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Felice Brothers – Yonder Is The Clock

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Felice Brothers – Yonder Is The Clock

The Felice Brothers have aptly taken the title of their new LP from a line in The Mysterious Stranger, a post-humously published novella by great American writer Mark Twain, author also of The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, classics both of a literary Americana as evocative of a glimmering mythic past as anything you’ll find on Harry Smith’s Anthology Of American Folk Music, that repository of “the old, weird America”, or, for that matter, The Basement Tapes. The Mysterious Stranger, in contrast to those fabulist confections featuring Tom and Huck, was a bleak satire about mankind’s general wretchedness, wholly unsparing. In it, the Young Satan, nephew, apparently, of the senior Satan of Biblical disrepute, is an angel come to earth to reveal to his gathered acolytes that life is meaningless, their God nothing more than a vast indifference. The chapter from which this album takes its name ends with an astonishing tirade against the coarse manipulation of popular opinion by seeded minorities – religious and secular – and the submission to their will of the craven majority, whose servile obedience, hypocritical acquiescence and self-serving spinelessness is apparently boundless. Twain’s bitter rant – withering satire worthy of Phil Ochs or Randy Newman – has an obvious contemporary relevance to post 9/11 America, the rise of the religious right and a ‘war on terror’ inspired by a conniving cabal whose greed was disguised as patriotism, all opposition to their calamitous adventure denounced as treasonous betrayal. The public’s complicity in all this would have been sad confirmation for Twain of their disastrous gullibility, not much having apparently changed in the 100 years since he wrote The Mysterious Stranger. That book’s eternal pessimism gusts like a cold hard wind through Yonder Is The Clock, which occupies an allegorical landscape as vividly imagined as the world described by Dylan on John Wesley Harding, that dusty bowl of cruel despair, bad things heading its way. The Felice Brothers have previously been no strangers to the raw hurt of things, the desperate scrabbling of the bereft and oppressed, life’s losers pinned to a wheel of pain and left to hang until their hands rot off. You think, for instance, of songs like “Rockefeller Druglaw Blues” from 2007’s Tonight At The Arizona and “Frankie’s Gun” from last year’s The Felice Brothers, which was shortlisted for the inaugural Uncut Music Award. These were grim tales of young men driven to crime by economic circumstance, songs that lent voice to a put-upon underclass with the empathetic vigour that Woody Guthrie inspired in the young Dylan. Nothing they’ve done before, however, has in this respect been as angrily sustained as it is here, on an album of growling protest and noisy rage, the picaresque adventures of The Felice Brothers replaced by harsher narrative lines. “Get the boys, turn on the show,” are the album’s opening words. In other circumstances, they may have been an instruction to strike up the band, bellowing entertainment to follow. Here, on a song called “The Big Surprise”, plaintive piano, dolorous bass and drums that sound like someone trying to knock down a wall fall in behind Ian Felice’s weary vocal lead, the group sounding as forlorn as the orchestra on the Titanic, the ship of state The Felice Brothers have been sailing on now listing fatally beneath them, going down with all hands. The track’s eventually exclamatory tone, its forecast of a hard rain coming, is repeatedly echoed on the album, with an accumulative sense of impending calamity reminiscent of “Love And Theft”’s “High Water (For Charley Patton)” or an old blues holler like “When The Levee Breaks” (one of the album’s highlights actually is an old blues holler, a raucous version of Elder Curry’s “Memphis Flu”, a fire-and-brimstone musical sermon about the 1928 influenza pandemic in the South). The Felice Brothers have previously invited comparisons with The Band, as much for the way they have sometimes looked, as on the cover of Tonight At The Arizona, as for the music they’ve played, which has sometimes recalled Music From Big Pink and The Band. The Band’s influence, which has at times been overstated to the cost of their own unique songwriting talent, is not as immediately apparent here as it was on The Felice Brothers. Key tracks like the wracked waltz of “Buried In Ice”, the eerie, slowly unfolding “Ambulance Man” and whispered lament of “Sailor Song”, for instance, are reminiscent with their woozy, weird clatterings and off-kilter instrumental voicings, of the Tom Waits of Mule Variations. When The Band are recalled here, it’s not so much the breezy folk and bucolic country of The Basement Tapes that come to mind. “Chicken Wire” and the hugely combustible “Run Chicken Run” are broadly redolent of the loud bracing roar The Band made with Dylan at the January 1968 Tribute To Woody Guthrie concert at Carnegie Hall, when they rocked the joint with raucous versions of “Dear Mrs Roosevelt”, “The Grand Coulee Dam” and “I Ain’t Got No Home”. The latter, especially, would not be out of place here alongside the rowdy, gospel hoe-down of “Penn Station”, where much stomping of feet, rasping harmonica, Cajun fiddle and massed voices hint at the demented exuberance and hysteria of a revivalist church meeting, someone doing stuff with snakes and people talking in tongues. The bruised heart of Yonder Is The Clock is probably located in four long ballads. The yearning “Katie Dear” is a musical letter home, ostensibly from someone serving time, although it could as easily be a letter to loved ones from a US soldier, sent down the years from anywhere from Valley Forge to Fallujah. “All When We Were Young”, meanwhile, evokes a childhood destroyed by war, the singer’s home-town, which could be Boston or Basra, destroyed by a downpour of bombs, the final minute or so of which is tearfully beautiful. Elsewhere, “Boy From Lawrence County” is about people who kill for money, in this case the bounty for Jesse James, that even friends of the outlaw are tempted by. Even better is the seven-minute “Cooperstown”, a hymn to a vanished America that finds a sad echo in the closing requiem of “Rise And Shine”, the record’s closing track. As a State of the Union address, this bold and often brilliant record is less inclined towards optimism than, say, Springsteen’s admirable Working On A Dream. Despite the coming of Obama, the record predicts that for many the years ahead will continue to be bleak, to which extent it shares the same concerns for America’s vulnerable sub-classes expressed on parts of Neil Young’s new Fork In The Road, and, from what you hear, the imminent new Dylan album, Neil and Bob among the elite company The Felice Brothers may yet increasingly keep. ALLAN JONES For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

The Felice Brothers have aptly taken the title of their new LP from a line in The Mysterious Stranger, a post-humously published novella by great American writer Mark Twain, author also of The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, classics both of a literary Americana as evocative of a glimmering mythic past as anything you’ll find on Harry Smith’s Anthology Of American Folk Music, that repository of “the old, weird America”, or, for that matter, The Basement Tapes.

The Mysterious Stranger, in contrast to those fabulist confections featuring Tom and Huck, was a bleak satire about mankind’s general wretchedness, wholly unsparing. In it, the Young Satan, nephew, apparently, of the senior Satan of Biblical disrepute, is an angel come to earth to reveal to his gathered acolytes that life is meaningless, their God nothing more than a vast indifference. The chapter from which this album takes its name ends with an astonishing tirade against the coarse manipulation of popular opinion by seeded minorities – religious and secular – and the submission to their will of the craven majority, whose servile obedience, hypocritical acquiescence and self-serving spinelessness is apparently boundless.

Twain’s bitter rant – withering satire worthy of Phil Ochs or Randy Newman – has an obvious contemporary relevance to post 9/11 America, the rise of the religious right and a ‘war on terror’ inspired by a conniving cabal whose greed was disguised as patriotism, all opposition to their calamitous adventure denounced as treasonous betrayal. The public’s complicity in all this would have been sad confirmation for Twain of their disastrous gullibility, not much having apparently changed in the 100 years since he wrote The Mysterious Stranger.

That book’s eternal pessimism gusts like a cold hard wind through Yonder Is The Clock, which occupies an allegorical landscape as vividly imagined as the world described by Dylan on John Wesley Harding, that dusty bowl of cruel despair, bad things heading its way. The Felice Brothers have previously been no strangers to the raw hurt of things, the desperate scrabbling of the bereft and oppressed, life’s losers pinned to a wheel of pain and left to hang until their hands rot off. You think, for instance, of songs like “Rockefeller Druglaw Blues” from 2007’s Tonight At The Arizona and “Frankie’s Gun” from last year’s The Felice Brothers, which was shortlisted for the inaugural Uncut Music Award. These were grim tales of young men driven to crime by economic circumstance, songs that lent voice to a put-upon underclass with the empathetic vigour that Woody Guthrie inspired in the young Dylan. Nothing they’ve done before, however, has in this respect been as angrily sustained as it is here, on an album of growling protest and noisy rage, the picaresque adventures of The Felice Brothers replaced by harsher narrative lines.

“Get the boys, turn on the show,” are the album’s opening words. In other circumstances, they may have been an instruction to strike up the band, bellowing entertainment to follow. Here, on a song called “The Big Surprise”, plaintive piano, dolorous bass and drums that sound like someone trying to knock down a wall fall in behind Ian Felice’s weary vocal lead, the group sounding as forlorn as the orchestra on the Titanic, the ship of state The Felice Brothers have been sailing on now listing fatally beneath them, going down with all hands. The track’s eventually exclamatory tone, its forecast of a hard rain coming, is repeatedly echoed on the album, with an accumulative sense of impending calamity reminiscent of “Love And Theft”’s “High Water (For Charley Patton)” or an old blues holler like “When The Levee Breaks” (one of the album’s highlights actually is an old blues holler, a raucous version of Elder Curry’s “Memphis Flu”, a fire-and-brimstone musical sermon about the 1928 influenza pandemic in the South).

The Felice Brothers have previously invited comparisons with The Band, as much for the way they have sometimes looked, as on the cover of Tonight At The Arizona, as for the music they’ve played, which has sometimes recalled Music From Big Pink and The Band. The Band’s influence, which has at times been overstated to the cost of their own unique songwriting talent, is not as immediately apparent here as it was on The Felice Brothers. Key tracks like the wracked waltz of “Buried In Ice”, the eerie, slowly unfolding “Ambulance Man” and whispered lament of “Sailor Song”, for instance, are reminiscent with their woozy, weird clatterings and off-kilter instrumental voicings, of the Tom Waits of Mule Variations.

When The Band are recalled here, it’s not so much the breezy folk and bucolic country of The Basement Tapes that come to mind. “Chicken Wire” and the hugely combustible “Run Chicken Run” are broadly redolent of the loud bracing roar The Band made with Dylan at the January 1968 Tribute To Woody Guthrie concert at Carnegie Hall, when they rocked the joint with raucous versions of “Dear Mrs Roosevelt”, “The Grand Coulee Dam” and “I Ain’t Got No Home”. The latter, especially, would not be out of place here alongside the rowdy, gospel hoe-down of “Penn Station”, where much stomping of feet, rasping harmonica, Cajun fiddle and massed voices hint at the demented exuberance and hysteria of a revivalist church meeting, someone doing stuff with snakes and people talking in tongues.

