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Graham Coxon – The Spinning Top

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Graham Coxon – The Spinning Top

While it’s tempting to think of Damon Albarn as Blur’s most restless and evolving member, it’s worth remembering that all four members of the group have not been slow to experiment with change. The years since ’97 have seen Dave Rowntree turn from drummer and aviation enthusiast into animator, candidate for office and pro bono trainee solicitor. Alex James has reformed from roué and man about town to writer, broadcaster, and happily married cheesemaker. And Graham Coxon? Well, Graham Coxon has the most long-standing reputation as Blur’s square peg. The arranger of some of the band’s most exquisite music, he was also agent of the strafing noise that helped the group find a way out of the falling Britpop market. The first to experiment with a solo career outside the confines of the group, Coxon was, it seemed, not even fully liberated by the purgative, half-formed skronking that comprised his first solo albums. He participated in cheerleading for the talents of British folkie Bert Jansch. He made two powerpop albums. A man given to radically changing his lifestyle, Coxon has likewise changed his methods, never staying in one musical place for too long. The Spinning Top, a really very enjoyable record, displays some of the finest aspects of the guitarist’s talents, but chief among them, those that pertain to Coxon the folkie, and acoustic guitar stylist. Of late he has been heard bringing some degree of togetherness and musicality to Peter Doherty’s Grace/Wastelands album, and much of the same warmth and intimacy attends The Spinning Top. Candour, for a long time near the top of Coxon’s agenda, is here to be found in abundance. Whether it’s in the nakedness of his thin but affecting voice (on “Sorrow’s Army”), the lyrics (“Did myself no favours/Stay in every night…”) or the transparent nature of the influences (Bert Jansch, Nick Drake, and Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” are key; folk bassist Danny Thompson is a guest), the 15 tracks here feel at first glance like a very guileless enterprise. Avowedly a concept album charting a man’s journey from cradle to grave, The Spinning Top is, however, very far from the work of a wide-eyed musical innocent. Although the dominant mode is simple, acoustic and pastoral – on one occasion, birds tweet; “Caspian Sea” evokes the youthful?Granchester psychedelia of the early Floyd – this is a record that’s been made by someone perhaps rather more anxious to flex their muscles than perhaps they’re letting on. Reminding the world of his strengths as musician, arranger and tunesmith, Coxon is perhaps giving a public account of them before his prodigal son-like return to the fold of Blur. Opener “Look Into The Light” would, in this respect, seem to set the tone for the whole LP. On the surface, a breezy acoustic number, reminiscent of Nick Drake in its minor-key picking, the singer’s voice worn on his sleeve, it nonetheless contains the capacity to surprise and delight in unexpected ways. Early on, a beautiful arrangement of wind instruments gives the song a celestial lift; just the kind of intelligent pop arrangement that one would expect to have found on a Nick Drake track, or for that matter, on a Blur album. “Blur-like” in fact becomes a formulation you find yourself turning to more and more with The Spinning Top. “If You Want Me” picks out its melody on a xylophone, before exploding into the kind of angular, spooky guitar oompah that characterised say, “He Thought Of Cars” from The Great Escape. “Dead Bees”, musically, is a cousin of “Beetlebum”. That band’s ability to incorporate wild noises into its pop compositions is found on the likes of “In The Morning”, which appears as if it may unspool into a Sandy Bull-style raga. The preceding “This House”, though raw, is still Kinksian in its melody and phrasing. It’s this last reference which is probably the most telling. The album’s?many musical excursions and its professional agenda notwithstanding, The Spinning Top is an album with a strong unity of place, namely that it’s tied into a tradition of faintly whimsical, British songwriting. Graham Coxon is swell bunch of guys, certainly, but of the power popper, the neurotic wannabe punk, and the English eccentric, it’s the last that’s the most rewarding to be around. JOHN ROBINSON UNCUT Q&A: GRAHAM COXON: There’s some great Bert Jansch-style playing on the album... I’m not as good as Bert – but I’m a huge fan of him, Davy Graham and Martin Carthy. And instead of thinking ‘It’d be wonderful to play like that...’ I thought I’d give it a go. So I sat down and tried to learn “Jubilation” by Davy Graham at 11 at night. I’d got it at five in the morning – I thought that was quite quick, considering. I just started writing songs that way. So, it’s a concept album? I had these songs, and I wanted to get them into some sort of order, and I thought that one way of doing that was to give them a story. I hadn’t written all the lyrics. So I put them in a story to get them in order. It evolved. The more I started to think about it the more nuanced it became, and then the artwork began to form. How come it’s not on EMI? We went our different ways. They were cutting the chaff from their books, and I was happy. To be honest I thought they’d done a bit of a shitty job on my last two albums. They’d put a lot of limitations on the kind of artwork I could do, and that was turning into a frustration. INTERVIEW: JOHN ROBINSON For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

While it’s tempting to think of Damon Albarn as Blur’s most restless and evolving member, it’s worth remembering that all four members of the group have not been slow to experiment with change. The years since ’97 have seen Dave Rowntree turn from drummer and aviation enthusiast into animator, candidate for office and pro bono trainee solicitor. Alex James has reformed from roué and man about town to writer, broadcaster, and happily married cheesemaker. And Graham Coxon?

Well, Graham Coxon has the most long-standing reputation as Blur’s square peg. The arranger of some of the band’s most exquisite music, he was also agent of the strafing noise that helped the group find a way out of the falling Britpop market. The first to experiment with a solo career outside the confines of the group, Coxon was, it seemed, not even fully liberated by the purgative, half-formed skronking that comprised his first solo albums. He participated in cheerleading for the talents of British folkie Bert Jansch. He made two powerpop albums. A man given to radically changing his lifestyle, Coxon has likewise changed his methods, never staying in one musical place

for too long.

The Spinning Top, a really very enjoyable record, displays some of the finest aspects of the guitarist’s talents, but chief among them, those that pertain to Coxon the folkie, and acoustic guitar stylist. Of late he has been heard bringing some degree of togetherness and musicality to Peter Doherty’s Grace/Wastelands album,

and much of the same warmth and intimacy attends The Spinning Top. Candour, for a long time near the top of Coxon’s agenda, is here to be found in abundance. Whether it’s in the nakedness of his thin but affecting voice (on “Sorrow’s Army”), the lyrics (“Did myself no favours/Stay in every night…”) or the transparent nature of the influences (Bert Jansch, Nick Drake, and Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” are key; folk bassist Danny Thompson is a guest), the 15 tracks here feel at first glance like a very guileless enterprise.

Avowedly a concept album charting a man’s journey from cradle to grave, The Spinning Top is, however, very far from the work of a wide-eyed musical innocent. Although the dominant mode is simple, acoustic and pastoral – on one occasion, birds tweet; “Caspian Sea” evokes the youthful?Granchester psychedelia of the early Floyd – this is a record that’s been made by someone perhaps rather more anxious to flex their muscles than perhaps they’re letting on. Reminding the world of his strengths as musician, arranger and tunesmith, Coxon is perhaps giving a public account of them before his prodigal son-like return to the fold

of Blur.

Opener “Look Into The Light” would, in this respect, seem to set the tone for the whole LP. On the surface, a breezy acoustic number, reminiscent of Nick Drake in its minor-key picking, the singer’s voice worn on his sleeve, it nonetheless contains the capacity to surprise and delight in unexpected ways. Early on, a beautiful arrangement of wind instruments gives the song a celestial lift; just the kind of intelligent pop arrangement that one would expect to have found on a Nick Drake track, or for that matter, on a Blur album.

“Blur-like” in fact becomes a formulation you find yourself turning to more and more with The Spinning Top. “If You Want Me” picks out its melody on a xylophone, before exploding into the kind of angular, spooky guitar oompah that characterised say, “He Thought Of Cars” from The Great Escape. “Dead Bees”, musically, is a cousin of “Beetlebum”. That band’s ability to incorporate wild noises into its pop compositions is found on the likes of “In The Morning”, which appears as if it may unspool into a Sandy Bull-style raga. The preceding “This House”, though raw, is still Kinksian in its melody and phrasing.

It’s this last reference which is probably the most telling. The album’s?many musical excursions and its professional agenda notwithstanding, The Spinning Top is an album with a strong unity of place, namely that it’s tied into a tradition of faintly whimsical, British songwriting.

Graham Coxon is swell bunch of guys, certainly, but of the power popper, the neurotic wannabe punk, and the English eccentric, it’s the last that’s the most rewarding to be around.

