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Nick Cave duets with Debbie Harry on new compilation!

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Nick Cave duets with Debbie Harry on new compilation!
Nick Cave has recorded a duet with Blondie's Debbie Harry for a new compilation that interprets unfinished songs by Jeffrey Lee Pierce. The track “Free To Walk”, appears on the album 'We Are Only Riders – The JLP Sessions Project, both singers also contribute solo tracks to the collection. Ca...

Nick Cave has recorded a duet with Blondie‘s Debbie Harry for a new compilation that interprets unfinished songs by Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

The track “Free To Walk”, appears on the album ‘We Are Only Riders – The JLP Sessions Project, both singers also contribute solo tracks to the collection. Cave also plays piano on Harry’s track “Lucky Jim”.

The Glitterhouse compilation, out on January 11, also features Mark Lanegan and Isobell Campbell, Mick Harvey, Lydia Lunch, The Raveonettes and Barry Adamson.

The We Are Only Riders track listing is:

Nick Cave – “Ramblin’ Mind”

Mark Lanegan – “Constant Waiting”

The Raveonettes – “Free To Walk”

Debbie Harry – “Lucky Jim”

Lydia Lunch – “My Cadillac”

David Eugene Edwards – “Ramblin’ Mind”

The Sadies – “Constant Waiting”

Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell – “Free To Walk”

Lydia Lunch – “St. Marks Place”

Crippled Black Phoenix – “Bells On The River”

Cypress Grove – “Ramblin’ Mind”

Johnny Dowd – “Constant Waiting”

Nick Cave & Debbie Harry – “Free To Walk”

Mick Harvey – “The Snow Country”

David Eugene Edwards & Crippled Black Phoenix – “Just Like A Mexican Love”

Lydia Lunch, Dave Alvin, And The JLP Sessions Project – “Walkin’ Down The Street (Doin’ My Thing)”

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

Fantastic Mr Fox

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Fantastic Mr Fox
UNCUT FILM REVIEW: FANTASTIC MR FOX Directed By Wes Anderson Starring The Voices Of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray SYNOPSIS: Mr Fox moves his family into a new home on land near mean-spirited farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean. When Mr Fox launches a series of daring ra...
  • UNCUT FILM REVIEW: FANTASTIC MR FOX
  • Directed By Wes Anderson
  • Starring The Voices Of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray

    • SYNOPSIS:

    Mr Fox moves his family into a new home on land near mean-spirited farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean. When Mr Fox launches a series of daring raids on their farms, the farmers respond by declaring war on Mr Fox. Enlisting the help of other countryside animals, our wiley vulpus vulpus hatches a plan to rob the farmers of their entire food stocks. Things, inevitably, do not go according to plan…

    ***

    It takes a certain kind of person to get where Wes Anderson is coming from. Here, after all, is a filmmaker who’s spent much of his career making quirky, sophisticated comedies about unconventional dreamers and dysfunctional families like Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited, films that are stylistically idiosyncratic to the point of polarising audiences. You might have cause to wonder, then, what on Earth he’d have to bring to Fantastic Mr Fox – a children’s book, no less, written by Roald Dahl.

    In fact, there’s plenty that’s familiar here to fans of Anderson’s films. We have an eccentric father figure who’s maybe not quite the Alpha Male he imagines himself to be, a calm, well-centred matriarch, a child prodigy, and plenty of squabbling sibling rivalry. Meanwhile, the cast list is filled with many of Anderson’s regular associates – both Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray play major roles here, and there are cameos from Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody and Roman Coppola.

    The script is by Anderson and his The Life Aquatic… With Steve Zissou co-writer, Noah Baumbach and there are chapter headings, too – “Cousin Kristofferson Arrives”, “The Terrible Tractors”, “Mr Fox Has A Plan” – a device he used before in The Royal Tenenbaums. You may even find some parity between Jarvis Cocker’s guitar-playing henchman, Petey, and Seu George’s Bowie-singing safety expert aboard the Belafonte in The Life Aquatic. In short, anyone concerned the director might have compromised his singular vision should be reassured – so far, so Wes, really.

    What’s different, of course, are the bristles, fur, textiles, fabrics, buttons and wood Anderson’s team of craftsmen have used to bring his take on Dahl’s story to life through the laborious process of stop-motion animation. But that forensic attention to detail in the film’s look is, in itself, yet another typical Anderson trait. Here, you might easily find yourself marvelling at a helicopter shot of a spread of fields, all immaculately woven together from different types of fabric like a patchwork quilt, or admiring the incredibly meticulous detailing on the characters’ clothes.

    The colour palette, meanwhile, is as heavily stylised as his last film, The Darjeeling Limited – a warm, autumnal mix of reds, browns and oranges replacing that movie’s peacock fan of blues, green and golds. More often than not, Fantastic Mr Fox resembles a high-budget update of British children’s programmes from the ’60s and ’70s like Pogles’ Wood and Bagpuss. Home-made and hand-made, all arts and crafts; peculiarly English, in other words.

    So, yes, it’s a Wes Anderson film. With puppets! Really, what’s not to like? In fact, it only really deviates from Anderson’s established template in one respect – the character of Mr Fox (Clooney) himself. Usually, Anderson’s patriarchs are weary and melancholic like Steve Zissou, or duplicitous and dysfunctional like Royal Tenenbaum; all of them struggling, to some degree, to connect with their extended families.

    Mr Fox, on the other hand, is brash, tenacious and super-confident – a do-er, in other words. Certainly, it’s hard to imagine any of Anderson’s other male leads having the cojones to behave as Mr Fox does. Here’s a character prepared to take on against the odds three angry farmers and their evil henchmen – all of them heavily armed, it should be said. But Mr Fox, in his own way, is troubled by the same kind of existential doubts that afflicted Tenenbaum and Zissou: “How can a fox be happy without a chicken in its teeth?” he muses darkly at one point. And when Mrs Fox angrily asks him at one point, “Why did you lie to me?” He replies: “Because I’m a wild animal.”

    George Clooney, of course, can do brash, tenacious and super-confident (oh, and charming) while standing on his head. And he does it here with great warmth (and charm). Meryl Streep, as Mrs Fox, is a fine variant on the kind of part Anjelica Huston’s played previously in Anderson’s films while Bill Murray’s badger is, well, Bill Murray-ish and Jason Schwartzman revisits the sulky persona he adopted for The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited.

    It’s perhaps difficult to know how all this will play out with the kids, admittedly. Anderson’s humour is typically droll, the characterisations arch. If the younger audiences are to connect with anyone here, you’d assume it might be Ash, Mr and Mrs Fox’ son. But Ash is a typically Anderson character – a bundle of neuroses, in other words.

    He harbours dreams of being an athlete, but his shortcomings are painfully shown up when compared to his visiting cousin, Kristofferson, who seems to be pretty much brilliant at everything. Ash is jealous – but this being a Wes Anderson film, he’s jealous in a deadpan sort way, of course. When Kristofferson appears to be cracking onto Ash’s lab partner at school, a sort of indie female fox, Ash petulantly remonstrates her: “You’re supposed to be my lab partner.” “I am,” she replies. “No you’re not,” says Ash. “You’re disloyal.” This, clearly, is not Toy Story.

