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Tim Buckley – Live At The Folklore Center, NYC – March 6, 1967

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Tim Buckley – Live At The Folklore Center, NYC – March 6, 1967

From the day it opened in 1957, Izzy Young’s Folklore Center fast became a Greenwich Village landmark. Part music store, part community nexus, and wholly devoted to the developing folk scene, the venue boosted countless careers during its 16-year run – not least Bob Dylan’s; Izzy Young himself promoted Dylan’s first concert proper. “Izzy was a switchboard,” wrote the late Dave Van Ronk in his entertaining memoir, The Mayor Of MacDougal Street. “When he opened that little hole, there was suddenly a place where everyone went, and it became a catalyst for all sorts of things.” By 1967, though, acoustic guitars were out, and even Van Ronk – hardly a latent rock’n’roller – had gone electric with his band, The Hudson Dusters. Despite the struggle, though, Young continued to shepherd an astonishing array of new artists into public consciousness – Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris, Patti Smith. And a 20-year-old Californian kid called Tim Buckley. Here was a can’t-miss prospect, loaded with charisma and angelic good looks, the songs of a poet, and a spellbinding five-octave voice. Intense, mysterious, mercurial, Tim Buckley arrived at precisely the right moment, 1966 – Dylan having gone electric, the first stirrings of psychedelia – to help ring in pop’s radical new direction. Turns out, Buckley, with later forays into jazz fusion, improvisation, and other harmonic experimentation, was among his generation’s most radical artists. In time, that was a recipe for a protracted downward commercial spiral, and, when mixed with his predilection for hard drugs, an inglorious death in 1975 at age 28. Given the luxury and distance of time, though, Buckley, like Gram Parsons, Nick Drake, et al, emerges as a romantic figure, an idealist who embodied some of the era’s highest ideals: staunch resistance to compromise; a constant, innate need to push artistic boundaries; a determination to put art before careerism. All of which makes this recording a virtual Buckley ground zero, such a breathtaking document. Recorded before a tiny, polite audience, it presents a fleeting vision: Buckley as wet-behind-the-ears folksinger, stripped down to just voice and guitar, pouring out 16 subtly complex, inner musings of the soul. In early 1967 Tim Buckley was still raw, a bit formless. His voice, an impossibly powerful, graceful tenor, could move listeners through a kaleidoscope of emotions, but also had a tendency to lapse into melodrama or histrionics. Buckley was just beginning to get his sea-legs as a songwriter, and while dry-run folk-rock set Tim Buckley – his late-’66 debut for Elektra – had shown flashes, in the big picture Buckley was little more than yet another world-weary troubadour in a post-Dylan world. …Folklore Center is the first tape to catch Buckley solo, and stands in stark contrast to the studio ornamentation and overdub-happy creations found on his studio recordings. His repertoire is in transition, moving from derivative folk/blues into the atmospheric, drifting balladry that would soon mark his best work. There’s precious cargo here, too. Reputedly many original Buckley songs have been lost to time, but this tape contains six previously unknown or unrecorded songs. From the opener, “Song For Jainie” the songs tumble out in a rush of adrenalin and ringing/droning guitar, images of inner turmoil piling up in eloquent verse. Buckley’s tone is regal, reverent, serious – this is not light listening. His voice, ethereal, precious, operatic, commands the material, and he consistently zeroes in on the jagged emotion of the songs, pulling hurt and anger to the surface in “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain,” or capturing love’s first dizzying rush on “I Can’t See You”. Though influenced by Dylan, Buckley was more enthralled by another Village legend – Fred Neil. A buoyant adaptation of Neil’s “Country Boy” is the penultimate song, Buckley leaning into its rather uncharacteristic aw-shucks sentiment with urgent vocal runs and rapid-fire strumming. Buckley’s Neil fixation is more overt on the cadenced phrasing of “Just Please Leave Me”, a trademark kiss-off song, and one that has gone unheard on record until now. Cool as Buckley’s blues workouts are, though, they represented stasis. A cover of Neil’s then-new “Dolphins” – poignant, pensive, conveying a seen-it-all-before ennui – - cuts deeper, opens up more room to stretch, and that’s where Buckley was going. The madrigal drone of “Phantasmagoria In Two” strikes a similar brooding tone, reflecting an introspective take on the chaos of the times. And when Buckley (with co-writer Larry Beckett) tackles the overtly topical “No Man Can Find The War”- brilliantly turning the subject of Vietnam outside in (“Is the war inside your mind?” he sings), the song’s sombre vibe hits a nerve. Those superb unreleased songs, especially “Cripples Cry” and “If The Rain Comes”, with their old-world melodies (the mind boggles at potential Sandy Denny interpretations), provide a glimpse at what was lost as Buckley raced to defy expectations time and again. But it’s all fascinating; a fly-on-the-wall glimpse of the development of folk-into-rock and Buckley’s ephemeral odyssey of a career. LUKE TORN

From the day it opened in 1957, Izzy Young’s Folklore Center fast became a Greenwich Village landmark. Part music store, part community nexus, and wholly devoted to the developing folk scene, the venue boosted countless careers during its 16-year run – not least Bob Dylan’s; Izzy Young himself promoted Dylan’s first concert proper. “Izzy was a switchboard,” wrote the late Dave Van Ronk in his entertaining memoir, The Mayor Of MacDougal Street. “When he opened that little hole, there was suddenly a place where everyone went, and it became a catalyst for all sorts of things.”

By 1967, though, acoustic guitars were out, and even Van Ronk – hardly a latent rock’n’roller – had gone electric with his band, The Hudson Dusters. Despite the struggle, though, Young continued to shepherd an astonishing array of new artists into public consciousness – Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris, Patti Smith. And a 20-year-old Californian kid called Tim Buckley.

Here was a can’t-miss prospect, loaded with charisma and angelic good looks, the songs of a poet, and a spellbinding five-octave voice. Intense, mysterious, mercurial, Tim Buckley arrived at precisely the right moment, 1966 – Dylan having gone electric, the first stirrings of psychedelia – to help ring in pop’s radical new direction.

Turns out, Buckley, with later forays into jazz fusion, improvisation, and other harmonic experimentation, was among his generation’s most radical artists. In time, that was a recipe for a protracted downward commercial spiral, and, when mixed with his predilection for hard drugs, an inglorious death in 1975 at age 28. Given the luxury and distance of time, though, Buckley, like Gram Parsons, Nick Drake, et al, emerges as a romantic figure, an idealist who embodied some of the era’s highest ideals: staunch resistance to compromise; a constant, innate need to push artistic boundaries; a determination to put art before careerism.

