Subscribe
Home Blog

Bruce Springsteen announces lost albums motherlode

Michael Bonner
-
0
Bruce Springsteen announces lost albums motherlode

Bruce Springsteen has confirmed details of a mammoth, 9 LP/7 CD box set, Tracks II: The Lost Albums, which is released by Sony Music on June 27.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

The set spans 1983 – 2018 and includes 83 songs. “’The Lost Albums’ were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released,” says Springsteen. “I’ve played this music to myself and often close friends for years now. I’m glad you’ll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them.”

The Lost Albums will arrive in limited-edition nine LP, seven CD and digital formats — including distinctive packaging for each previously-unreleased record, with a 100-page cloth-bound, hardcover book featuring rare archival photos, liner notes on each lost album from essayist Erik Flannigan and a personal introduction on the project from Springsteen himself.

A companion set — Lost And Found: Selections from The Lost Albums — will feature 20 highlights from across the collection, also arriving June 27 on two LPs or one CD.

The Lost Albums were compiled by Springsteen with producer Ron Aniello, engineer Rob Lebret and supervising producer Jon Landau at Thrill Hill Recording in New Jersey.

You can pre-order The Lost Albums here.

Watch a trailer for The Lost Albums here.

Listen to “Rain In The River“, from the lost album, Perfect World.

The tracklisting for Tracks II: The Lost Albums is:

LA Garage Sessions ’83

1. Follow That Dream

2. Don’t Back Down On Our Love

3. Little Girl Like You

4. Johnny Bye Bye

5. Sugarland

6. Seven Tears

7. Fugitive’s Dream

8. Black Mountain Ballad

9. Jim Deer

10. County Fair

11. My Hometown

12. One Love

13. Don’t Back Down

14. Richfield Whistle

15. The Klansman

16. Unsatisfied Heart

17. Shut Out The Light

18. Fugitive’s Dream (Ballad)

Streets of Philadelphia Sessions

1. Blind Spot

2. Maybe I Don’t Know You

3. Something In The Well

4. Waiting On The End Of The World

5. The Little Things

6. We Fell Down

7. One Beautiful Morning

8. Between Heaven and Earth

9. Secret Garden

10. The Farewell Party

Faithless

1. The Desert (Instrumental)

2. Where You Goin’, Where You From

3. Faithless

4. All God’s Children

5. A Prayer By The River (Instrumental)

6. God Sent You

7. Goin’ To California

8. The Western Sea (Instrumental)

9. My Master’s Hand

10. Let Me Ride

11. My Master’s Hand (Theme)

Somewhere North of Nashville

1. Repo Man

2. Tiger Rose

3. Poor Side of Town

4. Delivery Man

5. Under A Big Sky

6. Detail Man

7. Silver Mountain

8. Janey Don’t You Lose Heart

9. You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone

10. Stand On It

11. Blue Highway

12. Somewhere North of Nashville

Inyo

1. Inyo

2. Indian Town

3. Adelita

4. The Aztec Dance

5. The Lost Charro

6. Our Lady of Monroe

7. El Jardinero (Upon the Death of Ramona)

8. One False Move

9. Ciudad Juarez

10. When I Build My Beautiful House

Twilight Hours

1. Sunday Love

2. Late in the Evening

3. Two of Us

4. Lonely Town

5. September Kisses

6. Twilight Hours

7. I’ll Stand By You

8. High Sierra

9. Sunliner

10. Another You

11. Dinner at Eight

12. Follow The Sun

Perfect World

1. I’m Not Sleeping

2. Idiot’s Delight

3. Another Thin Line

4. The Great Depression

5. Blind Man

6. Rain In The River

7. If I Could Only Be Your Lover

8. Cutting Knife

9. You Lifted Me Up

10. Perfect World

Springsteen plays the UK later this year:

14th May         Manchester             Co-op Live

17th May         Manchester             Co-op Live 

20th May         Manchester             Co-op Live  

4th June          Liverpool                 Anfield Stadium 

7th June          Liverpool                 Anfield Stadium

Stereolab tease new music

Michael Bonner
-
0
Stereolab tease new music

Stereolab are teasing their first new music since 2010’s album, Not Music.

The band – who reformed in 2019 – appear to have sent UK subscribers to their mailing list a 7″ single with a song called “Aerial Troubles” on one side and an instrumental on the other, along with a word search.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

The band had already teased that something was coming in their Lab Report mailout from Monday, March 31, where a link led to an picture of a cardboard record mailer with “Unsolicited Stereolab Material” printed on it. On Tuesday, April 1, they posted a photograph on their Instagram page of what looks to be a record in a brown paper bag.

Stereolab are also touring extensively later this year.

MAY
25 — Brussels, Belgium – Botanique Les Nuits Botanique
26 — Köln, Germany – Gloria
28 — Hamburg, Germany – Grunspan
29 — Berlin, Germany – Huxley Neue Welt
30 — Frankfurt, Germany – Zoom
31 — Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso

JUNE
01 — Nijmegen, Netherlands – Doornroosje
03 — Nantes, France – Stereolux
04 — Paris, France – Le Trianon
05 — Bordeaux, France – Barbey
06 — Barcelona, Spain – Primavera Sound
07 — Madrid, Spain – Teatro Eslava
09 — Grenoble, France – La Belle Electrique
10 — Ferrara, Italy – Ferrara Sotto le Stelle
11 — Zurich, Switzerland – Volkshaus
12 — Munich, Germany – Hansa 36
14 — Zagreb, Croatia – Tvornica Kulture
15 — Budapest, Hungary – A38 Ship
16 — Vienna, Austria – WUK
17 — Prague, Czech Republic – Meet Factory
19 — Schorndorf, Germany – Manufaktur
20 — Luxembourg, Luxembourg – Den Atelier

