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Curated By Pavement

Uncut
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Curated By Pavement
Presenting our latest online exclusive: Curated By Pavement, one of the world's most unpredictable and best-loved indie-rock bands. Major reads! This special edition showcases a unique insight into the world of Pavement in their own words – their reunion in 2022, the best gigs they ever saw, ...

Presenting our latest online exclusive: Curated By Pavement, one of the world’s most unpredictable and best-loved indie-rock bands.

Major reads! This special edition showcases a unique insight into the world of Pavement in their own words – their reunion in 2022, the best gigs they ever saw, not to mention 92 of Pavement’s favourite albums. Also: the music which was most influential on them, featuring classic interviews with Kraftwerk, Sonic Youth and more from our archives, all in this latest issue.

Buy a copy here!

Dave Davies: “The truth might be the truth… but it still hurts”

Nick Hasted
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Dave Davies: “The truth might be the truth… but it still hurts”
In his new memoir, Living On A Thin Line, DAVE DAVIES – guitarist, spiritual warrior, astral explorer – goes deep inside his celebrated history in and out of THE KINKS. Speaking in the latest issue of Uncut magazine - in UK shops from Thursday, July 21 and available to buy from our online sto...

In his new memoir, Living On A Thin Line, DAVE DAVIES – guitarist, spiritual warrior, astral explorer – goes deep inside his celebrated history in and out of THE KINKS.

Speaking in the latest issue of Uncut magazine – in UK shops from Thursday, July 21 and available to buy from our online store – Davies blows apart some of the myths around his former band, shares news of brother Ray and considers where the deep soul-searching that has gone into writing his memoir will take him next. “It’s better to embrace those feelings full-on than let them fester,” he tells us.

Now read on…

It’s mid-morning as Dave Davies slips into his favourite pub in Highgate. With long white hair flowing from beneath a soft black Tibetan cap, and a rakishly psychedelic scarf slung across his shoulders, he looks leaner and healthier than ever.

“I’ve always liked it here,” he says, ordering an oat milk cappuccino. “It’s the sort of place where you feel in transit – it’s OK, but you know you’re going to leave. I’ve been used to that feeling all my life on the road.”

Dave began work on his new autobiography here. Living On A Thin Line is an often jaw-dropping account of life as The Kinks’ fiery, innovative guitarist and his equally tempestuous times offstage – from acid breakdowns to alien visitations. “That Covid shit prompted it,” he explains. “But it got tough when I realised that memories aren’t always good memories. There were times when I thought, I can’t fucking do this. It’s too hard. The truth might be the truth, but it still fucking hurts.”

Dave wrote a previous memoir, Kink, in 1996, when the band’s story was still very raw. But Dave’s stroke in 2004 and improved relations with Ray give the new book a wiser perspective. “Is that good?” he wonders. “I’ve had to live with these thoughts and feelings for decades. I’ve had time to mull them over and to mature. It is a less angry book.”

We’re sitting a mile or so from the Davies’ family home at 6 Denmark Terrace, where Dave and Ray wrote the early Kinks hits in the cramped front room. Highgate Wood is visible from the pub, part of the suburban landscape mythologised in The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society (1968). Ray too lives in Highgate, although the brothers rarely meet.

Where Ray is guarded, Dave is wide open, talking in freewheeling tangents and shadow-boxing the air for emphasis. Though he takes far-out spiritual flights, they’re always grounded by his earthy personality. “I’m glad you noticed that!” he laughs. “It’s reassuring. A lot of that came from my upbringing. ‘Get on with it, lad!’ Know what I mean? Check it out – but don’t get too carried away.” The writer of “This Man He Weeps Tonight” also cries several times during our interview, as some memories prove almost too much to take.

PICK UP THE NEW UNCUT FOR THE FULL STORY

Watch Joni Mitchell’s surprise performance at Newport Folk Festival

Greta Brereton
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Watch Joni Mitchell’s surprise performance at Newport Folk Festival
Joni Mitchell surprised the crowd at Newport Folk Festival over the weekend when she joined Brandi Carlile on stage for two songs. Fans were treated to a rare performance from the music legend when she appeared during Carlile's set on Sunday (July 24). Together, the pair sang Mitchell's classics ...

Joni Mitchell surprised the crowd at Newport Folk Festival over the weekend when she joined Brandi Carlile on stage for two songs.

Fans were treated to a rare performance from the music legend when she appeared during Carlile’s set on Sunday (July 24). Together, the pair sang Mitchell’s classics “Both Sides Now” and “A Case Of You”, released in 1966 and 1971, respectively. She also played the guitar solo from her 1974 song “Just Like This Train”.

Fan-shot footage from the performance shows the tenderness that 78-year-old Mitchell still captures in her vocals, with a visibly emotional Carlile seated beside her. Watch it below.

It was Mitchell’s second time appearing at the three-day festival since 1968, which took place in Newport, Rhode Island.

It also marked her second public performance this year, following on from an appearance back in April at the MusiCares’ 2022 Person of the Year gala. She was awarded the titular honour at the event, and celebrated with renditions of her 1970 classics “Big Yellow Taxi” and “The Circle Game”, joined by Carlile, Beck, Cyndi Lauper, Stephen Stills, Jon Batiste and more.

It was the first time she’d performed live since 2013, when she’d given two impromptu performances at events where she’d been invited to recite poetry. Prior to that, her last live shows were in 2002, two years after she retired from touring.

Ty Segall – Hello, Hi

Louis Pattison
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Ty Segall – Hello, Hi
Barely has the dust settled on his last escapade, and Ty Segall, Californian dreamer and one of the most prolific creators in all of rock’n’roll, sidles by once more. Just for context, Segall’s 2021 saw not one but two new collections of music. The first was Harmonizer, a ripping rock album th...

Barely has the dust settled on his last escapade, and Ty Segall, Californian dreamer and one of the most prolific creators in all of rock’n’roll, sidles by once more. Just for context, Segall’s 2021 saw not one but two new collections of music. The first was Harmonizer, a ripping rock album that dropped without warning or fanfare in August 2021. The second expanded Ty’s brief yet further – a film score for director Matt Yoka’s Whirlybird, a documentary following the Los Angeles News Service, whose roving helicopter tracked wrongdoings across LA’s urban sprawl throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Time for a pause? Of course not.

