR

Coco Before Chanel

An Education

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Nine

The Young Victoria

SHORT ANIMATION

The Gruffalo

The Happy Duckling

Mother of Many

SHORT FILM

14

I Do Air

Jade

Mixtape

Off Searson

ORANGE RISING STAR (voted by public)

Jesse Eisenberg

Nicholas Hoult

Carey Mulligan

Tahar Rahim

Kristen Stewart

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

Gorillaz announce new album tracklisting

News

Uncut

-

21st January 2010

0

Gorillaz announce new album tracklisting

Gorillaz have announced the release of their third album, 'Plastic Beach' on March 8. The band, created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, have a number of guests on the album, including Lou Reed, Mos Def, Mark E Smith, Snoop Dogg, Bobby Womack, De La Soul and Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys. The C...

Gorillaz have announced the release of their third album, ‘Plastic Beach’ on March 8.

The band, created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, have a number of guests on the album, including Lou Reed, Mos Def, Mark E Smith, Snoop Dogg, Bobby Womack, De La Soul and Super Furry Animals‘ Gruff Rhys. The Clash‘s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon also reunite on the title track.

‘Plastic Beach’ has the following tracklisting.

‘Orchestral Intro’

‘Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach’ (feat. Snoop Dogg)

‘White Flag (feat. Kano & Bashy)

‘Rhinestone Eyes’

‘Stylo’ (feat. Bobby Womack and Mos Def)

‘Superfast Jellyfish’ (feat. Gruff Rhys and De La Soul)

‘Empire Ants’ (feat. Little Dragon)

‘Glitter Freeze’ (feat. Mark E Smith)

‘Some Kind Of Nature’ (feat. Lou Reed)

‘On Melancholy Hill’

‘Broken’

‘Sweepstakes’ (feat. Mos Def & Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)

‘Plastic Beach’ (feat. Mick Jones & Paul Simonon)

‘To Binge’ (feat. Little Dragon)

‘Cloud Of Unknowing’ (feat. Bobby Womack)

‘Pirate Jet’

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

Thom Yorke to record new material with supergroup?

News

Uncut

-

20th January 2010

0

Thom Yorke to record new material with supergroup?

Thom Yorke has hinted that he may enter the studio with members of the supergroup her performed in Los Angeles with last year. That group featured Yorke alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, REM collaborator Joey Waronker, Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Mauro Refosco, and Radiohead's long-...

Thom Yorke has hinted that he may enter the studio with members of the supergroup her performed in Los Angeles with last year.

That group featured Yorke alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, REM collaborator Joey Waronker, Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Mauro Refosco, and Radiohead‘s long-term producer Nigel Godrich.

Speaking about the project, Yorke told BBC Radio 1’s Gilles Peterson that the band are going to “do something hopefully in April”, leading to speculation that they will join him at his Coachella festival gig in April. Yorke is currently billed for the LA event under the name “Thom Yorke????”.

Yorke also said that while the band would be used for “just some more gigs” he did not rule out the possibility that it could “lead somewhere [else] as well”.

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

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG – IRM

EELS – END TIMES

BUDDY HOLLY – NOT FADE AWAY

Supergrass working on ‘drone rock’ album

VAMPIRE WEEKEND – CONTRA

Muse, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys lead Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 nominations

Pavement announce Best Of album tracklisting

Invictus

It Might Get Loud

The Fourth Uncut Playlist Of 2010

Oil City Confidential

Black Francis announces new solo album

Pantha Du Prince: “Black Noise”

Radiohead: ‘Recording ‘In Rainbows’ half killed us’

The White Stripes announces live album release details

REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ to be used as Simon Cowell’s Haiti charity single

Harappian Night Recordings: “The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele”

‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll’, ‘Moon’ nominated for Bafta Awards

Gorillaz announce new album tracklisting

Thom Yorke to record new material with supergroup?

SHOP UNCUT

Uncut June 2025

The new Ultimate Music Guide: Siouxsie & The Banshees

500 Greatest Albums of the 1950s…Ranked!

Uncut May 2025

Ultimate Record Collection: The Beatles, 1965-1970