JULY
11 — Cagliari, Italy – Siren Festival

SEPTEMBER
13 — Nashville, Tennessee – Brooklyn Bowl
14 — Atlanta, Georgia – Variety Playhouse
16 — Miami, Florida – Miami Beach Bandshell
18 — New Orleans, Louisiana – The Civic Theatre
19 — Athens, Georgia – Georgia Theatre
20 — Asheville, North Carolina – The Orange Peel
21 — Saxapahaw, North Carolina – Haw River Ballroom
23 — Washington, D.C. – Howard Theatre
24 — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Union Transfer
26 — Boston, Massachussetts – Royale
27 — Portland, Maine – State Theatre

OCTOBER
01 — Brooklyn, New York – Brooklyn Steel
03 — Burlington, Vermont – Higher Ground
04 — Montreal, Quebec – Théâtre Beanfield
06 — Toronto, Ontario – Danforth Music Hall
07 — Buffalo, New York – Asbury Hall
08 — Cleveland, Ohio – Globe Iron
09 — Chicago, Illinois – Metro
11 — Minneapolis, Minnesota – First Avenue
12 — Iowa City, Iowa – Hancher Auditorium at the Englert Theatre
14 — Denver, Colorda – Gothic Theatre
17 — Vancouver, BC – Vogue Theatre
18 — Seattle, Washington – Neptune Theatre
19 — Portland, Oregon – McMenamins Crystal Ballroom
21 — San Francisco, California – The Regency Ballroom
24 — Santa Cruz, California – Rio Theatre
25 — Los Angeles, California – The Bellwether
28 — San Diego, California – Observatory North Park
30 — Marfa, Texas – The Capri
31 — Austin, Texas – TBC

NOVEMBER
01 — Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall
02 — Dallas, TX – Granada Theatre
12 — Mexico City, MX – Foro Indie Rocks!

DECEMBER
05 — Brighton – Corn Exchange
06 — London – Royal Festival Hall
08 — Glasgow – SWG3
09 — Leeds – Project House
11 — Manchester – O2 Ritz
13 — Oxford – O2 Academy

Brown Horse – All The Right Weaknesses

Michael Bonner
-
0
Brown Horse – All The Right Weaknesses

A band’s early trajectory tends to follow a certain pattern. First comes the rough toil, birthing obscure songs that very few people are interested to hear, gigging in backroom bars and so on, hoping for some kind of validation. Or at least an audience. If you’re lucky, you’ll get signed. Then comes the first album, usually shortlisted from songs you’ve been fussing over for the past few years. And if you’re luckier still, there’ll be attendant live shows, an accelerated period of development and a swift return to the studio. This is exactly where Brown Horse are at.

Buy All The Right Weaknesses here

A band’s early trajectory tends to follow a certain pattern. First comes the rough toil, birthing obscure songs that very few people are interested to hear, gigging in backroom bars and so on, hoping for some kind of validation. Or at least an audience. If you’re lucky, you’ll get signed. Then comes the first album, usually shortlisted from songs you’ve been fussing over for the past few years. And if you’re luckier still, there’ll be attendant live shows, an accelerated period of development and a swift return to the studio. This is exactly where Brown Horse are at.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

The Norwich sextet seemed to arrive from nowhere with last year’s Reservoir, a remarkably assured debut that ran the tenets of classic country-rock through a noisier, post-millennial filter. But they’d actually begun as a folk quartet some six years earlier, playing covers and originals in empty pubs, before regrouping (and swelling) into something more guitar-directed. Eventually picked up by the ever-discerning Loose label, the album was immediately followed by a months-long tour of the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia, during which time they trialled the bulk of what became All The Right Weaknesses.

It bears all the hallmarks of a road album, and a great one at that. Brown Horse have taken the live momentum of the new songs directly into the studio, keeping their raw charge intact while accenting their dynamics and fine-tuning the arrangements. Crucially too, All The Right Weaknesses is more expansive than its predecessor. Emma Tovell’s pedal steel is a near-constant presence throughout, as opposed to its occasional role on Reservoir, while co-singer Phoebe Troup is more prominent, adding alternative helpings of banjo and bass.

This seems to have unlocked something extra in the Brown Horse sound. Everything is bigger, bolder, broader. The band signal their intent with opener “Verna Bloom”. Named after the American character actress who appeared in High Plains Drifter and Animal House, it’s a moving thicket of steel, accordion and Crazy Horse guitars, angled skywards by a peeling solo. Three guitars intermingle on “Corduroy Couch”, an organ bubbling underneath. Inspired by teenage memories of listening to Talking Heads and REM in the attic, the shared vocals of Troup and Patrick Turner bring extra weight and colour to the song’s disquieting mix of nostalgia and desolation.

Contrastingly, “Holy Smokes” is blessed with the kind of folk-roots swing that The Band made effortless, Brown Horse inhabiting a rural spaciousness that’s almost, but not quite, carefree. This spills over elsewhere. “Tombland” carries some of the Felice Brothers’ rugged Catskills charm, banjo pushed to the front of the mix, though slacker guitar ensures that the song doesn’t stray too far from suburbia. And “Far Off Places” is a new-school take on an old-school jig, a Celtic reel caught between a Virginia hillside and a Norfolk taproom.

Sharing the creative load adds to the richness. Whereas half of Reservoir had been written by Turner, here he contributes two songs, with Tovell, Troup, lead guitarist Nyle Holihan and keyboardist Rowan Braham picking up the rest between them. It makes for a wider palette, but no less cohesion, given that the music itself is very much a collective endeavour.