All of which makes this recording a virtual Buckley ground zero, such a breathtaking document. Recorded before a tiny, polite audience, it presents a fleeting vision: Buckley as wet-behind-the-ears folksinger, stripped down to just voice and guitar, pouring out 16 subtly complex, inner musings of the soul.

In early 1967 Tim Buckley was still raw, a bit formless. His voice, an impossibly powerful, graceful tenor, could move listeners through a kaleidoscope of emotions, but also had a tendency to lapse into melodrama or histrionics. Buckley was just beginning to get his sea-legs as a songwriter, and while dry-run folk-rock set Tim Buckley – his late-’66 debut for Elektra – had shown flashes, in the big picture Buckley was little more than yet another world-weary troubadour in a post-Dylan world.

…Folklore Center is the first tape to catch Buckley solo, and stands in stark contrast to the studio ornamentation and overdub-happy creations found on his studio recordings. His repertoire is in transition, moving from derivative folk/blues into the atmospheric, drifting balladry that would soon mark his best work. There’s precious cargo here, too. Reputedly many original Buckley songs have been lost to time, but this tape contains

six previously unknown or unrecorded songs.

From the opener, “Song For Jainie” the songs tumble out in a rush of adrenalin and ringing/droning guitar, images of inner turmoil piling up in eloquent verse. Buckley’s tone is regal, reverent, serious – this is not light listening. His voice, ethereal, precious, operatic, commands the material, and he consistently zeroes in on the jagged emotion of the songs, pulling hurt and anger to the surface in “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain,” or capturing love’s first dizzying rush on “I Can’t See You”.

Though influenced by Dylan, Buckley was more enthralled by another Village legend – Fred Neil. A buoyant adaptation of Neil’s “Country Boy” is the penultimate song, Buckley leaning into its rather uncharacteristic aw-shucks sentiment with urgent vocal runs and rapid-fire strumming. Buckley’s Neil fixation is more overt on the cadenced phrasing of “Just Please Leave Me”, a trademark kiss-off song, and one that has gone unheard on record until now. Cool as Buckley’s blues workouts are, though, they represented stasis.

A cover of Neil’s then-new “Dolphins” – poignant, pensive, conveying a

seen-it-all-before ennui – – cuts deeper, opens up more room to stretch, and that’s where Buckley was going. The madrigal drone of “Phantasmagoria In Two” strikes a similar brooding tone, reflecting an introspective take on the chaos of the times. And when Buckley (with co-writer Larry Beckett) tackles the overtly topical “No Man Can Find The War”- brilliantly turning the subject of Vietnam outside in (“Is the war inside your mind?” he sings), the song’s sombre vibe hits a nerve.

Those superb unreleased songs, especially “Cripples Cry” and “If The Rain Comes”, with their old-world melodies (the mind boggles at potential Sandy Denny interpretations), provide a glimpse at what was lost as Buckley raced to defy expectations time and again. But it’s all fascinating; a fly-on-the-wall glimpse of the development of folk-into-rock and Buckley’s ephemeral odyssey of a career.

LUKE TORN

Ian Brown To Tour The UK

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Ian Brown To Tour The UK
Ian Brown is set to play a tour of the UK this November and December and will release album ‘My Way’ next month. The singer will play fourteen dates including Liverpool University and Brixton Academy in London. Tickets go on sale on Thursday (August 27) and album ‘My Way’ is out on Septemb...

Ian Brown is set to play a tour of the UK this November and December and will release album ‘My Way’ next month.

The singer will play fourteen dates including Liverpool University and Brixton Academy in London.

Tickets go on sale on Thursday (August 27) and album ‘My Way’ is out on September 28.

Ian Brown will play:

De Montfort Hall, Leicester, November 29

The Cliffs Pavilion, Southend, 30

The Regent, Ipswich, December, 1

O2 Academy, Bournemouth, 3

O2 Academy Brixton, London, 4, 5

The Corn Exchange, Cambridge, 7

O2 Academy, Sheffield, 8

O2 Academy, Leeds, 10, 11

Liverpool University, 12

The City Hall, Newcastle, 14

The Picture House, Edinburgh, 15

O2 Academy, Glasgow, 16

O2 Academy, Birmingham, 18

MEN Arena, Manchester, 19

More Ian Brown news

Daniel Johnstone – Yip/Jump Music/Continued Story/Hi, How Are You

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Daniel Johnstone – Yip/Jump Music/Continued Story/Hi, How Are You

