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Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

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Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

Rootling around the internet the other day, I came across an interesting picture of Justin Vernon, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter from Wisconsin who records under the nom de guerre of Bon Iver. In the photograph, it is snowing heavily. Vernon and his friend Keil are standing on the edge of dense woodland, wearing fluorescent orange outfits and holding rifles. The two men are going hunting, and we learn from the interview (at stereogum.com, incidentally) that during the recording of his debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, Vernon slaughtered, butchered and ate two deer. It is not the sort of backstory that usually comes with a hip American indie record, and listening to Vernon’s extraordinary debut, it’s hard to equate this gun-toting man – albeit one whose methodology is closer to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall than Ted Nugent - with the thoughtful, tender, at times angelic folksinger who inhabits the songs. But while the details might disturb squeamish vegetarians like myself, the sometimes gory realities of self-sufficiency and survival are integral to For Emma. . . On one level, we could bracket Bon Iver – the name’s an artful misspelling of the French for “Good winter” - as part of a revitalising new wave of Americana, along with Fleet Foxes, Dawn Landes, Sam Amidon, plentiful fingerpickers like Jack Rose, The Cave Singers, even more raucous rock bands like Band Of Horses and Howlin Rain. I suspect, though, that Justin Vernon would recoil at the prospect of being part of a scene. For Emma, Forever Ago is a record entirely predicated on isolation. It operates so securely and intensely in its own world – a world of snow and silence and long-percolated memories – that to listen sometimes seem like an intrusive act. The album was recorded, crucially, in his father’s log cabin, out in the woods of North-east Wisconsin, about 70 miles from Vernon’s hometown of Eau Claire. In November 2006, after his band DeYarmond Edison (no, me neither) broke up, Vernon headed up to the cabin for three months, planning to “hibernate”. As the weather got colder, he found his own food, chopped down trees for wood, collected his thoughts and formulated them into a suite of songs. Some extra drums and horns were added later, in a studio in Raleigh, North Carolina. Fundamentally, though, For Emma, Forever Ago is a genuinely solo record. At its heart is an acoustic guitar and Vernon’s calmly expressive falsetto, and since 500 copies of the album first appeared on the singer’s own label last autumn, standard review practise has seen fit to compare the sound with that of Iron & Wine. But it’s how Vernon treats that guitar, that voice, and the environment in which they were recorded that makes For Emma such a magical, hyper-real experience. It begins straightforwardly enough, with “Flume”, and with the sound of an acoustic guitar being strummed in an empty room; scuffy, ungated, revelling in the space. After 20 seconds, though, Vernon’s voice wafts in. “I am my mother’s only son. It’s enough,” he is singing, and there’s an echoey quality to it which is soon exacerbated by some celestial multitracking. After two and a half minutes, a brittle scrabble of guitar has come into the foreground, and for a few seconds the song dissolves. There are some discreetly unnerving electronic creaks, scrapes and gurgles, but we can also hear Vernon moving around the room, detect the inhospitable weather beyond the walls. Somehow, he seems to capture the performance with a forensic intimacy, while simultaneously imbuing it with an extra, ethereal dimension. “Flume” sets the tone for the eight songs which follow it. “Lump Sum” opens with a swooning choir of Justin Vernons, as if he has somehow corralled the voices in his head into some useful, harmonious work (talking of voices in the head, For Emma… is best experienced in headphones, the better to hear every squeaking string and profound sigh). “The Wolves (Act I And II) finds his multitracked voice taking on a faint gospel tinge, set against a remorselessly spare guitar, tapped as much as strummed. “Someday my pain will mark you,” he intones, “Harness your blame and walk through”. Far in the distance, mystifyingly, there appears to be a police siren. Plenty of For Emma seems to deal with a vague kind of anguish, and the lyrics often skirt impressionistically around clear meaning. But the emotional heft is increased – rather than dissipated – by the layered vocals, so that when the words are direct, the impact is huge. “Skinny Love” finds him exasperated and recriminatory: “I told you to be balanced,” he rails, “I told you to be kind/ Now all your love is wasted?/ Then who the hell am I?” “The Wolves” climaxes with him incanting, “What might have been lost don’t bother me,” with the voluptuous soulfulness of TV On The Radio, while rumbling drums sound like exploding fireworks in the background. If we crudely assume that Vernon has undergone some terrible personal heartbreak, making rapturous music in the middle of nowhere is evidently no mean consolation. And so For Emma flows on, through “Blindsided”, where the subtle electronic shading recalls the Austrian avant-gardist, Fennesz. Through “Creature Fear”, where hammered drums and a marauding bassline lead on into “Team”, the album’s seething equivalent of an instrumental freak-out. The guitar fuzzes and strafes, closer to that of Kevin Shields than any of Vernon’s supposed folk peers. Finally, he starts to whistle, creepily, a foreshadowing of the woozy New Orleans horns which garnish the title track. This one is a loping conversation (the lyric sheet reveals) between two parting lovers. “So apropos: saw death on a sunny snow,” he begins, as if remembering the morning’s successful kill. At the end of “re: stacks”, after Vernon has achieved some kind of resolution that “Your love will be safe with me”, you can hear him put his guitar down and walk away. Whether he is heading out of his father’s cabin towards a long, significant career is hard to predict, and the perverse romantic in me almost wants him not to bother trying. For Emma, Forever Ago is such a hermetically sealed, complete and satisfying album, the prospect of a follow-up – of a life for Vernon beyond the wilderness, even - seems merely extraneous. JOHN MULVEY UP CLOSE & PERSONAL WITH JUSTIN VERNON: UNCUT: So what made you head up to your father’s cabin at the end of 2006? JUSTIN VERNON: I’d nowhere else to be really, and I needed to get out of Raleigh, North Carolina, where I was living. I knew I had deer meat up there, I knew I had beer. Why did you need to get out of Raleigh? My bandmates and I (in DeYarmond Edison) were really close – we’d been playing together for ten years - and we broke up. It was really hard. I didn’t have anything going on there, and without the band, it was a personal struggle. I had a kitchen job ten hours a week that I hated. I needed to get out. How could you afford to hide away for so long in the cabin with no money coming in? Well, I didn’t need any. I was up at the cabin. I went deer hunting, and every ten days my dad brought in water and leftovers for me; meat or some corn, random stuff. I really ate more deer meat than you can possibly imagine. Did you go there with the idea of making an album? No. I always have my stuff with me, and I figured I’d play guitar or something, but I didn’t intend to make a record or anything. So what were you intending to do? To hide away, to just have some stillness. I had nowhere else to go. I had the opportunity to spend some quality time in nature, by myself, at a place that was pretty sacred to me. There were a lot of things underneath a lot of surfaces in my life that I needed to deal with. And I think the space given to me by the woods, both the mental and physical space, gave me so much room to breathe and excavate and examine. Are the songs predominantly about one old relationship? No, they’re not. It’s centred around an ancient, long-lost love. But, as happens in people’s lives, old relationships often have plenty to do with new relationships as they come along. A lot of the album is about me trying to grow up, about trying to grow into new love and failing at it. It’s telling a story of one last relationship and how other ones collided with it So is Emma a real person? Yeah, kind of. The person is real, the name is also somewhat real, but not real. I’m not even lying to you, it’s not her first name. How does she feel about the record? It’s kind of old enough. The people who are close to me, including her, knew that I was having trouble. Trouble gaining new perspective, trouble growing up from these old memories and these old loves. Everybody who’s known me has known I’ve been hung up, circling some kind of drain of mediocrity in my life, and it all seemed to stem from this ancient love Are you by nature a solitary person? No, I’m a pretty sociable person, as a matter of fact. I was football captain at my high school. But oftentimes I’ll just overflow, and then I’ll need to spend a week alone and not talk to anybody or call anybody. I’m pretty hyper-aware of what I need in any given moment, and I think anyone needs time alone. Do you think emotional and practical self-sufficiency are connected? I think so, I just think mentally I was in a good place. If I got cold when I recorded, I’d have to go and chop wood to put in the fire, if the dishes were dirty, I’d have to wash them. In so many instances in the world, people have crazy routines in their life, but often none of them include a moment to do nothing, to examine your day and what paths your thoughts have taken. Yes, they are connected, because I spent so much time alone examining things. What else did you do? There’s a tractor and a barn up there, my dad has a sawmill. So I’d cut trees down or saw wood. I built a huge cavernous closet in the barn, I built things in the woods, I’d mow the pines, just random chores that needed to be done. Do you have a moral justification for hunting? No I don’t, and I understand why it would need to be explained. I do think that there are trophy hunters and then there are people who are hunting for the right reasons. Killing an animal with your own devices, the experience it gives you, makes you feel really close to the earth. When you do it, it’s not a fun thing - you don’t throw your hands up in the air, or I don’t. When it happens you’re stunned by the power that you’ve just wielded. Afterwards it’s a very humbling experience to clean and butcher an animal, it’s not one that you’re super pumped about. But the justification is that if someone eats meat, why not get it from a place that is completely natural? When you kill an animal, you feel terrible, then you feel remorse, then you feel a gladness that you did something that was extremely natural and safe. You feel as if, when you die, you’ll feel closer to justifying your own death Are you daunted by the prospect of making a follow-up? Not really. The big champion thing for me on this record was that I learned how to excavate. I’ve always written as a follower and as a seeker, but at this point I feel like I’ve found The Way, with a capital W, how to write and how to exhume things from my psyche. Now that I’ve got that, all I really have to worry about is recreating something. I’ve purposely not written anything for the next record yet because I want to sit down and do it all in one period, so that the songs can grow from the same context. I don’t think the next record is going to sound anything like this one, and I think that’s good. INTERVIEW: JOHN MULVEY