JOHN ROBINSON

UNCUT Q&A: GRAHAM COXON:

There’s some great Bert Jansch-style playing on the album…

I’m not as good as Bert – but I’m a huge fan of him, Davy Graham and Martin Carthy. And instead of thinking ‘It’d be wonderful to play like that…’ I thought I’d give it a go. So I sat down and tried to learn “Jubilation” by Davy Graham at 11 at night. I’d got it at five in the morning – I thought that was quite quick, considering. I just started writing songs that way.

So, it’s a concept album?

I had these songs, and I wanted to get them into some sort of order, and I thought that one way of doing that was to give them a story. I hadn’t written all the lyrics. So I put them in a story to get them in order. It evolved. The more I started to think about it the more nuanced it became, and then the artwork began to form.

How come it’s not on EMI?

We went our different ways. They were cutting the chaff from their books, and I was happy. To be honest I thought they’d done a bit of a shitty job on my last two albums. They’d put a lot of limitations on the kind of artwork I could do, and that was turning into a frustration.

INTERVIEW: JOHN ROBINSON

For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

Manic Street Preachers – Journal For Plague Lovers

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Manic Street Preachers – Journal For Plague Lovers

With all the lyrics culled from Richey Edwards’ notebooks and a cover painting by Jenny Saville, the Manics appear to be touting Journal For Plague Lovers as a follow-up to their tormented masterpiece, 1994’s The Holy Bible. It’s a risky tactic – imagine if New Order announced they’d uncovered a new stash of Ian Curtis’ lyrics and were planning to record Unknown Pleasures 2. Yet the Manics must have agonised for years about using Richey’s lost verses: pointed but poetic, crackling with intelligence, bleak but often also very funny, they’re far superior to anything Nicky Wire has come up with since This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. Only now, with Edwards officially declared presumed dead in November, have the band felt comfortable about setting them to music. If there’s any lingering unease about this endeavour, it’s instantly dispelled by the first few ferocious chords. Richey would surely be proud of the way his words have galvanised the remaining Manics into making some of their most vital music for years. Just like old times, “Peeled Apples” is heralded by a sampled voice (from The Machinist, the film for which Christian Bale lost 62lbs). Then comes an oil-boring bass rumble, a searing post-punk guitar line and a slew of unmistakable Richey aphorisms: “The figure eight inside out is infinity”; “The Levi Jean has always been stronger than the Uzi”; “Falcons attack the pigeons in the West Wing at night”. It’s a pulsating opener. The Manics have recaptured that taut urgency, accommodating both their punk instincts and their stadium rock flourishes. Some of the credit for this must go to producer Steve Albini, hired partly because the band openly hoped to emulate Nirvana’s In Utero. In practice, though, the Manics’ innate musicality places them closer to early Smashing Pumpkins than Nirvana, more Killing Joke than Pere Ubu. Wire nails it when he says of the terrific title track: “The idea was to write music inspired by Rush then pretend we were Magazine playing it.” “Jackie Collins Existential Question Time” is a breezier number, with its chiming chorus line “Oh mummy, what’s a Sex Pistol?” reminding us of the mordant wit that often flickered behind Edwards’ hollow-cheeked grimace. “Me And Stephen Hawking” – a brisk, pithy pop song, the Manics’ best since “PCP” – provides a punchline to that old gag, ‘What did the anorexic say to the quadriplegic?’ (“We missed the sex revolution when we failed the physical” – boom tish!) If that all sounds like too much fun, there’s “She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach” – a grungy dissection of love as masochism. We’ve missed the phenomenon of James manfully struggling to wrap his gums around Richey’s knotty prose. “Facing Page: Top Left” – a slightly heavy-handed acoustic harp duet – finds him grappling with “tinted UV protection” and “dipping neophobia”. On the electrifying “Pretension/Repulsion” it sounds like he’s singing “Won’t release my address”; the lyric sheet has to be consulted to discover that he’s actually referring to the controversially curvy 1814 portrait Grande Odalisque by Ingres. Album closer “William’s Last Words” sounds like nothing the Manics have ever recorded before, and not just because Nicky Wire takes lead vocals. The worry that Wire can’t really sing is circumvented by a gorgeous acoustic backing, all halcyon chords and wilting strings, that makes him sound like Lawrence from Felt. Lyrically, it’s a poignantly stoical farewell to the world, and it’s hard to resist the temptation to read it as Richey’s suicide note. Of course, there’s something faintly ridiculous about Journal For Plague Lovers – as, indeed, there was about The Holy Bible – which makes it unlikely to win any new converts. But this is also a brave, compelling record that stands shoulder to shoulder with the Manics’ best. Even if they may struggle to make another album as good as this without Richey’s lyrics, Journal… provides a satisfying sense of closure. SAM RICHARDS UNCUT Q&A: NICKY WIRE: Why choose now to use Richey’s lyrics? It’s something we’ve always talked about. As time elapsed, it became clear that he’d deliberately given us these lyrics very shortly before he disappeared – kind of bequeathed them to us I suppose – so I imagine he did intend them to be Manic Street Preachers songs. I’d been a bit daunted by the lyrics at first but more and more I began to feel a sense of responsibility that we should be doing something with them. How much did the lyrics dictate the style and mood of the music? Completely and utterly. There were also other things in the lyric booklet – collages, quotes, etcetera – so in a sense Richey left us a visual demo of how he wanted the record to feel. What kind of emotions did you go through when you were singing Richey’s lyrics? It wasn’t as if I was having to choke back the tears, although there were certain lyrics that felt as if they were driving me towards an emotional response to the situation we’ve had with Richey since he disappeared. I remember hearing Nick singing “William’s Last Words” in the studio and thinking, ‘I’m glad it’s not me’ because I felt quite affected by it. But I’ve got to say mostly it felt like Richey was back in the room. I’m just glad we followed through on what we imagined to be his wishes. INTERVIEW: SAM RICHARDS

With all the lyrics culled from Richey Edwards’ notebooks and a cover painting by Jenny Saville, the Manics appear to be touting Journal For Plague Lovers as a follow-up to their tormented masterpiece, 1994’s The Holy Bible.

It’s a risky tactic – imagine if New Order announced they’d uncovered a new stash of Ian Curtis’ lyrics and were planning to record Unknown Pleasures 2. Yet the Manics must have agonised for years about using Richey’s lost verses: pointed but poetic, crackling with intelligence, bleak but often also very funny, they’re far superior to anything Nicky Wire has come up with since This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. Only now, with Edwards officially declared presumed dead in November, have the band felt comfortable about setting them to music.

If there’s any lingering unease about this endeavour, it’s instantly dispelled by the first few ferocious chords. Richey would surely be proud of the way his words have galvanised the remaining Manics into making some of their most vital music for years.

Just like old times, “Peeled Apples” is heralded by a sampled voice (from The Machinist, the film for which Christian Bale lost 62lbs). Then comes an oil-boring bass rumble, a searing post-punk guitar line and a slew of unmistakable Richey aphorisms: “The figure eight inside out is infinity”; “The Levi Jean has always been stronger than the Uzi”; “Falcons attack the pigeons in the West Wing at night”.

It’s a pulsating opener. The Manics have recaptured that taut urgency, accommodating both their punk instincts and their stadium rock flourishes. Some of the credit for this must go to producer Steve Albini, hired partly because the band openly hoped to emulate Nirvana’s In Utero. In practice, though, the Manics’ innate musicality places them closer to early Smashing Pumpkins than Nirvana, more Killing Joke than Pere Ubu. Wire nails it when he says of the terrific title track: “The idea was to write music inspired by Rush then pretend we were Magazine playing it.”

“Jackie Collins Existential Question Time” is a breezier number, with its chiming chorus line “Oh mummy, what’s a Sex Pistol?” reminding us of the mordant wit that often flickered behind Edwards’ hollow-cheeked grimace. “Me And Stephen Hawking” – a brisk, pithy pop song, the Manics’ best since “PCP” – provides a punchline to that old gag, ‘What did the anorexic say to the quadriplegic?’ (“We missed the sex revolution when we failed the physical” – boom tish!) If that all sounds like too much fun, there’s “She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach” – a grungy dissection of love as masochism.

We’ve missed the phenomenon of James manfully struggling to wrap his gums around Richey’s knotty prose. “Facing Page: Top Left” – a slightly heavy-handed acoustic harp duet – finds him grappling with “tinted UV protection” and “dipping neophobia”. On the electrifying “Pretension/Repulsion” it sounds like he’s singing “Won’t release my address”; the lyric sheet has to be consulted to discover that he’s actually referring to the controversially curvy 1814 portrait Grande Odalisque by Ingres.