Thematically too, these songs all feel connected. The disparity between fiction and reality is a common thread. “Press your face up to the screen/And you can feel the static,” sings Turner on “Verna Bloom”, before slipping further into abstraction. On the rumbling, David Berman-like “Radio Free Bolinas” – a reference to the reclusive Californian coastal community, or maybe a spoddy pop culture nod to Return Of The Jedi – its narrator “Fell asleep on the carpet/Of a television starship”. Other songs seem caught in a form of psychic interspace, a place of dark visions and fever dreams, hovering between something unspoken yet ominous.

Notwithstanding the unresolved sense of unease and disenchantment that underpins All The Right Weaknesses, everything seems to come back to the road. It’s there in the fortified distances of “Dog Rose” and the “dawn black void” that accompanies “Radio Free Bolinas”; it sounds the bell in the title track’s hotel bar, it sours the milk in the service station coffee of “Verna Bloom”. And, perhaps most memorably, it winds through the silent miles of “Wipers”: “Bill Callahan in the van/Cutting through the car park/Kids doing handstands on the bandstand”.

Brown Horse have come a long way in a very short time, but are clearly relishing the challenge. On this evidence, they’re set to run and run.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Hear S.G. Goodman’s new track, “Fire Sign”

Michael Bonner
-
0
Hear S.G. Goodman’s new track, “Fire Sign”

S.G. Goodman has shared a new track, “Fire Sign”, a taster for her upcoming third studio album, Planting By The Signs – which is released via Slough Water Records / Thirty Tigers on June 20.

You can hear the track below.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

Says Goodman of “Fire Sign”, “After touring relentlessly for 2 years, ‘living like the sun don’t shine / on the same dog’s ass everyday,’ as the song puts it, I came off the road questioning my purpose and choices. People are quick to tell you that you are not working hard enough, but slow in telling you that you are working hard enough. That seems to be up to you, as well as your ‘why?’. Despite this burnout and other personal setbacks, I found the fire to keep pushing and to make what I believe is my best record yet. ‘Who’ll put the fire out?’ The only person who can put my fire out is myself.”

Goodman recorded Planting By The Signs at the Nutt House in Sheffield, Alabama, alongside co-producer Drew Vandenberg (her co-producer on 2022’s Teeth Marks) and guitarist/songwriter Matt Rowan. Bonnie “Prince” Billy appears on a duet, “Nature’s Child”.

The tracklisting for Planting By The Signs is:

Satellite
Fire Sign
I Can See the Devil
Snapping Turtle
Michael Told Me
Solitaire
I’m In Love
Nature’s Child (feat. Bonnie “Prince” Billy)
Heat Lightning
Planting by the Signs (feat. Matthew Rowan)
Heaven Song
You can pre-order the album here.

The Beatles movie cast confirmed!

Michael Bonner
-
0
The Beatles movie cast confirmed!

The cast of Sam Mendes‘ Beatles films has been announced.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

Dubbed The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, the films star (l to r) Harris Dickinson (John Lennon), Paul Mescal (Paul McCartney), Barry Keoghan (Ringo Starr) and Joseph Quinn (George Harrison).

The four theatrical feature films – one from each band member’s point-of-view – will open in cinemas from April 2028.

As yet, the scriptwriter on the project is unknown.

Bobby Weir announces first London show for 22 years

Michael Bonner
-
0
Bobby Weir announces first London show for 22 years

Bobby Weir has announced a very special show with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Saturday, June 21, 2025.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

The Grateful Dead co-founder will be joined by his Wolf Bros bandmates: Don Was on bass, along with Dead & Company‘s Jeff Chimenti on piano and Jay Lane on drums.

This orchestral project debuted in America in 2022 with a sold-out four-night run at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where Weir and his bandmates performed with the National Symphony Orchestra.

Tickets for the Royal Albert Hall performance will be available through a series of presales beginning Wednesday, April 2 at 2PM BST and the general on sale will follow on Friday, April 4 at 4PM BST. Fans can sign up for the artist presale here.

Inside our latest free Uncut CD: Small Faces’ Something Nice – rarities, live and exclusives!

Rob Hughes
-
0
Inside our latest free Uncut CD: Small Faces’ Something Nice – rarities, live and exclusives!

Small Faces are the stars of our latest free CD, Something Nice, available with the May 2025 issue of Uncut.

Small Faces are the stars of our latest free CD, Something Nice, available with the May 2025 issue of Uncut.

The 11-track album includes rarities, alternate takes and live cuts, including a set of tracks from the new deluxe edition of The Autumn Stone.

This slew of rare Small Faces goodies is largely pooled from Kenney Jones’s recently revived Nice Records. “I started the label in the ’90s to raise money for Ronnie Lane when he had multiple sclerosis,” Jones tells Uncut. “I put it to bed after he died, but have since thought, ‘No, I want to do something with this.’”

The first Nice release was 2021’s Live 1966, an extraordinary document of Small Faces’ two sets at the Twenty Club in Mouscron, Belgium, selections from which comprise the first half of our CD. “It was one of the first gigs we’d ever done abroad,” recalls Jones. “We always loved jamming and that gig is really what the Small Faces were all about. You can hear why Led Zeppelin became big fans – Page and Plant in particular. The spirit of those early days never left us.”

Also included are rare mixes, cuts from the newly expanded edition of 1969’s The Autumn Stone and an in-progress version of Tim Hardin’s “Red Balloon”, exclusive to Uncut. All of it carries Small Faces’ unique imprint. “We had so much chemistry,” Jones adds. “There was a kind of telepathic understanding between the four of us. We just always knew what was needed.”