    Coincidentally, Anderson isn’t the only filmmaker to tackle a much-loved children’s book – later this year, we’ll see Spike Jonze’s version of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, adapted by Jonze and novelist Dave Eggers. You might wonder whether these two films signpost the way to a de-Disneyfication of children’s films, with both Anderson and Jonze exactly the kind of directors to recognise that childhood can be a complex and often traumatic experience. And perhaps this might even be the start of a trend for hip New York directors to film children’s books. What next? Sofia Coppola’s Ballet Shoes, perhaps? On second thoughts…

    MICHAEL BONNER

    Latest film and DVD reviews on Uncut.co.uk

    Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

True Blood

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True Blood

Vampires, as we know, never die. Certainly, they have failed to vanish from the imaginations of US movie and TV producers: from the ongoing Twilight franchise to the upcoming Vampire Diaries, the undead, once maligned as stinky, neck-hungry predators have been rebranded as good-looking metaphors for teen alienation. Perhaps it should come as no surprise to discover that the country that popularised the egg white omelette should now bring us a new dietary option: the bloodless vampire. True Blood, a show perceived by some to mark a fork in the road for the HBO cable network away from “real life” dramas, and into new and fantastical realms, is mercifully not of this type. From the title sequence on down, it’s evident that we are entering a rawer world. Table dancers, savage nature, vague intimations of voodoo – it may be devised to tell you who’s in the show, but it’s like stepping into a song by Screaming Jay Hawkins. As it turns out, that’s not far off the truth. Not a series that wastes time on lengthy exposition about what we can expect from vampires (“Say, I took a photograph of Bob, but I find to my surprise he doesn’t appear in the image…”), True Blood gets right down to it. In the same way that EastEnders is seldom detained by discussions of fruit and vegetables, this is a series in which the whole business of being a vampire is taken, refreshingly, pretty much for granted. In fact, in True Blood’s fictional Louisiana town, Bon Temps, “vamps” are legally permitted to live among regular folks. Their movement is unrestricted, but in the main they stick to their own nitespots – as soon becomes apparent, restaurants, or places to go in the day, they don’t need. Relationships between vampires and “locals” are frowned on, at best, as perverted. The True Blood of the title, meanwhile, is a placebo drink concocted for the benefit of vampires: a handy way to keep the undead drinking blood within the letter of the law. Most vampires, however, feel about it the same way Seinfeld felt about air travel. Once you’ve sampled first class, you don’t ever want to go back to economy. At the centre of this swiftly, but vividly drawn community is the romance that slowly develops between waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) – the, incidentally ESP gifted, heroine of the novel series on which True Blood is based – and a vampire named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer). Bill, a man of few words seems honourable, but also faintly menacing and is presented very much as one would hope a 174-year-old veteran of the US civil war to look: quite a lot like Mark Lanegan. As cute as this premise might sound, this is assuredly still an HBO show. There are adult scenes, drug use, and the de rigueur use of “the c word”. And, though it is never beats you over the head, this is a show with some serious and subtle things to say about prejudice. Not, however, that it plays that way at all. Held together by the romantic narrative of Sookie and Bill, and the incompetent police department’s failure to solve a string of recent and apparently motiveless murders, True Blood’s tone is a meeting point somewhere between Twin Peaks and Gossip Girl, both intriguing, soapy and agreeably flashy. In common with the former, True Blood also has a roster of superbly watchable minor characters: gay, drug-dealing short order cook Lafayette (Nelson Ellis), Sookie’s perpetually aggrieved best friend Tara (Rutina Wesley), and best of all Sookie’s brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten). While not endowed upstairs, he is supremely talented down, a distribution of resources that leads to many of the show’s finest comic moments. If there’s a faint suspicion on reaching the end of this first series, it’s that the tying up of loose ends is not exactly at the top of the programme makers’ lists here – one hopes that we’re not heading into a Lost-like world of no definitive closure. As it stands, though, the strength of this ensemble cast keeps True Blood eminently watchable, the real thing, in a world of synthetic blood products. It’s slightly guilty pleasure, certainly. But once you get a taste for it, it’s hard to deny the urge. EXTRAS: 3* DVD-only commentaries from cast and crew on five episodes, while the Blu-ray features episode previews, recaps, a season index and Enhanced Viewing Mode. JOHN ROBINSON Latest film and DVD reviews on Uncut.co.uk

Vampires, as we know, never die. Certainly, they have failed to vanish from the imaginations of US movie and TV producers: from the ongoing Twilight franchise to the upcoming Vampire Diaries, the undead, once maligned as stinky, neck-hungry predators have been rebranded as good-looking metaphors for teen alienation. Perhaps it should come as no surprise to discover that the country that popularised the egg white omelette should now bring us a new dietary option: the bloodless vampire.

True Blood, a show perceived by some to mark a fork in the road for the HBO cable network away from “real life” dramas, and into new and fantastical realms, is mercifully not of this type. From the title sequence on down, it’s evident that we are entering a rawer world. Table dancers, savage nature, vague intimations of voodoo – it may be devised to tell you who’s in the show, but it’s like stepping into a song by Screaming Jay Hawkins.

As it turns out, that’s not far off the truth. Not a series that wastes time on lengthy exposition about what we can expect from vampires (“Say, I took a photograph of Bob, but I find to my surprise he doesn’t appear in the image…”), True Blood gets right down to it. In the same way that EastEnders is seldom detained by discussions of fruit and vegetables, this is a series in which the whole business of being a vampire is taken, refreshingly, pretty much for granted.

In fact, in True Blood’s fictional Louisiana town, Bon Temps, “vamps” are legally permitted to live among regular folks. Their movement is unrestricted, but in the main they stick to their own nitespots – as soon becomes apparent, restaurants, or places to go in the day, they don’t need. Relationships between vampires and “locals” are frowned on, at best, as perverted.

The True Blood of the title, meanwhile, is a placebo drink concocted for the benefit of vampires: a handy way to keep the undead drinking blood within the letter of the law. Most vampires, however, feel about it the same way Seinfeld felt about air travel. Once you’ve sampled first class, you don’t ever want to go back to economy.

At the centre of this swiftly, but vividly drawn community is the romance that slowly develops between waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) – the, incidentally ESP gifted, heroine of the novel series on which True Blood is based – and a vampire named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer). Bill, a man of few words seems honourable, but also faintly menacing and is presented very much as one would hope a 174-year-old veteran of the US civil war to look: quite a lot like Mark Lanegan.

As cute as this premise might sound, this is assuredly still an HBO show. There are adult scenes, drug use, and the de rigueur use of “the c word”. And, though it is never beats you over the head, this is a show with some serious and subtle things to say about prejudice.

Not, however, that it plays that way at all. Held together by the romantic narrative of Sookie and Bill, and the incompetent police department’s failure to solve a string of recent and apparently motiveless murders, True Blood’s tone is a meeting point somewhere between Twin Peaks and Gossip Girl, both intriguing, soapy and agreeably flashy.

In common with the former, True Blood also has a roster of superbly watchable minor characters: gay, drug-dealing short order cook Lafayette (Nelson Ellis), Sookie’s perpetually aggrieved best friend Tara (Rutina Wesley), and best of all Sookie’s brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten). While not endowed upstairs, he is supremely talented down, a distribution of resources that leads to many of the show’s finest comic moments.

If there’s a faint suspicion on reaching the end of this first series, it’s that the tying up of loose ends is not exactly at the top of the programme makers’ lists here – one hopes that we’re not heading into a Lost-like world of no definitive closure. As it stands, though, the strength of this ensemble cast keeps True Blood eminently watchable, the real thing, in a world of synthetic blood products. It’s slightly guilty pleasure, certainly. But once you get a taste for it, it’s hard to deny the urge.

EXTRAS: 3* DVD-only commentaries from cast and crew on five episodes, while the Blu-ray features episode previews, recaps, a season index and Enhanced Viewing Mode.