Album closer “William’s Last Words” sounds like nothing the Manics have ever recorded before, and not just because Nicky Wire takes lead vocals. The worry that Wire can’t really sing is circumvented by a gorgeous acoustic backing, all halcyon chords and wilting strings, that makes him sound like Lawrence from Felt. Lyrically, it’s a poignantly stoical farewell to the world, and it’s hard to resist the temptation to read it as Richey’s suicide note.

Of course, there’s something faintly ridiculous about Journal For Plague Lovers – as, indeed, there was about The Holy Bible – which makes it unlikely to win any new converts. But this is also a brave, compelling record that stands shoulder to shoulder with the Manics’ best. Even if they may struggle to make another album as good as this without Richey’s lyrics, Journal… provides a satisfying sense of closure.

SAM RICHARDS

UNCUT Q&A: NICKY WIRE:

Why choose now to use Richey’s lyrics?

It’s something we’ve always talked about. As time elapsed, it became clear that he’d deliberately given us these lyrics very shortly before he disappeared – kind of bequeathed them to us I suppose – so I imagine he did intend them to be Manic Street Preachers songs. I’d been a bit daunted by the lyrics at first but more and more I began to feel a sense of responsibility that we should be doing something with them.

How much did the lyrics dictate the style and mood of the music?

Completely and utterly. There were also other things in the lyric booklet – collages, quotes, etcetera – so in a

sense Richey left us a visual demo of how

he wanted the record to feel.

What kind of emotions did you go through when you were singing Richey’s lyrics?

It wasn’t as if I was having to choke back the tears, although there were certain lyrics that felt as if they were driving me towards an emotional response to the situation we’ve had with Richey since he disappeared. I remember hearing Nick singing “William’s Last Words” in the studio and thinking, ‘I’m glad it’s not me’ because I felt quite affected by it. But I’ve got to say mostly it felt like Richey was back in the room. I’m just glad we followed through on what we imagined to be his wishes. INTERVIEW: SAM RICHARDS

Crystal Antlers – Tentacles

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Crystal Antlers – Tentacles

You only have to glance at Crystal Antlers’ press photos to start getting the flavour of five raggedly idealistic Long Beach bums who are a bit Mudhoney, a bit Hüsker Dü, a bit 13th Floor Elevators, and who’ve got their own Flavor Flav-style hypeman on percussion and general goofing. Brilliantly, they claim to run their own chimney sweep company, drive to gigs in a van powered by vegetable oil, while the aforementioned percussionist used to call himself Sexual Chocolate (he’s since reverted to his birth name, Damian). If you’re not psyched to hear the Crystal Antlers’ debut album after all that, you’re reading the wrong magazine. With last year’s terrific self-titled EP, Crystal Antlers blazed confidently into the West Coast psych punk void created by Blood Brothers’ break-up and Comets On Fire’s hiatus. Few reviewers have been able to resist mentioning Ethan Miller’s hairy mob in relation to Crystal Antlers and there’s a palpable sense of a mantle being passed here, although there’s arguably more love – and more Love, come to that – in the Antlers’ beatific visions. “Glacier” and “Swollen Sky” may portend an imminent environmental apocalypse but – like High Places and Yeasayer – rather than mongering doom, Crystal Antlers have appointed themselves as rowdy cheerleaders for mother earth. Victor Rodriguez’s organ leads the charge, “Dust” setting off at a deranged gallop before tugging back so sharply on the reins you’re thrown out of your seat. There are slumbers, sprints and waltzes, the band’s vaudevillian tempo changes contrasting starkly with the linear furrows of Wooden Shjips, for example. On “Andrew” – a hoarse highlight – chief caterwauler Jonny Bell summons the ghosts of swampland soul. “Your Spears” is giddily capricious, “Tentacles” barbed and point-blank, “Swollen Sky” majestically strung-out: a whole bleeding rainbow of emotions where most noise bands manage only one. Crucially, it always feels as if Crystal Antlers are having a blast, continually cold-shouldering the obvious and pushing each other to the limits of their musicianship and beyond. A little reminder that rock music can still feel like freedom. SAM RICHARDS For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

You only have to glance at Crystal Antlers’ press photos to start getting the flavour of five raggedly idealistic Long Beach bums who are a bit Mudhoney, a bit Hüsker Dü, a bit 13th Floor Elevators, and who’ve got their own Flavor Flav-style hypeman on percussion and general goofing. Brilliantly, they claim to run their own chimney sweep company, drive to gigs in a van powered by vegetable oil, while the aforementioned percussionist used to call himself Sexual Chocolate (he’s since reverted to his birth name, Damian). If you’re not psyched to hear the Crystal Antlers’ debut album after all that, you’re reading the wrong magazine.

With last year’s terrific self-titled EP, Crystal Antlers blazed confidently into the West Coast psych punk void created by Blood Brothers’ break-up and Comets On Fire’s hiatus. Few reviewers have been able to resist mentioning Ethan Miller’s hairy mob in relation to Crystal Antlers and there’s a palpable sense of a mantle being passed here, although there’s arguably more love – and more Love, come to that – in the Antlers’ beatific visions. “Glacier” and “Swollen Sky” may portend an imminent environmental apocalypse but – like High Places and Yeasayer – rather than mongering doom, Crystal Antlers have appointed themselves as rowdy cheerleaders for mother earth.

Victor Rodriguez’s organ leads the charge, “Dust” setting off at a deranged gallop before tugging back so sharply on the reins you’re thrown out of your seat. There are slumbers, sprints and waltzes, the band’s vaudevillian tempo changes contrasting starkly with the linear furrows of Wooden Shjips, for example.

On “Andrew” – a hoarse highlight – chief caterwauler Jonny Bell summons the ghosts of swampland soul. “Your Spears” is giddily capricious, “Tentacles” barbed and point-blank, “Swollen Sky” majestically strung-out: a whole bleeding rainbow of emotions where most noise bands manage only one.

Crucially, it always feels as if Crystal Antlers are having a blast, continually cold-shouldering the obvious and pushing each other to the limits of their musicianship and beyond. A little reminder that rock music can still feel like freedom.

SAM RICHARDS

For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

Bob Dylan On Course For UK Album Chart Summit

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Bob Dylan On Course For UK Album Chart Summit
Bob Dylan's new studio album 'Together Through Life' is currently topping the mid-week UK album charts, after being released on Monday April 27. The album, his 44th, will be his first No.1 charting album in over 40 years, with the last being 'New Morning' in 1979. Also Together Through Life, if it...

Bob Dylan‘s new studio album ‘Together Through Life’ is currently topping the mid-week UK album charts, after being released on Monday April 27.

The album, his 44th, will be his first No.1 charting album in over 40 years, with the last being ‘New Morning’ in 1979.

Also Together Through Life, if it remains the top spot on Sunday (May 3) will be Dylan’s seventh UK No.1.

Read Uncut’s five-star rated review of Dylan’s Together Through Life here

Also! Dylan played two shows in London last weekend, for a full report and the set lists, go here for Uncut Editor Allan Jones blog.

For more music and film news click here

You can also now follow Uncut on Twitter! For news alerts, to find out what we’re playing on the stereo and more, join us here @uncutmagazine

Pink Mountaintops Support Bands Revealed!

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Pink Mountaintops Support Bands Revealed!
Pink Mountaintops are headlining the next Club Uncut in London on May 11, celebrating the launch of their third album 'Outside Love' which is out the previous week. Pink Mountaintops, aka Black Mountain's chief songwriter Stephen McBean will be supported by new alt.folk US/Brit trio Sparrow and the...

Pink Mountaintops are headlining the next Club Uncut in London on May 11, celebrating the launch of their third album ‘Outside Love‘ which is out the previous week.

Pink Mountaintops, aka Black Mountain‘s chief songwriter Stephen McBean will be supported by new alt.folk US/Brit trio Sparrow and the Workshop and Django Django.

Sparrow and the Workshop are excited to be playing their third ever show at Club Uncut with singer Jill 0’Sullivan exclaiming: “‘Awesome!’ Bands like Okkervil River, Liz Green, Crystal Antlers, The Delta Spirit and William Elliot Whitmore have played here so it’s a real pleasure to be asked to play”.

Get your tickets for the show, at London’s Borderline on May 11, HERE.

Chack out the artist Myspace pages here to listen to tracks and find out more:

myspace.com/pinkmountaintops

myspace.com/sparrowandtheworkshop

myspace.com/djangotime

For more music and film news click here

You can also now follow Uncut on Twitter! For news alerts, to find out what we’re playing on the stereo and more, join us here @uncutmagazine

Squeeze, Mew and Ladyhawke For Latitude!