Rootling around the internet the other day, I came across an interesting picture of Justin Vernon, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter from Wisconsin who records under the nom de guerre of Bon Iver. In the photograph, it is snowing heavily. Vernon and his friend Keil are standing on the edge of dense woodland, wearing fluorescent orange outfits and holding rifles. The two men are going hunting, and we learn from the interview (at stereogum.com, incidentally) that during the recording of his debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, Vernon slaughtered, butchered and ate two deer.

It is not the sort of backstory that usually comes with a hip American indie record, and listening to Vernon’s extraordinary debut, it’s hard to equate this gun-toting man – albeit one whose methodology is closer to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall than Ted Nugent – with the thoughtful, tender, at times angelic folksinger who inhabits the songs. But while the details might disturb squeamish vegetarians like myself, the sometimes gory realities of self-sufficiency and survival are integral to For Emma. . .

On one level, we could bracket Bon Iver – the name’s an artful misspelling of the French for “Good winter” – as part of a revitalising new wave of Americana, along with Fleet Foxes, Dawn Landes, Sam Amidon, plentiful fingerpickers like Jack Rose, The Cave Singers, even more raucous rock bands like Band Of Horses and Howlin Rain.

I suspect, though, that Justin Vernon would recoil at the prospect of being part of a scene. For Emma, Forever Ago is a record entirely predicated on isolation. It operates so securely and intensely in its own world – a world of snow and silence and long-percolated memories – that to listen sometimes seem like an intrusive act.

The album was recorded, crucially, in his father’s log cabin, out in the woods of North-east Wisconsin, about 70 miles from Vernon’s hometown of Eau Claire. In November 2006, after his band DeYarmond Edison (no, me neither) broke up, Vernon headed up to the cabin for three months, planning to “hibernate”. As the weather got colder, he found his own food, chopped down trees for wood, collected his thoughts and formulated them into a suite of songs. Some extra drums and horns were added later, in a studio in Raleigh, North Carolina. Fundamentally, though, For Emma, Forever Ago is a genuinely solo record.

At its heart is an acoustic guitar and Vernon’s calmly expressive falsetto, and since 500 copies of the album first appeared on the singer’s own label last autumn, standard review practise has seen fit to compare the sound with that of Iron & Wine. But it’s how Vernon treats that guitar, that voice, and the environment in which they were recorded that makes For Emma such a magical, hyper-real experience.

It begins straightforwardly enough, with “Flume”, and with the sound of an acoustic guitar being strummed in an empty room; scuffy, ungated, revelling in the space. After 20 seconds, though, Vernon’s voice wafts in. “I am my mother’s only son. It’s enough,” he is singing, and there’s an echoey quality to it which is soon exacerbated by some celestial multitracking. After two and a half minutes, a brittle scrabble of guitar has come into the foreground, and for a few seconds the song dissolves. There are some discreetly unnerving electronic creaks, scrapes and gurgles, but we can also hear Vernon moving around the room, detect the inhospitable weather beyond the walls. Somehow, he seems to capture the performance with a forensic intimacy, while simultaneously imbuing it with an extra, ethereal dimension.

“Flume” sets the tone for the eight songs which follow it. “Lump Sum” opens with a swooning choir of Justin Vernons, as if he has somehow corralled the voices in his head into some useful, harmonious work (talking of voices in the head, For Emma… is best experienced in headphones, the better to hear every squeaking string and profound sigh). “The Wolves (Act I And II) finds his multitracked voice taking on a faint gospel tinge, set against a remorselessly spare guitar, tapped as much as strummed. “Someday my pain will mark you,” he intones, “Harness your blame and walk through”. Far in the distance, mystifyingly, there appears to be a police siren.

Plenty of For Emma seems to deal with a vague kind of anguish, and the lyrics often skirt impressionistically around clear meaning. But the emotional heft is increased – rather than dissipated – by the layered vocals, so that when the words are direct, the impact is huge. “Skinny Love” finds him exasperated and recriminatory: “I told you to be balanced,” he rails, “I told you to be kind/ Now all your love is wasted?/ Then who the hell am I?” “The Wolves” climaxes with him incanting, “What might have been lost don’t bother me,” with the voluptuous soulfulness of TV On The Radio, while rumbling drums sound like exploding fireworks in the background. If we crudely assume that Vernon has undergone some terrible personal heartbreak, making rapturous music in the middle of nowhere is evidently no mean consolation.

And so For Emma flows on, through “Blindsided”, where the subtle electronic shading recalls the Austrian avant-gardist, Fennesz. Through “Creature Fear”, where hammered drums and a marauding bassline lead on into “Team”, the album’s seething equivalent of an instrumental freak-out. The guitar fuzzes and strafes, closer to that of Kevin Shields than any of Vernon’s supposed folk peers. Finally, he starts to whistle, creepily, a foreshadowing of the woozy New Orleans horns which garnish the title track. This one is a loping conversation (the lyric sheet reveals) between two parting lovers. “So apropos: saw death on a sunny snow,” he begins, as if remembering the morning’s successful kill.

At the end of “re: stacks”, after Vernon has achieved some kind of resolution that “Your love will be safe with me”, you can hear him put his guitar down and walk away. Whether he is heading out of his father’s cabin towards a long, significant career is hard to predict, and the perverse romantic in me almost wants him not to bother trying. For Emma, Forever Ago is such a hermetically sealed, complete and satisfying album, the prospect of a follow-up – of a life for Vernon beyond the wilderness, even – seems merely extraneous.

JOHN MULVEY

UP CLOSE & PERSONAL WITH JUSTIN VERNON:

UNCUT: So what made you head up to your father’s cabin at the end of 2006?

JUSTIN VERNON: I’d nowhere else to be really, and I needed to get out of Raleigh, North Carolina, where I was living. I knew I had deer meat up there, I knew I had beer.

Why did you need to get out of Raleigh?

My bandmates and I (in DeYarmond Edison) were really close – we’d been playing together for ten years – and we broke up. It was really hard. I didn’t have anything going on there, and without the band, it was a personal struggle. I had a kitchen job ten hours a week that I hated. I needed to get out.

How could you afford to hide away for so long in the cabin with no money coming in?

Well, I didn’t need any. I was up at the cabin. I went deer hunting, and every ten days my dad brought in water and leftovers for me; meat or some corn, random stuff. I really ate more deer meat than you can possibly imagine.

Did you go there with the idea of making an album?

No. I always have my stuff with me, and I figured I’d play guitar or something, but I didn’t intend to make a record or anything.

So what were you intending to do?