The bruised heart of Yonder Is The Clock is probably located in four long ballads. The yearning “Katie Dear” is a musical letter home, ostensibly from someone serving time, although it could as easily be a letter to loved ones from a US soldier, sent down the years from anywhere from Valley Forge to Fallujah. “All When We Were Young”, meanwhile, evokes a childhood destroyed by war, the singer’s home-town, which could be Boston or Basra, destroyed by a downpour of bombs, the final minute or so of which is tearfully beautiful. Elsewhere, “Boy From Lawrence County” is about people who kill for money, in this case the bounty for Jesse James, that even friends of the outlaw are tempted by. Even better is the seven-minute “Cooperstown”, a hymn to a vanished America that finds a sad echo in the closing requiem of “Rise And Shine”, the record’s closing track.

As a State of the Union address, this bold and often brilliant record is less inclined towards optimism than, say, Springsteen’s admirable Working On A Dream. Despite the coming of Obama, the record predicts that for many the years ahead will continue to be bleak, to which extent it shares the same concerns for America’s vulnerable sub-classes expressed on parts of Neil Young’s new Fork In The Road, and, from what you hear, the imminent new Dylan album, Neil and Bob among the elite company The Felice Brothers may yet increasingly keep.

ALLAN JONES

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

Monks – Black Monk Time

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Monks – Black Monk Time

The story of the Monks has been told before, but it certainly bears repeating. In the early ’60s five bored American GIs living on an army base in a small town near Frankfurt formed a rock’n’roll covers band, The 5 Torquays, spending most of their period of service playing local bars as part of a US Army-sponsored PR outreach exercise. The Torquays’ residency in a Stuttgart dive led to an encounter with two young ad execs – Karl Remy and Walther Niemann – who were as much interested in Dadaism as product packaging. Taking on management of the group, Remy and Niemann made them over as the “anti-Beatles”, crafting an image and set of songs that were both overtly aggressive and almost autistic in their primitivism. Potential band names give a clue to the kind of feel that they were going for, but Molten Lead and Heavy Shoes were ditched in favour of the Monks, leading inevitably to a change of image. Yes, the band dressed as monks both onstage and off – in a time when most musicians’ hair was resting luxuriantly on their paisley collars, the Monks shaved tonsures into their army buzzcuts, topping off their matching black uniforms and white instruments with neckties made from nooses. The latter, incidentally, were intended to be symbolic of the metaphorical noose that all humanity wears. In line with their distinctive image, the Monks’ music was wildly out of step with the fashions of the time. Quite apart from singing songs about hate, paranoia, self doubt, James Bond and the madness of Vietnam, they also used feedback as a weapon, but delivered their songs with fixed grins when they played at Hamburg’s Star and Top Ten clubs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this approach was not exactly one built for long-term success – the chorus to their debut single for Polydor ran “Complication! CONSTIPATION!”, while at one gig an enraged crowd member clambered onstage and tried to throttle guitarist Gary Burger. When the Monks split in 1967, they had one album, a couple of singles and little more than local fame in pockets of Northern Germany to live off. But somehow the Monks’ rallying cry (“I’m a monk, you’re a monk, we’re ALL monks!”) resonated. The song about constipation was included on the Nuggets boxset, while the patronage of fans like Mark E Smith (The Fall have covered several Monks songs), Jello Biafra, Jack White and Henry Rollins (who first reissued Black Monk Time in 1994 on his own label) led to a tribute album, documentary film and a series of fanatically received reunion gigs. Now their album is re-released in the kind of deluxe packaging normally afforded to big-selling records of the period, and comes accompanied by a compilation of unreleased demos. Most excitingly, there’s really nothing that can dull the impact of hearing the Monks’ music for the first time. When they played live they emphasised their group unity by standing in a row at the front of the stage, centred around the pulpit that housed Larry Clark’s organ. Accordingly, there are no solos on Monks songs. Instead everything is as loud as everything else: feedback, martial drums, fuzz bass and an overamped banjo that sounds like the forked end of a crowbar being scratched on sheet metal. It’s industrial music – melody is replaced by brevity and the kind of emphasis on repetition that saw them fêted by the later Krautrock bands, while the vocals sound nothing less than strangulated. Frenetic opener “Monk Chant” features a genuinely deranged stream of consciousness rant (“Stop it! Stop it! I don’t like it! It’s too loud for my ears!”) that has parallels in the Sex Pistols’ version of “Johnny B. Goode” (“Stop it! It’s fuckin’ awful!”), but is really like nothing much before or since. A handful of groups found something approximating the Monks’ sound a couple of years later – but most of them arrived at it through an interest in avant-garde classical music. For the Monks, this was pure instinct, which is the root of their genius. Black Monk Time is 43 years old. The best compliment we can give this surreal record is that it’s as perplexing and invigorating now as it must have been in 1966. Maybe even more so. Uncut Q&A with Gary Burger: You were signed to Polydor. How did they treat you? Our labelmates were people like Bert Kaempfert, but our producer was an absolute jewel of a man. We trusted what he was trying to do. Black Monk Time is exactly what the Monks sounded like live. No overdubbing. Very energetic, very precise and, of course, very loud. You must’ve provoked a pretty extreme reaction… One time we were playing in South Germany and this strapping fellow jumped on stage and proceeded to strangle me. I bashed him on the head with my guitar and the security people grabbed him and tossed him out. But usually I saw puzzlement in the audiences. They were wondering how to dance to this strange music. But we had dedicated fans who would show up in black.A few even shaved their heads… How famous were you at the time? We had a wonderful time playing rock’n’roll in Germany. The Beatles had just had their day in Hamburg and now it was the turn of the Monks. The kids loved us, and as for what the older generations thought of us, well, who cares? We all suspected that we were years ahead of our time but we didn’t know that it would be 30-plus years before the Monks became legend. PAT LONG For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

The story of the Monks has been told before, but it certainly bears repeating. In the early ’60s five bored American GIs living on an army base in a small town near Frankfurt formed a rock’n’roll covers band, The 5 Torquays, spending most of their period of service playing local bars as part of a US Army-sponsored PR outreach exercise.

The Torquays’ residency in a Stuttgart dive led to an encounter with two young ad execs – Karl Remy and Walther Niemann – who were as much interested in Dadaism as product packaging. Taking on management of the group, Remy and Niemann made them over as the “anti-Beatles”, crafting an image and set of songs that were both overtly aggressive and almost autistic in their primitivism.

Potential band names give a clue to the kind of feel that they were going for, but Molten Lead and Heavy Shoes were ditched in favour of the Monks, leading inevitably to a change of image. Yes, the band dressed as monks both onstage and off – in a time when most musicians’ hair was resting luxuriantly on their paisley collars, the Monks shaved tonsures into their army buzzcuts, topping off their matching black uniforms and white instruments with neckties made from nooses. The latter, incidentally, were intended to be symbolic of the metaphorical noose that all humanity wears.

In line with their distinctive image, the Monks’ music was wildly out of step with the fashions of the time. Quite apart from singing songs about hate, paranoia, self doubt, James Bond and the madness of Vietnam, they also used feedback as a weapon, but delivered their songs with fixed grins when they played at Hamburg’s Star and Top Ten clubs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this approach was not exactly one built for long-term success – the chorus to their debut single for Polydor ran “Complication! CONSTIPATION!”, while at one gig an enraged crowd member clambered onstage and tried to throttle guitarist Gary Burger. When the Monks split in 1967, they had one album, a couple of singles and little more than local fame in pockets of Northern Germany to live off.

But somehow the Monks’ rallying cry (“I’m a monk, you’re a monk, we’re ALL monks!”) resonated. The song about constipation was included on the Nuggets boxset, while the patronage of fans like Mark E Smith (The Fall have covered several Monks songs), Jello Biafra, Jack White and Henry Rollins (who first reissued Black Monk Time in 1994 on his own label) led to a tribute album, documentary film and a series of fanatically received reunion gigs. Now their album is re-released in the kind of deluxe packaging normally afforded to big-selling records of the period, and comes accompanied by a compilation of unreleased demos.

Most excitingly, there’s really nothing that can dull the impact of hearing the Monks’ music for the first time. When they played live they emphasised their group unity by standing in a row at the front of the stage, centred around the pulpit that housed Larry Clark’s organ. Accordingly, there are no solos on Monks songs. Instead everything is as loud as everything else: feedback, martial drums, fuzz bass and an overamped banjo that sounds like the forked end of a crowbar being scratched on sheet metal. It’s industrial music – melody is replaced by brevity and the kind of emphasis on repetition that saw them fêted by the later Krautrock bands, while the vocals sound nothing less than strangulated. Frenetic opener “Monk Chant” features a genuinely deranged stream of consciousness rant (“Stop it! Stop it! I don’t like it! It’s too loud for my ears!”) that has parallels in the Sex Pistols’ version of “Johnny B. Goode” (“Stop it! It’s fuckin’ awful!”), but is really like nothing much before or since. A handful of groups found something approximating the Monks’ sound a couple of years later – but most of them arrived at it through an interest in avant-garde classical music. For the Monks, this was pure instinct, which is the root of their genius.

Black Monk Time is 43 years old. The best compliment we can give this surreal record is that it’s as perplexing and invigorating now as it must have been in 1966. Maybe even more so.

Uncut Q&A with Gary Burger:

You were signed to Polydor. How did they treat you?

Our labelmates were people like Bert Kaempfert, but our producer was an absolute jewel of a man. We trusted what he was trying to do. Black Monk Time is exactly what the Monks sounded like live. No overdubbing. Very energetic, very precise and, of course, very loud.

You must’ve provoked a pretty extreme reaction…

One time we were playing in South Germany and this strapping fellow jumped on stage and proceeded to strangle me. I bashed him on the head with my guitar and the security people grabbed him and tossed him out. But usually I saw puzzlement in the audiences. They were wondering how to dance to this strange music. But we had dedicated fans who would show up in black.A few even shaved their heads…

How famous were you at the time?

We had a wonderful time playing rock’n’roll in Germany. The Beatles had just had their day in Hamburg and now it was the turn of the Monks. The kids loved us, and as for what the older generations thought of us, well, who cares? We all suspected that we were years ahead of our time but we didn’t know that it would be 30-plus years before the Monks became legend.