Seasoned Ty watchers will know that he tends to follow a zig with a zag, and so it is with Hello, Hi. It does, broadly, what Harmonizer did not. Where that album was electric, synthetic and raw, Hello, Hi is largely acoustic, rustic-sounding and steeped in a sort of fey, offbeat prettiness. Where Harmonizer felt like the work of a full live band, Hello, Hi bears the mark of a record made alone in isolation, or something close to it. Ty’s album covers always do a good job of obliquely communicating their contents, and this is no exception. A black and white photo taken by Ty’s wife Denée on a hiking trail near their Topanga Canyon home, it pictures him balanced impishly on a tree branch, holding his guitar out in front of him like a talisman. Think a freaky flower child, or perhaps a mischievous forest spirit, spinning out riddles in exchange for safe passage.

This isn’t an all-new mode for Segall. Written and recorded at Ty’s own home studio, Harmonizer, in 2020, it clocks in at a relatively lean 10 songs and 34 minutes, making it of a piece with albums like Goodbye Bread and Sleeper: song-focused affairs that advance a consistent sound and style, as opposed to the pinball eclecticism of Freedom’s Goblin or Manipulator.

Hello, Hi brings a couple of Ty’s prime influences to the fore. His catalogue features a rich seam of songs that channel Marc Bolan – think Manipulator’s “Don’t You Want To Know (Sue)”, or Sleeper’s “Sweet CC”. Bolan’s influence – specifically the psychedelically inclined folk of his early Tyrannosaurus Rex incarnation – is writ all over Hello, Hi. Another touchstone might be Donovan – “Blue” seems to channel his whimsical delivery and a taste for surreal lyrical flights of fancy. Yet as ever, Ty wears his influences in a relaxed manner: tried on like a paisley shirt or feather boa, then discarded.

Is this, perhaps, Ty’s lockdown album? Certainly, there are moments that seem to capture something of the pandemic experience – a life spent between four walls, the stir-crazy effects of isolation, the days charted by the rhythm of morning passing into night. Some songs evoke home as a place of safety and comfort. “Good Morning” opens the album in a mood of dazed romantic bliss. “Good morning, lady/We can stay inside/The world is where we both lay/On the pillows we are fine”, Ty sings in a sleepy falsetto before layering his multi-tracked voice in a sort of dawn chorus. Elsewhere, the mood is more curdled and strange. “Saturday Pt 2” commences with a dismal scene: “In a room we are waiting/Living life behind closed doors/Only singing about the flat and painted drywall/And concrete floors…”. But then suddenly the guitars begin to bite, the drums kick in, and around the song’s midpoint, a saxophone solo from long-time collaborator Mikal Cronin lifts the song onto a higher plane. In moments like this, you can visualise Ty sat at home, using music to blast himself out of boredom and into a new reality.

A pervasive mood of isolation makes this one of Ty’s most introspective albums. Within, there are intimate love lullabies; songs that go down rabbit holes of ruthless self-doubt and self-examination; lyrics that reflect on the idea of changing yourself to make life easier, or to please another. I want to start over, but who would I be?/All the mistakes I’ve made are why I am me, he sings on “Over”. But Segall is not one to play things completely straight, so these sorts of ruminations are pockmarked with twists of artifice and sudden impositions of surreal imagery. “Don’t you feel better/When you’re wearing my cement sweater?” sings Ty on “Cement”, a track that somehow feels stranger each time you listen to it. The vocal is precisely enunciated and full of curious, arch mannerisms; the chord changes have a prickly, unresolved quality that ensures any genuine comfort dangles just out of reach; and the track ends with Ty’s voice layered into cascading harmonies, la-la-la-ing himself silly.

Even where Hello, Hi grapples with difficult feelings, there’s a craft and prettiness to the music that transcends any bummer vibes. Ty handles most of the drumming himself in his characteristically swinging, Ringo-ish style. “Over” and “Distraction” have a limber, freewheeling sense of momentum that nudges them towards the folk-jazz nexus currently occupied by figures like Ryley Walker. And there’s an album highlight in the shape of “Don’t Lie”, a deep cut by the Oakland-based lo-fi group The Mantles. Ty has some past form in delivering cover versions that tear the original a new one, but here he takes the opposite route. The original’s breezy paisley-shaded garage is transformed into a delicate acoustic hymn that accentuates the lyric about overcoming bad and sad times. It’s a gem.

And while it’s hardly the album’s set style, here and there Hello, Hi rocks out. The title track is the record’s one real barnstormer – three swift minutes of glammy chorusing, churning riffs and thundering caveman drums that’s enjoyable, and not just for its explosive incongruity. “Looking At You”, meanwhile, is a hangover from the Harmonizer sessions. A band effort that sees Ty assisted by Charles Moothart on drums and Ben Boye on Rhodes, its folk-rocky strum sports a scorching fuzz guitar solo, but also a beautiful “Dear Prudence”-style coda that revolves round and round like a ballerina in a music box.

So yes, Hello, Hi is one of Ty’s most lean and focused albums to date. But the closer you get, the more you spot its idiosyncrasies. Heartfelt and playful, homespun and surreal, down in the dumps and head-over-heels in love: here is Ty Segall in all his wonderful contradictions. After nine tracks in which the walls sometimes seem to be closing in, on the closing “Distraction” the door swings open. “So sing me a distraction/I want to know what happens/We’ll take a walk outside”, he sings. And with a sweet goodbye, the record ends, and Ty is gone – off to find his next adventure. Where will we find him next? Who knows, but past evidence suggests we won’t be waiting long.

The Walkmen – You & Me: The Sun Studio Edition

Rob Hughes
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The Walkmen – You & Me: The Sun Studio Edition
Of all the bands that burst from New York in the early ’00s, The Walkmen were the least defined by locale. The city’s nervy post-punk heritage fed directly into the kind of music popularised by The Strokes, Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, just as its dynamic club culture motored LCD Soundsystem a...

Of all the bands that burst from New York in the early ’00s, The Walkmen were the least defined by locale. The city’s nervy post-punk heritage fed directly into the kind of music popularised by The Strokes, Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, just as its dynamic club culture motored LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture. The Walkmen, by contrast, seemed aligned to another place and time.

This may be partly due to pure geography. All five members – Hamilton Leithauser, Paul Maroon, Walter Martin, Matt Barrick and Peter Bauer – had initially met at school and played in bands around Washington DC, 200-odd miles away. More pertinently though, there was a shared predilection for vintage gear and studio dynamics patented during the first flush of rock’n’roll. Once in New York, having formed from the remnants of Jonathan Fire*Eater and The Recoys, The Walkmen offered a riveting (if sometimes wayward) mix of ’60s minimalism and voluminous art rock, at its most potent on 2004’s killer single “The Rat”.