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Squeeze, Mew and Ladyhawke For Latitude!
Squeeze are to perform in the Uncut Arena at this year's Latitude Festival, it has just been announced. Glen Tilbrook and Chris Difford and co. will play the covered stage at Henham Park, as will Mew, Ladyhawke, Teitur, Hjaltan and Music Go Music. The Uncut Arena's bill is now taking shape, with h...

Squeeze are to perform in the Uncut Arena at this year’s Latitude Festival, it has just been announced.

Glen Tilbrook and Chris Difford and co. will play the covered stage at Henham Park, as will Mew, Ladyhawke, Teitur, Hjaltan and Music Go Music.

The Uncut Arena’s bill is now taking shape, with headliners Bat For Lashes, Spiritualized, Gossip previously announced.

New music additions elsewhere at the three day Suffolk bash include Little Boots, Golden Silvers, The XX and Pulled Apart By Horses.

The Suffolk festival is headlined by Pet Shop Boys, Grace Jones and Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds between July 16-19.

Weekend (July 16-19, 2009) tickets are £150, day tickets are £60, and you can buy them here: www.festivalrepublic.com or here: www.latitudefestival.co.uk

For more music and film news click here

You can also now follow Uncut on Twitter! For news alerts, to find out what we’re playing on the stereo and more, join us here @uncutmagazine

The full list of acts confirmed so far for this year’s Latitute Festival is:

2 Hot 2 Sweat

Alan Pownall

Bat For Lashes

Catherine AD

Dag For Dag

Dear Reader

Doves

Editors

First Aid Kit

Giantess

Sugar Crisis

Golden Silvers

Slow Club

We Have Band

Gossip

Grace Jones

Hjaltalin

Joe Gideon & The Shark

Jonathan Jeremiah

Ladyhawke

Little Boots

Magazine

Mew

Music Go Music

Newton Faulkner

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds

Passion Pit

Pet Shop Boys

Post War Years

Pretenders

Pulled Apart By Horses

Regina Spector

Sound Of Guns

Spiritualized

Squeeze

Teitur

The Late Greats

The XX

White Lies

Yes Giantess

Wilco Confirm New Album Title

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Wilco Confirm New Album Title
Wilco have confirmed that they are to call their seventh studio album 'Wilco (The Album)'. The follow up to 2007's Blue Sky Blue features 11 tracks, including one, "You And I" with guest vocals from singer Feist. The simply titled album also features a track called "Wilco (The Song)". Other track...

Wilco have confirmed that they are to call their seventh studio album ‘Wilco (The Album)’.

The follow up to 2007’s Blue Sky Blue features 11 tracks, including one, “You And I” with guest vocals from singer Feist.

The simply titled album also features a track called “Wilco (The Song)”.

Other tracks include “Deeper Down” and “Everlasting”, and ‘You And I’, which features guest vocals from Feist.

Wilco recently released a DVD ‘Ashes Of American Flags’ you can read the Uncut review here

Wilco also play the UK annd Ireland this Summer:

AUG-23 BRECON BEACONS, UK GREEN MAN FESTIVAL

AUG-25 LONDON, UK, TROXY

AUG-27 DUBLIN, IR, VICAR STREET

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The 16th Playlist Of 2009

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Not strictly an office playlist this week, since I haven’t actually been near the Uncut office for the past week and a half. Instead, here’s what I’ve been listening to at home, out and about in the sun, and so on. Mainly old stuff, as you can see, save that clutch of American indie comebacks. For a clue to what’s been going on in the office, have a look at our Twitter. Dylan, I’m thinking. 1 Brightblack Morning Light – Motion To Rejoin (Matador) 2 Joanna Newsom – The Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City) 3 The Lemonheads – Varshons (Cooking Vinyl) 4 The Breeders – Fate To Fatal EP (4AD) 5 Dinosaur Jr – Farm (PIAS) 6 Procol Harum – Shine On Brightly (Salvo) 7 Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air (CBS) 8 Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate – In The Heart Of The Moon (World Circuit) 9 Lindstrom & Prins Thomas – II (Eskimo) 10 Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele (Epic) 11 The Gil Evans Orchestra – Out Of The Cool (Impulse) 12 Funkadelic – Funkadelic (Westbound) 13 Various Artists – Explosive Rock Comp (http://silvercurrant.blogspot.com/) 14 LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver (DFA) 15 Boredoms – Super Roots 10 (Avex Trax) 16 Joe Henderson With Alice Coltrane – The Elements (Ace) 17 The Go-Betweens – 16 Lover’s Lane (Beggar’s Banquet)

Not strictly an office playlist this week, since I haven’t actually been near the Uncut office for the past week and a half. Instead, here’s what I’ve been listening to at home, out and about in the sun, and so on.

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Elbow To Play Biggest Show So Far

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Elbow To Play Biggest Show So Far
Elbow have announced the biggest live show of their careers taking place in Manchester on September 18. The band have billed the MEN Arena show as a 'homecoming' before they take a break to finish their next album, the award-winning 'The Seldom Seen Kid.' Tickets for the gig will go on sale on Fri...

Elbow have announced the biggest live show of their careers taking place in Manchester on September 18.

The band have billed the MEN Arena show as a ‘homecoming’ before they take a break to finish their next album, the award-winning ‘The Seldom Seen Kid.’

Tickets for the gig will go on sale on Friday (May 1).

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Bob Dylan – London 02 Arena, Saturday April 25, 2009/London Roundhouse, Sunday April 26, 2009

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The last time I was on a boat on the Thames, The Sex Pistols were playing “Pretty Vacant” as we sailed downriver past the Houses Of Parliament. It was Jubilee Day, 1977, and the cruiser we were on had just been surrounded by police launches, their searchlights raking the upper deck of our craft, dozens of their baton-wielding colleagues lined up in sinister ranks on Westminster Pier, waiting for us to dock so they could storm aboard and crack heads, which they eventually did with painful abandon. Tonight is altogether more sedate and I am heading downriver towards the 02, standing on deck of a Thames Clipper like Washington crossing the Delaware, no tube service this weekend to the Greenwich Peninsular, a pain for many, but not quite the cataclysmic inconvenience claimed elsewhere by some disgruntled individuals for whom it is all a bit of a palaver. The 02 is the biggest London venue Dylan’s played in years - apart from a two night residency at Wembley Arena in April 2007, Dylan often preferring the funky surroundings of Brixton Academy and in November 2003 even fetching up for one memorable show at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. That’s the kind of place you’d love to see him play more often, which even as the boat I’m on approaches the site of the former Millennium Dome, makes the prospect of tomorrow night’s gig at the Roundhouse so thrilling. As fearsomely large and invariably inhospitable indoor arenas go, the 02 is better than most, not unlike the venues I saw Dylan play on the opening North American dates of the Modern Times tour in late 2006. Usually, of course, when people play places like this, there is an inclination toward pyrotechnics, flamboyant stage sets, huge video screens to bring the audience closer to what’s happening on stage, which from the furthermost seats doubtless will seem remote. Dylan, though, has no time for such fripperies, that kind of showiness simply not his style, the music everything to him and who he is, the point of him – and us – being where we are tonight. It’s amazing, though, that what he does is so often continually misinterpreted – and that his recasting in often unexpected musical styles of various acknowledged classics from his vast back catalogue is still seen as wilful tampering, evidence in the disparaging opinion of some of a wilful tampering with and heedless butchering of his musical legacy, Dylan in their view not giving a toss about he plays or the way he plays it, which is rarely the way some of the songs originally sounded. This sad perspective is in opposition to others among us for whom Dylan’s unpredictability - his willingness to re-address his songbook typical of his creative restlessness than some woebegone indifference - is what makes, year after year, the narrative of the Never-Ending Tour so uniquely compelling. It’s an approach that doesn’t always work, admittedly. There is for instance a version at the 02 of “Chimes Of Freedom” that struggles in this particular incarnation to clearly match the potency of the song’s poetic imagery, the result somewhat muffled, not to mention unrecognisable at first to a lot of people (there’s an amusing cheer a few minutes in from one part of the crowd when they realise what it is he’s playing). Similarly, a version of “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll” as a fatalistic waltz slightly spurns the song’s bitter anger. When it does work, which is more often than not, the results can be spectacular – witness here “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, newly-minted as a serrated waltz, and the show’s possible highlight, a suitably dark and harrowing “Ballad Of Hollis Brown” played with the kind of nightmarish venom latterly reserved for the overhauled “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”, a similar highlight of recent tours, Donnie Herron’s spectral banjo plucking set against lead guitarist Denny Freeman’s ghostly twanging. And it’s not as if everything Dylan plays is wholly re-imagined from the original blueprint. Songs from “Love And Theft” and Modern Times like “Po’ Boy”, “Honest With Me”, “When The Deal Goes Down”, “Thunder On The Mountain” and, best of all, “Workingman’s Blues # 2” are all fairly faithfully - and in the case of the latter quite beautifully – rendered. And of course the by now standard set closers, “Like A Rolling Stone” and “All Along The Watchtower” exert an indefatigable magic. If the 02 show was in most respects great, the Roundhouse show was just as often astonishing – despite Dylan’s reluctance to mark the occasion by giving debut live airings to anything from the new Together Through Life, as many of the Uncut readers I spoke to were hoping. Not that there wasn’t much to absolutely relish, the Roundhouse the kind of venue where you’d ideally love to see Dylan more often and Sunday’s set afire with many tremendous moments, from rowdy opener “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” to the closing “Blowin’ In The Wind”, which has in the last few years sometimes been played as a wonderful bluegrass ballad and is in its current, similarly unexpected, setting a woozy soulful blues. Elsewhere and in between, there’s a rasping, staccato “Don’t Think Twice”, a gripping “Tangled Up In Blue”, and a take on “Million Miles” that recalls “Ballad Of A Thin Man”. There’s also a sulphuric all guns-blazing “Rollin’ And Tumblin’”, a lovely “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven”, a dark and ominous “High Water” – as much a highlight as “Hollis Brown” the night before – a stately “Ain’t Talkin’”. A version meanwhile of “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” in the rollicking style of The Faces, as Uncut’s Gavin Martin sharply observed on this morning’s Today Programme on Radio 4. All in all, unmissable. The set list for Bob Dylan's 02 show was: Maggie's Farm The Times They Are A-Changin' Things Have Changed Chimes Of Freedom Rollin' And Tumblin' The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll 'Til I Fell In Love With You Workingman's Blues #2 Highway 61 Revisited Ballad Of Hollis Brown Po' Boy Honest With Me When The Deal Goes Down Thunder On The Mountain Like A Rolling Stone (encores) All Along The Watchtower Spirit On The Water Blowin' In The Wind The set list for Dylan's Roundhouse show was: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat Don't Think Twice, It's All Right Tangled Up In Blue Million Miles Rollin' And Tumblin' Tryin' To Get To Heaven Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum Sugar Baby High Water (For Charley Patton) I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) Po' Boy Highway 61 Revisited Ain't Talkin' Summer Days Like A Rolling Stone (encores) All Along The Watchtower Spirit On The Water Blowin' In The Wind