PAT LONG

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

Booker T – Potato Hole

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Booker T – Potato Hole

Were one to extract the names of various disparate musicians at random from a hat, it would be difficult to come up with a less likely sounding collaboration than this. Booker T Jones, frontman of the MG’s, dormant as a solo artist for more than 15 years, has now reappeared, and is backed by the Drive-By Truckers and Neil Young. On closer examination, the enterprise seems a little less peculiar. Booker T & The MG’s served as Young’s backing band on 2002’s Are You Passionate?. The Drive-By Truckers also have form as hired help, having fallen in behind Bettye LaVette for 2007’s terrific Scene Of The Crime. The circle is strengthened further by the coincidence of Booker T & The MG’s’ 2008 induction into the Rock’N’Roll Hall of Fame with that of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section – the legendary ’60s and ’70s Alabama studio ensemble in which David Hood, father of the DBTs’ Patterson Hood, played bass. Diverting though the charting of the personnel is, their collective record (and collective records) would only amount to a vertiginous slide into the damp mud of disappointment were the music they conjured less than magical. Happily, Potato Hole proves as extraordinary, delirious and laugh-out-loud weird as anyone might dare hope. Of the 10 tracks it contains, seven are new Booker T compositions, three covers (one each from OutKast, Tom Waits and DBTs themselves). All are instrumentals. The key, as ever where Booker T is concerned, is to understand and appreciate his distinctive electric piano as the voice. Everybody reading this will know that voice, almost as surely as they know Lennon’s or Dylan’s. Though Booker T’s keyboard is best known for 1962 floor-filler “Green Onions” and (in the UK) from the theme for Test Match Special (originally recorded as “Soul Limbo”), it has been a constant presence in the rock’n’roll firmament, whether beneath Booker T’s own dextrous fingers (as the house band for Stax records, the MG’s played on records by Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, among others) or those he influenced (perhaps most obviously, The Doors’ Ray Manzarek). Fittingly, that sound – that big, nervy, chowa-chowa Hammond – is the first thing heard on Potato Hole, cueing up “Pound It Out”, in which Booker T riffs insouciantly against metal guitar powerchords. It could be the theme for a 1980s detective series. All great bands are that ineffable bit more than the sum of their parts, and that is happily true of Booker T’s makeshift backing ensemble here. The DBTs’ easy way with a Stonesy groove perfectly suits “She Breaks” and “Warped Sister”, and Young’s gruff soloing tops the deadpan surf boogie of “Native New Yorker” with startling but spectacular congruity. While all of Booker T’s compositions are instantly memorable – some feat when cutting out the voice and the lyric, and one that says much about the man’s skill as a pop arranger – it’s the brilliantly cast cover versions that are the best arguments for buying this. Tom Waits’ “Get Behind The Mule” is gently faithful, all clattering drums and guitars prowling like an alley mugger behind Booker T’s playful playing. The DBTs’ own “Space City”, though shorn of Mike Cooley’s original words, sounds no less an exquisite elegy to heartbreak. And you absolutely do not want to be friends with anyone capable of suppressing a yard-wide grin for the entirety of this supergroup’s version of “Hey Ya”. A joy all the more thrilling for being so unlikely, so unexpected, and so long in coming. It must be heartily hoped that all concern reconvene, and soon. UNCUT Q&A Booker T Jones: How did you settle on the Drive-By Truckers as your backing band? I’d listened to some of their albums, and I’ve known Patterson’s dad for a long time, of course. We have a lot of the same influences – Lynyrd Skynyrd, Neil Young, all the Southern influences. How long had you been writing these songs? I started in March 2007. I’d had some of the ideas for a while, but hadn’t put anything on tape. I wrote these songs on guitar. I’d sit in the studio, holding a thought in mind, and some type of mental picture would appear. You’ve chosen three great songs to cover. How many others did you consider? A lot of people were considering songs. We made the final decision by going on instinct at the last minute. Actually, we did quite a lot of the album that way. I just listened to my feeling, and went in that direction. What was the recording like? We did everything live, and it was recorded quite quickly, four or five days, and then I recorded Neil’s parts with him in San Francisco later. Neil plays all the lead parts. I played a little rhythm guitar and a little acoustic guitar. Do you give someone like Neil Young directions? When he asked, I gave him directions, and he did ask a number of times. But mostly, I left him alone… ANDREW MUELLER For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

Were one to extract the names of various disparate musicians at random from a hat, it would be difficult to come up with a less likely sounding collaboration than this. Booker T Jones, frontman of the MG’s, dormant as a solo artist for more than 15 years, has now reappeared, and is backed by the Drive-By Truckers and Neil Young. On closer examination, the enterprise seems a little less peculiar. Booker T & The MG’s served as Young’s backing band on 2002’s Are You Passionate?. The Drive-By Truckers also have form as hired help, having fallen in behind Bettye LaVette for 2007’s terrific Scene Of The Crime.

The circle is strengthened further by the coincidence of Booker T & The MG’s’ 2008 induction into the Rock’N’Roll Hall of Fame with that of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section – the legendary ’60s and ’70s Alabama studio ensemble in which David Hood, father of the DBTs’ Patterson Hood, played bass.

Diverting though the charting of the personnel is, their collective record (and collective records) would only amount to a vertiginous slide into the damp mud of disappointment were the music they conjured less than magical. Happily, Potato Hole proves as extraordinary, delirious and laugh-out-loud weird as anyone might dare hope. Of the 10 tracks it contains, seven are new Booker T compositions, three covers (one each from OutKast, Tom Waits and DBTs themselves). All are instrumentals. The key, as ever where Booker T is concerned, is to understand and appreciate his distinctive electric piano as the voice.

Everybody reading this will know that voice, almost as surely as they know Lennon’s or Dylan’s. Though Booker T’s keyboard is best known for 1962 floor-filler “Green Onions” and (in the UK) from the theme for Test Match Special (originally recorded as “Soul Limbo”), it has been a constant presence in the rock’n’roll firmament, whether beneath Booker T’s own dextrous fingers (as the house band for Stax records, the MG’s played on records by Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, among others) or those he influenced (perhaps most obviously, The Doors’ Ray Manzarek). Fittingly, that sound – that big, nervy, chowa-chowa Hammond – is the first thing heard on Potato Hole, cueing up “Pound It Out”, in which Booker T riffs insouciantly against metal guitar powerchords. It could be the theme for a 1980s detective series.

All great bands are that ineffable bit more than the sum of their parts, and that is happily true of Booker T’s makeshift backing ensemble here. The DBTs’ easy way with a Stonesy groove perfectly suits “She Breaks” and “Warped Sister”, and Young’s gruff soloing tops the deadpan surf boogie of “Native New Yorker” with startling but spectacular congruity. While all of Booker T’s compositions are instantly memorable – some feat when cutting out the voice and the lyric, and one that says much about the man’s skill as a pop arranger – it’s the brilliantly cast cover versions that are the best arguments for buying this. Tom Waits’ “Get Behind The Mule” is gently faithful, all clattering drums and guitars prowling like an alley mugger behind Booker T’s playful playing. The DBTs’ own “Space City”, though shorn of Mike Cooley’s original words, sounds no less an exquisite elegy to heartbreak. And you absolutely do not want to be friends with anyone capable of suppressing a yard-wide grin for the entirety of this supergroup’s version of “Hey Ya”.

A joy all the more thrilling for being so unlikely, so unexpected, and so long in coming. It must be heartily hoped that all concern reconvene, and soon.

UNCUT Q&A Booker T Jones:

How did you settle on the Drive-By Truckers as your backing band?

I’d listened to some of their albums, and I’ve known Patterson’s dad for a long time, of course. We have a lot of the same influences – Lynyrd Skynyrd, Neil Young, all the Southern influences.

How long had you been writing these songs?

I started in March 2007. I’d had some of the ideas for a while, but hadn’t put anything on tape. I wrote these songs on guitar. I’d sit in the studio, holding a thought in mind, and some type of mental picture would appear.

You’ve chosen three great songs to cover. How many others did you consider?

A lot of people were considering songs. We made the final decision by going on instinct at the last minute. Actually, we did quite a lot of the album that way. I just listened to my feeling, and went in that direction.

What was the recording like?

We did everything live, and it was recorded quite quickly, four or five days, and then I recorded Neil’s parts with him in San Francisco later. Neil plays all the lead parts. I played a little rhythm guitar and a little acoustic guitar.

Do you give someone like Neil Young directions?

When he asked, I gave him directions, and he did ask a number of times. But mostly, I left him alone…

ANDREW MUELLER

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

A Whiter Shade Of Pale Is Most Played Song In Public

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A Whiter Shade Of Pale Is Most Played Song In Public
Procol Harum's 1967 No. 1 hit "A Whiter Shade of Pale" has been named the most played song in public in the past 75 years, topping a new chart compiled for Radio 2. Queen came in at two with "Bohemian Rhapsody" and at No. 3 is The Everly Brothers' "All I Have To Do Is Dream". Although The Beatles ...

Procol Harum‘s 1967 No. 1 hit “A Whiter Shade of Pale” has been named the most played song in public in the past 75 years, topping a new chart compiled for Radio 2.

Queen came in at two with “Bohemian Rhapsody” and at No. 3 is The Everly Brothers’ “All I Have To Do Is Dream”.

Although The Beatles don’t feature in the Top 10, they do have three songs on the chart; “Hello Goodbye” (11), “Get Back” (13)and “From Me To You” (51).

Former Take That singer Robbie Williams matches The Beatles for most number of entries, also getting three.

The 100 tracks chart was compiled based on licensing firm PPL.

The Top 10 most played songs are:

1. Procol Harum – A Whiter Shade Of Pale

2. Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody

3. Everly Brothers – All I Have To Do Is Dream

4. Wet Wet Wet – Love Is All Around

5. Bryan Adams – (Everything I Do) I Do It For You

6. Robbie Williams – Angels

7. Elvis Presley – All Shook Up

8. Abba – Dancing Queen

9. Perry Como – Magic Moments

10. Bing Crosby – White Christmas

For more music and film news click here

Nine Inch Nails And Jane’s Addiction To Play UK Shows

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Nine Inch Nails And Jane’s Addiction To Play UK Shows
Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction are set to join-up for two shows in London and Manchester this July. The double-headline shows by the alt.rockers will take place after they share a stage at this year's T In The Park festival on July 11. The newly announced shows are: Manchester MEN Arena (Ju...

Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction are set to join-up for two shows in London and Manchester this July.

The double-headline shows by the alt.rockers will take place after they share a stage at this year’s T In The Park festival on July 11.