By 2006, however, after deciding to cut an ad hoc version of Harry Nilsson and John Lennon’s 1974 album Pussy Cats, the band appeared to have lost their way. Their label subsequently dropped them. Against a perilous backdrop – no record company, studio or manager – The Walkmen started work on what became You & Me.

Adversity had a profound effect. Written over two years, with band members split between New York and Philadelphia, The Walkmen tapped into the spirit of their favourite records from the late ’50s and early ’60s for inspiration: Elvis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly. The new songs left space between the grooves, allowing for echoey ambience and a moody sense of abstraction. There was fresh adventurism too, with guitarist Paul Maroon adding judicious brass and strings.

You & Me feels like a grand statement. The Walkmen prove themselves still capable of a fierce racket, but Leithauser comes into his own as an anguished balladeer, heightened by Maroon’s cavernous guitar and drummer Matt Barrick’s extraordinary percussion. Indeed, Barrick is the album’s secret weapon, creating syncopated rhythms and textures that steer these songs towards something more expressionist in tone.

“Dónde Está La Playa” emerges from a murky start into a series of clattery peaks and ominous lulls, Leithauser’s flailing confessional mapping out an emotional world of booze, partying and doomed romance: “I know that you’re married, rings on your hand/So I didn’t stay ’til the end”. The commanding “On The Water” is similarly locked in despair, the narrator heading home, probably drunk, beneath a swinging skyline, branches bending low. Leithauser sounds like a wounded Dylan, the music gathering around him in a busy storm.

He’s still dreaming of home as “Red Moon” looms into view. Leithauser yearns to be beside his loved one, his baleful tones mirrored by Maroon’s lonely trumpet, echoing across an empty night. The lyrics are hopeful, yet undercut by warning metaphors: riptides, darkness, light glinting from a steel knife. Even Leithauser’s optimism (and there’s a fair deal of it) appears misplaced. The booming avant-rock of “In The New Year” – set to squealing organ and flashing guitars – looks forward to a fresh start but its protagonist’s words ring hollow. “I know that it’s true/It’s gonna be a good year”, yelps Leithauser at his most impassioned. “Out of the darkness/And into the fire”. And by the time of penultimate track “I Lost You” (a Motown-ish wonder with Barrick in imperious form), the river’s overflowing, the house is burning down and Leithauser is pleading for a lifeline.

In the spring of 2009, nearly a year after You & Me’s release, The Walkmen decamped to Memphis to film a session at Sun Studios for PBS. The hitherto unreleased tracks finally appear on this edition. The key difference, aside from the surroundings, is the addition of a five-piece horn section, led by ex-Bar-Kays trumpeter Ben Cauley, the sole survivor of the plane crash that wiped out Otis Redding and his bandmates in 1967.

There are variations on tracks from You & Me (including an admirably funky “Canadian Girl”), though the highlight is a slightly older Walkmen tune, “Louisiana”. It’s a wonderful moment, like The VU’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” reimagined as humid Stax soul, rising into an immense finale. And while the sessions would directly inspire their next effort, 2010’s Lisbon, The Walkmen have You & Me to thank for ushering in the superior second phase of their career. They may no longer be around, but this album proves they still matter.

David Michael Moore – Flatboat River Witch

Peter Watts
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David Michael Moore – Flatboat River Witch
You probably haven’t heard of the schizoid zither. Or the buzzstick. Or the boing box. These are all names that semi-reclusive musician David Michael Moore has given to his homemade instrument, a wooden box with strings and keys that he describes as “a simple hybrid stringed instrument that comb...

You probably haven’t heard of the schizoid zither. Or the buzzstick. Or the boing box. These are all names that semi-reclusive musician David Michael Moore has given to his homemade instrument, a wooden box with strings and keys that he describes as “a simple hybrid stringed instrument that combines experimental percussion and melody on the same soundboard. It can be plucked like a harp, played with sticks like a santur, set up to bend strings like a koto, or played with a slide and finger picks. It is basically an ornamental soundboard that one can set up and play in different ways.”

Moore is an American original, a carpenter and artist who lives in a rundown house in rural Mississippi with his dog Bobo, lots of books, a 200-year-old human skull, homemade furniture and, of course, his musical instruments. As well as the schizoid zither, he plays drums, piano, keyboards, accordion plus chainsaw, dog bones and witches’ pot. Moore has been making music since the 1970s, and since the mid-’90s began issuing CDs under the monikers Dayday Moemoe, David Michael Moore and David Moore. The best of these recordings have now been collected by Indiana-based record label Ulyssa on Flatboat River Witch 1994–2015, which is available to purchase digitally or on cassette. The label has plans to follow up with re-releases of some of these original albums.

Moore might be unusual but he’s an excellent musician, and the songs on Flatboat River Witch are well recorded and beautifully played, essentially semi-improvised folk-jazz that combines the extraordinary sound of the boing box – a sort of all-in-one guitar, drum and keyboard that sounds simultaneously wooden and metallic – with more conventional instruments. He borrows rhythms and textures from folk and world music, peppers these with found sounds and occasionally sings, a little hoarse but warm and melodic enough. He calls his music “traditional but perverted”, but the rippling percussion of “Jungle Pie” or piano-led meditations like “Orion’s In The Bucket” and “Cottonwood Night Coming Down” are moving and accessible pieces of music. Many feel semi-improvised, like the 11-minute “Johnny Quixote”, but the funny ode to the posterior, “Butt Deluxe”, shows he can keep things short and sweet when he needs to.

His songs often speak of local people and places he has known – “No names have been changed to protect anyone. They could care less anyway,” he says in the sleevenotes to one CD – but are equally inspired by the landscape and cadence of the mighty river that flows nearby. This is music infused with mystery, humour and humanity. There’s something of Tom Waits or Dan Reeder about all this, and traces of the Southern Gothic of Jim White and Johnny Dowd, but it seems daft to look for comparisons with an artist so unforced, naturalistic and unique. Delve in: the weirdness is waiting.

Introducing Uncut’s amazing new Wilco CD: an alternate Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Michael Bonner
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Introducing Uncut’s amazing new Wilco CD: an alternate Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
This month’s Uncut CD is a special one: an alternate version of Wilco’s classic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, compiled for Uncut by the band themselves. https://twitter.com/Wilco/status/1547951016955416581 A handy companion piece to Nonesuch’s mammoth 20th-anniversary Yankee… boxset, due in Se...