To hide away, to just have some stillness. I had nowhere else to go. I had the opportunity to spend some quality time in nature, by myself, at a place that was pretty sacred to me. There were a lot of things underneath a lot of surfaces in my life that I needed to deal with. And I think the space given to me by the woods, both the mental and physical space, gave me so much room to breathe and excavate and examine.

Are the songs predominantly about one old relationship?

No, they’re not. It’s centred around an ancient, long-lost love. But, as happens in people’s lives, old relationships often have plenty to do with new relationships as they come along. A lot of the album is about me trying to grow up, about trying to grow into new love and failing at it. It’s telling a story of one last relationship and how other ones collided with it

So is Emma a real person?

Yeah, kind of. The person is real, the name is also somewhat real, but not real. I’m not even lying to you, it’s not her first name.

How does she feel about the record?

It’s kind of old enough. The people who are close to me, including her, knew that I was having trouble. Trouble gaining new perspective, trouble growing up from these old memories and these old loves. Everybody who’s known me has known I’ve been hung up, circling some kind of drain of mediocrity in my life, and it all seemed to stem from this ancient love

Are you by nature a solitary person?

No, I’m a pretty sociable person, as a matter of fact. I was football captain at my high school. But oftentimes I’ll just overflow, and then I’ll need to spend a week alone and not talk to anybody or call anybody. I’m pretty hyper-aware of what I need in any given moment, and I think anyone needs time alone.

Do you think emotional and practical self-sufficiency are connected?

I think so, I just think mentally I was in a good place. If I got cold when I recorded, I’d have to go and chop wood to put in the fire, if the dishes were dirty, I’d have to wash them. In so many instances in the world, people have crazy routines in their life, but often none of them include a moment to do nothing, to examine your day and what paths your thoughts have taken. Yes, they are connected, because I spent so much time alone examining things.

What else did you do?

There’s a tractor and a barn up there, my dad has a sawmill. So I’d cut trees down or saw wood. I built a huge cavernous closet in the barn, I built things in the woods, I’d mow the pines, just random chores that needed to be done.

Do you have a moral justification for hunting?

No I don’t, and I understand why it would need to be explained. I do think that there are trophy hunters and then there are people who are hunting for the right reasons. Killing an animal with your own devices, the experience it gives you, makes you feel really close to the earth. When you do it, it’s not a fun thing – you don’t throw your hands up in the air, or I don’t. When it happens you’re stunned by the power that you’ve just wielded. Afterwards it’s a very humbling experience to clean and butcher an animal, it’s not one that you’re super pumped about. But the justification is that if someone eats meat, why not get it from a place that is completely natural? When you kill an animal, you feel terrible, then you feel remorse, then you feel a gladness that you did something that was extremely natural and safe. You feel as if, when you die, you’ll feel closer to justifying your own death

Are you daunted by the prospect of making a follow-up?

Not really. The big champion thing for me on this record was that I learned how to excavate. I’ve always written as a follower and as a seeker, but at this point I feel like I’ve found The Way, with a capital W, how to write and how to exhume things from my psyche. Now that I’ve got that, all I really have to worry about is recreating something. I’ve purposely not written anything for the next record yet because I want to sit down and do it all in one period, so that the songs can grow from the same context. I don’t think the next record is going to sound anything like this one, and I think that’s good.

INTERVIEW: JOHN MULVEY

Martha Wainwright – I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too

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Martha Wainwright – I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too

Maybe there's something to be said for sibling rivalry. On older brother Rufus's Judy Garland extravaganza released earlier this year, Martha Wainwright made a one-song guest appearance on “Stormy Weather” and somehow contrived to steal the entire show. Now with her second solo record she's shaping up to seriously rival him in the album stakes too. Though the title promises bunny-boiling Morissette-y turmoil, and the opening track, from which the line is taken, has a chorus which runs “my heart was made for bleeding all over you”, these are as attention-grabbing yet largely atypical as the song about her dad, “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole”, was of the first record. In fact Wainwright is newly hitched herself (to producer Brad Albetta) and I Know... is for the most part a decidedly mature singer-songwriter album – about coming to terms with past loves (on “Bleeding All Over You” and “So Many Friends), the reality of commitment (“Niger River”, written prior to her marriage, while in Mali taking part in Damon Albarn's Africa Express project) and making painful sense of mortality. At the heart of the record are two tracks, “In The Middle Of The Night” and “The George Song”, about, respectively her mother's bout with cancer, and the suicide of an old lover. The first, especially, has a grand, glowering gravitas – part Patti Smith, part Leonard Cohen (right down to those limousines waiting outside). There are risks from too much confessional: “Hearts Club Band” anatomises a relationship with a prolific songwriter – Loudon? an ex-lover? - with a chorus of “Shut up!” - and over a whole album Wainwright isn't always immune from too-much-information syndrome. But at its best, as on “You Cheated Me”, where her childhood spent mainlining Rumors pays off with some deliciously witchy Stevie Nicks harmonies, I Know... gives AOR a good name. STEPHEN TROUSSÉ UNCUT Q&A WITH MARTHA WAINWRIGHT: How is married life? As a songwriter do you still feel the need to search out romantic trauma? I enjoy the shackles of marriages: they feel good! I didn't realise I was such a masochist! And the romantic trauma still exists within the marriage, I've noticed. Most of the songs are autobiographical to an extent, but I think I'm looking outside of myself a little more. The album's title is very funny... I wanted it to be funny. The song the line is from - “Bleeding All Over You” -seemed a bit menstrual. I didn't want the cover to be a tampon! But I'm glad if people lock up their husbands: I have one at home, and that's enough for me. There's a real Fleetwood Mac feel to some of the tracks. Were you keen to get away from being perceived as a folk singer, because of your parents? Stevie Nicks is an inspiration to us all. And as someone who likes to do her own version of interpretative dance I feel we could do some movement together. STEPHEN TROUSSÉ

Maybe there’s something to be said for sibling rivalry. On older brother Rufus‘s Judy Garland extravaganza released earlier this year, Martha Wainwright made a one-song guest appearance on “Stormy Weather” and somehow contrived to steal the entire show. Now with her second solo record she’s shaping up to seriously rival him in the album stakes too.

Though the title promises bunny-boiling Morissette-y turmoil, and the opening track, from which the line is taken, has a chorus which runs “my heart was made for bleeding all over you”, these are as attention-grabbing yet largely atypical as the song about her dad, “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole”, was of the first record.

In fact Wainwright is newly hitched herself (to producer Brad Albetta) and I Know… is for the most part a decidedly mature singer-songwriter album – about coming to terms with past loves (on “Bleeding All Over You” and “So Many Friends), the reality of commitment (“Niger River”, written prior to her marriage, while in Mali taking part in Damon Albarn‘s Africa Express project) and making painful sense of mortality.

At the heart of the record are two tracks, “In The Middle Of The Night” and “The George Song”, about, respectively her mother’s bout with cancer, and the suicide of an old lover. The first, especially, has a grand, glowering gravitas – part Patti Smith, part Leonard Cohen (right down to those limousines waiting outside).

There are risks from too much confessional: “Hearts Club Band” anatomises a relationship with a prolific songwriter – Loudon? an ex-lover? – with a chorus of “Shut up!” – and over a whole album Wainwright isn’t always immune from too-much-information syndrome. But at its best, as on “You Cheated Me”, where her childhood spent mainlining Rumors pays off with some deliciously witchy Stevie Nicks harmonies, I Know… gives AOR a good name.

STEPHEN TROUSSÉ

UNCUT Q&A WITH MARTHA WAINWRIGHT:

How is married life? As a songwriter do you still feel the need to search out romantic trauma?

I enjoy the shackles of marriages: they feel good! I didn’t realise I was such a masochist! And the romantic trauma still exists within the marriage, I’ve noticed. Most of the songs are autobiographical to an extent, but I think I’m looking outside of myself a little more.

The album’s title is very funny…

I wanted it to be funny. The song the line is from – “Bleeding All Over You” -seemed a bit menstrual. I didn’t want the cover to be a tampon! But I’m glad if people lock up their husbands: I have one at home, and that’s enough for me.

There’s a real Fleetwood Mac feel to some of the tracks. Were you keen to get away from being perceived as a folk singer, because of your parents?