The last time I was on a boat on the Thames, The Sex Pistols were playing “Pretty Vacant” as we sailed downriver past the Houses Of Parliament. It was Jubilee Day, 1977, and the cruiser we were on had just been surrounded by police launches, their searchlights raking the upper deck of our craft, dozens of their baton-wielding colleagues lined up in sinister ranks on Westminster Pier, waiting for us to dock so they could storm aboard and crack heads, which they eventually did with painful abandon.

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Pearl Jam Announce UK Live Shows

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Pearl Jam Announce UK Live Shows
Pearl Jam have announced that they are to perform four special shows in four venues in Europe this August. The headline gigs start in Rotterdam on August 13, followed by Berlin (15)Manchester (17) before ending at London's O2 Arena on August 18. These new dates are Pearl Jam's first in two years, ...

Pearl Jam have announced that they are to perform four special shows in four venues in Europe this August.

The headline gigs start in Rotterdam on August 13, followed by Berlin (15)Manchester (17) before ending at London’s O2 Arena on August 18.

These new dates are Pearl Jam’s first in two years, although they anticipate returning to Europe around the release of their next studio album, possibly in Autumn.

Member of Pearl Jam’s Ten Club are able to buy tickets for these show until April 29. After which general sale will begin on May 8.

Pearl Jam will play:

Rotterdam, Ahoy (August 13)

Berlin, Germany, Kindl-Bühne Wuhlheide (15)

Manchester, England, M.E.N. Arena (17)

London, England, 02 Arena (18)

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Green Day Announce UK Tour

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Green Day Announce UK Tour
Green Day have announced their first UK and Ireland shows since 2005, to promote their forthcoming new studio album ‘21st Century Breakdown’ which is released on May 15. Green Day will headline ten shows, starting in Glasgow on October 19 and ending with two nights at Manchester MEN on October ...

Green Day have announced their first UK and Ireland shows since 2005, to promote their forthcoming new studio album ‘21st Century Breakdown’ which is released on May 15.

Green Day will headline ten shows, starting in Glasgow on October 19 and ending with two nights at Manchester MEN on October 30 and 31.

Green Day will play the following venues, Ttckets will be on sale on Friday (May 1) at 10am.

Glasgow SECC (October 19)

Belfast Oddessy Arena (20)

Dublin 02 (21)

London O2 Arena (23, 24)

Sheffield Arena (26)

Birmingham LG Arena (27, 28)

Manchester MEN Arena (30, 31)

More info about the album from the band’s website here: www.greenday.com

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Soap – Series 1 (TV)

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Soap – Series 1 (TV)
Soap, which originally ran for four seasons in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, is arguably one of the most influential sitcoms of all time. As its title unsubtly suggested, it was a satire of the tropes of soap opera. This in itself would have been an achievement – successfully satirising what i...

Soap, which originally ran for four seasons in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, is arguably one of the most influential sitcoms of all time. As its title unsubtly suggested, it was a satire of the tropes of soap opera. This in itself would have been an achievement – successfully satirising what is already self-evidently absurd is extremely difficult. But Soap managed much more besides.

Admittedly, the targets Soap hunted weren’t that difficult to hit. The show expended barely a fraction of the creative ammunition at its disposal as it mowed down interminable and lamentable serials like The Young And The Restless and Days Of Our Lives (this first series of Soap, at least, narrowly pre-dated the advent of Dallas and Dynasty). The real accomplishment of the programme was its gleeful bending, breaking and/or cavalier disregarding of the parameters in which situation comedy could operate. Traces of its post-modern deadpan, running jokes and self-referential gags have since become stapes in other significant sit-coms like Seinfeld, Scrubs and Arrested Development.

There were plots, as such, chiefly chronicling the domestic upheavals of the wealthy Tate family (Tate patriarch Chester was played by Robert Mandan, previously best-known for starring in genuine soap Search For Tomorrow) and the less well-off Campbells. These storylines were preposterous to the point of opacity – later series involved demonic possession and alien abduction, no less. But the principal joys of Soap were the studied overacting of the cast, the cascading expository voiceovers of veteran gameshow announcer Rod Roddy, and a fizzy script by creator Susan Harris that managed to work in themes – homosexuality, race, religion – seldom touched on in mainstream American entertainment.

Early in the very first episode, Tate’s long-suffering wife Jessica (the very fabulous Katherine Helmond) marvels of black butler Benson (Robert Guillame): “Such a mind of your own!” Benson’s subsequent facial expression is a masterpiece in its own right.

Timeless and damn near flawless, Soap ranks alongside Police Squad! as a genuine pathfinder.

EXTRAS: tbc

ANDREW MUELLER

Bob Dylan – Together Through Life

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Bob Dylan – Together Through Life
Bob Dylan had the devil of a time working on the soundtrack for Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, caught up in the director’s typically tempestuous war with the film’s producers over a movie they didn’t understand and eventually butchered, Dylan’s musical contributions suffe...

Bob Dylan had the devil of a time working on the soundtrack for Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, caught up in the director’s typically tempestuous war with the film’s producers over a movie they didn’t understand and eventually butchered, Dylan’s musical contributions suffering a similar fate in the fragmented version originally released in 1973.

Hollywood, though, has been kinder since to Bob. Asked in 2000 to write something for LA Confidential director Curtis Hanson’s Wonder Boys, he came up with “Things Have Changed”, his first new song since 1997’s Time Out Of Mind. It duly won him an Oscar and a Golden Globe – awards that could have as easily gone to “Cross The Green Mountain”, a sombre Civil War epic full of gloomy portent he wrote for 2003’s Gods And Generals. The song, however, was played over the closing credits of a film no-one went to see and before it was rehabilitated on last year’s Tell Tale Signs collection, was available only on a soundtrack CD hardly anyone had heard.

Now apparently we have another movie project to thank for not just a single song, but an entire album.

Last year, French filmmaker Olivier Dahan, director of Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose, invited Dylan to write some songs for his new film, My Own Love Song, a romantic road movie of sorts starring Renée Zellweger and Forest Whitaker. Dylan responded with “Life Is Hard”, an aching ballad, mandolin, pedal steel and Dylan’s dark and wounded voice to the fore. Suddenly inspired, Dylan, as legend now insists, kept on writing and the next thing anyone knew he had nine more new songs and not long after that had finished the album, which is now upon us in all its rowdy glory.