This month’s Uncut CD is a special one: an alternate version of Wilco’s classic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, compiled for Uncut by the band themselves.

A handy companion piece to Nonesuch’s mammoth 20th-anniversary Yankee… boxset, due in September, Cross-Eyed Strangers encompasses alternate studio takes, live tracks and Jeff Tweedy solo cuts, climaxing with the epic finale to their recent New York performance of the album.

“Revisiting Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has been a collaboration with our audience,” Tweedy tells Uncut. “We are a band that likes to make people happy. The tour, the boxset, and now this compilation is all a part of letting everyone in as much as they want to come in.

“The songs pulled for this CD come from a variety of places over the years – versions that fans have responded well to. If you ever wondered what a time-travelling-enabled alternate version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would sound like, here’s your chance!”

Wilco

The CD, which is only available with the September 2022 issue of Uncut, accompanies our Wilco cover story – their first for a UK music magazine – which joins the dots between Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, its 20th anniversary edition and the band’s latest album, Cruel Country – and much, much more.

You can read a taster from our cover story by clicking here.

The new issue of Uncut is in shops from July 21 and also available to buy form our online store.

Welcome to the new Uncut: Wilco, Blondie, The Kinks and a free Wilco CD

Michael Bonner
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Welcome to the new Uncut: Wilco, Blondie, The Kinks and a free Wilco CD
The new issue of Uncut is in shops from July 21 and also available to buy form our online store. It seems strange, on reflection, that Wilco have never been on the cover of Uncut. After all, there are few contemporary bands whose career we’ve championed so assiduously during our 25-year existen...

The new issue of Uncut is in shops from July 21 and also available to buy form our online store.

It seems strange, on reflection, that Wilco have never been on the cover of Uncut. After all, there are few contemporary bands whose career we’ve championed so assiduously during our 25-year existence. Certainly, the sequence of albums from their 1995 debut AM to this year’s Cruel Country constitutes one of the most artistically consistent and compelling narratives in music. That they appeared five times in our recent list of 300 greatest albums of Uncut’s lifetime – the most of any artist – simply underscores their considerable musical achievements and ability to redefine what they do and how they do it.

For this cover story we celebrate not one but two Wilcos: the band in transition who recorded the landmark Yankee Hotel Foxtrot 20 years ago and the band now who’ve just released Cruel Country. With help from Jeff Tweedy and the rest of the band, Nick Hasted untangles the knotty congruence between Wilco past and Wilco present – and in doing so helps find a path to Wilco future. For our free CD, Wilco have reconstructed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot from other sources – some live, some alternate versions and some taken from their upcoming deluxe YHF special edition. It is, I think, very special.

Elsewhere, Peter Watts takes roads less travelled with Blondie, Dave Davies gives us one of his most revealing and emotional interviews ever, Stephen Troussé considers the legacy of David Bowie in the company of a fabulous collection of kooks, Laura Barton investigates Cosey Fanni Tutti’s transgressive life and times, we welcome Julia Jacklin and get deep with Cass McCombs. You’ll also find Love, Steve Hillage, Chris Forsyth and Little Feat, as well as continued evidence of the enduring power of several Uncut favourites. As our piece on the unexpected and welcome success, 37 years later, of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” proves, framing our heroes’ evolving work is a critical part of what we do here.

Plenty going on. Until next month…

New names and stages announced for this year’s End Of The Road festival

Sam Richards
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New names and stages announced for this year’s End Of The Road festival
A sprinkling of new names have been added to the line-up of this year's End Of The Road festival, taking place on September 1-4 at Larmer Tree Gardens on the Dorset/Wiltshire border. Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Jockstrap, Snapped Ankles, Hailu Mergia, James Holden & Wacław Zimpel, Duncan...

A sprinkling of new names have been added to the line-up of this year’s End Of The Road festival, taking place on September 1-4 at Larmer Tree Gardens on the Dorset/Wiltshire border.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Jockstrap, Snapped Ankles, Hailu Mergia, James Holden & Wacław Zimpel, Duncan Marquiss and John Francis Flynn are among the new additions, some of which will play on the new Boat stage (formerly the DJ-only Disco Ship).

The day splits for the festival have also been announced – see who’s playing which stage on which day on the poster below:

We’re looking forward to seeing you there. Exciting details of who’ll be joining us for our Uncut Q&A sessions on the Talking Heads stage will be revealed soon!

Wilco: “We value ourselves based on what’s on the horizon”

Nick Hasted
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Wilco: “We value ourselves based on what’s on the horizon”
2022 was meant to be the year Wilco celebrated the 20th anniversary of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the album that almost split the band but ended up securing their legend. However, this is a group that likes to keep moving – hence the surprise appearance in May of the organic and emotionally direct Crue...

2022 was meant to be the year Wilco celebrated the 20th anniversary of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the album that almost split the band but ended up securing their legend. However, this is a group that likes to keep moving – hence the surprise appearance in May of the organic and emotionally direct Cruel Country.

For this month’s cover story – in UK shops from Thursday, July 21 and available to buy from our online store – Jeff Tweedy and his cohorts explain why Wilco don’t really do nostalgia: “We value ourselves based on what’s on the horizon.”

The band have also curated an alternate version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot exclusively for Uncut, which is only available with our September 2022 issue.

Wilco’s sole UK stop on their summer European tour is at the Black Deer Festival, a celebration of Americana held in the Marquess of Abergavenny’s estate on the Kent/Sussex border. Surrounded by the Sussex Weald’s thick woodland, it’s a sedate English scene far from the wind-blown Midwest landscapes Wilco conjure on their new double album, Cruel Country.

It already sounds like one of their finest records, looking back to the glistening, redemptive acoustic beauty of 2007’s Sky Blue Sky, and further still to Uncle Tupelo. But 2022 also finds Wilco reckoning with their storied past more directly, with the upcoming 20th-anniversary reissue of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. With its troubled genesis, an eerie post-9/11 resonance, experimental production and tender songs, the album has always been a Wilco landmark. This new monolithic reissue – the 8CD Super Deluxe Edition includes 82 unreleased tracks – restates the case that it’s still their most crucial record, opening the way to everything they’ve done since, Cruel Country included.