Great claims have been made for Daniel Johnston. In Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary, The Devil And Daniel Johnston, the singer’s early recordings are compared – favourably – to the output of Robert Johnson. It’s possible, too, that one of Johnston’s acolytes mentions how he prefers them to the Basement Tapes. And a young Texan musician is forceful in his rejection of any comparison with Brian Wilson, because, obviously, Daniel Johnston’s records are way better than Pet Sounds. Elsewhere, Kurt Cobain, the sober judge of musical quality who did so much to promote Johnston by wearing his “Alien Frog” T-shirt on MTV, declared Yip/Jump Music to be No 35 in his Top 50 favourite LPs. (To apply context to Kurt’s list: this makes Johnston better than Flipper, but not as good as Shonen Knife). All of which is odd, and rather misleading for the Daniel Johnston virgin, who might be tempted by the hyperbole only to be confronted by records which – while they may contain slivers of something approaching genius – are stuffed with fragile songs which are often tuneless, and almost always badly recorded. So, let’s be clear. Daniel Johnston isn’t better than Johnson, or Bob, or Brian. Few are. But there is something compelling about the way he writes; something that isn’t as artless as it first appears. At times, the loops of logic in his fridge-door poetry are reminiscent of Ivor Cutler, who had a thing about intuition. There’s a fragment of rhymeless verse on Continued Story (his first studio album, from 1985) before the White Light/White Heat wig-out of “The Dead Dog Laughing in The Cloud”, where Johnston speaks a few lines: “I had a girlfriend/Made me scared of the world/I’d sit and watch the TV/Terrified of the soap opera.” Cutler could have written that, if he’d swapped his harmonium for a television set. Is that enough pussyfooting? Daniel Johnston is, or was, mentally ill. The modern term is “bipolar”, but Johnston has called himself a “manic depressive with grand illusions”. He may have said “delusions”. He was certainly a strange child, and always artistic. As an adolescent in West Virginia, he drew comic books and made Super-8 films, which provoked and mocked his Christian Fundamentalist parents, who thought nothing of his ambition to be the new John Lennon. He tormented his mother, and she responded by calling him “an unprofitable servant” (of God). So he ran away to the carnival, got himself beaten up, and found sanctuary in the Church of Christ in Austin, Texas, when the city was enjoying a musical rebirth, and was relatively welcoming for an oddball who handed out cassettes of his songs to strangers. Yip/Jump Music is the first of these albums, and contains several of what we may term his greatest hits. Most notably, there is “Speeding Motorcycle”: a strange song, akin to the Modern Lovers performing on children’s instruments, it ends with Johnston’s boyish vocal breaking down into owlish hoots. And then, with barely a change of tempo or tune, Johnston strikes up “Casper The Friendly Ghost”: an oddly beguiling mix of autobiography and comic-book lore. In Johnston’s lyric, Casper is “smiling through his own personal hell”, and has to die to get respect. It is a childish conceit. But not that childish. It’s like a little brother to Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso” (who “never got called an asshole”). Johnston says of Casper: “Everybody respects the dead, they love the friendly ghost”. Then there’s “The Beatles”, in which Johnston salutes his favourite group, without feeling the need to make his lines rhyme or scan. Yip/Jump Music is digitally remastered, but there’s no need to plug in the Sensurround. No amount of digital flummery can disguise the fact that it was recorded on a boombox, by an erratic one-man band. The same is true of Hi, How Are You. The fidelity of Continued Story is slightly higher, as it was recorded in a studio, with instruments that had been tuned. Even so, Johnston has a way of sabotaging expectations. “Ain’t No Woman Gonna Make A George Jones Outta Me” is a great novelty country song until it folds into a shambolic blues. If there’s a rug in the room, Johnston will pull it from under himself. It’s true that some who claim Johnston as a figurehead of outsider art are patronising him, and romanticising mental illness. At times his vulnerable chemistry is unsettling. But when it works, as on the lovely “Sweetheart”, “I Live For Love”, or “I Am A Baby (In My Universe)”, Johnston really does capture the sweet sensation of the best rock’n’roll, where teenage confusion is rendered manageable and thrilling by the alchemy of uncomplicated words, sincerely stated. If he’s sometimes naïve, he’s far from dumb. “I was a lucky sperm that made it against great odds,” he says on “Girls”. “And I never lost my youthful enthusiasm.” ALASTAIR MCKAY

Great claims have been made for Daniel Johnston. In Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary, The Devil And Daniel Johnston, the singer’s early recordings are compared – favourably – to the output of Robert Johnson. It’s possible, too, that one of Johnston’s acolytes mentions how he prefers them to the Basement Tapes. And a young Texan musician is forceful in his rejection of any comparison with Brian Wilson, because, obviously, Daniel Johnston’s records are way better than Pet Sounds.

Elsewhere, Kurt Cobain, the sober judge of musical quality who did so much to promote Johnston by wearing his “Alien Frog” T-shirt on MTV, declared Yip/Jump Music to be No 35 in his Top 50 favourite LPs. (To apply context to Kurt’s list: this makes Johnston better than Flipper, but not as good as Shonen Knife).

All of which is odd, and rather misleading for the Daniel Johnston virgin, who might be tempted by the hyperbole only to be confronted by records which – while they may contain slivers of something approaching genius – are stuffed with fragile songs which are often tuneless, and almost always badly recorded.

So, let’s be clear. Daniel Johnston isn’t better than Johnson, or Bob, or Brian. Few are. But there is something compelling about the way he writes; something that isn’t as artless as it first appears. At times, the loops of logic in his fridge-door poetry are reminiscent of Ivor Cutler, who had a thing about intuition. There’s a fragment of rhymeless verse on Continued Story (his first studio album, from 1985) before the White Light/White Heat wig-out of “The Dead Dog Laughing in The Cloud”, where Johnston speaks a few lines: “I had a girlfriend/Made me scared of the world/I’d sit and watch the TV/Terrified of the soap opera.” Cutler could have written that, if he’d swapped his harmonium for a television set.

Is that enough pussyfooting? Daniel Johnston is, or was, mentally ill. The modern term is “bipolar”, but Johnston has called himself a “manic depressive with grand illusions”. He may have said “delusions”.

He was certainly a strange child, and always artistic. As an adolescent in West Virginia, he drew comic books and made Super-8 films, which provoked and mocked his Christian Fundamentalist parents, who thought nothing of his ambition to be the new John Lennon. He tormented his mother, and she responded by calling him “an unprofitable servant” (of God). So he ran away to the carnival, got himself beaten up, and found sanctuary in the Church of Christ in Austin, Texas, when the city was enjoying a musical rebirth, and was relatively welcoming for an oddball who handed out cassettes of his songs to strangers.

Yip/Jump Music is the first of these albums, and contains several of what we may term his greatest hits. Most notably, there is “Speeding Motorcycle”: a strange song, akin to the Modern Lovers performing on children’s instruments, it ends with Johnston’s boyish vocal breaking down into owlish hoots. And then, with barely a change of tempo or tune, Johnston strikes up “Casper The Friendly Ghost”: an oddly beguiling mix of autobiography and comic-book lore. In Johnston’s lyric, Casper is “smiling through his own personal hell”, and has to die to get respect. It is a childish conceit. But not that childish. It’s like a little brother to Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso” (who “never got called an asshole”). Johnston says of Casper: “Everybody respects the dead, they love the friendly ghost”. Then there’s “The Beatles”, in which Johnston salutes his favourite group, without feeling the need to make his lines rhyme or scan.

Yip/Jump Music is digitally remastered, but there’s no need to plug in the Sensurround. No amount of digital flummery can disguise the fact that it was recorded on a boombox, by an erratic one-man band. The same is true of Hi, How Are You. The fidelity of Continued Story is slightly higher, as it was recorded in a studio, with instruments that had been tuned. Even so, Johnston has a way of sabotaging expectations. “Ain’t No Woman Gonna Make A George Jones Outta Me” is a great novelty country song until it folds into a shambolic blues. If there’s a rug in the room, Johnston will pull it from under himself.