See below for more on the tracklisting…

ORDER A COPY FROM US HERE

1 Ooh Poo Pah Doo (Live at The Twenty Club, Belgium, 1966)
“Formidable!” cries the excitable Belgian stage announcer, before Small Faces launch into the opening song of their matinee set in Mouscron. Originally released in 1960 by New Orleans singer Jessie Hill, “Ooh Poo Pah Doo” undergoes a full rock’n’roll makeover, with Ronnie Lane’s bluesy vocals out front and Ian McLagan driving along on organ. One of several songs the band never captured in the studio.

2 You Need Loving (Live at The Twenty Club, Belgium, 1966)
Steve Marriott fairly flies into this heaving R&B remake of Willie Dixon’s “You Need Love”, still four months shy of its studio counterpart on Small Faces’ debut album. Built around an improvised jam, the song had been in the band’s repertoire since they first started. Robert Plant evidently took note, later mining Marriott’s raw phrasing for Led Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love”.

3 Plum Nellie (medley) (Live at The Twenty Club, Belgium, 1966)
Along with “Green Onions”, “Plum Nellie” was one of two Booker T & The MG’s instrumentals in Small Faces’ early setlists. Here it forms part of an epic medley that includes a fearsome take on Big Joe Williams’ “Baby, Please Don’t Go” (styled after Muddy Waters) and Bukka White’s mighty “Parchman Farm”, before climaxing in a breathless blues blowout.

4 What’Cha Gonna Do About It (Live at The Twenty Club, Belgium, 1966)
Crowd hysteria ensues after Marriott introduces “our current British hit”, a pumping R&B powerhouse directly inspired by Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love”, with lyrics by Ian Samwell and Brian Potter. It would find its way into the Sex Pistols’ setlist a decade later, falling short of Small Faces’ ferocious live attack, however. “This really suited the power of Steve’s voice,” notes Kenney Jones.

5 Comin’ Home Baby (Live at The Twenty Club, Belgium, 1966)
Previously recorded by the Dave Bailey Quintet, Herbie Mann and (with the addition of vocals) American jazz crooner Mel Tormé, this searing instrumental offers a fabulous insight into Small Faces’ intuitive dynamic. Marriott singles out McLagan during the lead-up – “This is our organist, Mac… Hope you dig it a lot” – but it’s very much a groove-riding ensemble piece.

6 E Too D (Live at The Twenty Club, Belgium, 1966)
This Marriott/Lane original, developed from a live jam, is essentially a two-chord blues vamp (hence the title). Yet there’s also room for spontaneity and an old-school tip of the hat (“You heard of Chuck Berry? You heard of Nina Simone?”) as Marriott unpacks a tortured, imploring lead vocal. The studio version would fetch up on Small Faces in May ’66.

7 The Autumn Stone (mono single mix)
September 1968 saw Small Faces record for the final time as a four-piece at Olympic Studios, where Marriott’s sublime, semi-acoustic “Jenny’s Song” was reworked as “The Autumn Stone”. Rejected as a single by Immediate, whose Andrew Oldham felt unsure of its commercial potential, this mono mix remained in the vaults until being issued on limited-edition vinyl for Record Store Day 2016.

8 Green Circles (mono)
Inexplicably ditched in favour of “Talk To You” as B-side of “Here Come The Nice” (Small Faces’ debut single for Immediate), “Green Circles” is a firm fan favourite, marking the band’s shift from bullish mod-pop to bucolic psychedelia. Lane and Marriott share trippy vocals about an enlightened stranger imparting wisdom: “He dreamt of circles in the air/And you and I and everywhere”.

9 I Can’t Make It (stripped-down acoustic mix)
The single version of “I Can’t Make It” was caught in the crossfire
that accompanied Small Faces’ acrimonious switch from Decca to Immediate in 1967, barely troubling the Top 30 after the group refused to promote it. In its pared-back form – as heard on the expanded The Autumn Stone – the song’s limber groove and Stax/Motown core feel all the more invitingly lucid.

10 Red Balloon (Take 4 backing track)
Exclusive to Uncut, this newly mixed instrumental backing track finds the band veering into warm folk-roots territory, highlighted by electric piano, distorted 12-string guitar and Jones’s nimble brushwork. “Red Balloon” was cut at Trident in late May 1968, a day before the release of Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake. Another Tim Hardin tune, “If I Were A Carpenter”, was already in their live set.

11 All Or Nothing (Live)
This Steve Marriott classic landed Small Faces their first UK No 1 hit in September 1966. An essential component of the band’s live show from thereon in, by the time of this November ’68 performance at Newcastle City Hall it had taken on a richer, more measured tone, accentuated by McLagan’s soulful organ textures. “All Or Nothing” would later form the requiem at Marriott’s funeral.

ORDER A COPY FROM US HERE

Sufjan Stevens announces 10th anniversary reissue of Carrie & Lowell

Sam Richards
-
0
Sufjan Stevens announces 10th anniversary reissue of Carrie & Lowell

Sufjan Stevens has announced that a 10th anniversary deluxe reissue of Carrie & Lowell is coming via Asthmatic Kitty on May 30.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

The double LP will include seven previously unreleased bonus tracks, a 40-page art book and a new essay by Stevens. Hear the previously unreleased “Mystery Of Love (Demo)” below. Taken from the original Carrie & Lowell album sessions, it was later re-worked and re-recorded for Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name:

The bonus disc also includes demo versions of “Death With Dignity”, “Should Have Known Better”, “The Only Thing” and “Eugene”, as well as expansive outtakes of “Fourth Of July” and “Wallowa Lake Monster”.

Pre-order Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition) here.