Talking to Uncut backstage at Black Deer, John Stirratt – Wilco’s bassist and the band’s sole constant bar Jeff Tweedy since the band’s inception in 1994 – has the rangy, lived-in attitude of a ’70s Hollywood character actor. Multi-instrumentalist Mikael Jorgensen, who joined in 2002, still talks with the boyish, undimmed enthusiasm of a Wilco fan. Tweedy sports a green jacket and the rustic yellow hat he’ll doff on stage like an Opry showman. He has the amiable conviction of a man who’s exactly where he’s meant to be, his voice dry in tone but crackling with conviction about his work. “I’m really, really happy that we have a new record out and it’s not just a year devoted to looking backwards,” he says. “Wilco isn’t a band that has any real interest in catering to nostalgia. We value ourselves based on what’s on the horizon.”

Taking the stage at Black Deer, the band offer one answer to their legacy’s conundrums with a set that artfully interweaves their past and present, as new songs rub shoulders with old favourites, revealing the common thread of 28 years of radically shifting styles. The soft, pedal-steel swirl of Cruel Country’s “Story To Tell” is followed by Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s epochal opener “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”, with Tweedy’s voice rediscovering its old fragile slur. The new “Ambulance” considers death and redemption, themes that roll through Yankee…’s “War On War”, as well as “Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull”, whose mix of soft ballad beauty and freakout has much in common with Sky Blue Sky’s “Impossible Germany”. The tumbling, psychedelic madness of 1999’s Summerteeth ballad “Via Chicago” then shows Wilco’s penchant for experimentation didn’t start with Yankee.

“That diversity and contrast is what Wilco represents,” states guitarist Nels Cline, checking in later from Wilco’s next stop in Spain, alongside drummer and percussionist Glenn Kotche. “Having no hits is pretty liberating; so is being stylistically unpredictable. One of the reasons why I joined the band, honestly, is because I was aware of that. I felt coming into Wilco that I wouldn’t be in some sort of straitjacket. And I was right!”

PICK UP THE NEW UNCUT FOR THE FULL STORY

Listen to Lou Reed’s earliest known demo of The Velvet Underground’s “Heroin”

Damian Jones
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Listen to Lou Reed’s earliest known demo of The Velvet Underground’s “Heroin”
Lou Reed's earliest known demo of The Velvet Underground's "Heroin" has been released. ORDER NOW: Wilco are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: The rich and musical life of Lou Reed: “There are many plans to continue putting out Lou’s work” The 1965 take of the trac...

Lou Reed’s earliest known demo of The Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” has been released.

The 1965 take of the track, which you can listen to below, was put to tape by the late legendary singer-songwriter nearly two years before its release on his former band’s landmark debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico.

It is the latest taste of the forthcoming Words & Music, May 1965, an archival collection which is set to be released on August 26 via Light In The Attic on what would have been the late singer-songwriter’s 80th birthday.

The rare demo finds Reed accompanying himself on guitar and structurally, it is the same as the album version but it is more than three minutes shorter.

It follows an early demo of “I’m Waiting For The Man”, which was shared last month.

The songs on the album were written by Reed and recorded to tape by his future Velvet Underground bandmate John Cale. Reed posted the tape to himself as a “poor man’s copyright” and it remained sealed in its original envelope for nearly 50 years.

Elsewhere on the tracklist are previously unreleased demos including “Buttercup Song”, “Buzz Buzz Buzz” and “Stockpile”. Words & Music, May 1965 will be released in a variety of formats including LP, cassette, 8-track, digital and CD.

A deluxe 45-RPM double LP edition of the album will be limited to 7,500 copies worldwide and will include two 12-inch LPs, a bonus 7-inch including six previously-unreleased bonus tracks including a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”, a saddle-stitched, die-cut 28-page book featuring lyrics, archival photos and liner notes, and an archival reproduction of a rarely-seen letter written by Reed to his college professor and poet Delmore Schwartz, circa 1964.

All formats will be released on August 26, while a six-song digital EP Gee Whiz, 1958-1964 will arrive on October 7 and will feature the bonus content from the aforementioned 7-inch.

You can find further information on the release and its different formats, and pre-order the album, here.

Uncut – September 2022

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Uncut – September 2022
HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME Wilco, David Bowie, Blondie, Dave Davies, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Julia Jacklin, Steve Hillage, Love, Chris Forsyth, Little Feat and Stephin Merritt all feature in the new Uncut, dated September 2022 and in UK shops from July 21 or available to buy online now. T...

HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

Wilco, David Bowie, Blondie, Dave Davies, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Julia Jacklin, Steve Hillage, Love, Chris Forsyth, Little Feat and Stephin Merritt all feature in the new Uncut, dated September 2022 and in UK shops from July 21 or available to buy online now. This issue comes with an exclusive free 11-track CD – an alternate version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, compiled by Wilco.

WILCO: 2022 was meant to be the year Wilco celebrated the 20th anniversary of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the album that almost split the band but ended up securing their legend. However, this is a group that likes to keep moving – hence the surprise appearance in May of the organic and emotionally direct Cruel Country. Backstage at Black Deer festival, Jeff Tweedy et al tell Nick Hasted why Wilco don’t really do nostalgia: “We value ourselves based on what’s on the horizon.”

OUR FREE CD! CROSSEYED STRANGERS: An alternative Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, compiled by Wilco.

This issue of Uncut is available to buy by clicking here – with FREE delivery to the UK and reduced delivery charges for the rest of the world.

Inside the issue, you’ll find:

DAVID BOWIE: To mark the 50th anniversary of Ziggy Stardust, collaborators, historians, collectors and fans congregate in Liverpool for a weekend of communion, remembrance and celebration. Stephen Troussé finds that, six years after his passing, David Bowie’s afterlife might turn out to be his most intriguing adventure of all.

BLONDIE: A new boxset shines fresh light on Blondie’s remarkable journey from downtown scenesters to uptown habitués. Peter Watts explores the roads not travelled during their formative years in the company of Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke. “It was always kind of an experiment…”

DAVE DAVIES: Sitting in his local, Dave Davies – guitarist, spiritual warrior, astral explorer – is taking stock. To discuss: his celebrated history in and out of The Kinks, current relations with brother Ray, and where the deep soul-searching that has gone into writing a visceral new memoir will take him next. “It’s better to embrace those feelings full-on than let them fester,” he confesses to Nick Hasted.