JOHN ROBINSON

Latest film and DVD reviews on Uncut.co.uk

Seasick Steve – Man From Another Time

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Seasick Steve – Man From Another Time

It’s weirdly heartening to discover that even grey-bearded sixtysomething former hobos turned late-flowering blues superstars can suffer existential insecurity. On the title track of Seasick Steve’s fourth solo album, he wonders aloud what the heck he’s doing, and why anybody else is paying attention as he does it. “Anyway,” he mutters, in that gentle growl which has become as much a fixture of the British summer festival circuit as unseasonal downpours, “I don’t know why you wanna listen what I got to say at all… Don’t you got nothing better to do?” A fair question, to which a great many would clearly respond with an ardent, adamant “no”. Seasick Steve’s 2008 breakthrough, I Started Out With Nothin’ And I Still Got Most Of It Left, was a palpable Top 10 hit, staffed by guest stars (Nick Cave, KT Tunstall, Ruby Turner, Warren Ellis) and garlanded with critical accolades. His unusual autobiography was ubiquitously recycled in lurid shades of purple, though with rather greater emphasis on his years as a boxcar-jumping indigent than on his more recent toilings as a studio engineer. Now that Steve has established his myth – though it seems less a case of Emperor’s New Clothes than Tramp’s Old Overalls – it seems reasonable to consider these things. Is Seasick Steve the real deal – whatever that means – or has he merely cunningly deployed his picturesque, picaresque backstory as distraction from the possibility that his gruff, rugged blues is, on its own merits, not obviously superior to the fare available from any number of dive bar stages and buskers’ pitches? On the erratic strength of Man From Another Time, it’s hard to say. A couple of moments are arrestingly wretched. “Big Green And Yeller”, a Tim Hardin-esque talking blues love song to a John Deere tractor, is either mawkish or clumsily self-parodic. Opening track “Diddly Bo” (essentially a set of instructions for replicating one of Steve’s distinctive home-made instruments) and closing cut “Seasick Boogie” are wan, grating whimsy: you would not live long on the difference between either tune and “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”. The album is a much more ruthlessly pared affair than its predecessor. Steve plays all the instruments, aside from drums, and records on studio equipment of comparably venerable vintage to Steve himself. This fundamentalist approach inevitably places a huge burden on the singing and songwriting. When these rise to the challenge, it’s wondrous. The prisoner’s lament “That’s All” coughs and wheezes through aptly tense, claustrophobic verses before erupting into a riotous, unbound chorus: Steve/’s finest few minutes to date. “My Home (Blue Eyes)”, presumably an ode to the joy of returning home to his wife of many years, is an affectingly heartfelt echo of John Hartford’s “Gentle On My Mind”. Taken as a whole, unfortunately, Steve blunders in maintaining fidelity to the lo-fi approach at the expense of what might have best suited some of the cuts. “Banjo Song” features Steve’s voice at its weatherbeaten best, but suffers by the insistence on reducing the song to the title – there are reasons why the banjo is rarely featured as a solo instrument, and this sounds like a demo awaiting further work. The gently rueful railway stowaway’s reverie “Just Because I Can (CSX)” sounds similarly unfinished – what should have been a vivid evocation of a goods carriage rattling across the American prairie is a ponderous plod more reminiscent of a First Capital Connect train parked interminably amid sheepfields somewhere near Bedford. Seasick Steve sets his stall out with the title: he’s an old man, determined to have little truck with the new-fangled. He can plausibly claim, therefore, that it does what it says on the tin (a phrase which sounds like a Seasick Steve title in waiting). He should consider, however – and so should his audience – that antiquity and authenticity are not always necessarily the same thing. ANDREW MUELLER UNCUT Q&A: SEASICK STEVE:

  • Why the decision to strip the music back so far on this album?
    • I didn’t really want all those people on the other one, either. I picked those girl singers from Mississippi [Gale Mayes and Kim Fleming] but everyone else was kinda stuck on there by the record company. This time I didn’t even tell them where I was recording it.
  • Again, the songs are very obviously drawn on your own memories and experiences.
    • I always do that. I’m not very good at writing just for fun. Normally, I pick up a guitar, play a few things, think I like the way something sounds, and I remember something. If that goes past three or four words, I’ll go with it.
  • The title track suggests that you’re a bit bewildered by the stature you’ve acquired…
    • Well, I really am. I’m not trying to be modest, but three years ago, the odds against me doing any good would have seemed about four billion to one. And like I say in the song, I do feel lost in the new world. The only modern thing I want is a mobile phone – I’ve been sick a few times, so my wife won’t let me travel without one.
Interview: Andrew Mueller Latest and archive album reviews on Uncut.co.uk Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

It’s weirdly heartening to discover that even grey-bearded sixtysomething former hobos turned late-flowering blues superstars can suffer existential insecurity. On the title track of Seasick Steve’s fourth solo album, he wonders aloud what the heck he’s doing, and why anybody else is paying attention as he does it. “Anyway,” he mutters, in that gentle growl which has become as much a fixture of the British summer festival circuit as unseasonal downpours, “I don’t know why you wanna listen what I got to say at all… Don’t you got nothing better to do?”

A fair question, to which a great many would clearly respond with an ardent, adamant “no”. Seasick Steve’s 2008 breakthrough, I Started Out With Nothin’ And I Still Got Most Of It Left, was a palpable Top 10 hit, staffed by guest stars (Nick Cave, KT Tunstall, Ruby Turner, Warren Ellis) and garlanded with critical accolades. His unusual autobiography was ubiquitously recycled in lurid shades of purple, though with rather greater emphasis on his years as a boxcar-jumping indigent than on his more recent toilings as a studio engineer.

Now that Steve has established his myth – though it seems less a case of Emperor’s New Clothes than Tramp’s Old Overalls – it seems reasonable to consider these things. Is Seasick Steve the real deal – whatever that means – or has he merely cunningly deployed his picturesque, picaresque backstory as distraction from the possibility that his gruff, rugged blues is, on its own merits, not obviously superior to the fare available from any number of dive bar stages and buskers’ pitches?

On the erratic strength of Man From Another Time, it’s hard to say. A couple of moments are arrestingly wretched. “Big Green And Yeller”, a Tim Hardin-esque talking blues love song to a John Deere tractor, is either mawkish or clumsily self-parodic. Opening track “Diddly Bo” (essentially a set of instructions for replicating one of Steve’s distinctive home-made instruments) and closing cut “Seasick Boogie” are wan, grating whimsy: you would not live long on the difference between either tune and “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”.

The album is a much more ruthlessly pared affair than its predecessor. Steve plays all the instruments, aside from drums, and records on studio equipment of comparably venerable vintage to Steve himself. This fundamentalist approach inevitably places a huge burden on the singing and songwriting. When these rise to the challenge, it’s wondrous. The prisoner’s lament “That’s All” coughs and wheezes through aptly tense, claustrophobic verses before erupting into a riotous, unbound chorus: Steve/’s finest few minutes to date. “My Home (Blue Eyes)”, presumably an ode to the joy of returning home to his wife of many years, is an affectingly heartfelt echo of John Hartford’s “Gentle On My Mind”.

Taken as a whole, unfortunately, Steve blunders in maintaining fidelity to the lo-fi approach at the expense of what might have best suited some of the cuts. “Banjo Song” features Steve’s voice at its weatherbeaten best, but suffers by the insistence on reducing the song to the title – there are reasons why the banjo is rarely featured as a solo instrument, and this sounds like a demo awaiting further work.

The gently rueful railway stowaway’s reverie “Just Because I Can (CSX)” sounds similarly unfinished – what should have been a vivid evocation of a goods carriage rattling across the American prairie is a ponderous plod more reminiscent of a First Capital Connect train parked interminably amid sheepfields somewhere near Bedford.

Seasick Steve sets his stall out with the title: he’s an old man, determined to have little truck with the new-fangled. He can plausibly claim, therefore, that it does what it says on the tin (a phrase which sounds like a Seasick Steve title in waiting). He should consider, however – and so should his audience – that antiquity and authenticity are not always necessarily the same thing.

ANDREW MUELLER

UNCUT Q&A: SEASICK STEVE:

  • Why the decision to strip the music back so far on this album?

    • I didn’t really want all those people on the other one, either. I picked those girl singers from Mississippi [Gale Mayes and Kim Fleming] but everyone else was kinda stuck on there by the record company. This time I didn’t even tell them where I was recording it.