It’s true that some who claim Johnston as a figurehead of outsider art are patronising him, and romanticising mental illness. At times his vulnerable chemistry is unsettling. But when it works, as on the lovely “Sweetheart”, “I Live For Love”, or “I Am A Baby (In My Universe)”, Johnston really does capture the sweet sensation of the best rock’n’roll, where teenage confusion is rendered manageable and thrilling by the alchemy of uncomplicated words, sincerely stated.

If he’s sometimes naïve, he’s far from dumb. “I was a lucky sperm that made it against great odds,” he says on “Girls”. “And I never lost my youthful enthusiasm.”

ALASTAIR MCKAY

Oasis Pull Out Of V Festival Headline Slot

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Oasis Pull Out Of V Festival Headline Slot
Oasis had to pull out of their headline set at V Festival last night (August 23) after Liam Gallagher became ill with laryngitis. Snow Patrol replaced the band at the site in Chelmsford and played covers of 'Champagne Supernova' and 'Wonderwall'. On the 4Music stage Keane also played an Oasis song...

Oasis had to pull out of their headline set at V Festival last night (August 23) after Liam Gallagher became ill with laryngitis.

Snow Patrol replaced the band at the site in Chelmsford and played covers of ‘Champagne Supernova’ and ‘Wonderwall’.

On the 4Music stage Keane also played an Oasis song, performing their take on ‘Cast No Shadow’.

The Gallagher brothers and the rest of the band played on the Staffordshire site for V on Saturday night (August 22), but Liam was too ill the next day.

For daily news visit The Oasis Newsroom.

More Oasis news

Broken Embraces

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Broken Embraces
Film review: Broken Embraces Director: Pedro Almodóvar Starring: Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar, Blanca Portillo, José Luis Gómez *** Every few years, Pedro Almodóvar makes a film that reminds you how magisterial his cinema can be – a Volver, an All About My Mother. But then he’ll tend to...

Film review: Broken Embraces

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Starring: Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar, Blanca Portillo, José Luis Gómez

***

Every few years, Pedro Almodóvar makes a film that reminds you how magisterial his cinema can be – a Volver, an All About My Mother. But then he’ll tend to relapse into his routine idiosyncracies, as in Broken Embraces. His films can be uncomfortably navel-gazing, and that’s the case in this somewhat maudlin contemplation of the woes of film-making and the life artistic.

Not for the first time, Almodóvar’s narrative ingenuity gets the better of him in this convoluted tale of love, jealousy and madness centred around blind screenwriter ‘Harry Caine’ (Homar), who in happier years was director Mateo Blanco. A complex flashback structure traces the downfall of Mateo, as he meets Lena (Cruz), a secretary and sometime call girl fated for big screen glory.

The film takes in an opulently shot interlude on Lanzarote, as well as nods to Hitchcock, Buñuel’s Belle de Jour, Warhol’s paintings and Almodóvar’s own early style. Male lead Homar is lugubrious, but La Cruz radiates in her dressiest, most impish role yet. Yet even she, and the odd brilliant flourish, can’t save this otherwise minor exercise from the man of La Mancha.

Jonathan Romney

The Hurt Locker

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The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker Directed by Kathryn Bigelow Starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes *** What we commonly acknowledge as the great American films about the war in Vietnam all came after the conflict had been decided. Hollywood’s response to what was hap...

The Hurt Locker

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes

***

What we commonly acknowledge as the great American films about the war in Vietnam all came after the conflict had been decided. Hollywood’s response to what was happening there when the bombs were actually falling was confined principally to John Wayne’s gung-ho 1968 flag-waver The Green Berets and the same year’s cheapo exploitation flick The Losers, a Quentin Tarantino favourite, a glimpse of which we see in Jackie Brown, about a gang of Hell’s Angels who go east to kick VC ass with predictably noisy results.

The Boys In Company C and Go Tell The Spartans followed eventually in 1977, but were both essentially reiterations of WW2 combat movies uneasily relocated to the recent past and uncertain of the moral and political context in which they now found themselves. The Deer Hunter, the first of the great Nam movies, came out in 1978, Apocalypse Now a year later, with Oliver Stone’s Platoon, Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Brian De Palma’s Casualties Of War, much later additions, all coming over a decade after the war’s bitter end.

Hollywood’s engagement with the current insanity in Iraq has been less tawdry, but so far variable. Stone deals caustically with the build-up to the 2003 invasion as part of the Bush administration’s War On Terror in the blackly comic W, while the under-rated In The Valley Of Elah examines the domestic impact of the war. Elsewhere, Robert Redford’s Lions For Lambs is dim-wittedly worthy and largely unwatchable, unlike De Palma’s Redacted, almost a remake of Casualties Of War, whose angry disgust is not easily ignored and worth a second look.

You’d have to say, though, that none of these has matched to any reasonable extent David Simon and Ed Burns’ HBO mini-series Generation Kill, brilliantly based on the book by Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright, who was embedded during the first months of the invasion with Bravo Company of the First Reconnaissance Battalion, which ends not long after the so-called liberation of Baghdad, where even as Bravo Company pull out insurgent bombs are starting to go off, Saddam successfully deposed but the war far from over.

Until I saw Kathryn Bigelow’s stunning new movie, I would have thought it impossible to improve on Generation Kill’s re-creation of the messy calamity authored by the Bush-Blair alliance. But The Hurt Locker is more harrowing still, one of the greatest American films of the decade, certainly the best American movie since There Will Be Blood, shocking, overwhelming and unforgettable.

It’s set in Baghdad in 2004, during the last 38 days of a year-long tour of duty by a three-man unit of the US Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Squad, a volunteer elite, specially trained to dismantle IEDs (improvised explosive devices). When the film opens, Bravo Company have lost their team leader, a brave and sensible, by-the-book sergeant whose replacement, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) whose approach to his work is what you might call unconventional. In fact, in the worried opinion of his new colleagues, JT Sanborn and Owen Eldridge (Mackie and Geraghty), James is wholly reckless, as dangerous to their continued well-being as any of the devices they are asked to deal with.