Stevie Nicks is an inspiration to us all. And as someone who likes to do her own version of interpretative dance I feel we could do some movement together.

STEPHEN TROUSSÉ

Steve Winwood – Nine Lives

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Steve Winwood – Nine Lives

At 60, Steve Winwood remains one of Ray Charles’ most skillful disciples, his innate soulfulness bleeding into every note he sings and plays – as long as he’s feeling it, that is. Happily, the spirit is within Winwood for much of the 10th album bearing his name. Nine Lives revisits the jam-based work of Traffic rather than his refined ’80s synth-o-ramas, and that’s good news, because Winwood remains at his most compelling in immediate settings, while his primal presence tends to be tamped down within rigid structures. After the palate-cleansing opener, “I’m Not Drowning,” a sprightly country blues solo piece consisting of little more than a circular guitar figure and that unmistakable, tree-bark-textured voice set against clicking drumsticks, the album proceeds to introduce its elemental extremes of air (the chilled-out excursion “Fly”) and earth (“Raging Sea,” with its British-blues-rooted chunkiness). The Moment We’ve Been Waiting For Arrives with the spine-tingling snarl of an overdriven guitar, signaling the presence of the Lord – a.k.a. Eric Clapton. Right from the top, the master’s riffage cascades like molten lava, and Winwood rises up to meet his old mate’s fire with the churning of a massive, force-of-nature organ and a ferocious vocal, as the track reaches for, and achieves, Blind Faith godhead in its roiling payoff. It’s safe to say that neither of these guys has sounded so fully in the moment for at least a couple of decades. The second half is lifted by the elegantly funky “We’re All Looking” (think AWB) and the vibe-y, Traffic-meets-Santana groover “Secrets,” as Winwood leans on the keys of his trusty Hammond B3 and pumps the keyboard bass while Paul Booth trills the Chris Wood-like flute embellishments. By contrast, the world-beat-flavored “Hungry Man” and “At Times We Do Forget” feel earnest but overly considered. The closing “Other Shore” is a more satisfying expression of spiritual yearning that resembles the less cranky side of latter-day Van Morrison, right down to Booth’s contemplative sax solo. As reassuring as Nine Lives will be to longtime Winwood fans, it’s bound to leave them wanting more – like a full album of Winwood-Clapton interplay. BUD SCOPPA

At 60, Steve Winwood remains one of Ray Charles’ most skillful disciples, his innate soulfulness bleeding into every note he sings and plays – as long as he’s feeling it, that is. Happily, the spirit is within Winwood for much of the 10th album bearing his name. Nine Lives revisits the jam-based work of Traffic rather than his refined ’80s synth-o-ramas, and that’s good news, because Winwood remains at his most compelling in immediate settings, while his primal presence tends to be tamped down within rigid structures.

After the palate-cleansing opener, “I’m Not Drowning,” a sprightly country blues solo piece consisting of little more than a circular guitar figure and that unmistakable, tree-bark-textured voice set against clicking drumsticks, the album proceeds to introduce its elemental extremes of air (the chilled-out excursion “Fly”) and earth (“Raging Sea,” with its British-blues-rooted chunkiness).

The Moment We’ve Been Waiting For Arrives with the spine-tingling snarl of an overdriven guitar, signaling the presence of the Lord – a.k.a. Eric Clapton. Right from the top, the master’s riffage cascades like molten lava, and Winwood rises up to meet his old mate’s fire with the churning of a massive, force-of-nature organ and a ferocious vocal, as the track reaches for, and achieves, Blind Faith godhead in its roiling payoff. It’s safe to say that neither of these guys has sounded so fully in the moment for at least a couple of decades.

The second half is lifted by the elegantly funky “We’re All Looking” (think AWB) and the vibe-y, Traffic-meets-Santana groover “Secrets,” as Winwood leans on the keys of his trusty Hammond B3 and pumps the keyboard bass while Paul Booth trills the Chris Wood-like flute embellishments. By contrast, the world-beat-flavored “Hungry Man” and “At Times We Do Forget” feel earnest but overly considered. The closing “Other Shore” is a more satisfying expression of spiritual yearning that resembles the less cranky side of latter-day Van Morrison, right down to Booth’s contemplative sax solo.

As reassuring as Nine Lives will be to longtime Winwood fans, it’s bound to leave them wanting more – like a full album of Winwood-Clapton interplay.

BUD SCOPPA

Flight Of The Conchords – Flight Of The Conchords

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Flight Of The Conchords – Flight Of The Conchords

It’s safe to say that this is the most endlessly playable comedy album of the illennium. Multi-instrumentalist Bret McKenzie possesses a musical gift commensurate with his comedic talent, while he and Jemaine Clement may be the best blue-eyed soul singers since Hall & Oates – no kidding. The third team member is producer/programmer Mickey Petralia (Beck, Ladytron), whose command of ’80s synth-pop kitsch enables the Conchords to satirize in minute detail everything from the Pet Shop Boys (the sublime “Inner City Pressure”) and What’s Goin’ On (“Think About It”) to Bowie (“Bowie”). The LP serves as a reminder that “funny” and “funky” are only one character apart. BUD SCOPPA

It’s safe to say that this is the most endlessly playable comedy album of the illennium. Multi-instrumentalist Bret McKenzie possesses a musical gift commensurate with his comedic talent, while he and Jemaine Clement may be the best blue-eyed soul singers since Hall & Oates – no kidding.

The third team member is producer/programmer Mickey Petralia (Beck, Ladytron), whose command of ’80s synth-pop kitsch enables the Conchords to satirize in minute detail everything from the Pet Shop Boys (the sublime “Inner City Pressure”) and What’s Goin’ On (“Think About It”) to Bowie (“Bowie”). The LP serves as a reminder that “funny” and “funky” are only one character apart.

BUD SCOPPA

My Morning Jacket Stream Title Track From New Album

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My Morning Jacket Stream Title Track From New Album

Kentucky rock group My Morning Jacket have made the lead track from their fothcoming album Evil Urges available to hear online. Fans can get a preview of the band's new material by logging onto MMJ's MySpace page, here. Much of the fourteen track new album has been previewed live on the band's North American tour. My Morning Jacket are also due to play some UK dates this Summer, starting with the Neil Young headlined Day At Hop Farm Festival on July 6. The full Evil Urges' tracklisting is: "Evil Urges" "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream (Part 1)" "Highly Suspicious" "I'm Amazed" "Thank You Too" "Sec Walkin'" "Two Halves" "Librarian" "Look at You" "Aluminum Park" "Remnants" "Smokin' from Shootin" "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream (Part 2)" "Good Intentions"

Kentucky rock group My Morning Jacket have made the lead track from their fothcoming album Evil Urges available to hear online.

Fans can get a preview of the band’s new material by logging onto MMJ’s

MySpace page, here.

Much of the fourteen track new album has been previewed live on the band’s North American tour.

My Morning Jacket are also due to play some UK dates this Summer, starting with the Neil Young headlined Day At Hop Farm Festival on July 6.

The full Evil Urges’ tracklisting is:

“Evil Urges”

“Touch Me I’m Going to Scream (Part 1)”

“Highly Suspicious”

“I’m Amazed”

“Thank You Too”

“Sec Walkin'”

“Two Halves”

“Librarian”

“Look at You”

“Aluminum Park”

“Remnants”

“Smokin’ from Shootin”

“Touch Me I’m Going to Scream (Part 2)”

“Good Intentions”

Pete Doherty Reschedules Albert Hall Gig

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Pete Doherty Reschedules Albert Hall Gig
Pete Doherty has announced that he will play the biggest solo show of his career at London's Royal Albert Hall on July 12. The Babyshambles frontman was originally due to headline a concert at the same venue on April 26, but had to postpone it due to being banged up at Wormwood Scrubs for breaching...

Pete Doherty has announced that he will play the biggest solo show of his career at London’s Royal Albert Hall on July 12.

The Babyshambles frontman was originally due to headline a concert at the same venue on April 26, but had to postpone it due to being banged up at Wormwood Scrubs for breaching probation for drug and driving offences.

Fans still holding tickets for the original gig need to exchange them at the original points of sale for the new date in July.