The newly announced shows are:

Manchester MEN Arena (July 14)

London O2 Arena (15)

For more music and film news click here

Phil Spector Found Guilty Over Death Of Lana Clarkson

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Phil Spector Found Guilty Over Death Of Lana Clarkson

Legendary music producer Phil Spector has been found guilty of second-degree murder, as the trial over the murder of actress Lana Clarkson concluded after five months yesterday (April 13). Spector has been convicted of shooting Clarkson at his Los Angeles home on February 3, 2003, by a unanimous jury who took 30 hours to come to their verdict. A previous court case for the same shooting ended in a mistrial when the jury were deadlocked 10-2 in favour of conviction. Spector chose not to give any evidence in the trial at the Los Angeles courtcase and showed 'no emotion' as the verdict was read out, accoring to the Associated Press report. Spector will remain in jail until sentencing on May 29, when he could face from 15 years to life in prison for second-degree murder. Spector who pioneered the Wall of Sound technique in the 60s was also responsible for producing hits such as The Ronettes "Be My Baby" and The Righteous Brothers "You've Lost That Loving Feeling." For more music and film news click here Pic credit: PA Photos

Legendary music producer Phil Spector has been found guilty of second-degree murder, as the trial over the murder of actress Lana Clarkson concluded after five months yesterday (April 13).

Spector has been convicted of shooting Clarkson at his Los Angeles home on February 3, 2003, by a unanimous jury who took 30 hours to come to their verdict.

A previous court case for the same shooting ended in a mistrial when the jury were deadlocked 10-2 in favour of conviction.

Spector chose not to give any evidence in the trial at the Los Angeles courtcase and showed ‘no emotion’ as the verdict was read out, accoring to the Associated Press report.

Spector will remain in jail until sentencing on May 29, when he could face from 15 years to life in prison for second-degree murder.

Spector who pioneered the Wall of Sound technique in the 60s was also responsible for producing hits such as The Ronettes “Be My Baby” and The Righteous Brothers “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.”

For more music and film news click here

Pic credit: PA Photos

The Field: “Yesterday And Today”

John Mulvey
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When I was writing about the Lindstrom & Prins Thomas album a while back, I mentioned there was more Scandinavian electronic goodness forthcoming from The Field. “Yesterday And Today” is Axel Willner’s second album in this guise and, risking one of those winsome climatic references, it works great walking to work on a bright spring morning like this one. Lumping The Field and Lindstrom & Prins Thomas together is a bit lazy, of course – perhaps a result of me not writing about techno that regularly here. There are occasional vague affinities: “Sequenced” on “Yesterday And Today” has a certain kosmische gleam to it which you can also detect on the new Lindstrom & Prins Thomas. But whereas that duo tend towards a sort of euphoric noodle, The Field’s music is predominantly tidal, gauzy, rich and linear. At times, you could just about align Willner’s music with that dubious neo-shoegazing school of electronica, epitomised by people like Ulrich Schnauss, that I’m always so suspicious of. There’s a vocal loop in “The More That I Do” that could conceivably be sampled from the Cocteau Twins, for instance, but its aligned to a fiercely propulsive rhythm. Mostly, this is aestheticised dance music rather than ethereal whimsy, both transporting and meaty. “I Have The Moon, You Have The Internet” opens the album, and has a sort of rippling, saturated quality which reminds me of how M83 are often described, but rarely sound to me. “Leave It”, meanwhile, is 11 and a half minutes of what, in more innocent times, we might’ve called ambient trance, with twinkling bells that evoke Glastonbury dawns of the early ‘90s, Megadogs, and various other events which have long lost their hipster cachet. Sounds great, nevertheless. Even Willner’s soppiest conceits are successful. A cover of The Korgis’ “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime” is initially glitchy and gaseous, a Kompakt relative of 10cc's “I’m Not In Love”, before the frail vocals and soft-focus edits are overwhelmed by vast synth waves. Epically pretty, virtually to the point of absurdity, but still compelling. At the other extreme, once the necessary whooshing is done with, the title track ends up as a comparatively tough breakbeat workout, with Dan Enquist on bass and the mighty John Stanier from Battles behind the kit. Maybe that’s the greatest strength of “Yesterday And Today”: whenever there’s a danger of everything becoming too fluffy, Willner remembers to hit the gas.

When I was writing about the Lindstrom & Prins Thomas album a while back, I mentioned there was more Scandinavian electronic goodness forthcoming from The Field. “Yesterday And Today” is Axel Willner’s second album in this guise and, risking one of those winsome climatic references, it works great walking to work on a bright spring morning like this one.

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Happy Mondays Shaun Ryder To Answer YOUR Questions!

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Happy Mondays Shaun Ryder To Answer YOUR Questions!

The legend that is Happy Mondays frontman Shaun William Ryder is soon to face a grilling for Uncut's regular feature An Audience With... - and, accordingly, we’re after your questions. So, what could you possibly want to ask the man once known mysterious as X..? Was he really once a postman? What’s the most money he’s ever spent in a night out? Any more computer game voice overs in the works? Is he jealous of Bez winning Celebrity Big Brother? Send your questions to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com by Thursday, April 16. The best questions, and Ryder's answers will be published in a future edition of Uncut. For more music and film news click here

The legend that is Happy Mondays frontman Shaun William Ryder is soon to face a grilling for Uncut’s regular feature An Audience With… – and, accordingly, we’re after your questions.

So, what could you possibly want to ask the man once known mysterious as X..?

Was he really once a postman?

What’s the most money he’s ever spent in a night out?

Any more computer game voice overs in the works?

Is he jealous of Bez winning Celebrity Big Brother?

Send your questions to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com by Thursday, April 16.

The best questions, and Ryder’s answers will be published in a future edition of Uncut.

For more music and film news click here

Rourke? Ryder? Basinger? Welcome to the 1980s. Again

Michael Bonner
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0

In one of the best scenes in The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke's Randy and Marisa Tomei's Cassidy are propping up a bar, discussing the generally woeful state of modern music. They concur that Guns N' Roses, Motley Crue and Def Leppard set the bar astronomically high back in the day and, grumpy spoilsport that he was, "that Cobain pussy" pretty much ruined it all. The Nineties "sucked". And the Eighties? "Man, best shit ever!" Of course, a lot of what makes this scene particularly funny is how we're viewing it through the prism of Rourke as he is now, as opposed to how he was then, at his peak, in the same time period Randy is praising so effusively. More broadly, it also says much about how people develop a critic-proof love for the music that soundtracked their youth, when they were young, virile and carefree. For Hollywood, the Eighties has always been a Year Zero. It was the era of the high concept movie, a model that still governs today's blockbuster industry. It was also the decade where most of cinema’s biggest names found their mark: Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy, Johnny Depp. If any further proof were needed that the Eighties were Where It's At as far as the movies are concerned, look no further than The Expendables: an action caper that stars Sylvester Stallone, Mickey Rourke (again), Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts and Arnold Schwarzenegger (sadly, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kurt Russell turned it down). Quite whether The Expendables will be full of knowing winks-to-camera and heavy doses of irony, it's too early to tell (though, according to some pictures online this week, Sly's certainly gone overboard to pump up for the shoot). But one thing is certain, Hollywood likes the Eighties. Although, it's harder to tell what they think of Bret Easton Ellis' version of the Eighties. Ellis has already had films made of three of his Eighties-set books – Less Than Zero, The Rules Of Attraction and American Psycho. None of which, particularly, have been huge smashes; while preferring to touch on certain dark truths about Eighties’ America (the cocaine, the suits, the egos, the dreadful music), they’ve never come with the rosy-nostalgia that Hollywood likes to employ when looking back at the Eighties. The latest Ellis adaptation to come to the cinemas, The Informers, is based on a collection of loosely connected short stories. They were originally published in 1994, around a decade after Ellis wrote them, as an exigency because his next planned novel, Glamorama, was way behind schedule. As per Ellis, it's full of hardbodies, drug addicts, vampires, rock stars and other habitues of Ellis' shadow Los Angeles. It's now been made into a film – hey, that's why we're here – but what seems so interesting is how it's apparently provided a rehabilitation facility for several of (at time of filming) Hollywood's Least Wanted. What’s important to remember is that the film finished shooting in December, 2007. This was when one of its stars, Mickey Rourke, still figured he'd probably only be invited to attend awards ceremonies if he was first presented with a pair of rubber gloves and shown the way to the kitchen, a bowl full of soapy water and a pile of dirty dishes. It also stars Kim Basinger, who hasn't really made anything of significance since 1997’s LA Confidential. And then there's Winona Ryder. I admit, at this point, that the bit at the end of Edward Scissorhands when a heavily aged Winona tells her grandson that, in fact, Edward is alive and well and living in secret in the castle and the only reason it snows is because he's making beautiful ice carvings of her as she was in her youth can, on a bad day, reduce me to something close to tears. Snuffles, at least. All the same, it's with a hard heart that I say that the last time she hit the headlines was in 2001, when she was arrested for shoplifting. Still, it’s these three who pretty much topline The Informers. Here’s the trailer. Tell me what you think. [youtube]cj2e6D-SjkQ[/youtube]

In one of the best scenes in The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke’s Randy and Marisa Tomei’s Cassidy are propping up a bar, discussing the generally woeful state of modern music. They concur that Guns N’ Roses, Motley Crue and Def Leppard set the bar astronomically high back in the day and, grumpy spoilsport that he was, “that Cobain pussy” pretty much ruined it all. The Nineties “sucked”. And the Eighties? “Man, best shit ever!”