Written by former Village Voice columnist Mark Boal(who also co-scripted In the Valley Of Elah) and based on his own experience as a journalist embedded with a bomb squad in Baghdad, The Hurt Locker follows the fractious three-man squad through the fraught final days of their posting via a series of increasingly terrifying, unbearably tense set-pieces, incredibly staged, to which Bigelow fully brings her unbeatable gifts for action and suspense – including several absolutely nerve-shredding bomb disposals, one of which features the dismantling of a so-called ‘body bomb’, crudely stitched inside the mutilated corpse of a young Iraqi, that will have audiences looking anywhere but the screen.

There’s also a brutal desert ambush, in which Bravo Company and a group of contract bounty hunters led by Ralph Fiennes, who memorably starred in Bigelow’s terrific millennial noir, Strange Days, are pinned down by insurgents, in which by their actions rather than what they have to say to each other, which is not much at all, we learn volumes about the characters of James and Sanborn.

Great as she is at outstanding action sequences of often awesome ferocity – as evidenced previously in films like Near Dark and Point Break – what most interests Bigelow isn’t so much the war itself or the political ideologies that led so inevitably to it. What she is most concerned with is how these men react to the daily crisis of being where they are, how they individually cope with accumulative stress, anxiety and danger. You think, as a consequence, of Hawks and Ford and the male communities around which so many of their films are set and the various notions of heroism explored therein, these men defined by what they do and how well they do it.

In an outstanding ensemble cast, Renner is astonishing as the fatalistic, apparently fearless James, a character who in a lesser film may have been not much more than a macho cipher, but who is here intricately drawn, as complicatedly wired as any of the explosives he is called upon to defuse. Renner has something of the swagger of the young Harvey Keitel, a raw energy barely contained. James offers no view on the war he has found himself part of, the rights or wrongs of it. He just gets on with the job he has volunteered to do and takes professional pleasure in doing it expertly. As well he might. After all, if he fucks up he’s dead.

There’s a thrill in it for him, for sure. But beyond this, with nothing more between himself and death by detonation than his own wit, cool intelligence and a pair of pliers, he is master of his own fate, free of the common realities by which, back in the world, he feels reduced. In the face of death, he becomes wholly alive and the feeling for him is addictive. While Sanborn and Eldridge can’t wait for their tour of duty to come to a blessed end, we begin to understand that James dreads a return to ‘normal’ life perhaps more than the daily terror he faces on the streets of Baghdad.

The Hurt Locker’s almost wordless domestic coda, with James returned to his estranged wife and child, a quietly harrowing scene in a vast supermarket in which he stands mute and alone, overwhelmed by an unnameable loss, is as harrowing in its way as any of the more obvious horrors we have previously seen and we are perhaps not surprised by what happens next, which we recognise as agonisingly inevitable.

Allan Jones

Michael Jackson Will Not Be Buried Until September

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Michael Jackson Will Not Be Buried Until September
Michael Jackson’s family have announced that the singer will be buried on September 03. Uncut previously reported that his father Joe Jackson had claimed the singer’s funeral would be at the end of August. But the family have moved the date for unknown reasons. Last week Tito Jackson announc...

Michael Jackson’s family have announced that the singer will be buried on September 03.

Uncut previously reported that his father Joe Jackson had claimed the singer’s funeral would be at the end of August.

But the family have moved the date for unknown reasons.

Last week Tito Jackson announced that he will perform a musical tribute to his brother while on a tour of the UK with Gladys Knight.

More Michael Jackson news

Elvis Costello Set To Release Series Of Live Albums

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Elvis Costello Set To Release Series Of Live Albums
Elvis Costello will release the first in a series of live albums in September. ‘Live at the El Mocambo’ will be the first in ‘The Costello Show’ project which sees the singer release a number of live records over a year. The footage for the first release comes from Elvis Costello & The...

Elvis Costello will release the first in a series of live albums in September.

‘Live at the El Mocambo’ will be the first in ‘The Costello Show’ project which sees the singer release a number of live records over a year.

The footage for the first release comes from Elvis Costello & The Attraction’s gig in Toronto in March 1978 and features includes songs ‘My Aim Is True’ and ‘This Year’s Model’.

‘Live at the El Mocambo’ is released on September 29.

More Elvis Costello news

Various Artists: “Seeing For Miles”

John Mulvey
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In what now seems, somewhat miraculously, to be an annual free-pass for self-indulgence, I’ve been allowed to compile another one of my psych CDs to come free with the new issue of Uncut; the one with The Who on the cover, hence the CD’s pretty arbitrary title, “Seeing For Miles”. As with last year’s “Interstellar Overdrive”, I figured it may be useful to post links to a bunch of blogs about the artists on the disc. A couple of things here that I haven’t mystifyingly, blogged about. One is the new Six Organs Of Admittance album, which is lovely, but somehow stumped me to write about; I’ve linked instead to one of the numerous other posts on Ben Chasny. The other is Theo Angell’s “Wakeling”, from his “Tenebrae” album. Angell is affiliated to the Jackie O Motherfucker collective, and now seems to have found a Brooklyn home alongside various Tower Recordings alumni. Consequently, “Wakeling” fits in well with that latter sound – evocative crypto-folk of the kind we used, in more innocent times, to call freak folk. Anyway, here’s the full tracklisting. Let me know what you think when you’ve had a listen. 1. Arbouretum - “Another Hiding Place” 2. Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound - “Kolob Canyon” 3. Sleepy Sun – “New Age” 4. Deradoorian - “Moon” 5. Ganglians - “The Void” 6. White Denim - “Mirrored & Reverse” 7. Wooden Shjips - “Down By The Sea” 8. Sun Araw - “Heavy Deeds” 9. Sir Richard Bishop - “Barbary” 10. Six Organs Of Admittance - “Actaeon’s Fall” 11. Theo Angell - “Wakeling” 12. Mountains - “Map Table”

In what now seems, somewhat miraculously, to be an annual free-pass for self-indulgence, I’ve been allowed to compile another one of my psych CDs to come free with the new issue of Uncut; the one with The Who on the cover, hence the CD’s pretty arbitrary title, “Seeing For Miles”.

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Babyshambles Announce UK Tour

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Babyshambles Announce UK Tour
Pete Doherty has announced a new tour with Babyshambles this winter. The singer has spent most of 2009 working on his solo gigs and album ‘Grace/Wastelands’ but now he will join his band for seven dates. Last week Uncut reported that Doherty hopes to play festivals in 2010 with a reunited Lib...

Pete Doherty has announced a new tour with Babyshambles this winter.

The singer has spent most of 2009 working on his solo gigs and album ‘Grace/Wastelands’ but now he will join his band for seven dates.