Doherty has also announced that he will play with Babyshambles for his ‘comeback’ gig, also in London, at the Kentish Town Forum on May 13.

Tickets for the Babyshambles gig are onsale today (May 7).

Oasis New Tracks Leak Online

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Oasis New Tracks Leak Online

Three brand new Oasis songs have been leaked online, allowing fans to access them across messageboards and fansites since yesterday (May 6). The three new songs, which will reportedly appear on the band's forthcoming seventh studio album are entitled "I Wanna Live A Dream (In My Record Machine)", "Nothin' On Me" and "Stop The Clocks". The song clips have started to be removed from several sites, but the tracks are still available to hear on this Myspace page: www.myspace.com/newoasissongs The new album, the follow-up to 2005's Don't Believe The Truth, has been produced by Dave Sardy, whose previous credits include the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash and Primal Scream. Uncut's sister-title NME.com have reviewed the three leaked songs - to see what their first impressions are CLICK HERE. The as-yet-untitled album is slated for release on Big Brother this September. Pic credit: Dean Chalkley

Three brand new Oasis songs have been leaked online, allowing fans to access them across messageboards and fansites since yesterday (May 6).

The three new songs, which will reportedly appear on the band’s forthcoming seventh studio album are entitled “I Wanna Live A Dream (In My Record Machine)”, “Nothin’ On Me” and “Stop The Clocks”.

The song clips have started to be removed from several sites, but the tracks are still available to hear on this Myspace page: www.myspace.com/newoasissongs

The new album, the follow-up to 2005’s Don’t Believe The Truth, has been produced by Dave Sardy, whose previous credits include the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash and Primal Scream.

Uncut’s sister-title NME.com have reviewed the three leaked songs – to see what their first impressions are CLICK HERE.

The as-yet-untitled album is slated for release on Big Brother this September.

Pic credit: Dean Chalkley

The Police To Play Last Ever Show In New York

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The Police To Play Last Ever Show In New York
The Police have announced that they will play their last show on their current reunion tour in New York this Summer, to raise money for the city's art's programme. The band, who reformed in February 2007, to play a 30th anniversary reunion world tour, will finish up in New York, where they played t...

The Police have announced that they will play their last show on their current reunion tour in New York this Summer, to raise money for the city’s art’s programme.

The band, who reformed in February 2007, to play a 30th anniversary reunion world tour, will finish up in New York, where they played their first ever North American show, back in 1978.

The venue and date of the concert has yet to be revealed.

The band said in a press statement yesterday (May 6), “We kicked off our very first American tour at CBGB in 1978 and this summer, 30 years later, our journey will come full circle as we play our final show here in New York City.”

The band have also donated $1 million to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s tree-planting initiative that will see one million trees planted in the city by 2017.

The Police are due to play their final show in the UK, headlining the Hard Rock Calling event in London’s Hyde Park on June 29.

Julian Cope, Martha Wainwright, Howling Bells and Fields For Latitude – More here!

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Legendary performer Julian Cope has today (May 6) been confirmed to play the Uncut Arena at this year's Latitude Festival in July. Playing on the opening night (July 17), the former Teardrop Explodes frontman will play songs from his career, spanning 30 years. Martha Wainwright has also just bee...

Legendary performer Julian Cope has today (May 6) been confirmed to play the Uncut Arena at this year’s Latitude Festival in July.

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Neil Young Offers Sneak Preview Of Ongoing Archives Collection

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Neil Young Offers Sneak Preview Of Ongoing Archives Collection
Neil Young has today (May 6) personally offered a sneak preview of his upcoming 5 volume, 45 year career-spanning Archives project, which is now slated for release this Autumn through Warner Music. At a webcasted morning session of the Sun Microsystem's JavaOne Conference in San Francisco, Young an...

Neil Young has today (May 6) personally offered a sneak preview of his upcoming 5 volume, 45 year career-spanning Archives project, which is now slated for release this Autumn through Warner Music.

At a webcasted morning session of the Sun Microsystem’s JavaOne Conference in San Francisco, Young and Shakey films colleague L.A. Johnson unveiled some elements of the ongoing project.

Based around an interactive “filing cabinet”, Young and Johnson revealed how fans will be able to play songs and access pertinent material – photographs, newspaper clippings, in essence Young’s own memorabilia – while they listen to what is playing.

Young, in jovial, chatty form, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, demonstrated the use of an interactive timeline, while also informing us that should he find any more archive material to share, it will be enabled to automatically download to what will eventually be a collection of ten Blu-Ray discs.

Young said of the delay to the project, which has been in the planning stages for at least the last ten years, that it was technology’s fault. He said “I thought DVD would be good enough, but you couldn’t navigate around materials whilst listening to the music, and I thought that that’s what my fans would want to do. Also we were defeated by technology with the sound. Now with Java you can listen in the best possible quality that we have today.”

He added that making and designing Volume One has “been very rewarding for me, but it’s not finished! In fact, we’re never done.”

The only limit to what the Archives will hold he says is storage and “how much your device can hold” but that as technology moves forward, storage space gets bigger and bigger.

From seeing the demonstration today, and the immense space-age vision that Neil Young has for his Archives, it will certainly be worth all these years of waiting.

Pic credit: PA Photos

Neil Young To Make Archive Announcement Today?

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Neil Young To Make Archive Announcement Today?
Neil Young is due to make an announcement at IT company Sun Microsystems' conference this afternoon (May 6) fuelling speculation that the long-long awaited Archives series is finally about to see the light of day. In January this year, we reported that Neil Young had decided to ditch the current CD...

Neil Young is due to make an announcement at IT company Sun Microsystems’ conference this afternoon (May 6) fuelling speculation that the long-long awaited Archives series is finally about to see the light of day.

In January this year, we reported that Neil Young had decided to ditch the current CD format for his impending Archives series, in favour of new-fangled Blu-Ray DVD technology.

Young said at the time, at a press conference at Sundance Film Festival: “I know it’s in technical production now, but it’s only coming out on Blu-ray and DVD. There won’t be CDs. Technology has caught up to what the concept was in the first place [and] how we’re able to actually present it. But there’s no doubt it will come out this year.”

Sun Microsystems have released the following statement about today’s announcement from the singer: “Neil Young and Sun will make an announcement during the event, and provide a special demonstration of a new multi-media music project. Come hear and see what Java technology means to Neil Young”.

Watch the announcement live from 4.30pm (GMT) by clicking here. The webcast is two hours, no details as yet as to what time Young will speak.

Come back to www.uncut.co.uk for more details as soon as the announcement is made.

We’re holding our collective breaths…

Pic credit: PA Photos

Julian Cope and Martha Wainwright Join Latitude Bill

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Julian Cope and Martha Wainwright Join Latitude Bill

Legendary performer Julian Cope has today (May 6) been confirmed to play the Uncut Arena at this year's Latitude Festival in July. Playing on the opening night (July 17), the former Teardrop Explodes frontman will play songs from his career, spanning 30 years. Martha Wainwright has also just been confirmed to play our Arena on the same night. Sister of Rufus, she is renowned for amazing live vocal performances and comes to the Suffolk festival armed with her latest acclaimed album I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too. Also added to the Uncut stage festival bill are Howling Bells, joining previously announced artists Malian duo Amadou & Mariam, prog-punks The Mars Volta and, closing the festival, Tindersticks. Over on the Obelisk Stage, NME New Noise tour act White Lies and psychedelic rock/folk group Fields who join headliners Franz Ferdinand, Sigur Ros and Interpol, along with Elbow, The Breeders and Death Cab For Cutie on Latitude’s main stage. Check out the dedicated Uncut Latitude blog for details of artists, performers, poets, authors and plays that have so far been confirmed for the three day festival. Highlights include Sadlers Wells, Bill Bailey and Iain Banks who will all appear. Click here for our Latitude blog for all your festival updates! Latitude takes place at Henham Park, Southwold, Sufflolk between July 17 and 20. Tickets are selling fast, priced £130 for the weekend, or £55 for day tickets, all of which are available from the credit card hotline - 0871 231 0821. Or online at www.seetickets.com, www.festivalrepublic.com and at www.latitudefestival.co.uk. Keep your browsers pointed at www.uncut.co.uk – we’ll announce new additions there the minute we hear of them.