It sounds pretty much like you hoped it would – like something recorded and written quickly, not quite on the hoof, but close to it, Dylan apparently eager to get these new songs down with a raw immediacy, which he largely has. My immediate opinion, since it seems that’s what’s required here, is that Together Through Life is in many respects as raffishly ebullient as any record Dylan has put his name to since The Basement Tapes. It was great to hear him sounding so wry and playful on, say, “Love And Theft”, an album of bountiful humour. But here Bob sounds like he’s having a ball in different ways, the joint jumping with him, everybody digging the groove, Dylan’s redoubtable touring band augmented by David Hidalgo from Los Lobos, whose accordion is featured just about everywhere, and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell. The album’s a gas, a riot, a hoot.

And this despite the disconsolate mood of key tracks and the hard look the album takes at what’s left of the world at the time of writing (“Widows cry, orphans bleed/Everywhere you look, there’s more misery”). There’s an inclination to see Dylan’s late songs – let’s say from Time Out Of Mind on – as largely preoccupied with mortality, principally his own, the general passing of things, among them youthful vigour, and the bad bits life has waiting for us, licking their chops. This is perhaps because of Time Out Of Mind’s “Not Dark Yet”, a great song that yet casts a somewhat distorted shadow over a lot that’s followed, as if it alone defines his later repertoire.

Much of Together Through Life can be seen as further unflinching reflection on life’s transience, it’s true, as Dylan dwells on time doing nothing but running out fast and the hostility of an unfriendly world, from whose clutches, repeatedly, the singer wants to escape – into dreams, memories, a past that haunts him, the arms of those he’s loved now lost to him.

The lyrics allude frequently to sinking suns, chilly winds, eternal loneliness, twilight reveries, final voyages to unspecified destinations, the seeping away of the day’s last light. But despite the admittedly bereft mood and musical voicings of songs like, say, “Life Is Hard” (the only example of the crooning vocal style latterly favoured by Dylan), “Forgetful Heart” (its stalking tempo reminiscent of “Ain’t Talkin’”), “This Dream Of You”(a fiddle-led waltz), or the gorgeous “I Feel A Change Coming On” (passingly reminiscent of “Workingman’s Blues #2”), the album can barely be described as mordant or particularly downbeat.

The record, you could say, in fact is characterised by a kind of boisterous fatalism, a stoic swagger that may remind you of the old blues dictum: “You might get better, but you’ll never get well.” By which is meant, I suppose, that while what’s waiting for us is nothing we’ll be especially happy about, there may yet be adventure and high old times in the getting there. In other words, if life is something we lose, the least we can do is make the noisy most of it.

Thus, blues romps like “Jolene” and “Shake Mama Shake” share a carnal jauntiness, full of rollicking good humour, sound more sulphuric, less formal than their comparatively more stately equivalents on Modern Times, “Rollin’ And Tumblin” and “Someday Baby”. Opener “Beyond Here Lies Nothing” does much to set the rambunctious tone of a lot that follows, Hidalgo’s accordion fronting a flurry of horns, tumbling drums and a wonderfully lithe instrumental groove, Dylan’s vocal gloriously growly.

The sardonic “My Wife’s Hometown”, meanwhile, is another stripped down blues, at once wry and exclamatory, as cracked and leathery as an old saddle or the nag it sits upon. On the sheerly irresistible Texas jump of “If You Ever Go To Houston”, the band are uncommonly lively company, powered by Hidalgo’s riffing accordion and kicking up the dust like people who turn up at a party and before you know it are blowing doors off their hinges, juggling cats and running around with their hair on fire, that kind of crowd. “If you ever go to Austin, Fort Worth or San Anton’,” Dylan sings, “Find the barrooms I got lost in and send my memories home”.

The album’s inclination towards bleak humour finds its most vivid expression on darkly ironic closer, “It’s All Good”, a litany of personal and national woe on which Dylan takes a jaundiced look at the republic – “Big politician tellin’ lies/Restaurant kitchen all full of flies” – and finds little to admire, much that draws his contempt.

More scholarly types than myself are already hovering over Together Through Life, no doubt to tell us from which obscure blues or classical source Dylan has imported lyrics (“Beyond Here Lies Nothing” is apparently a quote from Ovid, a very funny couplet in “My Wife’s Hometown” is evidently derived from Chaucer). I’ll cheerfully leave them to it, turn the record up real loud and shake this mama one more time.

ALLAN JONES

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Morrissey – Southpaw Grammar/ Maladjusted

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Morrissey – Southpaw Grammar/ Maladjusted

Southpaw Grammar 4* Maladjusted 1* At a recent concert, Morrissey announced that he was about to play a song from his 1995 album, Southpaw Grammar – at which point an excited whoop went up from the audience. It was a response that the singer clearly wasn’t expecting. “Really? Did anyone buy it?” he enquired. “Could you furnish me with receipts?” These days, Morrissey is a National Treasure. His arena gigs sell out in minutes, his singles go Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic, his half-baked opinions on immigration are earnestly debated on Question Time. Once-hostile publications slaver over his new LPs and prominent Labour and Conservative front benchers fight over his oeuvre. So it seems difficult to believe that, little more than a decade ago, he seemed all but washed up. On its release, Southpaw Grammar seemed to be the point where the Great British Public officially fell out of love with Morrissey. The casual Smiths fan had all but lost interest while even the scary Moz obsessives were a little puzzled. Unlike all other Morrissey albums, Southpaw came illustrated with a picture of a person who wasn’t Morrissey. It kicked off with a terrifying 11-minute track that sampled a discordant eight-note phrase from Shostakovich’s Fifth. It had a track that started with a three-minute Buddy Rich drum solo. Its two lead singles seemed to be blatant paeans to man-love, both based around fiendishly complicated chord cycles. The album, which Morrissey initially approached Brian Eno to produce before sheepishly returning to Steve Lillywhite, was dismissed as Moz’s bonkers prog album. As bonkers prog albums go, it was scarcely a Kid A, a Sandinista! or an Achtung Baby, as is confirmed by this rejigged and remastered edition. The previous opening track, “The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils” (a towering, majestic, dystopian sequel to “The Headmaster Ritual”), has been pushed to the back, while the album is frontloaded with some of Morrissey’s finest three-minute pop gems. “Dagenham Dave” was savaged at the time as the nadir of his homoerotic class tourism, but it now stands up as one of his finest singles – a maddeningly catchy tangle of spiky chords, Motown drums and Morricone strings. The Angus Young-meets-Phil Spector rampage of “Boy Racer” is almost as good; “Reader Meet Author” and “Best Friend On The Payroll” are equally memorable. There are four previously unreleased tracks – “Honey, You Know Where To Find Me” (which sounds like the backing track to “You’re The One For Me, Fatty”, but with better lyrics), the punky “Fantastic Bird”, and two faintly forgettable ballads, “You Should Have Been Nice To Me” and “Nobody Loves Us”. Morrissey was clearly hurt by the muted critical response to the efforts of Southpaw and, in response, he reverted to his comfort zone. Maladjusted, however, merited only passing mention in 1997 and its status has not improved since then. Rather bafflingly, this package sees Morrissey remove the album’s only decent single, “Roy’s Keen”, and – even weirder – its best song, the Syd Barrett-ish “Papa Jack”. It only emphasises the sheer lack of memorable melodies on the rest of the album. There are bruise-coloured ballads, only one of them, “Trouble Loves Me”, being any good (“on the flesh rampage/at YOUR age?”), there is a so-so rockabilly number (“Satan Rejected My Soul”); and there is Morrissey’s worst single, “Alma Matters”. This time there are seven extra tracks. Moz’s ballad about the Northern Ireland troubles, “This Is Not Your Country”, somehow manages to be worse than Spandau Ballet’s “Between The Barricades”; written before the Good Friday Agreement, it now sounds about as relevant as a song about the repeal of the Corn Laws. “Sorrow Will Come In The End” (previously omitted from UK releases) sees Morrissey whining about his treatment in the Mike Joyce court case and is the sonic equivalent of being emailed a tiresome list of “hilarious lawyer jokes”. “Heir Apparent” has one nice guitar riff. “Now I Am A Was” probably wouldn’t have even made it into a Smiths rehearsal room. Much more than The Smiths, Morrissey as a solo artist lives or dies on his singles – or, at the very least, standout album tracks that serve as talking points. His steroid-injected albums since You Are The Quarry, while variable, are at least redeemed by a string of cracking singles. Southpaw Grammar has at least half a dozen. Maladjusted, in this version at least, has none. For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

Southpaw Grammar 4*

Maladjusted 1*

At a recent concert, Morrissey announced that he was about to play a song from his 1995 album, Southpaw Grammar – at which point an excited whoop went up from the audience. It was a response that the singer clearly wasn’t expecting. “Really? Did anyone buy it?” he enquired. “Could you furnish me with receipts?”