Last week Uncut reported that Doherty hopes to play festivals in 2010 with a reunited Libertines.

Pete Doherty will play the following dates with Babyshambles:

O2 Academy, Sheffield, December 10

Cardiff University, 12

The Pavilion, Bath, 13

O2 Academy, Liverpool, 14

The Guildhall, Southampton, 15

O2 Academy, Birmingham, 19

Rock City, Nottingham, 20

More Babyshambles news

Tickets Go On Sale For Muse Homecoming Gigs

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Tickets Go On Sale For Muse Homecoming Gigs

Tickets went on sale today for Muse’s homecoming gigs next month. The concerts at Teignmouth Den in Devon will take place on September 04 and 05. Earlier this week, Uncut reported that the band will return to their hometown for the two open air concerts. More Muse news

Tickets went on sale today for Muse’s homecoming gigs next month.

The concerts at Teignmouth Den in Devon will take place on September 04 and 05.

Earlier this week, Uncut reported that the band will return to their hometown for the two open air concerts.

More Muse news

Radiohead Drummer Goes Solo

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Radiohead Drummer Goes Solo

Video footage of Radiohead drummer Phil Selway singing at a gig in London has been posted online ahead of his debut solo release. Selway has written one and sung on two songs for ‘7 Worlds Collide: The Sun Came Out’ – a charity album put together by Neil Finn. The drummer sang the tracks at a gig in Dingwalls in London last week (August 11) to promote the album and videos of the performance have appeared on YouTube. It has been reported that Selway will record his own solo album in September. ‘7 Worlds Collide: The Sun Came Out’ is out on August 31 and includes contributions from KT Tunstall, Johnny Marr and Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche from Wilco. The full tracklisting is: 1. Too Blue - (written by Johnny Marr/Jeff Tweedy), vocals Neil Finn/Johnny Marr and featuring Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway (Radiohead) and Glenn Kotche/ (Wilco) 2. You Never Know - (written by Jeff Tweedy), vocals Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) 3. Little By Little - (written by Sharon Finn/Neil Finn), vocals Sharon Finn and Neil Finn 4. Learn To Crawl - (written by Ed O'Brien/Johnny Marr/Liam Finn/Neil Finn), vocals Neil Finn 5. Girl Make Your Own Mind Up - (written by Don McGlashan), vocals Don McGlashan, featuring Glenn Kotche (Wilco), Ed O'Brien (Radiohead), Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) 6. Hazel Black - (written by KT Tunstall/Neil Finn), vocals KT Tunstall 7. Red Wine Bottle - (written by Liam Finn/Chris Garland/Johnny Marr), vocals Liam Finn 8. Black Silk Ribbon - (written by KT Tunstall/Bic Runga), vocals KT Tunstall and Bic Runga 9. Run In The Dust - (written by Johnny Marr), vocals Johnny Marr 10. The Ties That Bind Us - (written by Phil Selway), vocals Phil Selway (Radiohead) 11. What Could Have Been - (written by Jeff Tweedy), vocals Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) 12. Duxton Blues - (written by Glenn Richards), vocals Glenn Richards featuring Johnny Marr and Neil Finn 13. Reptile - (written by Lisa Germano), vocals Lisa Germano, featuring Glenn Kotche (Wilco), Neil Finn More Uncut.co.uk music and film news

Video footage of Radiohead drummer Phil Selway singing at a gig in London has been posted online ahead of his debut solo release.

Selway has written one and sung on two songs for ‘7 Worlds Collide: The Sun Came Out’ – a charity album put together by Neil Finn.

The drummer sang the tracks at a gig in Dingwalls in London last week (August 11) to promote the album and videos of the performance have appeared on YouTube.

It has been reported that Selway will record his own solo album in September.

‘7 Worlds Collide: The Sun Came Out’ is out on August 31 and includes contributions from KT Tunstall, Johnny Marr and Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche from Wilco.

The full tracklisting is:

1. Too Blue – (written by Johnny Marr/Jeff Tweedy), vocals Neil Finn/Johnny Marr and featuring Ed O’Brien, Phil Selway (Radiohead) and Glenn Kotche/ (Wilco)

2. You Never Know – (written by Jeff Tweedy), vocals Jeff Tweedy (Wilco)

3. Little By Little – (written by Sharon Finn/Neil Finn), vocals Sharon Finn and Neil Finn

4. Learn To Crawl – (written by Ed O’Brien/Johnny Marr/Liam Finn/Neil Finn), vocals Neil Finn

5. Girl Make Your Own Mind Up – (written by Don McGlashan), vocals Don McGlashan, featuring Glenn Kotche (Wilco), Ed O’Brien (Radiohead), Jeff Tweedy (Wilco)