  • Again, the songs are very obviously drawn on your own memories and

    experiences.

    • I always do that. I’m not very good at writing just for fun. Normally, I pick up a guitar, play a few things, think I like the way something sounds, and I remember something. If that goes past three or four words, I’ll go with it.

  • The title track suggests that you’re a bit bewildered by the stature you’ve acquired…

    • Well, I really am. I’m not trying to be modest, but three years ago, the odds against me doing any good would have seemed about four billion to one. And like I say in the song, I do feel lost in the new world. The only modern thing I want is a mobile phone – I’ve been sick a few times, so my wife won’t let me travel without one.

Interview: Andrew Mueller

Latest and archive album reviews on Uncut.co.uk

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

Leonard Cohen – Live At The Isle Of Wight 1970

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Leonard Cohen – Live At The Isle Of Wight 1970

It was gone two in the morning by the time he finally got on stage after being woken from a nap in his trailer. Out front the mood among the throng – an astonishing 600,000 strong – was a mixture of blissed-out and fired-up after five days of music, ragged sleep and running battles between the organisers and the ‘free festival radicals’ occupying ‘Desolation Row’, the hill overlooking the site. Backstage there were jitters – already that night there had been an onstage fire, a wilful act of arson, during Jimi Hendrix’s slot. Unfazed, Leonard Cohen wandered onstage cool as an English summer. Shaggy, stubbled, tanned, and sporting a tightly belted safari suit (possibly the only time said garment has seemed dashing), he looked more film star than rock icon. At almost 36, he was, Miles Davis aside, the oldest act on a sprawling, stellar bill. Cohen’s subsequent performance was remarkable for its poise, its passion and the way it defused the tension crackling in the air. Before he had even played a note Cohen had seized his moment by reminiscing about his childhood visits to the circus and getting the audience to hold up a lighted match (a gesture yet to descend into cliché) and by singing, ad lib, “It’s good to be here alone in front of 600,000 people”. When Cohen finally swoops into a solemn “Bird On A Wire”, the crowd’s collective exhalation is almost tangible. Thereafter, Cohen never lets his grip slacken over 80 minutes, towing his audience through songs that were already causes célèbres – “So Long Marianne”, “Suzanne”, “Lady Midnight” – and startling them withintroductions that are sometimes poems, sometimes narratives. “I wrote this in a peeling room in the Chelsea hotel… I was coming off amphetamine and pursuing a blonde lady whom I met in a Nazi poster,” is his lead-in to “One Of Us Can’t Be Wrong”. The confidential introductions and Cohen’s tousled appearance lend proceedings a drowsy intimacy, though whether Len’s half-closed eyes and sleepy manner are due to his recent nap or the ingestion of some festive substance is unclear. In this early part of his career, long before the more detached and oblique commentator of the 1980s emerged, the confessional was, in any case, Cohen’s default position, the sense of his nakedness enhanced by minimal backings. Here he’s accompanied by a classy quartet of US session players (including producer Bob Johnston) whose acoustic guitars strum and ripple gently behind him while Johnston sounds hymnal organ parts and a trio of female singers provide harmony and gospel choruses. Incongruously, Cohen dubbed the group ‘The Army’. The commanding presence, though, remains Cohen’s voice, never a thing of supple beauty for sure, and prone to wander into the wrong key, but by turns sensual and fervid and always perfectly paced for lyrics that chime with poetic grace. The versions here of “The Stranger”, “The Partisan”, and “You Know Who I Am”, to mention just three, have a steely exuberance absent from the more mannered takes on his first two albums. Whether singing, reciting or talking, Cohen never misses a phonetic beat. At times even the band, who had just accompanied him on a European tour, seem as mesmerised by his spoken forays as the crowd. There’s a clever underlying structure to the set, too, that alternates a jolt or two of slow, lingering romance with more uptempo offerings. Hence, after “…Marianne” comes a bounding “Lady Midnight”, while “The Stranger” is followed by a countrified take on “Tonight Will Be Fine” featuring banjo and fiddle, the latter by Charlie Daniels. In a wry preface to “Tonight”, Cohen sings of his “sad and famous songs” alongside a cheery dedication to “the poison snakes on Desolation Hill”. Ouch! “That’s No Way To Say Goodbye”, forlorn as ever, is pursued by a riotous version of “Diamonds In The Mine”, one of three tracks here that would ultimately see release on 1971’s Songs of Love And Hate, said album also including the Isle of Wight performance of “Sing Another Song Boys”. This would have been the crowd’s first encounter with both songs, as with “Famous Blue Raincoat”, rendered here with gruff, arresting determination. After that, “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” seems almost an afterthought to a set that, across a 40-year chasm, still astonishes. NEIL SPENCER Latest and archive album reviews on Uncut.co.uk Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

It was gone two in the morning by the time he finally got on stage after being woken from a nap in his trailer. Out front the mood among the throng – an astonishing 600,000 strong – was a mixture of blissed-out and fired-up after five days of music, ragged sleep and running battles between the organisers and the ‘free festival radicals’ occupying ‘Desolation Row’, the hill overlooking the site. Backstage there were jitters – already that night there had been an onstage fire, a wilful act of arson, during Jimi Hendrix’s slot.

Unfazed, Leonard Cohen wandered onstage cool as an English summer. Shaggy, stubbled, tanned, and sporting a tightly belted safari suit (possibly the only time said garment has seemed dashing), he looked more film star than rock icon. At almost 36, he was, Miles Davis aside, the oldest act on a sprawling, stellar bill.

Cohen’s subsequent performance was remarkable for its poise, its passion and the way it defused the tension crackling in the air. Before he had even played a note Cohen had seized his moment by reminiscing about his childhood visits to the circus and getting the audience to hold up a lighted match (a gesture yet to descend into cliché) and by singing, ad lib, “It’s good to be here alone in front of 600,000 people”.

When Cohen finally swoops into a solemn “Bird On A Wire”, the crowd’s collective exhalation is almost tangible. Thereafter, Cohen never lets his grip slacken over 80 minutes, towing his audience through songs that were already causes célèbres – “So Long Marianne”, “Suzanne”, “Lady Midnight” – and startling them withintroductions that are sometimes poems, sometimes narratives. “I wrote this in a peeling room in the Chelsea hotel… I was coming off amphetamine and pursuing a blonde lady whom I met in a Nazi poster,” is his lead-in to “One Of Us Can’t Be Wrong”.

The confidential introductions and Cohen’s tousled appearance lend proceedings a drowsy intimacy, though whether Len’s half-closed eyes and sleepy manner are due to his recent nap or the ingestion of some festive substance is unclear. In this early part of his career, long before the more detached and oblique commentator of the 1980s emerged, the confessional was, in any case, Cohen’s default position, the sense of his nakedness enhanced by minimal backings.

Here he’s accompanied by a classy quartet of US session players (including producer Bob Johnston) whose acoustic guitars strum and ripple gently behind him while Johnston sounds hymnal organ parts and a trio of female singers provide harmony and gospel choruses. Incongruously, Cohen dubbed the group ‘The Army’.

The commanding presence, though, remains Cohen’s voice, never a thing of supple beauty for sure, and prone to wander into the wrong key, but by turns sensual and fervid and always perfectly paced for lyrics that chime with poetic grace. The versions here of “The Stranger”, “The Partisan”, and “You Know Who I Am”, to mention just three, have a steely exuberance absent from the more mannered takes on his first two albums. Whether singing, reciting or talking, Cohen never misses a phonetic beat. At times even the band, who had just accompanied him on a European tour, seem as mesmerised by his spoken forays as the crowd.

There’s a clever underlying structure to the set, too, that alternates a jolt or two of slow, lingering romance with more uptempo offerings. Hence, after “…Marianne” comes a bounding “Lady Midnight”, while “The Stranger” is followed by a countrified take on “Tonight Will Be Fine” featuring banjo and fiddle, the latter by Charlie Daniels. In a wry preface to “Tonight”, Cohen sings of his “sad and famous songs” alongside a cheery dedication to “the poison snakes on Desolation Hill”. Ouch!