JULIA JACKLIN: Having flirted with acting, Julia Jacklin eventually found herself in Montreal, speed-writing a follow-up to the acclaimed Crushing on a Roland keyboard in view of Leonard Cohen’s house. Tom Pinnock hears how she came up with a modern classic by crossing Celine Dion with Goblin. “I was trying to keep the beauty,” Jacklin says, “but make sure it was never getting too pretty.”

STEVE HILLAGE: The Gong and System 7 guitarist talks Glasto, UFOs, Sham 69 and which space-rock band had the best drugs.

LOVE: The making of “She Comes In Colours”.

CHRIS FORSYTH: Album by album with the modern-day rock guitar maestro.

LITTLE FEAT: Forty-five years later, an expanded revisitation of the Feat at their live best.

CLICK TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

In our expansive reviews section, we take a look at new records from Cass McCombs, Louden Wainwright III, Danger Mouse & Black Thought, Amanda Shires and more, and archival releases from The Foundations, Bridget St. John, Lou Reed, and others. We catch the The Rolling Stones and LCD Soundsystem live; among the films, DVDs and TV programmes reviewed are Hit The Road, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time, The Feast, The Good Boss and The Gray Man; while in books there’s PP Arnold and Barbara Charone.

Our front section, meanwhile, features Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Sonic Boom & Panda Bear, Andy Ellison and Sylvie, while, at the end of the magazine, Stephin Merritt shares his life in music.

You can pick up a copy of Uncut in the usual places, where open. But otherwise, readers all over the world can order a copy from here.

CLICK TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

The Beach Boys’ Al Jardine – My Life In Music

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The Beach Boys’ Al Jardine – My Life In Music
Read more in issue 303 of Uncut - available now for home delivery from our online store. THE KINGSTON TRIO STRING ALONG CAPITOL, 1960 I had already heard The Kingston Trio’s version of “The John B Sails” – the original title of “Sloop John B” – when String Along came out in 196...

Read more in issue 303 of Uncut – available now for home delivery from our online store.

THE KINGSTON TRIO
STRING ALONG
CAPITOL, 1960

I had already heard The Kingston Trio’s version of “The John B Sails” – the original title of “Sloop John B” – when String Along came out in 1960. It was their fifth album and the last one with original member Dave Guard. I just loved every song on it. At the time, nothing beat their folk sound and perfect harmonies. It’s still one of my all-time favourites and really takes me back to my early days when I was in my own folk trio called The Islanders. I liked their striped shirts too, ha-ha!

GEORGE GERSHWIN
“RHAPSPDY IN BLUE”
VICTOR MACHINE TALKING CO, 1924

This is probably my all-time favourite song, and it’s so amazing that a song that’s almost 100 years old is still so powerful – it literally knocks me out every time I hear it. I also enjoyed Brian’s Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin album that features all of our current Brian Wilson band members: Darian Sahanaja, Probyn Gregory, Paul Von Mertens, Mike D’Amico and Gary Griffin, plus the late Nicky Wonder – RIP – and also Jeffrey Foskett. If there’s a George Gershwin Music Hall Of Fame, Brian should be in it!

FRANKIE LYMON & THE TEENAGERS
WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE
GEE, 1956

I think Frankie Lymon was only 12 when he joined [the band that would become] The Teenagers and [not much older when] they released their big hit “Why Do Fools Fall In Love”. I loved that doo-wop sound in the late-’50s, but this song in particular really hit me with its catchy melody and expressive vocals. The Beach Boys recorded it in early 1964 and then we released it as the B-side to “Fun, Fun, Fun”. We still love playing it live – it just takes me back to a really innocent time in the early days of rock’n’roll and I still have the 45 in my own personal jukebox.

LEAD BELLY
COTTON FIELDS (THE COTTON SONG)
FOLKWAYS, 1953

Huddie Ledbetter (aka Lead Belly) first recorded “The Cotton Song” in 1940 and I first heard it in the mid-’50s. I loved Lead Belly’s vocals and of course his 12-string guitar sound but it was really his heartfelt emotional lyrics written during the Great Depression that affected me. I was determined to record a new version for The Beach Boys at a time when we were going off in quite a few different musical directions. We released “Cotton Fields” on our 20/20 album and it ended up being our last single released in mono and on Capitol at the time.

Black Midi – Hellfire

Daniel Dylan Wray
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Black Midi – Hellfire
For three young men in their early twenties, Black Midi have already covered a lot of musical ground. Their 2019 debut, Schlagenheim, embraced a twisted mutation of math-rock, jazz and post-punk, recalling Battles at their most discordant or a mutilated King Crimson. 2021’s Cavalcade was a more al...

For three young men in their early twenties, Black Midi have already covered a lot of musical ground. Their 2019 debut, Schlagenheim, embraced a twisted mutation of math-rock, jazz and post-punk, recalling Battles at their most discordant or a mutilated King Crimson. 2021’s Cavalcade was a more all-encompassing tonal affair; alongside the frenzied assaults was a softer, more melodic and often poignant side that showed they could veer into avant-folk territory as easily as they could pulverising noise-rock. They continue on this unpredictable route here, on their third album, seemingly on a crusade to sound like all genres yet also none.

On the opening “Hellfire” they combine an almost rap-esque spitfire delivery of words – “a headache, a sore limb, an itchy gash, a mirage, a tumour, a scar” – over the top of a composition that encompasses theatrical piano, military drums, stirring strings and wailing saxophone. It is a wild start to an album made by a band who have chosen to wholeheartedly embrace chaos. However, they also possess such clear talent as musicians, delivering each note with sharp clarity and exactness, that they manage to create a dichotomous form of precise mayhem.

Marta Salogni, who previously worked on Cavalcade’s opener “John L”, produces here, and does a deft yet dynamic job of bringing the band to life. The record is often intensely busy – with tracks like “Sugar/Tzu” veering from tender and gentle restraint to volatile and discordant bursts of squealing guitar and drums – yet it never sounds cluttered or messy. She’s able to extract, and highlight, the disorder while also emphasising space, allowing the record to swing from breakdown to explosion and back again with grace.

Some moments of the record are so overblown, bombastic, theatrical, confounding and nonsensical – take the brilliant “The Race is About To Begin”, with characters that include Mrs Gonorrhoea, and which sounds like someone has accidentally played three different songs at once – that it can feel like the band are taking the piss. And in many senses, they are; ideas, lyrics and musical directions that many groups may toss off for fun in the studio but quickly discard as being too absurd are seen through to the bitter end here. The band themselves have said as much: “Black Midi don’t expect, or want, you to take themselves or their music too seriously. Black Midi’s music can be exuberant, cathartic, theatrical, comic, absurdist, over-abundant, intense, cinematic, brutal.”