6. Hazel Black – (written by KT Tunstall/Neil Finn), vocals KT Tunstall

7. Red Wine Bottle – (written by Liam Finn/Chris Garland/Johnny Marr), vocals Liam Finn

8. Black Silk Ribbon – (written by KT Tunstall/Bic Runga), vocals KT Tunstall and Bic Runga

9. Run In The Dust – (written by Johnny Marr), vocals Johnny Marr

10. The Ties That Bind Us – (written by Phil Selway), vocals Phil Selway (Radiohead)

11. What Could Have Been – (written by Jeff Tweedy), vocals Jeff Tweedy (Wilco)

12. Duxton Blues – (written by Glenn Richards), vocals Glenn Richards featuring Johnny Marr and Neil Finn

13. Reptile – (written by Lisa Germano), vocals Lisa Germano, featuring Glenn Kotche (Wilco), Neil Finn

More Uncut.co.uk music and film news

First look — James Cameron’s Avatar

Michael Bonner
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Traditionally, August is something of a slow news month. Anything, however apparently inappropriate, seems to be used to fill in valuable airtime or column space during the holiday season. You might, for instance, have happened to hear yesterday morning Evan Davies interviewing august cricket commentator Henry Blofeld on the BBC’s flagship radio news programme Today about whether he’d prefer to commentate on the 100 metres at the World Athletics Championships. Today, it seems everyone’s got in a palaver about Avatar, James Cameron’s 3D sci-fi epic of which 15 minutes was shown during a series of screenings rolled out at hundreds of cinemas round the world. Perhaps inevitably with this kind of blockbuster, it’s all about the numbers. Avatar is Cameron’s first film since Titanic, 12 years ago, which took $1.8 billion at the box office. He originally sketched the outline for Avatar in 1994 but held off making it until he thought technology was advanced enough. It has, apparently, cost $237 million. And, as those of us who saw it today at London’s IMAX were told by the head of the UK distributor 20th Century Fox, so far 2,000 people have seen the official trailer, released yesterday, online. It’s perhaps irrelevant to wonder whether Avatar will be remotely good in any field other than the visual effects. Having learned from Hawks, Hill, Carpenter and Corman that characters in certain types of genre films can be defined more effectively by their actions than by exposition, Cameron’s never exactly been one to get bogged down in character and dialogue. Which is why the first 90 minutes of Titanic, before the ship went down, was so woeful and why his best films – the two Terminator movies and Aliens – are action-driven adrenalin rushes. Indeed, based on the five sequences we saw from Avatar, it seems like Cameron is happy to recycle some of his own films, alongside a number of tropes and set-ups familiar from other sources. We open, for instance, with Stephen Lang’s Marine corps colonel explaining to a platoon of grunts that they’re about to embark on a tour of duty on a hostile alien planet, Pandora. “Think of Hell. You might want to go there for R&R after this,” he snarls. Aliens..? Well, maybe. Avatar’s central character, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a Marine, crippled during combat. He’s given access by Sigourney Weaver’s scientist to an Avatar creature, part human and part Na’vi, one of the planet’s many colourful creatures. Now resembling nothing less than a greeny-blue Thundercat, Sully is sent to Pandora where he befriends his fellow Na’vi and love interest begins to take shape with one of their kind, Neytiri. It’s possible Sully is part of a covert military operation: the planet’s atmosphere is poison to humans, but it seems that if successfully immersed in Avatar hybrids, Earth’s military could conquer Pandora. Anyway, that’s yr plot. But, like I say, I suspect the story is really just an excuse for Cameron to unveil his latest, and admittedly deeply impressive, box of tricks. Of course, it looks fantastic. There’s one sequence on Pandora where Sully first experiences the planet’s landscape close-up – a weird, lush, rainforest that looks like it should: totally alien. Gone, we can safely assume, are the days when George Lucas fudged it by getting Tunisia to double for Tatooine. Or worse: quarries near Dorking masquerading as Skaro in Doctor Who. I’m reluctant to get carried away in the hype, but you do get a sense of Cameron’s incredible visual accomplishments here. And this, inevitably, is what Avatar will stand or fall on. Plenty has already been written about how the director helped pioneer “the future camera” developed to capture the actors and integrate them into his virtual world; how the other great technological innovators of the modern cinema age, Spielberg, Lucas and Peter Jackson, were all invited down to check out Cameron’s posh new gadgets. If you find the idea of “the future camera” slightly self-important, then certainly you won’t fall for the talk of how Avatar is going to revolutionise cinema. Certainly, once all the bluster about the 3D technology is out of the way, there’s the simple truth that only 320 cinemas out of 3,600 UK cinemas are digitally equipped, and so Avatar will also be released in creaky old-fashioned 2D come December 18. You can see the trailer here anyway.

Traditionally, August is something of a slow news month. Anything, however apparently inappropriate, seems to be used to fill in valuable airtime or column space during the holiday season. You might, for instance, have happened to hear yesterday morning Evan Davies interviewing august cricket commentator Henry Blofeld on the BBC’s flagship radio news programme Today about whether he’d prefer to commentate on the 100 metres at the World Athletics Championships. Today, it seems everyone’s got in a palaver about Avatar, James Cameron’s 3D sci-fi epic of which 15 minutes was shown during a series of screenings rolled out at hundreds of cinemas round the world.

Continue

Wychwood Festival Confirms First Acts For 2010

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Wychwood Festival Confirms First Acts For 2010
The Levellers, Dreadzone and Adrian Edmondson & the Bad Shepherds have been confirmed for 2010’s Wychwood Festival. Early bird tickets go on sale on Monday (August 24) with adult tickets bought then costing £90. The Levellers are set to headline Beautiful Days festival in Devon on Sunday (A...

The Levellers, Dreadzone and Adrian Edmondson & the Bad Shepherds have been confirmed for 2010’s Wychwood Festival.

Early bird tickets go on sale on Monday (August 24) with adult tickets bought then costing £90.

The Levellers are set to headline Beautiful Days festival in Devon on Sunday (August 23) – where they will play album ‘A Weapon Called the Word’ in full.

Wychwood Festival 2010 will take place at the Cheltenham Racecourse in Gloucestershire from June 04 to 06.

More Uncut.co.uk music and film news

Neil Young To Play Free Gig At Film Festival

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Neil Young To Play Free Gig At Film Festival
Neil Young and Joan Baez are reportedly both set to perform free gigs at the Toronto Film Festival in September. Directors and filmmakers billed to appear at the event include George A Romero and Jonathan Demme. In a statement, a director of the festival Cameron Bailey said: “We are thrilled to...

Neil Young and Joan Baez are reportedly both set to perform free gigs at the Toronto Film Festival in September.

Directors and filmmakers billed to appear at the event include George A Romero and Jonathan Demme.

In a statement, a director of the festival Cameron Bailey said: “We are thrilled to be showcasing a diverse and dynamic array of programming in the heart of Toronto, Yonge-Dundas Square.

“YDS will be the new street-level hub of festival activity with a sensational programme of free events.

“Whether you’re a festival veteran or looking for your entry point to the Toronto International Film Festival, there’s something for everyone.”

Young will play after the premiere of ‘The Neil Young Trunk Show’ on September 14.

The Toronto Film Festival runs from September 10 to 19.

More Neil Young news

Pic credit: PA Photos

Jack White To Open New Record Store

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Jack White To Open New Record Store
Jack White’s record studio project ‘The Third Man’ is set to open another store in the US. White opened ‘Third Man Records and Novelties’ in Nashville in March to sell limited edition vinyl records and merchandise. But as demand spread, he opened a temporary shop in New York for two days...

Jack White’s record studio project ‘The Third Man’ is set to open another store in the US.

White opened ‘Third Man Records and Novelties’ in Nashville in March to sell limited edition vinyl records and merchandise.

But as demand spread, he opened a temporary shop in New York for two days in July.

Now White is set to launch ‘The Third Man Records and Novelties West’ in Los Angeles from August 26 to 28.