Legendary performer Julian Cope has today (May 6) been confirmed to play the Uncut Arena at this year’s Latitude Festival in July.

Playing on the opening night (July 17), the former Teardrop Explodes frontman will play songs from his career, spanning 30 years.

Martha Wainwright has also just been confirmed to play our Arena on the same night. Sister of Rufus, she is renowned for amazing live vocal performances and comes to the Suffolk festival armed with her latest acclaimed album I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too.

Also added to the Uncut stage festival bill are Howling Bells, joining previously announced artists Malian duo Amadou & Mariam, prog-punks The Mars Volta and, closing the festival, Tindersticks.

Over on the Obelisk Stage, NME New Noise tour act White Lies and psychedelic rock/folk group Fields who join headliners Franz Ferdinand, Sigur Ros and Interpol, along with Elbow, The Breeders and Death Cab For Cutie on Latitude’s main stage.

Check out the dedicated Uncut Latitude blog for details of artists, performers, poets, authors and plays that have so far been confirmed for the three day festival. Highlights include Sadlers Wells, Bill Bailey and Iain Banks who will all appear.

Click here for our Latitude blog for all your festival updates!

Latitude takes place at Henham Park, Southwold, Sufflolk between July 17 and 20.

Tickets are selling fast, priced £130 for the weekend, or £55 for day tickets, all of which are available from the credit card hotline – 0871 231 0821. Or online at www.seetickets.com, www.festivalrepublic.com and at www.latitudefestival.co.uk.

Keep your browsers pointed at www.uncut.co.uk – we’ll announce new additions there the minute we hear of them.

Mudhoney: “Superfuzz Bigmuff: Deluxe Edition”

John Mulvey
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Among other, healthier spring activities, I spent a fair part of the Bank Holiday weekend introducing my three-year-old to The Beach Boys and Lightning Bolt and listening to “Superfuzz Bigmuff” – not on any particular grunge nostalgia binge, but because it has just been subjected to the extensive, deluxe, collector’s edition reissue treatment. There’s something mildly farcical about Mudhoney’s debut mini-album getting this sort of lavish reverence, of course. What was once a six-tracker, now lurches unsteadily across two CDs, totalling 32 tracks – the possibilities of a two-track seven-inch being afforded a 2CD extended package seem ever more plausible. But still, part of Mudhoney’s charm has always been how they take something rudimentary and drag it out inexorably. The Stooges only lasted for three albums, plenty of ‘60s garage bands worshipped by Mark Arm and co probably only lasted for a three-minute single. Mudhoney, though, have kept this schtick going, not hugely changed, for two decades now, no doubt amused by the irony of a studiously dumb, sloppy band becoming an institution. This month, Sub Pop have made the slightly odd decision to release this bumper “Superfuzz” package at the same time as a new Mudhoney album, “The Lucky Ones”. The latter is as likeable as ever, though perhaps not quite as good as the last one, “Under A Billion Suns”, and inevitably dwarfed by the heavy shadow of “Superfuzz Bigmuff”. It still sounds great, as you might imagine, augmented (as with previous reissues) with those early singles like “Touch Me I’m Sick” and the Sonic Youth split, “Halloween”, as well as various endless live tracks, demos of “Mudride” and such that prove, as if anyone really needed proof, that the nascent Mudhoney’s music wasn’t exactly finessed whenever they staggered into a studio. What’s most striking, though, is how all these recordings reveal a long-suppressed truth about the whole Pacific Northwest grunge thing – that it was actually much less emotionally complicated than most indie and alternative rock. I guess most mainstream views now memorialise the scene through the filter of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, as a great anguished howl of the disconsolate and so on. As anyone who knows about Nirvana from some of their actual records (rather than the entirely creepy Cobain industry that seems to throw up another “revelatory” documentary about the poor guy every few months), there are plenty of ecstatic punk thrashes in the Nirvana catalogue. But still, thanks also I guess to some of Eddie Vedder’s ruminations, the slurry of Alice In Chains and later Soundgarden, the myth of Mark Lanegan and so on, the legend of grunge is inexorably tied up in misery. Mudhoney, and “Superfuzz Bigmuff” in particular, posit a brilliant alternative path, that you can trace all the way through to a Pearl Jam single like “Spin The Black Circle”, oddly. It’s a culture of wise and sometimes snarky men spending long years studying garage rock, metal, hardcore and so on, fetishising the most primitive manifestations of rock, then having a go themselves. It isn’t crude and primal because – as countless post-Nirvana analysts might have you believe – it’s the best way to tap into the crudest and most primal emotions. It just sounds that way because it’s dumb and exhilarating. The return of “Superfuzz” allows us, in a small way perhaps, to try and tamper with the received history of the Seattle scene. Usually, the picture that comes to mind is the NME shot by Martyn Goodacre of the youngish Kurt, kohl-eyed and soulful. Today, though, I keep thinking of another NME shot, again by Martyn, I think. It’s of Tad, live at the London Powerhaus, sailing into the faintly terrified crowd in a gigantic belly-flop of a stagedive. It’s stupid, thrilling and very funny. Like “Superfuzz Bigmuff” and the whole daft idea of grunge itself, maybe.

Among other, healthier spring activities, I spent a fair part of the Bank Holiday weekend introducing my three-year-old to The Beach Boys and Lightning Bolt and listening to “Superfuzz Bigmuff” – not on any particular grunge nostalgia binge, but because it has just been subjected to the extensive, deluxe, collector’s edition reissue treatment.

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Pete Doherty Released From Jail

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Pete Doherty Released From Jail

Singer Pete Doherty has been released from jail at London's Wormwood Scrubs this morning (May 6) after serving just 29 days of a fourteen week prison sentence for drug and driving offences. The Babyshambles frontman, showed off a certificate proving he was clean of drugs, when he was released at 7.10 this morning. Doherty told waiting reporters that he found the Scrubs' medical facilities difficult to deal with. He commented: "Well, I knew it was going to be a bit rough to start with, with the overcrowding and the medical facilities. Although they do their best – they are good, they can't really cater for the average junkie." Holding a diary that he had kept whilst serving his sentence, the musicaian also joked that the worst aspect of being jailed was "Gangsters and Radio 4, basically." Whilst inside, Doherty missed what would have been the biggest solo gig of his career, at London's Royal Albert Hall. However his early release from prison means that he will be able to perform at a scheduled gig at this year's Glastonbury festival. Pic credit: PA Photos

Singer Pete Doherty has been released from jail at London’s Wormwood Scrubs this morning (May 6) after serving just 29 days of a fourteen week prison sentence for drug and driving offences.

The Babyshambles frontman, showed off a certificate proving he was clean of drugs, when he was released at 7.10 this morning.

Doherty told waiting reporters that he found the Scrubs’ medical facilities difficult to deal with. He commented: “Well, I knew it was going to be a bit rough to start with, with the overcrowding and the medical facilities. Although they do their best – they are good, they can’t really cater for the average junkie.”

Holding a diary that he had kept whilst serving his sentence, the musicaian also joked that the worst aspect of being jailed was “Gangsters and Radio 4, basically.”

Whilst inside, Doherty missed what would have been the biggest solo gig of his career, at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

However his early release from prison means that he will be able to perform at a scheduled gig at this year’s Glastonbury festival.

Pic credit: PA Photos

Win! Bruce Springsteen Back Catalogue CDS!

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Win! Bruce Springsteen Back Catalogue CDS!
Uncut.co.uk has three sets of Bruce Springsteen's forthcoming back catalogue reissues to give away to three lucky readers! As previously reported, Columbia records are reissuing 17 albums from Bruce Springsteen's back catalogue this month, including everything from The Boss' 1973 debut Greetings Fr...

Uncut.co.uk has three sets of Bruce Springsteen‘s forthcoming back catalogue reissues to give away to three lucky readers!

As previously reported, Columbia records are reissuing 17 albums from Bruce Springsteen’s back catalogue this month, including everything from The Boss’ 1973 debut Greetings From Asbury Park to the five CD Live 1975-1985 collection – and all come packaged in deluxe double cardboard sleeves featuring the original vinyl artwork.