Black Midi’s creative restlessness is reflected in the vast shifts that take place within the album. At times it ricochets around so such – from the metal-esque riffage of “Welcome To Hell” to the acoustic skip of “Still” – that it feels whiplash-inducing. Similarly, the lyrics and stories on the album lean more towards vignettes than they do a neatly packaged conceptual whole, even if hell in various forms is something of a recurring theme.

Often what we have are character monologues, with singer Geordie Greep stating “almost everyone depicted is a kind of scumbag”; the narrative of the album glides from boxing-match drama to a fictional radio host introducing the band to confessions of a grisly murder. It’s a little like channel-hopping through a TV station programmed by someone who has amalgamated the strangest corners of the world into one place. There’s no performative politics here, no social commentary, no earnest personal overspill, just a series of odd stories that capture what a genuinely eccentric band, and lyricist Greep, are. His vocal delivery matches this wild ride too, from idiosyncratic spoken word, to frenzied screams, to a genuinely tender, soft and beautiful delivery that even veers towards a croon from time to time, as on the sweeping “The Defence”.

Ultimately, the unique thing about Black Midi is that despite the shock of their sound – an all-things-at-once post-genre party – Hellfire manages to retain a strange and hypnotic cohesion. They’ve managed to make tonal inconsistencies feel like an actual consistency, rather than being a jarring and detracting experience. They’ve wrangled chaos into submission, and currently sound like no other band out there.

Cheri Knight – American Rituals

Piers Martin
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Cheri Knight – American Rituals
Fish around for a minute or two googling “Cheri Knight” and you’ll soon come across a song of hers on YouTube called “Dar Glasgow”. It’s the opening track on her second solo album, 1998’s The Northeast Kingdom. The cover is a painting of Knight in a dress of green leaves holding a guit...

Fish around for a minute or two googling “Cheri Knight” and you’ll soon come across a song of hers on YouTube called “Dar Glasgow”. It’s the opening track on her second solo album, 1998’s The Northeast Kingdom. The cover is a painting of Knight in a dress of green leaves holding a guitar in a vegetable field, alluding to her two passions, music and farming. The song is a rural gothic folk tale, spun out over the drone of a harmonium, which slowly pulls the listener in. That harmonium is played by Steve Earle, whose label E-Squared released the album, and the song also features additional vocals by Emmylou Harris.

In some respects, this is the pinnacle of Knight’s patchy career as a semi-professional musician, though she enjoyed modest attention in the early 1990s as the vocalist and bassist in roots-rockers Blood Oranges. After Northeast Kingdom, she withdrew from music and carried on tending the land where she lived in Western Massachusetts. She hadn’t been heard of since – until now.

American Rituals rewinds two decades to the late ’70s and early ’80s to focus on Knight’s early DIY recordings, when she studied music composition at the free-thinking Evergreen State College outside Olympia, Washington, long before the city became an indie hotbed. Raised in a musical household and schooled in philosophy and architecture, she was familiar with the likes of John Cage before entering Evergreen, but there, with access to new ideas, instruments and studios, she was able to channel her interests into creating quite a pure kind of music from voice samples and audio collages; pared-back, elemental pieces where the act of construction – the ritual – is intrinsic to the finished work.

She’s direct in her technique, nothing is out of place. “Hear/Say” primarily loops and layers those two words – we hear what she is saying – for five minutes until they become either meaningful or meaningless; “Primary Colours” coalesces into a melody comprised of her repetition of the names of various colours. For “Prime Numbers”, she assembles a basic groove from handclaps, bass and polyvocal chants. Others, like “Tips On Filmmaking” and “Water Project #2261”, share a joyous exoticism with Steve Reich’s rich minimalism and seem less concerned with process. Knight worked closely with the composer Pauline Oliveros while at college and her wisdom, her approach to listening, seems to have informed Knight’s thoughtful music.

At the time, the seven pieces here came out on various compilations celebrating the local DIY scene, released on vinyl by Evergreen College or Kerry Leimer’s Palace Of Lights imprint. Knight was also part of Olympia’s Lost Music Network alongside fellow musician Bruce Pavitt, who’d go on to start Sub Pop. Remarkably, for such a casually pioneering composer, this is the first time Knight’s foundational music has appeared in one place. Now she’ll surely get some of the recognition she deserves.

Lera Lynn – Something More Than Love

Rob Hughes
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Lera Lynn – Something More Than Love
Lera Lynn isn’t prone to repeating herself. Having moved further away from her countryish beginnings with 2018’s duets album, Plays Well With Others, she followed up with the self-made, and self-explanatory, On My Own. Now she’s shifted into an entirely different dimension with Something More ...

Lera Lynn isn’t prone to repeating herself. Having moved further away from her countryish beginnings with 2018’s duets album, Plays Well With Others, she followed up with the self-made, and self-explanatory, On My Own. Now she’s shifted into an entirely different dimension with Something More Than Love. Co-produced with her partner Todd Lombardo, it’s an often moving, sometimes troubled, meditation on the joys and trials of new parenthood.

Lynn gave birth to their first son at the start of the pandemic. Adjusting to being a mother while processing the internal and external changes in her life, she began suffering from postnatal depression. All of this played into the songs that took shape at the couple’s home in Nashville. As its title suggests, Something More Than Love pulls deep from her emotional self. Both “Illusion” and “Black River” deal with the euphoria of finding meaningful connection, the latter’s acceptance of fate finding a metaphor in the ceaseless roll of the current it describes.

Lynn ponders sharing her body with a new presence on “Conflict Of Interest” (“Can we both exist/Inside of this new skin/What is your name?”), before declaring her utter devotion on the self-sacrificial title track, her protective genes kicking in: “How could I deny you?/Formula of stardust/You’re a perfect figure”. The full weight and terror of responsibility threatens to drag her under on “Eye In The Sky”, but, ultimately, there’s renewed strength on “Golden Sun” and “I’m Your Kamikaze”.

On a musical level, Lynn imparts these songs with an unhurried grace. And while there’s an agreeable twang to “Black River” and folk-country steel on “In A Moment”, synths form the album’s bedrock. “Illusion” carries echoes of Kacey Musgraves’ transition to propulsive pop (Lombardo is a recent contributor of hers, as are fellow band members Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian), while the exquisite “What Is This Body?” and “Cog In The Machine” present a more abstract and experimental side of Lynn, crowned by her cool, effortlessly agile vocals.