“That’s No Way To Say Goodbye”, forlorn as ever, is pursued by a riotous version of “Diamonds In The Mine”, one of three tracks here that would ultimately see release on 1971’s Songs of Love And Hate, said album also including the Isle of Wight performance of “Sing Another Song Boys”. This would have been the crowd’s first encounter with both songs, as with “Famous Blue Raincoat”, rendered here with gruff, arresting determination. After that, “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” seems almost an afterthought to a set that, across a 40-year chasm, still astonishes.

NEIL SPENCER

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Uncut Reviews: Kraftwerk – Reissues

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Uncut Reviews: Kraftwerk – Reissues
KRAFTWERK: REISSUES Autobahn 5* Radio-Activity 4* Trans-Europe Express 5* The Man-Machine 4* Computer World 5* Techno Pop 3* The Mix 4* Tour De France 4* 12345678 The Catalogue 2* Nobody ever believes me, but I was watching a talent show on ITV one night in the late ’70s when four blo...

KRAFTWERK: REISSUES

  • Autobahn 5*
  • Radio-Activity 4*
  • Trans-Europe Express 5*
  • The Man-Machine 4*
  • Computer World 5*
  • Techno Pop 3*
  • The Mix 4*
  • Tour De France 4*
  • 12345678 The Catalogue 2*

Nobody ever believes me, but I was watching a talent show on ITV one night in the late ’70s when four blokes came on dressed as mannequins and danced robotically to Kraftwerk’s “Showroom Dummies”. I think they were from Yorkshire, and no, they didn’t win. But what an act! They live on in my memory as a totem of The Bizarre Ways That Britain First Heard Kraftwerk. My own first encounter was in 1975, when “Autobahn” entered the charts the same week as “Wombling White Tie And Tails” and West Ham’s FA Cup song. Truly a Top 40 to die for.

Now, three decades on, we’re all thoroughly accustomed to Kraftwerk. They’re the grand dukes and sovereign rulers of electronic music. They inspire awe for the glittering pop palaces they built with their tisky-tisk drums and singing, swinging synths (“Europe Endless”, “Spacelab”, “Neon Lights”, “Computer World”).

An alphabet of the people they’ve influenced would run to 2,500 names before it even got to Cabaret Voltaire. And yet, for all our clinical theories about innovative electro-pop and minimalist man-machinery, what’s striking about Kraftwerk’s catalogue – eight CDs finally remastered to Ralf Hütter’s satisfaction, after an aborted attempt in 2004 – is that it still comes down to a very basic, non-scientific response: the immediate alertness, pleasure and fascination that Kraftwerk’s icily beautiful textures trigger in our hearts and brains. Hütter and his since-departed colleague Florian Schneider were famous for pioneering tomorrow’s technology today, but they also wrote romantic music that will dance in the air forever. And that’s a clinical theory.

As an adolescent in 1978–79, Kraftwerk were seldom far from my radio. The local station used to play “Kometenmelodie 2” (from Autobahn) and “Airwaves” (Radio-Activity) on its Sunday evening programme for hi-fi buffs, along with audiophiliac Moog voyages by Tomita, Jarre and Vangelis. You switched off your bedroom light, angled your face to the night sky and imagined your small transistor radio to be emitting the pulsating symphonies of faraway planets. Not ’alf!

Thirty years later, the second side of Autobahn(1974) still takes me back to those spooky Sunday broadcasts, and I get a Proustian thrill from the rock’n’roll chords on “Kometenmelodie 2” that sound like Hot Butter playing Status Quo’s “Caroline”. However, the main attraction of Autobahn, of course, is its 22-minute title track, a virtuoso sound-simulation of a motorway journey – from the car door slamming and the engine starting, to the hypnotic white-noise patterns of 130km/h driving. While Kraftwerk can sound metallically stern when they choose to, “Autobahn” is freckled with warmth: sunny vocal harmonies (“…mit Glitzerstrahl”), a carefree flute solo (Schneider) and clever modulations (denoting gear-changes) to break the tension.

As the likes of Bowie and Eno listened attentively, a dark triptych followed. Radio-Activity (1975) begins like a heartbeat in the void, accelerating into the pulse that will form the spine of the title-song, an eerie tribute to the intangibles (music, disintegrating atoms) that linger in the atmosphere. The LP has a musty scent of Old Europe, which proved a hit with the synth groups of 1980-81 (eg, Ultravox and Visage), and it retains a blood-chilling, Wagnerian quality even now, thanks to Kraftwerk’s use of the Vako Orchestron, a choir-like relative of the Mellotron.

Trans-Europe Express (1977) and The Man-Machine (1978) are most people’s idea of Kraftwerk. They move with mother-of-pearl grace, each with a wry pop satire in the centre (“Showroom Dummies”, “The Model”) that allows the grandeur either side to breathe. The sparse lyrics lend themselves to considerable interpretation. Who are the real automatons – the humans or the robots? – is one of the central questions of Kraftwerk. It might be argued that, in an age when we stare into screens for years of our lives, sending emails to people sitting at desks six feet away, a line like “Ya tvoi sluga, ya tvoi rabotnik (I’m your slave, I’m your worker)” is not so much cute as close to the bone. At least the dummies had time to go dancing.

Having clanged a whole lotta metal on Trans-Europe Express, Kraftwerk turned their attention to commerce, with outrageous elegance. Computer World (1981), my favourite of their LPs, is as sensual and soulful as Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, yet it keeps up a chattering commentary on its comings and goings (“Business! Numbers! Money! People!”) like an arrivals and departures board in a busy airport. Computer World was criticised for its repetitiveness and short running time (34 minutes), but it’s now rightly regarded as a masterclass in how to construct an exquisite electronic song-suite from the most unsexy ingredients.

Sadly, the remaster is a fiasco. The soft tones of “Computer Love” become sharp, the wide spaces of “Home Computer” contract into tunnels, and “Pocket Calculator” bears down on us like a spiked ceiling in a horror film. Equally poor is the remastered Radio-activity, where atmospheric crackles and hisses have been removed by noise reduction software. For pity’s sake, they’re part of the music! Autobahn, Trans-Europe Express and The Man-Machine have less sound-quality issues, but are all inferior to the original EMI CDs. Anyone planning to buy the 8CD …The Catalogue, would be well-advised to sample an individual remaster first.

Hütter is within his rights to tinker with Kraftwerk’s canon as he wishes, but a botched Kraftwerk remaster series is a bitter disappointment nevertheless. It’s not such an issue, thankfully, with the remaining three LPS: the lean, industrial Techno Pop (a re-titled Electric Café with added track “House Phone”); The Mix (1991), a surprisingly addictive re-imagining of 11 classic tracks in a dancefloor context; and Tour De France (2003), a cycling fetishist’s techno headphone soundtrack with a gorgeous five-note motif. For those who’ll never sport the yellow jersey, have no fear. It also works its magic if you’re on an exercise bike.