Spiritualized, Barbican Hall, London, March 27, 2025

Piers Martin
-
0
Spiritualized, Barbican Hall, London, March 27, 2025

Things were very different in early 1995 when Spiritualized’s magnificent second album Pure Phase came out at the height of Britpop, reaching number 20 in the charts. But as Jason Pierce shows this evening, not much has changed in his world. Seven albums and 30 years later, J Spaceman’s vision remains essentially the same as he channels the heavy cosmic blues and raw Americana that has come to define the Spiritualized sound through a 15-piece ensemble for this special anniversary performance. 

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

This is the band’s second night at the Barbican as part of a run of shows this year celebrating Pure Phase, the Spiritualized album that tends to get overlooked in favour of its follow-up Ladies And Gentleman We Are Floating In Space, but which many fans consider to be the perfect distillation of Pierce’s musical genius.

It moved the band on from their more delicate debut Lazer Guided Melodies by bringing in some of Pierce’s most immediate pop songs – “Medication”, “Lay Back In The Sun” – and introducing the soulful gospel tropes he’d explore in rich detail later on, while retaining the electronic tones and harmonious drones that always suggested he was tuned to a celestial frequency only he could hear – a result of his fastidious production and mixing methods.

Pure Phase also gave the band some personality and helped to solidify their approach. Back then, Pierce played up to his spaced-out image by wearing an astronaut suit and posing vacantly for press shots in a T-shirt with the slogan “Drugs Not Jobs”, arm in arm with his partner at the time, Kate Radley.

This evening, Pierce is the only person on stage not wearing black as he stands to the right in a pale shirt, shades and silver trainers with his band arranged in a semi-circle around the stage, leaving a large empty space in the centre. The eye lands on the rhythm section anchored in the middle, Starsailor’s James Stelfox on bass and long-time Spiritualized drummer Kevin Bales. Above them, a huge moon is projected on the backdrop – maybe we will be floating in space? – and the room is bathed in swirling green light, reflecting the colour of the Pure Phase reissue in 2021. 

You usually know what you’re getting with a Spiritualized show, but this evening you really do because Pure Phase is played in sequence. Pierce’s regular five-piece band is joined by strings, brass and four backing singers, which allows him to deliver maximalist versions of each song, perhaps presenting Pure Phase in its entirety for the first time in the way he’d always imagined it (budget permitting). 

Somehow Pierce turns 60 this year, and for all the garlands tossed at his most recent album Everything Was Beautiful, he has effectively been writing versions of “Medication” for the last 30 years. “Every night I stay up late and make my state more desperate,” he sings, slightly crumpled, on this transcendent junkie prayer that opens the show, but by the end he’s come alive as the brass rings out: “Makes me feel so good – leaves me fucked up inside!” This leads into the sweeter “The Slide Song” and gentler “All Of My Tears” before the audience is vaporised by the pulsating sax-and-strobe overload of “These Blues”.

Everything that makes Spiritualized such a compelling live experience is contained in Pure Phase – even the sinuous electronic passages seem to glow as if beamed in from another dimension. And yet the 20-minute encore of “Cop Shoot Cop”, that deep-fried acid-rock gospel trip from Ladies And Gentleman…, immediately illustrates the leap Pierce took for his next album. That one turns 30 in two years – start queuing for tickets now. 

SET LIST
1 Medication
2 The Slide Song
3 Electric Phase
4 All Of My Tears 
5 These Blues
6 Let It Flow
7 Take Good Care Of It
8 Born, Never Asked
9 Electric Mainline
10 Lay Back In The Sun
11 Good Times
12 Pure Phase
13 Spread Your Wings
14 Feel Like Goin’ Home
ENCORE
15 Cop Shoot Cop

The Who, Royal Albert Hall, London, March 27, 2025

Peter Watts
-
0
The Who, Royal Albert Hall, London, March 27, 2025

It says a lot about Roger Daltrey’s support for the Teenage Cancer Trust that when The Who take the stage at the Royal Albert Hall it is the band’s first show for almost exactly a year – in fact, it’s their first since last year’s Teenage Cancer Trust show. And The Who will be back here again on Sunday to headline a second evening on behalf of the charity. Tonight, at least, Daltrey and Pete Townshend are in fine form, delivering a set packed with hits but also containing a great deal of warmth, humour and character. On the likes of “Love, Reign O’er Me”, “Behind Blue Eyes” and “5.15”, they don’t quite roll back the years, as much as embrace the reality of their age with a heartening defiance.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

The Who first played the Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer Trust a quarter of a century ago in 2000. On that occasion, they were joined by special guests including Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher, Eddie Vedder and Nigel Kennedy. For last year’s show, they were accompanied by an orchestra. But this time round, it’s just the band – Pete and Roger, plus five others including Zac Starkey on drums and Simon Townshend on second guitar. “Do you miss the orchestra?” gasps Townshend after whirl-winding his way through “Pinball Wizard”. “I fucking do. When we had the orchestra, I only had to pretend to play.”

Townshend is feeling particularly fragile as he’s just had his left knee replaced – news that is greeted with nods of sympathy from a crowd that has aged with the band. When Daltrey, now 81 but astonishingly spry, fluffs a line on “I Can See For Miles”, he blames it on a “senior moment”. Later he complains of failing eyesight to go with his poor hearing – “if I lose my voice, I’ll have the full ‘Tommy’,” he jokes.

That doesn’t seem likely. Daltrey’s voice is a miracle, and he knows it. After a pair of looseners to get everybody in the mood – “I Can’t Explain” and “Substitute” – Daltrey moves through the gears, with fantastic renditions of demanding numbers like “Bargain” and “The Real Me”. By the time we reach “5.15”, it’s clear he’s singing as well as ever, and when he hits the extended, agonising howl of “looooove” after Townshend’s solo on “Love, Reign O’Er Me”, it brings the crowd to their feet. That song is one of the highlights, with Townshend delivering a frantic performance that has the rest of the band watching his hands searching for a cue on where to go next.