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White Denim: “Fits”

John Mulvey
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0

There’s a good line from James Petralli in the biog which accompanies “Fits”, the new White Denim album. “We set the tempos high,” he says, “and set off.” Something of a simplification, but you can see what he means. Like its predecessor, “Workout Holiday”, “Fits” rushes through a lot of ideas in its 35 or so minutes. Again, it’s ostensibly the sound of a more-or-less conventional rock’n’roll band pushing the form to its limits. Not experimental, as such; more adventurous, frantic and greedy for ideas. It’d be easy for them to be self-indulgent, not least because their drummer, Josh Block, looked like one of the best I’ve seen in years when White Denim played our Club Uncut last year (they're headling our stage at The Great Escape next month, by the way). And I suppose, in the way they integrate all their riffs – including incredibly punchy and memorable pop songs like, here, “I Start To Run” and “Regina Holding Hands”- into a sort of manic jam, they are. Music business types with an eye on sensible commercial presentation will, once again, roll their eyes in despair. But for the rest of us, it makes for a thrilling ride – and, actually, an anti-indulgent one, given how quickly and ruthlessly they spit up and dispatch idea after idea after idea. To try and give some vague sense of the exhilarating gush of “Fits”, I thought I’d try and write about it, track-by-track, as it plays. Hold tight, here goes - with explosions, distorted howled chants and then “Radio Milk How Can You Stand It”, furious drums and bass runs, hardcore guitar chops, a reverberant Hendrixy solo, some kind of catchy tune over frenzied rolls, and the first reiteration of the Minutemen vibe I mentioned in that live review. Oh, and a totally incongruous reverb-heavy coda that sounds a bit like an Austin power trio trying to sound like The Isley Brothers. Next up, a big clanging psych-rocker called “All Consolation”, Petralli lost in a vortex, a trademark nagging melody pulled apart by staccato rhythms and solos. It’s amazing stuff, a sort of vandalised reorganisation of classic rock. Echoing drum space into a brassy “High Time”-era MC5 soul rocker called “Say What You Want” (cousin, maybe, of “All You Really Have To Do”), in which the wanton way they obfuscate their genius – in this case the artful smothering of Petralli’s rousing pipes – is again apparent. After a minute or so, they get bored with the mighty riff and jam off somewhere else. Two minutes in, some kind of electric sitar effect serves to push up the tempo further into some molten jazz-hardcore jam. “Hard Attack” begins, again, with a memorable riff, then speeds into manic Latino – lyrics in Spanish – territory; like, perhaps, how I always hoped the evolution from At The Drive-In into The Mars Volta might work out. Track Five, “I Start To Run”; relatively logical, hairy, funky, incredibly catchy, and this album’s “Let’s Talk About It”. There’s some odd, almost dubby punctuation here, though, that would destroy the song’s momentum if most bands were foolhardy enough to try it. Again, there’s that sense of a formal song disintegrating halfway through, only to be replaced by something more interesting. “Sex Prayer”, up next, is bassist Steve Terebecki at the controls with more dub, Black Ark organ, and chattering guitars and textures that suggest, maybe, Tortoise if they’d stayed a shade closer to their hardcore roots. Halfway through already. “Mirrored And Reversed” is at once urgent and laidback, maybe Texan motorik, or maybe space-rock Canned Heat, or something by Black Mountain, with a fantastic pulsating bassline and some weirdly bubbling boogie breaks (apologies: I hate alliteration). It fades into the distance, then fades back in again for a drilled freak-out closing passage. Worth mentioning here, the incredible discipline of this band, as well as their eclecticism: “Paint Yourself”, next, is groovy and countrified, hearty enough to be a ballad but still carried off with the usual pace and gusto. It’s beautifully accomplished. As is “I’d Have It Just The Way We Were”, a feathery and fast, jazzy waltz that, again, has something of The Isleys about it. At just over two minutes, you could get annoyed at White Denim for tossing off such great songs like this, but there’s always something interesting coming along to compensate. In this case, it’s “Everybody Somebody”, a fractious workout that sounds like – bear with me – ZZ Top playing punk-funk. I may be getting carried away now. “Regina Holding Hands” is a crystallisation of some of the – it’s all relative – mellower ideas on “Fits”, being a gorgeous blue-eyed soul tune that could/should lure a few unsuspecting pop fans into White Denim’s deeply confusing universe. Finally, “Syncn”, is rippling and soft, tender even, but still imbued with the momentum – “the tempos high” – that makes the whole album so swift and compelling. Make sense?

There’s a good line from James Petralli in the biog which accompanies “Fits”, the new White Denim album. “We set the tempos high,” he says, “and set off.”

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Radiohead Reissues – Collectors Editions

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Radiohead Reissues – Collectors Editions

Radiohead Reissues Pablo Honey 3* | The Bends 4* | OK Computer 5* *** It certainly doesn’t feel like 12 years since OK Computer, an indication of the record’s continuing power and resonance, as well as, perhaps, the inability of Radiohead’s successors to move the game forward significantly. Either way, the reissue of such a ubiquitous album hardly seems crucial right now. That is, unless you work for EMI. So far, their treatment of Radiohead’s back catalogue has resembled a jilted lover flogging their ex’s belongings on eBay, dripping bittersweet tears onto the address labels. First there was the hurriedly-assembled seven-album boxset and ridiculous USB stick. Then came the less-than-essential Best Of. More recently, EMI announced plans to re-release every Radiohead single on 12” vinyl, an exercise that will surely only serve to point up the ugliness of most of the original artwork. However, it’s harder to condemn EMI kingpin Guy Hands and company for this latest batch of reissues. The label have only done what any sane copyright holder would do and whacked out the early albums with bonus discs corralling all the b-sides, plus selected BBC Radio sessions. There are no outtakes (so that studio version of “True Love Waits” remains at large) but thankfully no superfluous remasters either. The ‘Special’ DVD editions may test your loyalty, featuring nothing more than the promo videos, a smattering of BBC TV appearances and the previously released footage from Radiohead Live At The Astoria in 1994. Otherwise, these reissues have been logically and sympathetically compiled. So to the music. 1993’s Pablo Honey isn’t as completely cack-handed as many would have you believe. It’s lumpy and uneven and often sounds like a band pulling in five different directions – but that last quality was, and occasionally remains, part of Radiohead’s appeal. “You” is blaring and overtly tricksy but, as an opener, it’s pretty ambitious – less grunge-lite, more college prog. Muse would later base an entire career on this kind of thing. “Creep”, however, still sounds like the runt of Radiohead’s litter: the over-bearing self-pity, those wheedling arpeggios… even Jonny’s clink-clunk guitar spasms signposting the chorus now feel horribly mannered. If “Creep” was released today, we’d call it emo. Radiohead would go on to release worse singles – the clunky music biz satires “Anyone Can Play Guitar” and “Pop Is Dead” are best swerved – but there are also plenty of better songs on Pablo Honey, even if they don’t seek attention so cravenly. “Vegetable”, for example, turns out to be a terrific, gnashing, power-pop smoulderer, while future obsessions with cultural alienation, suicide and TV as the opiate of the masses are all there in underrated debut single “Prove Yourself”: “Can’t afford to breathe in this town/ Nowhere to sit without a gun in my hand/ Hooked back up to the cathode ray/ I’m better off dead”. “Lurgee” may not be similarly indicative of any future direction but its diaphanous layers of Galaxie 500 guitar are enchanting all the same. Pablo Honey’s contemporaneous extra tracks are largely rubbish, save for the urgent, original version of “Prove Yourself” and a dreamy Verve-like number called “Coke Babies”. Serious Radiohead twitchers may nevertheless appreciate a session version of old On A Friday staple “Nothing Touches Me”. With hindsight, the ’90s music press analysis of a sudden epiphany occurring between Pablo Honey and The Bends seems like overstating the case. Many of the musical and lyrical themes are similar but The Bends is simply more focused, better written, less anxious and allows Thom Yorke’s voice more room. “My Iron Lung” still cleaves to that quiet-loud-quiet dynamic, but the quiet bits are menacingly serene, the loud bits genuinely delirious. “High And Dry”, “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Bullet Proof… ” witness the flourishing of a deft, restrained songwriting talent, while “Planet Telex” seamlessly introduces keyboards along with a sense of conflicted futurism that would prove the band’s rudder for a decade. Whether or not you consider The Bends to be Radiohead’s first masterpiece probably hinges on whether you think “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” is an unbearably poignant meditation on death and the devil or a bleak cod-baroque dirge. Those in the latter camp are forewarned that there are two more versions of it on the second disc, but luckily The Bends’ b-sides overall are far more rewarding than Pablo Honey’s. They appreciably improve with time: forget anything from the “My Iron Lung” EP and skip straight to “Maquiladora”, a strident Smashing Pumpkins-style stadium rocker that was unlucky not to make the album.“How Can You Be Sure?” and “Talk Show Host” find Radiohead gaining in confidence, experimenting with rhythm and texture, sounding fluid, sultry even. Which brings us to OK Computer, still so ever-present on the rock landscape. And no wonder: existential angst has never been realised with such heart-rending potency, via a collection of awesomely supple and substantial songs that haven’t worn or dated one iota. There hasn’t been a better album released in the intervening 12 years. As before, the b-sides can be interpreted as portents of the future: claustrophobic affairs bathed in digital static, the band toying with programmed beats and dubby atmospherics. “A Reminder” and “Meeting In The Aisle” are particularly dreamy (nightmarish?) and do a better job of elongating the Radiohead template than trip hop remixes by Fila Brazilia and producer Nigel Godrich’s mates Zero 7. Even more conventional songs such as “Polyethylene” and “Lull” offer fresh angles. Weirdly, however, the live and session tracks chosen for inclusion here sound a little lethargic. It’s a shame that EMI weren’t able to secure footage of the legendary 1997 Glastonbury performance, widely regarded as the moment Radiohead ascended to Olympus (even if, as the bootlegs suggest, you probably had to be there). Instead, OK Computer’s flimsy accompanying DVD offers three songs from a May ’97 Later… With Jools Holland appearance – all utterly stunning, but you’re left feeling shortchanged. OK Computer was such a towering achievement that its influence on British music was to prove a little bit suffocating. It made audiences so wary of rock artifice that our album charts became clogged with pained, earnest posh boys. Few of the bands who formed or gained lift-off as a direct result of hearing OK Computer – Coldplay, Editors, Elbow, Muse et al – have come close to emulating its wracked majesty. At least Radiohead themselves would do their best to ensure that their next move was pretty much inimitable. SAM RICHARDS For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

Radiohead Reissues

Pablo Honey 3* | The Bends 4* | OK Computer 5*

***

It certainly doesn’t feel like 12 years since OK Computer, an indication of the record’s continuing power and resonance, as well as, perhaps, the inability of Radiohead’s successors to move the game forward significantly. Either way, the reissue of such a ubiquitous album hardly seems crucial right now.

That is, unless you work for EMI. So far, their treatment of Radiohead’s back catalogue has resembled a jilted lover flogging their ex’s belongings on eBay, dripping bittersweet tears onto the address labels. First there was the hurriedly-assembled seven-album boxset and ridiculous USB stick. Then came the less-than-essential Best Of. More recently, EMI announced plans to re-release every Radiohead single on 12” vinyl, an exercise that will surely only serve to point up the ugliness of most of the original artwork.

However, it’s harder to condemn EMI kingpin Guy Hands and company for this latest batch of reissues. The label have only done what any sane copyright holder would do and whacked out the early albums with bonus discs corralling all the b-sides, plus selected BBC Radio sessions. There are no outtakes (so that studio version of “True Love Waits” remains at large) but thankfully no superfluous remasters either.

The ‘Special’ DVD editions may test your loyalty, featuring nothing more than the promo videos, a smattering of BBC TV appearances and the previously released footage from Radiohead Live At The Astoria in 1994. Otherwise, these reissues have been logically and sympathetically compiled.