DAVID CAVANAGH

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Sufjan Stevens – Presents The BQE

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Sufjan Stevens – Presents The BQE

In a world where so many singer-songwriters are trammelled by their crushing lack of ambition and their lack of musical expertise, Sufjan Stevens sticks out like a sore thumb. He sings clever, beautiful, folk-tinged songs about serial killers, zombies and bird-spotting. He’s written a string of rigorously researched concept albums: you’ve probably heard about Michigan and Illinois, the first two albums in his epic plan to celebrate each state of the Union, but there’s also been a song-cycle about the Chinese zodiac (Enjoy Your Rabbit; a collection of songs about the Bible (Seven Swans); and a separate EP of carols for five consecutive Christmases. Now Stevens has turned his attention to the great American highway. Specifically, his new project is a film, an accompanying soundtrack and a theatrical performance that explores New York City’s Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a mainly elevated section of Interstate 278 that connects southern Brooklyn (where Stevens lives) to Grand Central Parkway in Queens. The work was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music(BAM) in 2007; Stevens and a 36-piece orchestra premiered it alongside a projection of his accompanying film. Fittingly – for a man who has been joined by a choir dressed in scout uniforms, or by cheerleaders who cartwheel onto the stage bearing orange pom-poms – the show was accompanied by five glamorous hula-hoop dancers. This package features the CD, a DVD of the film, a comic book and a 3D Viewmaster reel (you know, one of those quaint, olde-fashioned toys that you view through special Bakelite binoculars) containing stereoscopic images from the film. BAM, who commissioned the work as part of a festival celebrating the borough, were apparently disappointed that Stevens chose not to use lyrics, instead addressing this expanse of tarmac and pre-stressed concrete through an orchestral score. Stevens, however, has long been lurching away from folksy Americana that BAM might have expected, dabbling with glitchy electronica, minimalism and the avant garde. Tellingly, around the release of his last album, Stevens informed us that he was “bored with the banjo, bored with the guitar”. He studied the oboe and piano to a high level, and lists Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff and Grieg as his current classical interests, as well as the airy minimalism of Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley. Some of these influences are evident on BQE, which often sounds like a series of particularly impressive classical pastiches. “I don’t think, musically, the BQE is that innovative or new,” he acknowledges. “There are references to Copland and Gershwin and Ravel and stuff. It’s not conscious, it’s just that I listen to a lot of that stuff. It’s part of my education.” “Introductory Fanfare For The Hooper Heroes” and “Interlude I” have swaggering horns that suggest Aaron Copland; while the chugging woodwind and pizzicato strings of “Movement V” and “Interlude II” nod to the minimalism of Michael Nyman. “Movement II” starts with a gentle piano, brushed drums and cello; the trumpet fanfares slowly start to resemble Gil Evans’ lavish orchestrations for Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain. Sometimes Stevens swerves through about five utterly distinct stylistic genres in one stretch of music. On tracks 6 and 7, a delicately unfolding Steve Reich-ish orchestral pattern, all dancing flutes and woodwind, suddenly mutates into a thumpy rave anthem. On “Movement VII” the piano riff from Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” becomes the basis for a strident orchestral motif, which slowly starts to swing, like an Elmer Bernstein soundtrack. Stevens, who plays piano and celeste throughout, also performs a Keith Jarrett-like solo vignette which closes the album. In isolation from the film it accompanies, the score is beautiful, maddening, headache-inducing and slightly bonkers. Anyone expecting his familiar blend of Appalachian folksong and the Great American Songbook will be puzzled. And, as a piece of modern orchestral music, it’s not quite as satisfying as Run Rabbit Run (a classical reworking of Enjoy Your Rabbit, released this month in the US). But it’s a brave and hugely ambitious score that Stevens just about pulls off. JOHN LEWIS UNCUT Q&A: SUFJAN STEVENS:

In a world where so many singer-songwriters are trammelled by their crushing lack of ambition and their lack of musical expertise, Sufjan Stevens sticks out like a sore thumb. He sings clever, beautiful, folk-tinged songs about serial killers, zombies and bird-spotting.

He’s written a string of rigorously researched concept albums: you’ve probably heard about Michigan and Illinois, the first two albums in his epic plan to celebrate each state of the Union, but there’s also been a song-cycle about the Chinese zodiac (Enjoy Your Rabbit; a collection of songs about the Bible (Seven Swans); and a separate EP of carols for five consecutive Christmases.

Now Stevens has turned his attention to the great American highway. Specifically, his new project is a film, an accompanying soundtrack and a theatrical performance that explores New York City’s Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a mainly elevated section of Interstate 278 that connects southern Brooklyn (where Stevens lives) to Grand Central Parkway in Queens.

The work was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music(BAM) in 2007; Stevens and a 36-piece orchestra premiered it alongside a projection of his accompanying film. Fittingly – for a man who has been joined by a choir dressed in scout uniforms, or by cheerleaders who cartwheel onto the stage bearing orange pom-poms – the show was accompanied by five glamorous hula-hoop dancers. This package features the CD, a DVD of the film, a comic book and a 3D Viewmaster reel (you know, one of those quaint, olde-fashioned toys that you view through special Bakelite binoculars) containing stereoscopic images from the film.

BAM, who commissioned the work as part of a festival celebrating the borough, were apparently disappointed that Stevens chose not to use lyrics, instead addressing this expanse of tarmac and pre-stressed concrete through an orchestral score. Stevens, however, has long been lurching away from folksy Americana that BAM might have expected, dabbling with glitchy electronica, minimalism and the avant garde. Tellingly, around the release of his last album, Stevens informed us that he was “bored with the banjo, bored with the guitar”.

He studied the oboe and piano to a high level, and lists Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff and Grieg as his current classical interests, as well as the airy minimalism of Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley. Some of these influences are evident on BQE, which often sounds like a series of particularly impressive classical pastiches. “I don’t think, musically, the BQE is that innovative or new,” he acknowledges. “There are references to Copland and Gershwin and Ravel and stuff. It’s not conscious, it’s just that I listen to a lot of that stuff. It’s part of my education.”

“Introductory Fanfare For The Hooper Heroes” and “Interlude I” have swaggering horns that suggest Aaron Copland; while the chugging woodwind and pizzicato strings of “Movement V” and “Interlude II” nod to the minimalism of Michael Nyman. “Movement II” starts with a gentle piano, brushed drums and cello; the trumpet fanfares slowly start to resemble Gil Evans’ lavish orchestrations for Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain.

Sometimes Stevens swerves through about five utterly distinct stylistic genres in one stretch of music. On tracks 6 and 7, a delicately unfolding Steve Reich-ish orchestral pattern, all dancing flutes and woodwind, suddenly mutates into a thumpy rave anthem. On “Movement VII” the piano riff from Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” becomes the basis for a strident orchestral motif, which slowly starts to swing, like an Elmer Bernstein soundtrack. Stevens, who plays piano and celeste throughout, also performs a Keith Jarrett-like solo vignette which closes the album.

In isolation from the film it accompanies, the score is beautiful, maddening, headache-inducing and slightly bonkers. Anyone expecting his familiar blend of Appalachian folksong and the Great American Songbook will be puzzled. And, as a piece of modern orchestral music, it’s not quite as satisfying as Run Rabbit Run (a classical reworking of Enjoy Your Rabbit, released this month in the US). But it’s a brave and hugely ambitious score that Stevens just about pulls off.

JOHN LEWIS

UNCUT Q&A: SUFJAN STEVENS:

  • Why a film and a score about a road?

    • The Brooklyn Academy Of Music (BAM) commissioned me to write something about the borough for a festival. I felt that this expressway is such an iconic object that defines Brooklyn. BAM would have preferred lyrics, but I couldn’t distil the essence of this ugly/beautiful structure into words.

  • What sounds inspired you?

    • Well, the expressway is a symbol of movement, and motion, and I wanted the music to have a sense of perpetual motion. So a lot of it’s in 7/8, because when you cut a beat out of a measure, it can create a weird hiccup, which suggests that there’s no beginning and no end. And, although I initially wanted it to sound very sleek and cool, like Steve Reich, a lot of it’s very cartoonish. In a lot of Italian neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, people customise their car horns to play the theme from The Godfather, or the Dukes Of Hazzard. There’s a trumpet solo that simulates that!

  • What are you working on now?

    • Well, everything I’ve done in the past has been part of some conceptual package. Since then I’ve been trying to avoid that. I’m trying not to write about the US, for instance, and it’s taking me so long, because I feel like I’m starting over again! I’m also doing more stuff with electronics.