Happy Mondays bassist Paul Ryder has died aged 58

Will Richards
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Happy Mondays bassist Paul Ryder has died aged 58
Paul Ryder, bassist of Happy Mondays and brother of frontman Shaun, has died at the age of 58. The news was revealed by the band on social media, with no cause of death or further details yet given. They wrote: "The Ryder family and Happy Mondays band members are deeply saddened and shocked to...

Paul Ryder, bassist of Happy Mondays and brother of frontman Shaun, has died at the age of 58.

The news was revealed by the band on social media, with no cause of death or further details yet given.

They wrote: “The Ryder family and Happy Mondays band members are deeply saddened and shocked to say that Paul Ryder passed away this morning. A true pioneer and legend. He will be forever missed.

“We thank you for respecting the privacy of all concerned at this time. Long live his funk x”

Ryder formed the band alongside brother Shaun in 1980, playing through until their initial split in 1993. While not joining a reunion the band held in 2004, he did rejoin Happy Mondays for a further set of reunion dates in 2012, which had continued for the following decade to the present day.

Tributes from those in the Manchester music scene and beyond have been pouring in for Ryder online since the news was announced, with Ian Brown writing: “REST IN PEACE PAUL RYDER A GREAT FRIEND A GREAT MUSICIAN A GREAT FELLA BIG LOVE TO AMELIA JACOB SONNY CHICO AND THE FAMILY AND BAND LOVE YA LONGTIME PABS X”

Haçienda DJ Dave Haslam added: Really very sorry to hear of the death of Paul Ryder – he made a massive contribution to Happy Mondays and was good company and a top fella RIP.”

See more tributes to Ryder below.

 

The band were set to headline London’s Kaleidoscope Festival next weekend (July 23) at Alexandra Palace, and played Buckinghamshire’s Bigfoot Festival last month.

Introducing the Ultimate Music Guide to Kate Bush

John Robinson
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Introducing the Ultimate Music Guide to Kate Bush
BUY THE KATE BUSH ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE As she was writing her extraordinary Hounds Of Love album, time was very much on Kate Bush’s mind. Her music, as she explained in 1985, was born of experimentation, and took a very long (and expensive) while to bear fruit in the studio. For that and ...

BUY THE KATE BUSH ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE

As she was writing her extraordinary Hounds Of Love album, time was very much on Kate Bush’s mind. Her music, as she explained in 1985, was born of experimentation, and took a very long (and expensive) while to bear fruit in the studio. For that and other reasons, her record company had an eye on the clock too – after over two years away from the spotlight, there were concerns that Kate’s public might have forgotten her in the wake of The Dreaming. As far removed from these kind of pressures as possible, at a new studio built in a Kent farmhouse, Kate Bush was working at her own pace on remarkable, “rhythmic” new songs.

With a fittingly idiosyncratic sense of timing, it’s one of these songs – “Running Up That Hill” – which prompts Kate Bush’s unexpected return to the conversation in 2022, and which we celebrate with this current edition of our Ultimate Music Guide. At the time of writing, the song is number one in the UK singles charts (though it now holds a record for having taken 37 years to get there), and is still in the US top five. The success has even prompted some rare breaking of cover by the artist herself.

Thanks to an interview with Radio 4’s Womans’ Hour we have been able to peer briefly through Kate’s privacy. We learn that she is landline not Zoom call or mobile. That she is entertained by the song’s new-found success (“the world’s gone mad”). Also that she is aware of TikTok, but not of “WitchTok”, a Kate-centric strand of the platform (which, she says, “sounds ridiculous”).

More particularly, she’s happy with the event that has prompted this resurgence of interest in her music: the use of the song in the Netflix series Stranger Things. Although she never listens to her “old stuff” her household are fans of the show, and she is happy the song has been used in such a “special” way (for the uninitiated, the song rescues a young female character called Max, who is in mortal/supernatural danger).

Maybe the most interesting element to be gleaned from Kate’s interview with Emma Barnett is an off-the-cuff remark she makes about the nature of music as opposed to other artforms. “Other artforms sit in their own space,” she says – whereas music diffuses in a way that visual art or contemporary dance or sculpture might struggle to. “It finds a way of touching people.”

What you’ll find in this reprint of our sold-out guide from 2017 is the story of how Kate’s music has done just that. Told through in-depth writing about Kate’s albums (also her singles and videos), and in classic interviews from the archives of NME, Melody Maker and Uncut, it’s the whole story of this remarkable artist’s work – even though it might not yet be the complete one. As recent events have shown us, you can never quite tell when the next something good is going to happen.

Buy a copy of the magazine here. Missed one in the series? Bundles are available at the same location…

Kate Bush – Ultimate Music Guide

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Kate Bush – Ultimate Music Guide
As she tops the charts in 2022 with her 1985 hit "Running Up That Hill", which was featured prominently in Netflix's Stranger Things, we celebrate the genius of Kate Bush with our Ultimate Music Guide. "I just know that something good is going to happen..." Buy a copy here!...

As she tops the charts in 2022 with her 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill”, which was featured prominently in Netflix’s Stranger Things, we celebrate the genius of Kate Bush with our Ultimate Music Guide. “I just know that something good is going to happen…”

Buy a copy here!

Bob Dylan to play nine UK shows in October

Sam Richards
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Bob Dylan to play nine UK shows in October
Bob Dylan has announced that his ongoing Rough And Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour will swing by the UK in October. He'll play nine shows in the country, including four nights at the London Palladium. See the full list of dates on the poster below: Tickets go on sale at 10am on Friday July 15 f...

Bob Dylan has announced that his ongoing Rough And Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour will swing by the UK in October.

He’ll play nine shows in the country, including four nights at the London Palladium. See the full list of dates on the poster below:

Tickets go on sale at 10am on Friday July 15 from here (for the London Palladium shows) and here (for all other dates).

Dylan has played 74 dates so far on his Rough And Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour, but this will be the first time he’s toured the UK in over five years.

If that’s not enough Bob for ya, Cat Power has announced that she’ll play a special show at the Royal Albert Hall on November 5, with a set recreating Dylan’s legendary 1966 show at the same venue in full. Tickets for that one also go on sale at 10am on Friday (July 15) from here.

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