All the albums will be released on May 19, just prior to The Boss’ Ireland and UK stadium shows, which include the first shows to be performed at Arsenal Football Club’s home ground, the Emirates Stadium.

However, to be in with a chance of winning one of three sets, simply log in and answer the simple question HERE.

This competition closes on May 30, 2008.

The full Springsteen dates are:

Dublin, ÉIRE, RDS Arena (May 22/ 23/25)

Manchester, Old Trafford (28)

Emirates Stadium (30/ 31)

Cardiff Millennium Stadium (June 14)

You can win a set of the following Bruce Springsteen albums:

Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ.

The Wile, The innocent & The E Street Shuffle

Born To Run

Darkness On The Edge Of Town

Nebraska

Born In The USA

Tunnel Of Love

Human Touch

Lucky Town

In Concert/ MTV Unplugged

Greatest Hits

The Ghost Of Tom Joad

18 Tracks

The Rising

The River

Live In New York City

Live 1975 – 1985

Queen To Play Nelson Mandela’s Birthday Concert

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Queen To Play Nelson Mandela’s Birthday Concert
Queen with Paul Rodgers are set to be one of the headlining acts at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert, which takes place in London's Hyde Park on June 27. Other artists revealed to be performing at the 46664 Concert, named after the former President of South Africa's prison number, include Ann...

Queen with Paul Rodgers are set to be one of the headlining acts at Nelson Mandela‘s 90th birthday concert, which takes place in London’s Hyde Park on June 27.

Other artists revealed to be performing at the 46664 Concert, named after the former President of South Africa’s prison number, include Annie Lennox, Simple Minds and Dame Shirley Bassey.

Popstars including former X Factor winner Leona Lewis, Sugababes and Jamelia will also play the birthday gig which will raise money for Mandela’s AIDs charity which also bears the name 46664.

Razorlight, Corrs‘ sisters Andrea and Sharon and Eddy Grant are also on the bill alogside South African artists who include the Soweto Gospel Choir, Sipho Mabuse and Johnny Clegg.

Mandela has told BBC News: “You all know that I am supposed to be retired. But my friends and the charitable organisations that bear my name want to use my 90th birthday year to raise funds to continue our work and so of course I want to help them.”

Invited guests to Mandela’s birthday concert are expected to include former US President Bill Clinton, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown as well as celebrities like Will Smith, Robert De Niro and Oprah Winfrey.

This year’s concert also marks the 20th annivesary of the event held at Wembley Stadium in June 1988, which saw artists such as the Eurythmics, Simple Minds Dire Straits perform for his 70th birthday and also call for his release from prison.

Tickets for the Hyde Park bash go onsale this Friday (May 9) at 9am.

Though fans who register by 6pm today can buy special presale tickets from tomorrow (May 7).

More information is available from the official website here: 46664.com

Pic credit: PA Photos

Nine Inch Nails Giveaway New Album Free

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Nine Inch Nails Giveaway New Album Free
Nine Inch Nails are giving away their brand new studio album "The Slip" as a free download, online via their website nin.com, just two months after releasing a 36 track instrumental album "Ghosts I-IV" via the same portal. Of the ten brand new tracks, Nine Inch Nails' first new full band material s...

Nine Inch Nails are giving away their brand new studio album “The Slip” as a free download, online via their website nin.com, just two months after releasing a 36 track instrumental album “Ghosts I-IV” via the same portal.

Of the ten brand new tracks, Nine Inch Nails’ first new full band material since Year Zero, the track “Discipline” was made available as a free download on April 23.

Trent Reznor, the industro-grunge band’s frontman has said that the free download is “as a thank you to our fans for your continued support” and it will come in a variety of formats “including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options – all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.”

Their previous instrumental album was a free download for the first nine tracks, while packages for the rest of the double album started at just five dollars.

The shock move for the album’s release, which will also see a physical release on CD and vinyl in July, follows in the steps of Radiohead and Coldplay who have both released their new material for free via their own websites, bypassing record company involvement.

Nine Inch Nails’ The Slip full track listing is:

‘999,999’

‘1,000,000’

‘Letting you’

‘Discipline’’

‘Echoplex’

‘Head Down’

‘Lights In The Sky’

‘Corona Radiata’

‘The Four Of Us Are Dying’

‘Demon Seed’

Sonic Youth: “SYR7”

John Mulvey
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I was just Googling the line-up of All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2001, curated by Mogwai (whose still-exhilarating debut album, in deluxe reissue format, was playing five minutes ago). Looking back, I must have been in hog heaven: Godspeed You Black Emperor, Stereolab, Super Furry Animals, Labradford, Ligament, Shellac, Papa M, The For Carnation, the great and good of post-rock and, notoriously, Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth headlined on Saturday night, played an extensively improvised set, and managed to piss off quite a large proportion of their assembled fans (including, if memory serves, one or two members of Mogwai themselves, but don’t quote me on that). Heroically, the SYR series of releases is reactivated this month with “SYR7”, which turns out to be, on its A-side at least, 20-odd minutes of that free, elevated jam, now titled “J’Accuse Ted Hughes”. When I tried blagging a copy of this record a week or so back, the publicist expressed surprise that I remembered the show so fondly. Surely, she suggested, I’d slagged off the performance in NME? I denied this, albeit slightly anxious that I might be getting things terribly wrong. But then she found the clipping, and the review was written by James Oldham, another big fan of the band, who now runs Loog Records and A&Rs Duffy, amongst others. James described the gig as “something close to a living hell”. He writes about the first song, which may well have been “J’Accuse Ted Hughes”, like this: “At 10pm, Sonic Youth amble onstage and start playing what sounds like the run-out groove of ‘Bad Moon Rising’. After ten minutes of meandering two-note fluctuations, bassist Kim Gordon starts singing. Badly. Ten minutes later, the rhythm changes slightly and Gordon starts hitting a block of wood. Ten minutes after that, they’re still up there noodling away. . .” From then on, he starts getting really disparaging. Weirdly, though, take out the negativity, and it’s a fairly accurate description of this glowering, ominous piece – far more accessible, incidentally, than some of the SYR releases which have preceded it. There’s a rippling, meditative quality which is possibly reminiscent of something from the middle of “The Diamond Sea”, and it strikes me that what people found so alienating about the set was the lack of context. If Sonic Youth had framed this trip with even a minute or two of more conventional melody, such a longueur would have been assimilable. Here, though, it has the unanchored fervour of free jazz. Kim Gordon’s freestyle incantations, we can now hear, veer from “I will fuck you” to “I sent my poem to Good Housekeeping. They paid me ten dollars”. I have a new Free Kitten album, by the way, which I should get round to writing about in the next week or so. Anyway, “J’Accuse Ted Hughes” is backed by a 2003 studio piece called “Agnès B Musique”, a really lovely, humming piece of deep space drift played on and mixed by Jim O’Rourke, which reminds me a bit of an organic version of his glitch record for Mego that came out around that time. Bit of something Krautish here, too; Faust, maybe, at their most casually industrial. Whatever: it's good, it's probably a limited edition, and "SYR8" is due on July 29, featuring a 2005 performance at the Roskilde Festival where the band were augmented by Mats Gustafsson and Merzbow. Bring it on!

I was just Googling the line-up of All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2001, curated by Mogwai (whose still-exhilarating debut album, in deluxe reissue format, was playing five minutes ago). Looking back, I must have been in hog heaven: Godspeed You Black Emperor, Stereolab, Super Furry Animals, Labradford, Ligament, Shellac, Papa M, The For Carnation, the great and good of post-rock and, notoriously, Sonic Youth.

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Dirty Pretty Things Reveal New Album Details

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Dirty Pretty Things Reveal New Album Details
Dirty Pretty Things have announce details of their forthcoming second, as-yet-untitled, new studio album and the first single to be taken from it "Tired Of England". The band's follow-up to their 2006 debut Waterloo To Anywhere will be released on June 30, with the single coming out one week prior ...

Dirty Pretty Things have announce details of their forthcoming second, as-yet-untitled, new studio album and the first single to be taken from it “Tired Of England”.