Interview: JOHN LEWIS

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Paul McCartney to headline Royal Albert Hall charity concert

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Paul McCartney to headline Royal Albert Hall charity concert
Paul McCartney is to top the bill at a charity concert to raise money for Children in Need next month. Muse, Dame Shirkey Bassey, Leona Leiws and Dizzee Rascal are some of the artists confirmed to appear at the show, which takes place at the Royal Albert Hall on November 12. Tickets will be availa...

Paul McCartney is to top the bill at a charity concert to raise money for Children in Need next month.

Muse, Dame Shirkey Bassey, Leona Leiws and Dizzee Rascal are some of the artists confirmed to appear at the show, which takes place at the Royal Albert Hall on November 12.

Tickets will be available to buy after allocation by ballot but limited to two per person. Register here for tickets by midday on October 20.

The show will be broadcast on BBC One, with highlights also played on BBC Radio 2 on November 19.

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First look: Arctic Monkeys new Richard Ayoade directed video!

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First look: Arctic Monkeys new Richard Ayoade directed video!
Arctic Monkeys new Richard Ayoade directed video for new single 'Cornerstone' has been posted online - ahead of it's November 16 release. The song is the second single to be lifted from the band's No.1 charting 'Humbug' album. See the Arctic Monkeys "Cornerstone" video here: http://www.youtube.co...

Arctic Monkeys new Richard Ayoade directed video for new single ‘Cornerstone’ has been posted online – ahead of it’s November 16 release.

The song is the second single to be lifted from the band’s No.1 charting ‘Humbug’ album.

See the Arctic Monkeys “Cornerstone” video here:

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Pink Floyd to feature on Royal Mail stamp!

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Pink Floyd to feature on Royal Mail stamp!

Album artwork used by Pink Floyd, The Clash and The Rolling Stones are all set to feature as part of a new set of ten stamps to be issued by the Royal Mail on January 7, 2010. The 10 stamps will feature the following album covers: Blur - 'Parklife' David Bowie - 'The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars' The Clash - 'London Calling' Coldplay - 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head' Led Zeppelin - 'Led Zeppelin IV' New Order - 'Power, Corruption & Lies' Mike Oldfield - 'Tubular Bells' Pink Floyd - 'The Division Bell' Primal Scream - 'Screamadelica' The Rolling Stones - 'Let It Bleed' Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

Album artwork used by Pink Floyd, The Clash and The Rolling Stones are all set to feature as part of a new set of ten stamps to be issued by the Royal Mail on January 7, 2010.

The 10 stamps will feature the following album covers:

Blur – ‘Parklife’

David Bowie – ‘The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars’

The Clash – ‘London Calling’

Coldplay – ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head’

Led Zeppelin – ‘Led Zeppelin IV’

New Order – ‘Power, Corruption & Lies’

Mike Oldfield – ‘Tubular Bells’

Pink Floyd – ‘The Division Bell’

Primal Scream – ‘Screamadelica’

The Rolling Stones – ‘Let It Bleed’

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First look: Nirvana Live At Reading DVD

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First look: Nirvana Live At Reading DVD

An official CD and DVD of Nirvana's famous Reading Festival headline performance in 1992 is to be released on November 2 and the first trailer has been made available now. 'Nirvana - Live At Reading Festival' will be available as a CD/ DVD pacakage, as well as separately. A double 12" live album will also be released on November 16. See a preview of the forthcoming live footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwvpaXXG34A&hl=en&fs=1 'Nirvana Live At Reading' features this set list: 'Breed' 'Drain You' 'Aneurysm' 'School' 'Sliver' 'In Bloom' 'Come As You Are' 'Lithium' 'About A Girl' 'Tourette's' 'Polly' 'Lounge Act' 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' 'On A Plain' 'Negative Creep' 'Been A Son' 'All Apologies' 'Blew' 'Dumb' 'Stay Away' 'Spank Thru' 'Love Buzz' 'The Money Will Roll Right In' 'D-7' 'Territorial Pissings' Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

An official CD and DVD of Nirvana‘s famous Reading Festival headline performance in 1992 is to be released on November 2 and the first trailer has been made available now.

‘Nirvana – Live At Reading Festival’ will be available as a CD/ DVD pacakage, as well as separately. A double 12″ live album will also be released on November 16.

See a preview of the forthcoming live footage here:

‘Nirvana Live At Reading‘ features this set list:

‘Breed’

‘Drain You’

‘Aneurysm’

‘School’

‘Sliver’

‘In Bloom’

‘Come As You Are’

‘Lithium’

‘About A Girl’

‘Tourette’s’

‘Polly’

‘Lounge Act’

‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’

‘On A Plain’

‘Negative Creep’

‘Been A Son’

‘All Apologies’

‘Blew’

‘Dumb’

‘Stay Away’

‘Spank Thru’

‘Love Buzz’

‘The Money Will Roll Right In’

‘D-7’

‘Territorial Pissings’

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Early White Stripes rarities to be released from ‘The Vault’

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Early White Stripes rarities to be released from ‘The Vault’

Rare versions of songs recorded during The White Stripes' first ever recording session are to be released by Jack White's Third Man Records this month. Studio outtakes of the duo's 1998 single "Let's Shake Hands" and the B-side "Look Me Over Closely" are to be made available to 'Vault' subscribers - the online service set up by White. The package will also include an exclusive vinyl album 'The Raconteurs, Live In London' and a Dead Weather screen print. Registration for this release is open until October 22, at Thirdmanrecords.com/vault Jack White is this month's Uncut cover star - read the full interview, with Uncut's Man of the Decade now. Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

Rare versions of songs recorded during The White Stripes‘ first ever recording session are to be released by Jack White‘s Third Man Records this month.

Studio outtakes of the duo’s 1998 single “Let’s Shake Hands” and the B-side “Look Me Over Closely” are to be made available to ‘Vault’ subscribers – the online service set up by White.

The package will also include an exclusive vinyl album ‘The Raconteurs, Live In London’ and a Dead Weather screen print.

Registration for this release is open until October 22, at Thirdmanrecords.com/vault

Jack White is this month’s Uncut cover star – read the full interview, with Uncut’s Man of the Decade now.

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Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor: “Ghosts”

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One track today: the debut solo single by Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear, which comes out on his own new label, Terrible, under the name of Cant. I’ve begun to assemble my albums of the year lists for the mag over the past week, and my personal favourite is looking likely to be “Veckatimest”, sad indie cliché that such a choice may make me. But anyhow, the music coming out in the slipstream of “Veckatimest” is also pretty special, most recently the astounding version of “While You Wait For The Others” with the new lead vocal by Michael McDonald, and Cant’s “Ghosts” is just about as brilliant. Like Daniel Rossen’s Department Of Eagles album from last year, “Ghosts” makes it fairly obvious which band Taylor comes from. He has a good claim to be the specific director of this sound, however, since it was Taylor who actually produced both “Veckatimest” and “In Ear Park”. “Ghosts” has a lot of the elements that made those records so beguiling: stark tambourine and drumbeats that could’ve been lifted from a vintage girl group single, or at least a very early Mary Chain one; watery, engulfing harmonies; that crotchety, fractionally disruptive guitar that previously came to the fore in “I Live With You”. That song is possibly the closest thing to “Ghosts”, but this new Taylor song is more spare, a little distrait, unanchored; it actually makes me want to go back and listen to the very first Grizzly Bear album for the first time in years, because I suspect this might provide a link of sorts between where they began and where they’ve ended up. What initially seems fragile and dislocated, however, gradually coalesces into a simple, nagging and magnificent sigh of a chorus that has a similarly transporting and addictive effect as one of my very favourite singles, Plush’s “Found A Little Baby”. I’ve just played this five times in a row while writing the review and it gets better every time. Oh, and the seven-inch, which I don’t have, has an unreleased Arthur Russell song on the flip; wow.