These days, Morrissey is a National Treasure. His arena gigs sell out in minutes, his singles go Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic, his half-baked opinions on immigration are earnestly debated on Question Time. Once-hostile publications slaver over his new LPs and prominent Labour and Conservative front benchers fight over his oeuvre. So it seems difficult to believe that, little more than a decade ago, he seemed all but washed up. On its release, Southpaw Grammar seemed to be the point where the Great British Public officially fell out of love with Morrissey. The casual Smiths fan had all but lost interest while even the scary Moz obsessives were a little puzzled.

Unlike all other Morrissey albums, Southpaw came illustrated with a picture of a person who wasn’t Morrissey. It kicked off with a terrifying 11-minute track that sampled a discordant eight-note phrase from Shostakovich’s Fifth. It had a track that started with a three-minute Buddy Rich drum solo. Its two lead singles seemed to be blatant paeans to man-love, both based around fiendishly complicated chord cycles. The album, which Morrissey initially approached Brian Eno to produce before sheepishly returning to Steve Lillywhite, was dismissed as Moz’s bonkers prog album.

As bonkers prog albums go, it was scarcely a Kid A, a Sandinista! or an Achtung Baby, as is confirmed by this rejigged and remastered edition. The previous opening track, “The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils” (a towering, majestic, dystopian sequel to “The Headmaster Ritual”), has been pushed to the back, while the album is frontloaded with some of Morrissey’s finest three-minute pop gems.

“Dagenham Dave” was savaged at the time as the nadir of his homoerotic class tourism, but it now stands up as one of his finest singles – a maddeningly catchy tangle of spiky chords, Motown drums and Morricone strings. The Angus Young-meets-Phil Spector rampage of “Boy Racer” is almost as good; “Reader Meet Author” and “Best Friend On The Payroll” are equally memorable. There are four previously unreleased tracks – “Honey, You Know Where To Find Me” (which sounds like the backing track to “You’re The One For Me, Fatty”, but with better lyrics), the punky “Fantastic Bird”, and two faintly forgettable ballads, “You Should Have Been Nice To Me” and “Nobody Loves Us”.

Morrissey was clearly hurt by the muted critical response to the efforts of Southpaw and, in response, he reverted to his comfort zone. Maladjusted, however, merited only passing mention in 1997 and its status has not improved since then. Rather bafflingly, this package sees Morrissey remove the album’s only decent single, “Roy’s Keen”, and – even weirder – its best song, the Syd Barrett-ish “Papa Jack”. It only emphasises the sheer lack of memorable melodies on the rest of the album. There are bruise-coloured ballads, only one of them, “Trouble Loves Me”, being any good (“on the flesh rampage/at YOUR age?”), there is a so-so rockabilly number (“Satan Rejected My Soul”); and there is Morrissey’s worst single, “Alma Matters”.

This time there are seven extra tracks. Moz’s ballad about the Northern Ireland troubles, “This Is Not Your Country”, somehow manages to be worse than Spandau Ballet’s “Between The Barricades”; written before the Good Friday Agreement, it now sounds about as relevant as a song about the repeal of the Corn Laws. “Sorrow Will Come In The End” (previously omitted from UK releases) sees Morrissey whining about his treatment in the Mike Joyce court case and is the sonic equivalent of being emailed a tiresome list of “hilarious lawyer jokes”. “Heir Apparent” has one nice guitar riff. “Now I Am A Was” probably wouldn’t have even made it into a Smiths rehearsal room.

Much more than The Smiths, Morrissey as a solo artist lives or dies on his singles – or, at the very least, standout album tracks that serve as talking points. His steroid-injected albums since You Are The Quarry, while variable, are at least redeemed by a string of cracking singles. Southpaw Grammar has at least half a dozen. Maladjusted, in this version at least, has none.

For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

Bob Dylan’s Two Night Stand In London

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Bob Dylan’s Two Night Stand In London
Bob Dylan played two wildly different venues in London over the weekend, as part of the current leg of his Never-Ending Tour On Saturday, April 25, he played the 20,000 capacity 02 Arena, whilst on Sunday, April 26, Dylan played at the 4,800 capacity Roundhouse in Camden. The show – the sma...

Bob Dylan played two wildly different venues in London over the weekend, as part of the current leg of his Never-Ending Tour

On Saturday, April 25, he played the 20,000 capacity 02 Arena, whilst on Sunday, April 26, Dylan played at the 4,800 capacity Roundhouse in Camden.

The show – the smallest on his current world tour – was also attended by a number of celebrities, including Bill Wyman, Jude Law, Terry Gilliam and Bill Nighy.

Uncut’s Allan Jones will be filing a full report on both shows later today (April 27). So check back here for Allan’s blog.

The set list for Bob Dylan’s 02 show was:

Maggie’s Farm

The Times They Are A-Changin’

Things Have Changed

Chimes Of Freedom

Rollin’ And Tumblin’

The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll

‘Til I Fell In Love With You

Workingman’s Blues #2

Highway 61 Revisited

Ballad Of Hollis Brown

Po’ Boy

Honest With Me

When The Deal Goes Down

Thunder On The Mountain

Like A Rolling Stone

(encore)

All Along The Watchtower

Spirit On The Water

Blowin’ In The Wind

The set list for Dylan’s Roundhouse show was:

Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat

Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right

Tangled Up In Blue

Million Miles

Rollin’ And Tumblin’

Tryin’ To Get To Heaven

Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum

Sugar Baby

High Water (For Charley Patton)

I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)

Po’ Boy

Highway 61 Revisited

Ain’t Talkin’

Summer Days

Like A Rolling Stone

(encore)

All Along The Watchtower

Spirit On The Water

Blowin’ In The Wind

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The Pretenders Added To Latitude Festival Bill

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The Pretenders Added To Latitude Festival Bill
The Pretenders are one of the latest additions to the bill for this year's Latitude Festival which takes place from July 16- 19 in Southwold in Suffolk. Chrissie Hynde and co. will play from their nine-album back catologue, including hits "I'll Stand By You" and "Back On The Chain Gang". They will ...

The Pretenders are one of the latest additions to the bill for this year’s Latitude Festival which takes place from July 16- 19 in Southwold in Suffolk.

Chrissie Hynde and co. will play from their nine-album back catologue, including hits “I’ll Stand By You” and “Back On The Chain Gang”. They will play the Obelisk Arena on Friday July 17.

Also added to the Obelisk billing are White Lies, the Brits who scored a number one with their debut album ‘To Lose My Life’ in January and have since been in huge demand for live performances. The band return to Latitude’s main stage graduating from being last year’s opening act on the same stage.

Also playing are Flashguns hotly tipped new signings to Rough Trade and the Verve influenced The Chakras.

The new additions join previously announced headliners Pet Shop Boys, Grace Jones and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, as well as Doves, Editors, Magazine, Spiritualized and Regina Spector

Latitude, now in it’s fourth year is also jam packed with even more theatre, dance, comedy and poetry than ever before.

Sadler’s Wells, the Royal Opera House, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, and The Bush theatre group will all be bringing their repetoire to Latitude this year, some of it bespoke for their surroundings.

This year will also see the Britten Sinfonia performing in the lush outdoor space.