The opening coincides with White’s band the Dead Weather performing in local venues and will sell music by them as well as the White Stripes and the Raconteurs.

More Uncut.co.uk music and film news

The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine In 3D In the Pipeline?

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The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine In 3D In the Pipeline?
Disney are discussing a plan to make a 3D version of The Beatles film ‘Yellow Submarine’ with Robert Zemeckis, the man behind the 2009 3D remake of ‘A Christmas Carol’. Disney would like the film to be released in 2012 - possibly to coincide with the London Olympics - rumours suggest. Tal...

Disney are discussing a plan to make a 3D version of The Beatles film ‘Yellow Submarine’ with Robert Zemeckis, the man behind the 2009 3D remake of ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Disney would like the film to be released in 2012 – possibly to coincide with the London Olympics – rumours suggest.

Talks are currently going on to secure the rights to use 16 Beatles songs.

Earlier this week Uncut reported that controllers in the style of the band members’ instruments had been designed for the new ‘Beatles:Rock Band’ game.

More Beatles news

The Rakes For Headline US Tour

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The Rakes For Headline US Tour
The Rakes are set to play ten dates in America in October and November. The tour will see the band visit venues across the US including The Roxy in Los Angeles and the Highline Ballroom in New York. The band will release their third album ‘Klang’ in America on October 20, but only as a digital...

The Rakes are set to play ten dates in America in October and November.

The tour will see the band visit venues across the US including The Roxy in Los Angeles and the Highline Ballroom in New York.

The band will release their third album ‘Klang’ in America on October 20, but only as a digital version.

The album has been on sale in the UK since March on CD, vinyl and as a digital download.

The Rakes will play:

The Roxy, Los Angeles (October 31)

Slims, San Francisco (November 1)

The Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City (03)

The Bluebird, Denver (04)

The Triple Rock, Minneapolis (06)

Double Door, Chicago (07)

Mod Club, Toronto (November 09)

Petit Campus, Montreal (10)

Great Scott, Boston (11)

Highline Ballroom, New York (11)

More Rakes news

Norah Jones To Release New Album

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Norah Jones To Release New Album
Norah Jones will release her new album - which sees the singer work with the likes of Jesse Harris, Ryan Adams and Will Sheff from Okkervil River - in November. Other names to help Jones with the record include guitarist Smokey Hormel who’s worked with Johnny Cash and Justin Timberlake, James Poy...

Norah Jones will release her new album – which sees the singer work with the likes of Jesse Harris, Ryan Adams and Will Sheff from Okkervil River – in November.

Other names to help Jones with the record include guitarist Smokey Hormel who’s worked with Johnny Cash and Justin Timberlake, James Poyser who’s played keyboards for The Roots and Erykah and drummer Joey Waronker who’s worked with Beck.

Kings of Leon, Be Your Own Pet and Tom Waits producer Jacquire King also worked on the unnamed album.

Jones said: “I think the record sounds different due to the variety of musicians we used.

“I knew I wanted to play with grooves more than I have on previous albums. Some of these new songs lent themselves to having driving rhythms underneath.”

The record is set for release in the US in November on Blue Note Records, but the date that it will hit UK shops is yet to be announced.

More Norah Jones news

Califone: “All My Friends Are Funeral Singers”

John Mulvey
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Some promo CDs come with a serious layer of security to prevent piracy and leaks: a special watermark which means the music can be traced back to a specific numbered disc if it finds its way onto the internet. You can often see the point of these heavy manners, especially when an album that may well sell millions arrives early in the Uncut office. At other times, though, the security business can look like a sly promotional stunt: to imbue high importance on a band you wouldn’t normally imagine had enough fans to merit such measures. When the sixth Califone album arrived here last week, notably watermarked, it definitely felt like a case of the latter. But then again, there’s a useful flipside: to remind us of the value of long-serving bands we can easily take for granted. I wrote something similar about the problems of consistency with regard to Yo La Tengo’s “Popular Songs” a while back, and a lot of the same can apply to Califone. “All My Friends Are Funeral Singers” serves, though, as a stealthy and powerful reminder of what a fantastic body of work Tim Rutili and his cohorts have accrued through the history of Califone and beyond, back into the days of Red Red Meat. I remember reviewing “Heron King Blues” for Uncut when it came out, and comparing Califone to another more successful band from Chicago, Wilco, who – certainly circa “A Ghost Is Born” – had a not-dissimilar way of balancing arcane folk traditions with a refreshingly forward-thinking experimental approach. Wilco and Califone’s paths have obviously diverged somewhat since then. But still, by Rutili’s recent standards, “All My Friends…” is a pretty accessible album: listening to something like “Ape-Like”, at once somehow distrait and punchy, there’s a potent link to fractionally gnarlier Red Red Meat material from the mid ‘90s (there’s a good argument, incidentally, that their “Bunny Gets Paid” has been one of the most valuable and predictably neglected reissues of the year). But anyway, “All My Friends…” purports to be the soundtrack to Rutili’s first feature film, though it works just fine as a discreet bunch of songs in isolation. There’s a little more focus here than on, say, “Heron King Blues” (and a lot more than the “Deceleration” collections), but Califone’s schtick remains more or less constant. As usual, Brian Deck and the band have managed to create a very subtle blend of very crisp, live-sounding, beautifully-captured instrumentation and more processed noise. Crudely, you can divide what they do into four rough sectors. The opening “Giving Away The Bride” showcases a sort of rusted, clanking almost-funk that’s reminiscent of some latterday Tom Waits. There are brief studio collages like “A Wish Made While Burning Onions Will Come True”. Then the rickety and battered folk songs, for instance “Buñuel”, that update traditional forms in an oblique yet fervid way. Finally, and to my mind best of all, there are the sombre, elegant progressions like "Krill", “Evidence”, nailed onto a resonant piano line, and the outstanding and insidious “Funeral Singers” itself, much in the style of the last album’s “Black Metal Valentine” and as good a song as Califone have ever recorded. It’s all a lot more complicated than that, of course – not least when you factor in the Gil Evans horns on “Alice Marble Gray” or the vague gamelan which ushers in the old weird American hoedown of “Salt”.

Some promo CDs come with a serious layer of security to prevent piracy and leaks: a special watermark which means the music can be traced back to a specific numbered disc if it finds its way onto the internet. You can often see the point of these heavy manners, especially when an album that may well sell millions arrives early in the Uncut office.

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