The set is a masterclass in giving the fans what they want, from the beautiful performance of “Behind Blue Eyes”, which at times is just Pete and Roger working together to fill the song, to the rare airing of “Love Ain’t For Keeping” and then the quick-fire medley of “My Generation”/“Cry If You Want”/“See Me Feel Me”/“Listening To You”. Townshend gets a couple of songs on lead vocal: a great “The Seeker” and later “Eminence Front” – the latter to give Daltrey’s voice a break as it follows the taxing medley. Between songs, Daltrey praises the charity and urges further support in raising funds, with Townshend watching his friend’s passion with obvious pride.

The final straight begins with the crowd singalong “You Better You Bet” followed by “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” in quick succession. Those two epics draw the best from the entire band, with keyboard player Loren Gold enjoying his big moment on the intro to “Baba O’Riley” while Starkey wallops the drums. As “Won’t Get Fooled Again” crashes along, Daltrey breaks out the harmonica, locking perfectly into Townshend’s guitar. The rest of the band then slips away, leaving the stage to “the two old farts at the front” who close the set together with “Tea And Theatre” from Endless Wire, a song about the band, what they did, who they were and what remains: “We play them as one; We’re older now; All of us sad; All of us free; Before we walk from this stage; Two of us”. New knee, old friends, a good cause and testament to one of the most unlikely and enduring partnerships in music.

The Who’s set list, the Royal Albert Hall, London, March 27, 2025:

I Can’t Explain
Substitute
Who Are You?
The Kids Are Alright
I Can See For Miles
Bargain
Pinball Wizard
Love Ain’t For Keepin’
The Seeker
Behind Blue Eyes
The Real Me
5.15
I’m One
Love, Reign O’Er Me
My Generation/Cry If You Want/See Me Feel Me/Listening To You
Eminence Front
You Better, You Bet
Baba O’Reilly
Won’t Get Fooled Again
Tea & Theatre

The Smiths: “We wrote songs about our experiences”

Michael Bonner
-
0
The Smiths: “We wrote songs about our experiences”

From Uncut’s March 2015 issue [Take 214], how The Smith’s 1985 album Meat Is Murder provided a radical manifesto for troubled times, one overshadowed by the “violence, oppression and horror” of Margaret Thatcher. Uncut tracks down band members, intimate associates and contemporaries to tell the full story of a band at their closest and most adventurous…

The distance travelled by The Smiths in late 1984 can be measured, to some extent, in car journeys. En route with the rest of The Smiths from their respective homes in Manchester to Amazon Studios in Kirkby during the winter of 1984, Morrissey would sit at the back, to best enjoy the full benefit of the car’s central heating system. The vehicle – a 1970s white stretch Mercedes rented from R&O Van Hire, Salford – had once been used for weddings. Now it was being used for another type of celebration. The Smiths – along with their fledgling co-producer, Stephen Street – were heading to Amazon to record their second LP, Meat Is Murder. “We had a feeling the grown-ups had left the building and it was left to us to break some rules and have some fun,” Johnny Marr told Uncut. Despite the weather, the daily trips shuttling to and from Kirkby were conducted in high spirits, characterised by an air of anticipation for what the coming sessions would bring. The interior of the car featured two rows of seats, facing each other like a cab. Morrissey and Johnny Marr would face forward on the back seats, while Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce sat in front of them, facing the rear of the car. If there were any disagreements between the band members, it was usually to do with the heating – which Morrissey would complain wasn’t turned up high enough. “Amazon was on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere,” says Andy Rourke. “It was the freezing winter. We’d stop for a cup of tea at this mobile café and carry that into the studio. That was our routine for two or three weeks.”

An industrial estate in Kirkby, on the outskirts of Liverpool, in the depths of winter, hardly seems the most auspicious setting from which to storm the citadel. All the same, the work started here by The Smiths on Meat Is Murder was freewheeling and stimulating. “It was very exciting,” acknowledges Stephen Street. “It felt like all the stars were in alignment, everything seemed to be working.”

While historically Morrissey’s songs had lingered on a nostalgic, post-war vision of England – one of juvenile delinquents, underworld spivs and “jumped-up pantry boy”s – Meat Is Murder presented a different, highly politicised side to the band. The songs on the album addressed powerful, contemporary themes including animal rights, domestic and institutionalised violence.

“The Smiths were out there on their own,” Paul Weller tells Uncut. “I thought they were similar to The Jam, really. It wasn’t a party line thing, and the lyrics weren’t always overly political. But they still seemed to reflect what was going on in people’s lives.”

“The issues they were addressing in the songs on Meat Is Murder were socio-political,” adds Billy Bragg. “My politics were more ideological, but The Smiths were more involved in broader issues; we lived in a time when those issues were right to the forefront of debate.”

“The politics of the day had a big effect on the music and Morrissey’s lyrics,” admits Andy Rourke. “That’s what we wrote songs about: our experiences. That comes across in the music, also.”

If Meat Is Murder helped establish The Smiths as a radical force, it had other, equally far-reaching implications for their career. These were fluid and fast-moving times for the group: since releasing their first single, “Hand In Glove”, in May 1983, their ascent had been rapid and exhilarating, building on a brace of thrilling singles and, in February 1984, a self-titled debut album. Meat Is Murder, though, is best characterised as an exchange of ideas at a higher level. It moved their story forward credibly, giving them their only No 1 album, in the process dislodging Springsteen’s Born In The USA from the top of the UK album charts. It also represented a point where Morrissey and The Smiths were at their tightest. “Morrissey always wanted to be part of a gang,” says Richard Boon, then production manager at Rough Trade Records. “He’d never been, because he was such an outsider character.I remember being in the band’s van once when they were coming down to London. They were all wearing white T-shirts because that would make us stand out and they wanted to stand out. By Meat Is Murder, The Smiths had cohered as a gang.”