Weekend (July 16-19, 2009) tickets are £150, day tickets are £60, and you can buy them here: www.festivalrepublic.com or here: www.latitudefestival.co.uk

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Wilco – Ashes Of American Flags

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Wilco – Ashes Of American Flags

Whether they were aware of it or not, filmmakers Christoph Green and former Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty have a problem. Thanks to Sam Jones’ 2002 documentary, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, any film about Wilco courts high expectations. Jones captured the implosion and rebirth of Wilco, and – a rarity for a rock film – added considerably to the audience’s understanding of the band and, particularly, its creative centre, Jeff Tweedy. That may have been an accident of circumstance, but it does mean that any straightforward portrayal of the band on tour is likely to disappoint. But Green and Canty have been down this road before. They directed Tweedy’s 2006 live DVD, Sunken Treasure, and their unobtrusive approach worked, largely because Tweedy was uncharacteristically chatty during that solo tour. Here, with the whole band in tow, it admittedly becomes a little harder to find a coherent narrative. The filmmakers locate a sense of nostalgia for a disappearing America through the Polaroids keyboardist Pat Sansone takes of urban wastelands – “capturing these little pieces of a fading America with a fading technology”. There’s moments, too, of offstage intimacy. We see Jeff having his throat examined and the band discussing various ailments, including fused vertebrae and – a problem for percussionist Glenn Kotche –hand abuse. If there’s one theme Green and Canty touch on it’s the vague rootlessness common to all rock tours: cue the moody shot of the silver bus rolling along the horizon. And then the penny drops. The pictures are pretty enough, but close your eyes and listen, and Ashes Of American Flags is revealed as an understated record of a band at ease with itself, playing some of the most beautiful music of their careers. The music is tight and tough; a perfect hybrid of Wilco’s country rock twang and their more eclectic experiments. Mostly, they resist the urge to replicate Tweedy’s sonic migraines, opting instead for melodic interplay and wiry repetitions of riffs. Sometimes – on “Kingpin”, say – they sound positively dirty, and they’re not beyond moments of absurd showmanship, such as the mock electrical storm that punctuates “Via Chicago”. And, yes, Tweedy plays “Heavy Metal Drummer” with a bra suspended from his guitar. So, a quiet triumph, and a beautiful document of a confident moment in the life of Wilco. Jeff’s dad can be proud. Evidently, when he appears backstage at a meet-and-greet, he is. EXTRAS: Seven additional bonus tracks, “I’m The Man Who Loves You”, “Airline To Heaven”, “It’s Just That Simple”, “At Least That’s What You Said”, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”, “Theologians”, “Hate It Here”. With this DVD, you can also download the audio of all the tracks via the Wilco website. Alastair McKay

Whether they were aware of it or not, filmmakers Christoph Green and former Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty have a problem. Thanks to Sam Jones’ 2002 documentary, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, any film about Wilco courts high expectations. Jones captured the implosion and rebirth of Wilco, and – a rarity for a rock film – added considerably to the audience’s understanding of the band and, particularly, its creative centre, Jeff Tweedy. That may have been an accident of circumstance, but it does mean that any straightforward portrayal of the band on tour is likely to disappoint.

But Green and Canty have been down this road before. They directed Tweedy’s 2006 live DVD, Sunken Treasure, and their unobtrusive approach worked, largely because Tweedy was uncharacteristically chatty during that solo tour. Here, with the whole band in tow, it admittedly becomes a little harder to find a coherent narrative. The filmmakers locate a sense of nostalgia for a disappearing America through the Polaroids keyboardist Pat Sansone takes of urban wastelands – “capturing these little pieces of a fading America with a fading technology”. There’s moments, too, of offstage intimacy. We see Jeff having his throat examined and the band discussing various ailments, including fused vertebrae and – a problem for percussionist Glenn Kotche –hand abuse. If there’s one theme Green and Canty touch on it’s the vague rootlessness common to all rock tours: cue the moody shot of the silver bus rolling along the horizon.

And then the penny drops. The pictures are pretty enough, but close your eyes and listen, and Ashes Of American Flags is revealed as an understated record of a band at ease with itself, playing some of the most beautiful music of their careers. The music is tight and tough; a perfect hybrid of Wilco’s country rock twang and their more eclectic experiments.

Mostly, they resist the urge to replicate Tweedy’s sonic migraines, opting instead for melodic interplay and wiry repetitions of riffs. Sometimes – on “Kingpin”, say – they sound positively dirty, and they’re not beyond moments of absurd showmanship, such as the mock electrical storm that punctuates “Via Chicago”. And, yes, Tweedy plays “Heavy Metal Drummer” with a bra suspended from his guitar.

So, a quiet triumph, and a beautiful document of a confident moment in the life of Wilco. Jeff’s dad can be proud. Evidently, when he appears backstage at a meet-and-greet, he is.

EXTRAS: Seven additional bonus tracks, “I’m The Man Who Loves You”, “Airline To Heaven”, “It’s Just That Simple”, “At Least That’s What You Said”, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”, “Theologians”, “Hate It Here”. With this DVD, you can also download the audio of all the tracks via the Wilco website.

Alastair McKay

Tarantino’s latest, plus Woodstock movie all heading to the Cannes Film Festival

Michael Bonner
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It remains to be seen whether the global credit gloom will have a negative effect on the parties, the glamour and the excessively large yachts that tend to provide entertaining if diversionary colour from the Cannes Film Festival. But, certainly, in terms of heavyweight talent on display at this year's festival, you might be hard pressed to think of a more Cannes-like line-up. In fact, it's difficult to think of a year when I've been more excited about the films showing. Lately, it's sometimes felt like the serious matter of showcasing important movies has been obscured by big studios unveiling their Spring/Summer blockbusters -- Star Wars and Indiana Jones spring to mind -- films that have been bolted on to the festival, simply because half the world's media will be there to give them a publicity boost. This year, though, it looks like Cannes is, well, back on track. Highlights include new films from festival veterans like Quentin Tarantino, Ken Loach, Jane Campion, Lars von Trier, Terry Gilliam, Michael Haneke, Ang Lee and Pedro Almodóvar, as well as relative newcomer Andrea Arnold, whose debut Red Road was one of my favourite films of the last few years. Anyway, here's 5 that deserve a heads up in UNCUT's world: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Tarantino's latest, a WW2 movie with Brad Pitt leading a group of Jewish-American soldiers into occupied France to dish out bloody revenge against the Nazis. All, presumably, in appallingly bad taste. Tarantino, of course, won the Palm D'Or in 1994 with Pulp Fiction. [youtube]9TadvFY3rA8[/youtube] THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS. Heath Ledger died while filming this fantasy with Terry Gilliam about a travelling theatre troupe who make a deal with the Devil, his role taken up by Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law. In shoe-in casting, Tom Waits plays Satan. Of course. [youtube]jRYXNk-qZAs[/youtube] TAKING WOODSTOCK. Ang Lee's comedy follows aspiring Greenwich Village interior designer Elliot Tiber, who becomes involved in organising a small music festival outside New York in 1969. [youtube]7Iq8z2WDbKo[/youtube] ANTICHRIST. Horror from Lars von Trier, with Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Ginasborg as a couple who, following the death of their child, retreat to a remote cabin only to find something extremely unpleasant in the woods. [youtube]8kFnO4hyhO8[/youtube] FISH TANK. From British director Andrea Arnold. A 15-year old girl's life is turned on its head when her mother brings home a new boyfriend. Anyway, you can read the full line-up here.

It remains to be seen whether the global credit gloom will have a negative effect on the parties, the glamour and the excessively large yachts that tend to provide entertaining if diversionary colour from the Cannes Film Festival. But, certainly, in terms of heavyweight talent on display at this year’s festival, you might be hard pressed to think of a more Cannes-like line-up.

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The Specials Play First Reunion Show

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The Specials Play First Reunion Show
The Specials began their comeback reunion tour at the Newcastle Academy on Wednesday (April 22). Terry Hall led the band through a greatest hits set starting with "Do The Dog" and encoring with 1980 No.1 "Too Much Too Young". The Specials will also play in Sheffield, Birmingham and Manchester befo...

The Specials began their comeback reunion tour at the Newcastle Academy on Wednesday (April 22).

Terry Hall led the band through a greatest hits set starting with “Do The Dog” and encoring with 1980 No.1 “Too Much Too Young”.

The Specials will also play in Sheffield, Birmingham and Manchester before a five night stand at London’s Brixton Academy.

The 30th anniversary tour finale will take place in Coventry on May 15th, however the band are booked to play a handful of festivals this Summer, including V Festival.

The anticipated reunion shows are all sold-out:

NEWCASTLE, Academy (April 22)

SHEFFIELD, Academy (23)

BIRMINGHAM, Academy (25, 26)

GLASGOW, Academy (28, 29)

MANCHESTER, Apollo (May 3, 4)

LONDON, Brixton Academy (6, 7, 8, 11, 12)

COVENTRY, Ricoh Arena (15)

The Specials first night set list was:

‘Do The Dog’

‘Dawning Of A New Era’

‘Gangsters’

‘It’s Up To You’

‘Rat Race’

‘Monkey Man’

‘Blank Expression’

‘Too Hot’

‘Doesn’t Make It Alright’

‘Concrete Jungle’

‘Friday Night Saturday Morning’

‘Stereotype’

‘Man At C&A’

‘A Message To You Rudy’

‘Do Nothing’

‘Hey Little Rich Girl’

‘Nite Klub’

‘You’re Wondering Now’

‘Ghost Town’

‘Too Much Too Young’

‘Skinhead Moonstomp’

‘Enjoy Yourself’

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