So to the music. 1993’s Pablo Honey isn’t as completely cack-handed as many would have you believe. It’s lumpy and uneven and often sounds like a band pulling in five different directions – but that last quality was, and occasionally remains, part of Radiohead’s appeal. “You” is blaring and overtly tricksy but, as an opener, it’s pretty ambitious – less grunge-lite, more college prog. Muse would later base an entire career on this kind of thing. “Creep”, however, still sounds like the runt of Radiohead’s litter: the over-bearing self-pity, those wheedling arpeggios… even Jonny’s clink-clunk guitar spasms signposting the chorus now feel horribly mannered. If “Creep” was released today, we’d call it emo. Radiohead would go on to release worse singles – the clunky music biz satires “Anyone Can Play Guitar” and “Pop Is Dead” are best swerved – but there are also plenty of better songs on Pablo Honey, even if they don’t seek attention so cravenly.

“Vegetable”, for example, turns out to be a terrific, gnashing, power-pop smoulderer, while future obsessions with cultural alienation, suicide and TV as the opiate of the masses are all there in underrated debut single “Prove Yourself”: “Can’t afford to breathe in this town/ Nowhere to sit without a gun in my hand/ Hooked back up to the cathode ray/ I’m better off dead”. “Lurgee” may not be similarly indicative of any future direction but its diaphanous layers of Galaxie 500 guitar are enchanting all the same.

Pablo Honey’s contemporaneous extra tracks are largely rubbish, save for the urgent, original version of “Prove Yourself” and a dreamy Verve-like number called “Coke Babies”. Serious Radiohead twitchers may nevertheless appreciate a session version of old On A Friday staple “Nothing Touches Me”.

With hindsight, the ’90s music press analysis of a sudden epiphany occurring between Pablo Honey and The Bends seems like overstating the case. Many of the musical and lyrical themes are similar but The Bends is simply more focused, better written, less anxious and allows Thom Yorke’s voice more room.

“My Iron Lung” still cleaves to that quiet-loud-quiet dynamic, but the quiet bits are menacingly serene, the loud bits genuinely delirious. “High And Dry”, “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Bullet Proof… ” witness the flourishing of a deft, restrained songwriting talent, while “Planet Telex” seamlessly introduces keyboards along with a sense of conflicted futurism that would prove the band’s rudder for a decade.

Whether or not you consider The Bends to be Radiohead’s first masterpiece probably hinges on whether you think “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” is an unbearably poignant meditation on death and the devil or a bleak cod-baroque dirge. Those in the latter camp are forewarned that there are two more versions of it on the second disc, but luckily The Bends’ b-sides overall are far more rewarding than Pablo Honey’s. They appreciably improve with time: forget anything from the “My Iron Lung” EP and skip straight to “Maquiladora”, a strident Smashing Pumpkins-style stadium rocker that was unlucky not to make the album.“How Can You Be Sure?” and “Talk Show Host” find Radiohead gaining in confidence, experimenting with rhythm and texture, sounding fluid, sultry even.

Which brings us to OK Computer, still so ever-present on the rock landscape. And no wonder: existential angst has never been realised with such heart-rending potency, via a collection of awesomely supple and substantial songs that haven’t worn or dated one iota. There hasn’t been a better album released in the intervening 12 years.

As before, the b-sides can be interpreted as portents of the future: claustrophobic affairs bathed in digital static, the band toying with programmed beats and dubby atmospherics. “A Reminder” and “Meeting In The Aisle” are particularly dreamy (nightmarish?) and do a better job of elongating the Radiohead template than trip hop remixes by Fila Brazilia and producer Nigel Godrich’s mates Zero 7. Even more conventional songs such as “Polyethylene” and “Lull” offer fresh angles. Weirdly, however, the live and session tracks chosen for inclusion here sound a little lethargic.

It’s a shame that EMI weren’t able to secure footage of the legendary 1997 Glastonbury performance, widely regarded as the moment Radiohead ascended to Olympus (even if, as the bootlegs suggest, you probably had to be there). Instead, OK Computer’s flimsy accompanying DVD offers three songs from a May ’97 Later… With Jools Holland appearance – all utterly stunning, but you’re left feeling shortchanged.

OK Computer was such a towering achievement that its influence on British music was to prove a little bit suffocating. It made audiences so wary of rock artifice that our album charts became clogged with pained, earnest posh boys. Few of the bands who formed or gained lift-off as a direct result of hearing OK Computer – Coldplay, Editors, Elbow, Muse et al – have come close to emulating its wracked majesty.

At least Radiohead themselves would do their best to ensure that their next move was pretty much inimitable.

SAM RICHARDS

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

Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/ Light Years

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Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/ Light Years

In the gap between their first album for Rough Trade, 2007’s Hey Venus!, and Dark Days/Light Years, the personnel of Super Furry Animals have been on what one might call a busman’s holiday. Gruff Rhys has been exploring the life of maverick automobile manufacturer John DeLorean as part of electro-pop duo Neon Neon. Electronics guru Cian Ciaran has been in the studio labouring on the next record by his techno project,Acid Casuals. Drummer Daf Ieuan and bassist Guto Pryce, meanwhile, joined up with actor Rhys Ifans in gonzo Cardiff supergroup The Peth, an excellent excuse to party their way from Portmeirion Town Hall to Hoxton Bar And Grill without ever having to put on a pair of shoes. No word from guitarist Huw ‘Bunf’ Bunford, which probably explains why he’s so keen to get stuck in here. Dark Days/Light Years commences with his “Crazy Naked Girls”, an indulgent voodoo-rock jam that romps along on romping Ringo drums, wah-wah-treated guitar freakouts, and at least three false endings. Clocking in at a little over six minutes, it’s more the sort of song to kick off an encore than a record, but at nine albums old, Super Furry Animals have got quite used to doing exactly what they please. Whereas in music, a taste for eccentricity is so typically coupled to a flash-in-the-pan lifespan, paradoxically for Super Furry Animals, it appears to be the secret of their impressive endurance. Their fans, a fiercely loyal bunch, wonder out loud why they’re not one of the biggest bands in rock. Everyone else notices songs called things like “The Very Best Of Neil Diamond” and “White Socks/Flip Flops”, an occasional tendency to sing in their mother tongue – represented here by the cheery “Lliwiau Llachar” (it translates as “Intensely Bright Colours”) – and a taste for peculiar subject matter. That last trait is admirably illustrated by “Inaugural Trams”, a corporate hymn dedicated to an imaginary city’s travel network, Gruff joyously reeling off a list of facts and figures about reduced pollution emissions and the like, interrupted only by a brief spoken-word segment in German courtesy of Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy. In the hands of others, this sort of activity might feel like arsing around. In the hands of Super Furry Animals – who have always known when to play it straight, as well as strange – it’s the mark of a band that will never be content resting on their laurels. But if recent Furries albums have shown a sneaking tendency towards sleepy country balladry, Dark Days/Light Years seems keen to slide out of that particular hammock. The attendant press communiqué suggests Daf has developed “a pedal steel phobia”, and it’s true, this is a more upbeat Furries, more concerned with the interplay of a live band, the dynamics of riff and groove. “Inconvenience” and “Mountain” are uncomplicated glam stomps, the former a close ringer for The Sweet’s “Blockbuster” (and their own “Golden Retriever”), the latter a lyrically absurdist number sung by Cian that seems to concern the noble practice of chilling out and getting things in perspective. Electronics do have a place here, although they’re inevitably woven into the fabric of songs, most successfully on “Cardiff In The Sunshine”, a gorgeous eight-minute album centrepiece that winds vocoder-treated vocals, ascending synth lines and acid squelches from gentle beginnings towards a sunburst climax. Gruff, it must be said, still writes the best songs. “The Very Best Of Neil Diamond” blends a vaguely Eastern guitar line with tin-can rattles and a haunting vocoder refrain, while “Moped Eyes” is the album’s highlight – a deft, funky number smeared with gorgonzola organ that’s oddly reminiscent of Beck’s Midnite Vultures, not least for Gruff’s delivery, all whooped vocal tics and ice-cold rhymes: “Hot wheels at traffic lights/Hot deals, transactional rights/From middle-aged sophisticates/To stone-aged reprobates”. “Moped Eyes” is also the closest thing this album has to a hit single, which is to say, not especially close. But then you feel that was never the intention. Dark Days/Light Years is a record that privileges the five-way dynamic that has lead Super Furry Animals through nine albums. As with, say, Radiohead’s In Rainbows, the charm here is in hearing a veteran band who still really enjoy the process of getting in a studio and playing music together. And it’s great, still. LOUIS PATTISON UNCUT Q&A: Gruff Rhys & Huw ‘Bunf’ Bunford Dark Days/Light Years feels very much like a full-band record. Was this the approach from the outset? Gruff: Yes. The whole record is built around material we’ve been trying out in soundchecks and rehearsals for the last nine years or so. Some, like “Moped Eyes”, are improvised songs we developed in the studio. Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy adds German vocals to “Inaugural Trams”. What’s he – and by extension, the song – on about? Gruff: It concerns the opening of a new tram system in a socialist utopian middle-European town. The chairman, armed with the latest eco-speak, cuts the ribbon. Nick plays the part of the tram guard, announcing the next stop. How is Rough Trade working out for Super Furry Animals? Have you had to alter expectations? Bunf: First off, we intend not to tour this album in the conventional way. All promotion will be done through films and live footage of us in the studio performing the album – a very cost-effective way of getting material out into the public domain. About seven years ago I made a bet with our management that there would soon be only one major label left – I’m quietly confident he’ll be paying out soon. Nevertheless, I didn’t expect it to be Starbucks. Still, making a latte in 30 seconds – that’s Darwinism in motion. LOUIS PATTISON

In the gap between their first album for Rough Trade, 2007’s Hey Venus!, and Dark Days/Light Years, the personnel of Super Furry Animals have been on what one might call a busman’s holiday. Gruff Rhys has been exploring the life of maverick automobile manufacturer John DeLorean as part of electro-pop duo Neon Neon. Electronics guru Cian Ciaran has been in the studio labouring on the next record by his techno project,Acid Casuals. Drummer Daf Ieuan and bassist Guto Pryce, meanwhile, joined up with actor Rhys Ifans in gonzo Cardiff supergroup The Peth, an excellent excuse to party their way from Portmeirion Town Hall to Hoxton Bar And Grill without ever having to put on a pair of shoes.

No word from guitarist Huw ‘Bunf’ Bunford, which probably explains why he’s so keen to get stuck in here. Dark Days/Light Years commences with his “Crazy Naked Girls”, an indulgent voodoo-rock jam that romps along on romping Ringo drums, wah-wah-treated guitar freakouts, and at least three false endings. Clocking in at a little over six minutes, it’s more the sort of song to kick off an encore than a record, but at nine albums old, Super Furry Animals have got quite used to doing exactly what they please.