“It all happened very quickly,” reflects Rourke. “Especially at that time, things picked up even more, and the records started selling better than they had done. I think it always continued upwards, but around Meat Is Murder, it definitely stepped up a gear. They were crazy, busy times.”

FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT MARCH 2015/TAKE 214 IN THE ARCHIVE

Peggy Seeger: “Everything is interlaced”

Jim Wirth
-
0
Peggy Seeger: “Everything is interlaced”

From Uncut’s April 2021 issue [Take 287], the indomitable first lady of folk shares her whole story with Uncut: an epic 85-year odyssey that also involves Woody Guthrie, Ewan MacColl and Greenham Common

This morning, Peggy Seeger has been out in her garden in Oxfordshire to inspect the bird tables. These, she explains, have now been squirrel-proofed and she was keen to see how successfully they were working. “Connecting with nature is something you do a whole lot when you get old,” she says, with a typically commanding blue-eyed stare. “I’m not a mature citizen, I’m not vintage, I’m old. Bloody old. You’ll soon be joining the whole of nature’s system and learning to understand it is what I’m doing now. And it is magical. Absolutely magical.”

A leading figure in the most politically radical stream of the UK folk revival, Seeger has not morphed into an earth mother. There are no dreamcatchers on her living room wall, no obvious crystals. However, the younger half-sister of Pete Seeger, and widow of Ewan MacColl, has a pleasingly cosmic outlook. “Everything is interlaced,” she explains. “No element of the earth, the galaxies, human thought, the natural systems – none of it is separated from the rest. Until we learn that, we’re doomed.”

If artists tend to stick to their fundamentals once they get past retirement age, Seeger is determinedly extending her range. Aged 85, she is increasingly out there.

Seeger’s place in the world may have been defined by the work she did in the 1950s and 1960s, when – as the loyal lieutenant to the Oliver Cromwell of the folk revival – she helped set standards for all folk singers, whether they wanted them or not.

“Peggy was my total role model,” says singer Sandra Kerr, who later made the music for Bagpuss. “She was everything I wanted to do. She sang, she wrote songs, she played three or four instruments, she had great empathy with people and she was a livewire.”

With and without MacColl, Seeger wrote important contemporary songs, including feminist standards “I’m Gonna Be An Engineer” and “Carry Greenham Home”. “Peggy’s made a huge contribution to the culture of political music in this country,” Billy Bragg tells Uncut.

However, the most remarkable thing about Seeger may be that she is making the most sophisticated, challenging work of her career now. Her new album (billed as her last), First Farewell, takes on the meditative chanson mood of 2014’s beautifully crafted Everything Changes, but steers toward starker terrain.

If she owed her traditional repertoire to her father, folklorist Charles Seeger, the abstract piano shapes on First Farewell are all down to her mother, ‘ultramodernist’ composer Ruth Crawford Seeger – who died in 1953, when her daughter was 18. “My mother used to make me get lost on the piano and then find my way out into a good harmonic ending,” she says. “She made me go to anything, including dissonance.”

“This odd fusion of Aunt Molly Jackson and Béla Bartók, that’s her thing,” says her second son Calum MacColl, who has helped realise Seeger’s most recent records along with his older brother Neill and his sister-in-law – rock’s top oboist, Kate St John.

On the bible-black “Swim For The Star” from Everything Changes, Seeger followed the Titanic as it slipped under the waters of the Atlantic; on First Farewell, she goes deeper still. “I’m dealing with matters that to me are very serious in the world, but trying not to preach on Hyde Park Corner,” she explains.

Seeger’s early work could be harsh and astringent – “I don’t have a beautiful voice, I have a character voice,” she says – but she is using softer power here. “If you have a strident song that says ‘hypocrisy and greed are part of our system’, people say, ‘Oh, it’s those lefties talking again,” she explains, talking through the weary “How I Long For Peace”. “But if it’s in a gentle, really tuneful song and has a chorus…”

However, while she expertly connects sex and the movement of tectonic plates on “Lubrication”, and challenges attitudes to ageing on the cheeky “The Invisible Woman”, her steps into meditative space are even more impressive: the angular “The Puzzle”; the chilling “One Of Those Beautiful Boys” and – most remarkable still – rapturous opener “Dandelion And Clover”.

Here, the deaths of a seven-year-old schoolmate and her first lover are woven into a song that softens the horrible certainty of death with the comforting glow of memory, set to a wondrous, undulating melody. Steering by candlelight, she is stretching toward the unearthly twinkle of Robert Wyatt or Ivor Cutler. Fittingly, given her unusual musical journey, Seeger has not heard of either of them.

FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT APRIL 2021/TAKE 287 IN THE ARCHIVE

Laura Nyro: “A musical force of nature”

Laura Snapes
-
0
Laura Nyro: “A musical force of nature”

From Uncut’s May 2017 issue [Take 240], we salute the genius of “The Bronx Brontë”! Laura Snapes tracks down Nyro’s closest collaborators to uncover the true story of a revolutionary singer-songwriter and her own thwarted career…

There is an abiding image of Laura Nyro as the black sheep at the crowning of the counterculture. On June 17, 1967, the 19-year-old played Monterey. According to cousin and confidant Alan Merrill, the moment producer Lou Adler called and asked Nyro to play, “Her lips went blue from the shock.” Once she recovered, she started sketching costumes. Her outfit was a black dress that hung off one shoulder, forming a batwing beneath the other arm. A decade later, Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks would take this look mainstream. In ’67, Nyro came off as an earnest East Coaster in a field of flower children.