One track today: the debut solo single by Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear, which comes out on his own new label, Terrible, under the name of Cant. I’ve begun to assemble my albums of the year lists for the mag over the past week, and my personal favourite is looking likely to be “Veckatimest”, sad indie cliché that such a choice may make me.

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Stephen Stills live album to be released

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Stephen Stills live album to be released
Stephen Stills's London Shepherd's Bush Empire concert last year is to be released as a live CD and DVD on October 27. Stills, formerly of Buffallo Springfield and CSN amongst others, performed two sets; one acoustic and one electric - playing songs from every era of his career. The Shepherd's Bu...

Stephen Stills‘s London Shepherd’s Bush Empire concert last year is to be released as a live CD and DVD on October 27.

Stills, formerly of Buffallo Springfield and CSN amongst others, performed two sets; one acoustic and one electric – playing songs from every era of his career.

The Shepherd’s Bush show also included covers of Bob Dylan‘s “Girl From The North Country” and Tom Petty’s “The Wrong Thing To Do”.

Also just released is a Manassas compilation – ‘Pieces’, gathering tracks from the two albums Stills created with former Byrd Chris Hillman.

Stephen Still’s Live At Shepherd’s Bush track list is:

Acoustic Set

“Treetop Flyer”

“4 + 20″

“Johnny’s Garden”

“Change Partners”

“Girl From The North Country”

“Blind Fiddler”

“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”

Electric Set

“Isn’t It About Time”

“Rock & Roll Woman”

“The Wrong Thing To Do”

“Wounded World”

“Bluebird”

“For What It’s Worth”

“Love The One You’re With”

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First career-spanning Elvis box set to be released

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First career-spanning Elvis box set to be released

A new 100-track box set is to be released to celebrate what would have been Elvis Presley's 75th birthday this coming January. Surprisignly, the box-set 'Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight' is the first major career-spanning collection to be released. The four-disc set begins with Elvis' first self-recorded at Memphis Recording Service song, "My Happiness" and runs through to the Junkie XL remix of "A Little Less Conversation" which was a No.1 hit in 2002. 'Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight' will be released on December 8, while a single disc of the key tracks from the box will be available on January 5, 2010. Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

A new 100-track box set is to be released to celebrate what would have been Elvis Presley‘s 75th birthday this coming January.

Surprisignly, the box-set ‘Elvis 75: Good Rockin’ Tonight‘ is the first major career-spanning collection to be released.

The four-disc set begins with Elvis’ first self-recorded at Memphis Recording Service song, “My Happiness” and runs through to the Junkie XL remix of “A Little Less Conversation” which was a No.1 hit in 2002.

‘Elvis 75: Good Rockin’ Tonight‘ will be released on December 8, while a single disc of the key tracks from the box will be available on January 5, 2010.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

Kurt Vile, Deer Tick and Mountains coming up at Club Uncut!

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Kurt Vile, Deer Tick and Mountains coming up at Club Uncut!

Coming up at Club Uncut! Three great new artists at three venues in London in the coming weeks; Club Uncut is proud to present:

Coming up at Club Uncut!

Three great new artists at three venues in London in the coming weeks; Club Uncut is proud to present:

Grizzly Bear announce new London live show

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Grizzly Bear announce new London live show
Grizzly Bear have announced a new London live show to take place at the Roundhouse on March 13, 2010. The band, who are to reissue their acclaimed album Vecktamist with an additional seven live tracks on November 2, are due to play a sold-out show backed by The London Symphony Orchestra at The Barb...

Grizzly Bear have announced a new London live show to take place at the Roundhouse on March 13, 2010.

The band, who are to reissue their acclaimed album Vecktamist with an additional seven live tracks on November 2, are due to play a sold-out show backed by The London Symphony Orchestra at The Barbican on October 31.

Tickets for the new Grizzly Bear date will go on sale on Friday October 16.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

Dexys’ Kevin Rowland to DJ at London indie pop club

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Dexys’ Kevin Rowland to DJ at London indie pop club
Kevin Rowland is to return to DJ for a second time at indie pop club, How Does It Feel To Be Loved, on November 6. The Dexys Midnight Runners' singer's song list, last time, included Roxy Music, Bowie and The Four Tops, with Rowland even singing over some of his selections. See Rowland's 2007 set ...

Kevin Rowland is to return to DJ for a second time at indie pop club, How Does It Feel To Be Loved, on November 6.

The Dexys Midnight Runners‘ singer’s song list, last time, included Roxy Music, Bowie and The Four Tops, with Rowland even singing over some of his selections.

See Rowland’s 2007 set list here

HDIF takes place at the Brixton Canterbury Arms on Friday November 6.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

Eels Announce Brand New Album

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Eels Announce Brand New Album
Mark 'E' Everett has announced that the follow-up to this year's Hombre Lobo album will be released in January. The new self-recorded album, called End Times is the band's eighth release and features 14 brand new songs. End Times will be released on January 18, 2010. More info from the EELS websi...

Mark ‘E’ Everett has announced that the follow-up to this year’s Hombre Lobo album will be released in January.

The new self-recorded album, called End Times is the band’s eighth release and features 14 brand new songs.

End Times will be released on January 18, 2010.

More info from the EELS website here: eelstheband.com

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk

Real Estate: “Real Estate”

John Mulvey
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A while ago, I wrote about Ducktails, one of the projects of Matthew Mondanile from New Jersey. Now, Woodsist is putting out the debut album by a band he plays guitar in, Real Estate, that might be if anything even better. “Real Estate” has a very similar dazed, heat-damaged atmosphere to Ducktails – a generally baked nostalgia for summer childhoods, reductively - and there’s a comparable grasp of melody which is gentle and ebbing, rather than forceful. But while Mondanile uses that to make fuzzy, pop/ambience, Real Estate cultivate the same vibes with a spare, jangly indie sound that has already, and understandably, won them comparisons – in the press release, at least - with New Jersey antecedents The Feelies and also The Clean. In that last Ducktails blog, I mentioned something about how Mondanile was at his least effective when he worked towards more orthodox songforms. But here, on the likes of “Pool Swimmers”, it’s clear that the songs are actually, in their own discreet way, rather strong. The comparison I made with Felt holds some water again, not least because Real Estate manage to make a very thin, fey guitar sound come across as somehow mysterious and alluring, rather than tinny and winsome. There’s also something about Martin Courtney’s voice, especially on “Beach Comber” and “Fake Blues”, the way it sits tentatively, unsteadily just behind the prickly mesh of guitars, that is reminiscent of very early Stone Roses, perhaps; when Ian Brown was defined more by stealth than by arrogance. I may start talking about how the Bluetones initially and fleetingly seemed like a good idea, so perhaps some hipper contemporary references might help sell this lovely little record. There are definite affinities with some of the other new lo-fi bands around, most notably the excellent Ganglians, and maybe also Kurt Vile, when Real Estate build up a certain skinny, reverberant momentum around “Suburban Beverage” (Yo La Tengo might be worth mentioning, too). As the album goes on, in fact, it seems to drift further out of focus and into some kind of blissful chugging reverie, with Mondanile and Courtney’s guitars amiably running rings round each other, in no evident hurry to get anywhere. The effect is charming and beatific, and, as mentioned, very like The Feelies. Finally, there’s a song called “Snow Days”. Among publicists, there’s been an understandable but often pretty random habit this year of comparing new acts to Fleet Foxes; the Balearic/prog/MOR record that came billed as such being a particular winner. I suspect Real Estate wouldn’t be hugely enamoured with the comparison, but “Snow Days” has a similar dewy calmness to it, a folksy, borderline preternatural calm that could easily come across as precious, but is actually rather beguiling. Have a listen at their Myspace.

A while ago, I wrote about Ducktails, one of the projects of Matthew Mondanile from New Jersey. Now, Woodsist is putting out the debut album by a band he plays guitar in, Real Estate, that might be if anything even better.

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