Whereas in music, a taste for eccentricity is so typically coupled

to a flash-in-the-pan lifespan, paradoxically for Super Furry Animals, it appears to be the secret of their impressive endurance. Their fans, a fiercely loyal bunch, wonder out loud why they’re not one of the biggest bands in rock. Everyone else notices songs called things like “The Very Best Of Neil Diamond” and “White Socks/Flip Flops”, an occasional tendency to sing in their mother tongue – represented here by the cheery “Lliwiau Llachar” (it translates as “Intensely Bright Colours”) – and a taste for peculiar subject matter. That last trait is admirably illustrated by “Inaugural Trams”, a corporate hymn dedicated to an imaginary city’s travel network, Gruff joyously reeling off a list of facts and figures about reduced pollution emissions and the like, interrupted only by a brief spoken-word segment in German courtesy of Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy. In the hands of others, this sort of activity might feel like arsing around. In the hands of Super Furry Animals – who have always known when to play it straight, as well as strange – it’s the mark of a band that will never be content resting on their laurels.

But if recent Furries albums have shown a sneaking tendency towards sleepy country balladry, Dark Days/Light Years seems keen to slide out of that particular hammock. The attendant press communiqué suggests Daf has developed “a pedal steel phobia”, and it’s true, this is a more upbeat Furries, more concerned with the interplay of a live band, the dynamics of riff and groove. “Inconvenience” and “Mountain” are uncomplicated glam stomps, the former a close ringer for The Sweet’s “Blockbuster” (and their own “Golden Retriever”), the latter a lyrically absurdist number sung by Cian that seems to concern the noble practice of chilling out and getting things in perspective. Electronics do have a place here, although they’re inevitably woven into the fabric of songs, most successfully on “Cardiff In The Sunshine”, a gorgeous eight-minute album centrepiece that winds vocoder-treated vocals, ascending synth lines and acid squelches from gentle beginnings towards a sunburst climax.

Gruff, it must be said, still writes the best songs. “The Very Best Of Neil Diamond” blends a vaguely Eastern guitar line with tin-can rattles and a haunting vocoder refrain, while “Moped Eyes” is the album’s highlight – a deft, funky number smeared with gorgonzola organ that’s oddly reminiscent of Beck’s Midnite Vultures, not least for Gruff’s delivery, all whooped vocal tics and ice-cold rhymes: “Hot wheels at traffic lights/Hot deals, transactional rights/From middle-aged sophisticates/To stone-aged reprobates”.

“Moped Eyes” is also the closest thing this album has to a hit single, which is to say, not especially close. But then you feel that was never the intention. Dark Days/Light Years is a record that privileges the five-way dynamic that has lead Super Furry Animals through nine albums. As with, say, Radiohead’s In Rainbows, the charm here is in hearing a veteran band who still really enjoy the process of getting in a studio and playing music together. And it’s great, still.

LOUIS PATTISON

UNCUT Q&A: Gruff Rhys & Huw ‘Bunf’ Bunford

Dark Days/Light Years feels very much like a full-band record. Was this the approach from the outset?

Gruff: Yes. The whole record is built around material we’ve been trying out in soundchecks and rehearsals for the last nine years or so. Some, like “Moped Eyes”, are improvised songs we developed in the studio.

Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy adds German vocals to “Inaugural Trams”. What’s he – and by extension, the song – on about?

Gruff: It concerns the opening of a new tram system in a socialist utopian middle-European town. The chairman, armed with the latest eco-speak, cuts the ribbon. Nick plays the part of the tram guard, announcing the next stop.

How is Rough Trade working out for Super Furry Animals? Have you had to alter expectations?

Bunf: First off, we intend not to tour this album in the conventional way. All promotion will be done through films and live footage of us in the studio performing the album – a very cost-effective way of getting material out into the public domain. About seven years ago I made a bet with our management that there would soon be only one major label left – I’m quietly confident he’ll be paying out soon. Nevertheless, I didn’t expect it to be Starbucks. Still, making a latte in 30 seconds – that’s Darwinism in motion.

LOUIS PATTISON

The Hold Steady – A Positive Rage

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The Hold Steady – A Positive Rage

For a live band as drilled and gregarious as The Hold Steady, committing a taste of their beery rock communion to plastic was surely only a matter of time. Recorded in Chicago on Hallowe’en 2007, this live album focuses on the band’s first three records, capturing a time when Boys And Girls In America turned them from insider darlings into a bona fide rock phenomenon. A Positive Rage is something of a misnomer, since hardcore fury rates low on the Steady agenda. More crucial is the band’s 3-D storytelling on muscular guitars, and Craig Finn’s traditional chat about joy in the encore. All round, it’s a tremendous run of songs from a mid-set “Lord I’m Discouraged” to a closing “Killer Parties”. KITTY EMPIRE

For a live band as drilled and gregarious as The Hold Steady, committing a taste of their beery rock communion to plastic was surely only a matter of time. Recorded in Chicago on Hallowe’en 2007, this live album focuses on the band’s first three records, capturing a time when Boys And Girls In America turned them from insider darlings into a bona fide rock phenomenon.

A Positive Rage is something of a misnomer, since hardcore fury rates low on the Steady agenda. More crucial is the band’s 3-D storytelling on muscular guitars, and Craig Finn’s traditional chat about joy in the encore. All round, it’s a tremendous run of songs from a mid-set “Lord I’m Discouraged” to a closing “Killer Parties”.

KITTY EMPIRE

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – A Stranger Here

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Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – A Stranger Here

At 77, and firmly established as the link between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, Jack Elliott could be excused a bit of laurel-resting. Instead, inspired by their collaboration on I’m Not There’s soundtrack, Elliott and producer Joe Henry have chosen to explore the pre-war country blues. Stylistically, it’s a slight departure from Elliott’s usual purview. There’s a tussle between frailty and wisdom in the performances, with wisdom winning, mostly. The songs are well chosen (Rev Gary Davis’ “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” stands out), and the band – including Van Dyke Parks and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos – create a woozy, tumbledown feel, as if they are playing from a carnival float. Elliott is better at world-weariness than he is at sass, but has enough guile to mould the songs in his own image. ALASTAIR McKAY For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

At 77, and firmly established as the link between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, Jack Elliott could be excused a bit of laurel-resting. Instead, inspired by their collaboration on I’m Not There’s soundtrack, Elliott and producer Joe Henry have chosen to explore the pre-war country blues. Stylistically, it’s a slight departure from Elliott’s usual purview.

There’s a tussle between frailty and wisdom in the performances, with wisdom winning, mostly. The songs are well chosen (Rev Gary Davis’ “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” stands out), and the band – including Van Dyke Parks and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos – create a woozy, tumbledown feel, as if they are playing from a carnival float. Elliott is better at world-weariness than he is at sass, but has enough guile to mould the songs in his own image.

ALASTAIR McKAY

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

In The Loop

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In The Loop
IN THE LOOP DIRECTED BY Armando Iannucci STARRING Peter Capaldi, James Gandolfini, Tom Hollander *** SYNOPSIS After a junior government minister (Hollander) makes a minor gaffe in a radio interview, questions are asked about the UK’s involvement in a possible American-led war in the Middle Ea...

IN THE LOOP

DIRECTED BY Armando Iannucci

STARRING Peter Capaldi, James Gandolfini, Tom Hollander

***

SYNOPSIS

After a junior government minister (Hollander) makes a minor gaffe in a radio interview, questions are asked about the UK’s involvement in a possible American-led war in the Middle East. The Prime Minister’s press co-ordinator (Capaldi) is called in. Things do not go well. There will be blood.

***

You might wonder just how far Armando Iannucci’s influence reaches into our world. In the 18 years since On The Hour first broadcast on Radio 4, it’s almost impossible to understate his importance on a generation of comedy shows. Arguably, everything from The Office to The IT Crowd, Spaced and even Gavin And Stacey owes him some kind of debt, either stylistic, technical or down the previous involvement of the cast or creators in shows Ianucci has developed.

Equally, it’s still difficult to watch current affairs programmes without seeing the DNA of The Day Today in pompous news journalists, extravagant and pointless computer graphics and the desperate, self-important shriek of the headlines themselves. It’s fair to say, though, that Iannucci and his affiliates have had less luck making it on the big screen.

Steve Coogan, whose Alan Partridge series’ Iannucci co-wrote and produced, has conspicuously failed to replicate his TV successes in movies. Meanwhile, Chris Morris, Iannucci’s other principal collaborator from those early years, has, perhaps inevitably, found his plans for a movie satirising Islamic terrorism enormously difficult to get greenlit. In The Loop, though, the cinematic off-shoot from his political comedy The Thick Of It, may well find Iannucci stealing a march on his former colleagues.

It might become a double victory, too, as Iannucci successfully manages to disprove the long-held belief that TV series never, ever translate to the big screen. In fact, stylistically there’s very little difference, if any, between In The Loop and its TV counterpart. The hand-held, fly-on-the-wall style Iannucci deploys on The Thick Of It (a technique he first used in The Pool, a spoof documentary about a public swimming baths that appeared in The Day Today) is satisfyingly intact here. The only fundamental difference is that the world of The Thick Of It has grown larger. It is still, quite literally, a Whitehall farce; but the production also takes us overseas, to Washington and the United Nations. There, it’s reassuring to report, Iannucci finds plenty of corrosive humour in the build up to a war in the Middle East.

As ever with The Thick Of It, the delight is in watching the meticulously plotted story unravel at breakneck speed. And, as with all great farce, the spark is seemingly infinitesimally small. In this case, it’s one word – “Unforeseeable” – used as a casual answer by Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), the Secretary of State for International Development, when asked in a Radio 4 interview about the likelihood of war in the Middle East.

Foster’s comments are leapt on by the press and the Opposition, much to the dismay of the Prime Minister’s terrifying enforcer, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi). As Tucker sees it, Foster’s comment is out of step with Downing Street, which is trying to downplay the prospect of invasion while at the same time preparing to support America should war break out. Malcolm is not a man to be messed with – nor, indeed, is his equally terrifying attack dog, Jamie (Paul Higgins) – and Foster’s continued gaffes in subsequent interviews about the government’s position on war leads an apoplectic Malcolm to send him to Washington.

A good thing, from Foster’s point of view, as there appears to be a problem brewing with an angry constituent (Steve Coogan) over a disputed wall. In the States, Foster’s apparent lack of appetite for war is seized by Washington diplomat Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy), who’s embroiled in her own battle at the State Department with Linton Barwick (David Rasche), her hawkish opposite number. Clarke’s only ally is General Miller (Gandolfini), who appears similarly disenchanted with the Washington warmongering.