The band’s follow-up to their 2006 debut Waterloo To Anywhere will be released on June 30, with the single coming out one week prior on June 23.

Recorded in Los Angeles as well as London, Dirty Pretty Things helped Nik Leman, Graeme Stewart and Ben Wood with producing the new tracks.

The tracklisting of the forthcoming DPT album will be:

‘Buzzards And Crows’

‘Hippy Son’

‘Plastic Hearts’

‘Tired Of England’

‘Come Closer’

‘Fault Lines’

‘Kicks Or Consumption’

‘Best Face’

‘Truth Begins’

‘Chinese Dogs’

‘The North’

‘Blood On My Shoes’

All You Need Is Love

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All You Need Is Love

Well, where would you start, given apparently unlimited funds and time, plus the moral support of no less than John Lennon, to tell the entire history of 20th century popular music? Where do you start, and where do you end? In the very first shot in Tony Palmer's colossal documentary series - all five DVDs, 17 episodes, 14 hours and 45 minutes of it - we are accompanying some unseen pop idol inside a limo approaching the Hammersmith Odeon, assailed by a mob of rabid fans. From being inside the eye of this frenzy, Palmer whisks us to an almost prehistoric West Africa, on a musicological search for the fount of blues and rhythm. A scepticism about the traditional view of 'jungle drums' as the source of rock 'n' roll takes him inland to the astringent desert guitars of Mali and Nigeria, observing the music's passage along the slave routes to America and the complicated cultural conveyancing that saw black music hideously hammed up and exploited in Minstrel Shows. We return to Africa for some explosive footage of Fela Kuti, Africa 70 and his exotically dancing wives, plus Ginger Baker trancing out with a roomful of Nigerian drummers. And that's just the first episode. Made in 1975, All You Need Is Love took a long view of 75 years of popular music, observing its mutation from spontaneous folk form to multi-million dollar business and shaper of social forces. There are episodes devoted to Ragtime, Jazz, Blues, Tin Pan Alley, Musicals, Country, Folk and Protest Songs, the coming of Rock 'N' Roll, and on to the electrification of the 60s and 70s. The series is the product of a televisual age when big subjects - Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent Of Man, The World At War - were still granted room to breathe. All You Need Is Love is in the same bracket, a work of anthropology as much as entertainment. Palmer was equally at home in the worlds of Frank Zappa or Gustav Mahler, and while clearly in love with his subject, these films keep their cool in the presence of celebrity, making powerfully rhetorical snips with the editor's scalpel. Footage of Count Basie mugging to camera is intercut with a Ku Klux Klan ceremony; Columbia boss Clive Davis boasts how music has become a bigger sector than movies, his pride undercut by Keith Moon grunting his way through a solo vocal take - shorn of backing track - from Two Sides Of The Moon. You can sense Palmer's efforts to look beyond received wisdom and construct arguments. The episode dealing with The Beatles, for instance, is equally about how the pop marketing machine woke up to what Derek Taylor laconically calls "the longest-running story since the Second World War". Miraculously, the series doesn't feature a narrator; the story unravels via a shrewd shuffling of archive and contemporary film, plus interviews with artists and their makers, bosses, critics, fans. We meet stars who lived through incredible times - Earl 'Fatha' Hines talks of playing for Al Capone; Dizzy Gillespie describes what it was actually like up on the stand with Charlie Parker; Murray The K recalls The Beatles' arrival in the States. Unlike today's typical TV music doc - frustratingly short clips, clichŽ-ridden voiceovers and self-advertisments for Stuart Maconie and Miranda Sawyer - these films kick back and groove on their subjects, letting whole songs play out, interviewees ramble and digress. The camera lingers to register significant places and atmospheres: the Manhattan asylum where Scott Joplin died insane; the Ealing blues club where Alexis Korner found The Rolling Stones rehearsing; the massed potential energy of a stadium rock crowd minutes before showtime. Even the interviews and contemporary material are gorgeously rendered in bronzed, hazy film stock, appropriate given that it was filmed just as pop music's high summer was about to turn to autumn. As Palmer approaches his own present time, the story gets inevitably fragmented. The future, imagined in the final episode, is Tangerine Dream, Muzak, Mike Oldfield, and, er, Black Oak Arkansas. Punk rock is waiting to be born, but Palmer's final image is unwittingly prophetic: Oldfield alone in his private studio composing Ommadawn, the precursor of a thousand bedroom producers of the future. EXTRAS: none. ROB YOUNG

Well, where would you start, given apparently unlimited funds and time, plus the moral support of no less than John Lennon, to tell the entire history of 20th century popular music? Where do you start, and where do you end? In the very first shot in Tony Palmer‘s colossal documentary series – all five DVDs, 17 episodes, 14 hours and 45 minutes of it – we are accompanying some unseen pop idol inside a limo approaching the Hammersmith Odeon, assailed by a mob of rabid fans.

From being inside the eye of this frenzy, Palmer whisks us to an almost prehistoric West Africa, on a musicological search for the fount of blues and rhythm. A scepticism about the traditional view of ‘jungle drums’ as the source of rock ‘n’ roll takes him inland to the astringent desert guitars of Mali and Nigeria, observing the music’s passage along the slave routes to America and the complicated cultural conveyancing that saw black music hideously hammed up and exploited in Minstrel Shows. We return to Africa for some explosive footage of Fela Kuti, Africa 70 and his exotically dancing wives, plus Ginger Baker trancing out with a roomful of Nigerian drummers. And that’s just the first episode.

Made in 1975, All You Need Is Love took a long view of 75 years of popular music, observing its mutation from spontaneous folk form to multi-million dollar business and shaper of social forces. There are episodes devoted to Ragtime, Jazz, Blues, Tin Pan Alley, Musicals, Country, Folk and Protest Songs, the coming of Rock ‘N’ Roll, and on to the electrification of the 60s and 70s. The series is the product of a televisual age when big subjects – Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent Of Man, The World At War – were still granted room to breathe.

All You Need Is Love is in the same bracket, a work of anthropology as much as entertainment. Palmer was equally at home in the worlds of Frank Zappa or Gustav Mahler, and while clearly in love with his subject, these films keep their cool in the presence of celebrity, making powerfully rhetorical snips with the editor’s scalpel. Footage of Count Basie mugging to camera is intercut with a Ku Klux Klan ceremony; Columbia boss Clive Davis boasts how music has become a bigger sector than movies, his pride undercut by Keith Moon grunting his way through a solo vocal take – shorn of backing track – from Two Sides Of The Moon. You can sense Palmer’s efforts to look beyond received wisdom and construct arguments. The episode dealing with The Beatles, for instance, is equally about how the pop marketing machine woke up to what Derek Taylor laconically calls “the longest-running story since the Second World War”.

Miraculously, the series doesn’t feature a narrator; the story unravels via a shrewd shuffling of archive and contemporary film, plus interviews with artists and their makers, bosses, critics, fans. We meet stars who lived through incredible times – Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines talks of playing for Al Capone; Dizzy Gillespie describes what it was actually like up on the stand with Charlie Parker; Murray The K recalls The Beatles’ arrival in the States.

Unlike today’s typical TV music doc – frustratingly short clips, clichŽ-ridden voiceovers and self-advertisments for Stuart Maconie and Miranda Sawyer – these films kick back and groove on their subjects, letting whole songs play out, interviewees ramble and digress. The camera lingers to register significant places and atmospheres: the Manhattan asylum where Scott Joplin died insane; the Ealing blues club where Alexis Korner found The Rolling Stones rehearsing; the massed potential energy of a stadium rock crowd minutes before showtime.

Even the interviews and contemporary material are gorgeously rendered in bronzed, hazy film stock, appropriate given that it was filmed just as pop music’s high summer was about to turn to autumn. As Palmer approaches his own present time, the story gets inevitably fragmented. The future, imagined in the final episode, is Tangerine Dream, Muzak, Mike Oldfield, and, er, Black Oak Arkansas. Punk rock is waiting to be born, but Palmer’s final image is unwittingly prophetic: Oldfield alone in his private studio composing Ommadawn, the precursor of a thousand bedroom producers of the future.

EXTRAS: none.

ROB YOUNG

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