Around them orbit a dysfunctional bunch of assistants and advisors remarkable for being just as stupid, lazy and/or scheming as their counterparts in the British government. There is a dossier, too, about arms in the Middle East, which at least one side wants to doctor. Iannucci’s point, it seems, is that these people can be just as prone to pettiness, feuding and, more pertinently considering the fate of the world rests in their hands, ineptitude as the rest of us. There is, perhaps, a touch of Dr Strangelove here, in the coal-black cynicism and the grim conclusion that inter-departmental power games on this level can, effectively, lead to a real war, in which real people will die.

You might think there would be something terribly parochial about the Whitehall contingent when compared to their American counterparts. But it says much about the skills of Iannucci’s core players – Hollander, Capaldi and Chris Addison, particularly – that they face off remarkably well against the Americans. A third act confrontation, for example, between Capaldi and Gandolfini is equally weighted. Gandolfini himself leads an impressive array of US talent – Rasche, who you might remember from Eighties’ cop comedy, Sledge Hammer!, is particularly brilliant as the Rumsfeldian Barwick – and with a script as strong as this (by regular The Thick Of It writers Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche, and the show’s long-standing “swearing consultant” Ian Martin), it’s easy to see why Iannucci can attract such a high level of talent. In this department, In The Loop commendably resembles a Howard Hawks-style screwball comedy enhanced with the furious profanities of a David Mamet play.

It’s strange, perhaps, but it’s hard to see In The Loop specifically as a political comedy. In the way that The Sopranos, say, wasn’t really about the Mob after all, so In The Loop isn’t really about politics. It’s a highly moral story about human beings, their failures and inadequacies. In Mamet’s Glengarry Gen Ross, salesman Ricky Roma asks, “A hell exists on earth?”. Iannucci seems to think it does, and it’s name is Malcolm Tucker.

MICHAEL BONNER

Mike Leigh – The BBC Collection (TV)

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Mike Leigh – The BBC Collection (TV)

This comprehensive collection of Mike Leigh’s work at the BBC includes his greatest hit, Abigail’s Party (with Alison Steadman inflicting Demis Roussos on her neighbours), and one of his greatest films, Nuts In May (in which Steadman’s Candice-Marie and Roger Sloman’s Keith endure a problematic camping holiday in Dorset). Also included are Hard Labour, The Permissive Society, The Kiss Of Death, Who’s Who, Grown-Ups, Home Sweet Home and Four Days In July, all of which make the case that Leigh is a poet of loneliness in the vein of Beckett rather than a class warrior. EXTRAS: 4* Director’s commentaries, booklet, interview documentary with Will Self. ALASTAIR McKAY

This comprehensive collection of Mike Leigh’s work at the BBC includes his greatest hit, Abigail’s Party (with Alison Steadman inflicting Demis Roussos on her neighbours), and one of his greatest films, Nuts In May (in which Steadman’s Candice-Marie and Roger Sloman’s Keith endure a problematic camping holiday in Dorset).

Also included are Hard Labour, The Permissive Society, The Kiss Of Death, Who’s Who, Grown-Ups, Home Sweet Home and Four Days In July, all of which make the case that Leigh is a poet of loneliness in the vein of Beckett rather than a class warrior.

EXTRAS: 4* Director’s commentaries, booklet, interview documentary with Will Self.

ALASTAIR McKAY

Grateful Dead and Creedence Included In Revamped Woodstock Film

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Grateful Dead and Creedence Included In Revamped Woodstock Film
Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace And Music’ , the 1970 Oscar winning film about the 1969 festival, has been revamped and re-cut for release as a 4 hour Director's Cut to celebrate the 40th anniversary this June. The film, and a documentary spanning four discs now boasts two hours of previously unseen ...

Woodstock – 3 Days of Peace And Music’ , the 1970 Oscar winning film about the 1969 festival, has been revamped and re-cut for release as a 4 hour Director’s Cut to celebrate the 40th anniversary this June.

The film, and a documentary spanning four discs now boasts two hours of previously unseen footage from the festival; including 13 artists who didn’t make an appearance in the original film.

You can now see The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana and The Who in 5.1 audio in the new archival footage.

The Warner Home Video release will be available as a 4-disc DVD and 2-disc Blu-ray on June 15.

For more on Woodstock, see the latest (May) issue of Uncut for an 8-page special, where the survivors of the notorious mudfest speak.

For more music and film news click here

Pic credit: PA Photos

The 14th Uncut Playlist Of 2009

John Mulvey
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Pretty weird mix this week, as I look down this list, not all of it fantastic. If I can break the usual protocols here, though, the Johnny Cash remix is really awful, and I speak as a Snoop Dogg fan. Given that “I Walk The Line” looked like the most interesting thing on the Cash remix album that turned up the other day, I suspect we might have found the worst record of 2009 already – though I must confess I don’t have the moral courage to check and make sure. 1 Peter Walker – Long Lost Tapes 1970 (Tompkins Square) 2 Little Boots – New In Town (679) 3 God Help The Girl – God Help The Girl (Rough Trade) 4 Sonic Youth – The Eternal (Matador) 5 Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (Honest Jon’s) 6 White Denim – Fits (Full Time Hobby) 7 Johnny Cash – I Walk The Line (QDT Remix Featuring Snoop Dogg) (Compadre) 8 Double Dagger – More (Thrill Jockey) 9 We Are Wolves – Total Magique (Dare To Care) 10 Sparrow And The Workshop – Sleight Of Hand (Distiller) 11 Mamer – Eagle (Real World) 12 Rusted Shut – Dead (Load) 13 Jandek live in Houston (Youtube) 14 Music For Your Heart – Embrace The Change (http://www.myspace.com/music4yourheart) 15 Tony Allen – Secret Agent (World Circuit) 16 The XX – Crystallised (Young Turks) 17 The Derek Trucks Band – Already Free (Victor) 18 A Mountain Of One – Institute Of Joy (Ten Worlds) 19 Spinnerette – Spinnerette (Hassle) 20 The Field – Yesterday And Today (Kompakt) 21 Buffy Sainte-Marie – Running For The Drum (Cooking Vinyl)

Pretty weird mix this week, as I look down this list, not all of it fantastic. If I can break the usual protocols here, though, the Johnny Cash remix is really awful, and I speak as a Snoop Dogg fan. Given that “I Walk The Line” looked like the most interesting thing on the Cash remix album that turned up the other day, I suspect we might have found the worst record of 2009 already – though I must confess I don’t have the moral courage to check and make sure.

Continue

Wooden Shjips To Headline Club Uncut!

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Wooden Shjips To Headline Club Uncut!

Club Uncut is proud to present Wooden Shjips as our headliners on August 19. The psychedelic four man band from San Francisco, who are about to release their third album 'Dos' describe their music as "minimalist psych bop". Uncut's John Mulvey thinks they are heavily indebted to the sounds of The Spacemen 3. You can read his blog on the band and the new album here. As usual with our monthly live shows, Wooden Shjips will play at London's Borderline venue, just off Manette Street in London W1. Supports are still to be confirmed, but you can can get your tickets for the show now, by clicking here: seetickets.com In the meantime, have a listen to some Wooden Shjips tracks here, we particularly like new Sub Pop 7" single "Loose Lips", check it out here: Myspace.com/woodenshjips For more music and film news click here

Club Uncut is proud to present Wooden Shjips as our headliners on August 19.

The psychedelic four man band from San Francisco, who are about to release their third album ‘Dos’ describe their music as “minimalist psych bop”.

Uncut’s John Mulvey thinks they are heavily indebted to the sounds of The Spacemen 3. You can read his blog on the band and the new album here.

As usual with our monthly live shows, Wooden Shjips will play at London’s Borderline venue, just off Manette Street in London W1.

Supports are still to be confirmed, but you can can get your tickets for the show now, by clicking here: seetickets.com

In the meantime, have a listen to some Wooden Shjips tracks here, we particularly like new Sub Pop 7″ single “Loose Lips”, check it out here: Myspace.com/woodenshjips

For more music and film news click here

The Beatles Remaster Entire Catalogue

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The Beatles Remaster Entire Catalogue
The Beatles entire catalogue of albums have been digitally remastered and will be reissued on September 9, 2009, say Apple Corps today (April 7). Each of the CDs will feature replicated UK album artwork, new liner notes and rare photographs. Initially, the CDs will also contain a short film about t...

The Beatles entire catalogue of albums have been digitally remastered and will be reissued on September 9, 2009, say Apple Corps today (April 7).

Each of the CDs will feature replicated UK album artwork, new liner notes and rare photographs. Initially, the CDs will also contain a short film about the album, containing archive footage, and exclusive behind-the-scenes studio chat from the band.

On the same day, two box sets; one stereo and one mono, will also be released.

The stereo set features the original 12 Beatles studio albums plus ‘Magical Mystery Tour.’ The albums ‘Past Masters Vol. I and II’ will also be included, amalgamated into one title, so the box set will feature 14 albums on 16 discs.

‘The Beatles in Mono’ box set contains The Beatles’ ten albums which were originally intended to be released in mono, as well as two extra discs of mono masters.

Bonuses include the original 1965 stereo mixes of “Help!” and “Rubber Soul”, both of which have not appeared on CD before.

The Apple Corps press statement, regarding the question as to whether the Beatles catalgue will eventually be available to download simply states: “Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue. There is no further information available at this time”.

More information about all of these releases will be available here: www.thebeatles.com

The Stereo Albums:

The stereo albums have been remastered by Guy Massey, Steve Rooke, Sam Okell with Paul Hicks and Sean Magee

Additional historical notes by Kevin Howlett and Mike Heatley

Additional recording notes by Allan Rouse and Kevin Howlett

* = CD includes QuickTime mini-doc about the album

Please Please Me* (CD debut in stereo)

With The Beatles* (CD debut in stereo)

A Hard Day’s Night* (CD debut in stereo)

Beatles For Sale* (CD debut in stereo)

Help!*

Rubber Soul*

Revolver*

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band* (also includes 1987 notes, updated, and new intro by Paul McCartney)

Magical Mystery Tour*

The Beatles*

Yellow Submarine* (also includes original US liner notes)

Abbey Road*

Let It Be*

Past Masters (contains new liner notes written by Kevin Howlett)

‘The Beatles in Mono’ (box set only):

Remastered by Paul Hicks, Sean Magee with Guy Massey and Steve Rooke

Presented together in box with an essay written by Kevin Howlett

+ = mono mix CD debut

Please Please Me

With The Beatles

A Hard Day’s Night

Beatles For Sale

Help! (CD also includes original 1965 stereo mix)+

Rubber Soul (CD also include original 1965 stereo mix)+

Revolver+

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band+

Magical Mystery Tour+

The Beatles+

Mono Masters

For more music and film news click here

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