Onstage at Monterey, Nyro would have preferred to perform at the piano, but there was little precedent for a young female artist playing her own songs, and the house band struggled with her complex charts. Certain she had heard the crowd booing, Nyro demanded that DA Pennebaker omit her performance from his documentary. When he reviewed the footage in 1997, he discovered these were cries of “beautiful!” and invited her to see for herself, but Nyro died from ovarian cancer before she could resolve her fear. The film shows the Russian Jewish/Italian Catholic girl from the Bronx to be the greatest white female soul singer until Amy Winehouse emerged four decades later. “Wedding Bell Blues” sparkles with festive harmonies, while on “Poverty Train”, Nyro searches the sky as she details a bad trip. She’s vulnerable and dramatic, and appears daunted by her own power.

Contrast this tentative performance with a solo appearance at LA’s Troubadour in 1969. In attendance was Jackson Browne, songwriter, admirer and aspiring artist. (Joni Mitchell was also allegedly there, taking notes. “She was the only female singer-songwriter at the time that I knew,” she would tell PBS.) “She had brought in a grand piano,” Browne recalls. “Her fans were so crazy about her that, in between each song, she’d walk out to the edge of the stage and pace the front to rolling applause. Then she’d compose herself, and go into another song. I’d never seen anything like it. She wore a red velvet dress – she was not like the freaks, the hippies she was playing to. Her audience was just wilding for her. But she was a diva; she took this in her stride.” Browne laughs. “There was no false modesty in Laura! Never any, ‘Oh, you’re too kind’, she just expected it.”

“From the moment that I met her, she had a presumption of her own power,” says friend Ellen Sander, who met Nyro in the office of her first manager, Artie Mogull. “She sensed that what she was doing was important and should be popular.” Alan Merrill, who played on Nyro’s teenage demos, says her confidence was inbuilt. “Nobody could touch her in terms of musical strength, at least as a writer,” he says. “She was inimitable. She knew it. She was a musical force of nature, more than a talent.”

Contrary to the image of Nyro as a fragile failure, 50 years since the release of her debut, More Than A New Discovery, it’s apparent that Nyro was a confident, gentle visionary who thrived when she got to create her own terms. She upset the archetypes for female musicians, fashioning new aesthetic moulds and poetic expressiveness, and made a case for authorship as autonomy. She inspired Joni Mitchell to take up piano, and Carole King’s push to be taken seriously as an artist. With her natural producer’s touch, Nyro co-pioneered the LP’s transition from pop vending machine to studio-crafted statement, and found on the streets of New York analogues for the cyclical violence of war, poverty, and injustice plaguing the US at the end of the ’60s: “The Bronx Brontë”, as one writer described her. “She was inexorably the way she was,” says Browne. “A person who could focus her feeling, and summoned the song in a way that was real every time. That was a great example of how to conduct yourself as a performer. Someone who’s gonna get up there to represent their work.”

FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT MAY 2017/TAKE 240 IN THE ARCHIVE

Tobacco City – Horses

Rob Hughes
-
0
Tobacco City – Horses

Lexi Goddard and Chris Coleslaw first met while working at the same café in Chicago, soon uniting to perform Neil Young covers and, in time, writing their own songs as Tobacco City. Debut EP “LSD” arrived in 2018, followed by 2021’s full-length Tobacco City, USA, an album that suggested their spiritual locus lay at some movable point between ’60s Bakersfield and the bleached expanse of the American Southwest. Echoes of Gram and Emmylou shaped their harmonies, while a supporting cast conjured up the kind of glazed psychedelic country so beloved of early Flying Burritos.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

i)Horses(i) is even more impressive. Smart, evocative and almost casually assured, it’s the sound of a band pooling their influences into something timeless, their unhurried songs as vivid as their lyrical depictions of carefree youth, weightless days and bitter experience. “Autumn” is a wry portrait of teenage life in smalltown America, where a dirty lakeshore breeze comes in from the water treatment plant, diner grease fills the air and there’s always someone running from the police. It’s rich and poetic, reminiscent of The Handsome Family in its sense of quotidian drama. The gorgeous “Time” carries something of My Morning Jacket’s effortless drift, countrified by fiddle and Andy ‘Red’ PK’s radiant pedal steel. “Watching berries ripen on the vine/Gonna take my time,” sing Coleslaw and Goddard, as if willing this reverie to last forever. A similar form of ambience steers “Horses”, essentially an interlude in three parts, like fragments from a fast-fading dream.

Goddard takes the lead on slow-rolling ballad “Fruit From The Vine”, her voice as softly expressive as Judee Sill, thoughts of regret tainting what appears to be an idyllic scene: “And the women all singin’ while the sun disappears/And the roosters wrestle over the last warm beer.” By contrast, she and Coleslaw get to frolic freely on the up-tempo “Buffalo”, as flames burn across the plains. It’s a wonderful rush of good-time choogle and barroom honky-tonk, driven by voices that feel like they’re here to stay.

The new Uncut: Small Faces, a Small Faces CD, Radiohead, Lou Reed, Bootsy Collins, Pogues, Bon Iver and more

Michael Bonner
-
0
The new Uncut: Small Faces, a Small Faces CD, Radiohead, Lou Reed, Bootsy Collins, Pogues, Bon Iver and more

For Kenney Jones, reclaiming the Small Faces legacy has been a lengthy battle, doggedly pursuing unpaid royalties and restoring the management of this beloved group’s back catalogue. “I don’t think any band’s been treated worse than the Small Faces,” Jones’s former bandmate Ian McLagan ruefully told Uncut in 2014. Jones’s achievements, then, are nothing short of heroic – as this month’s cover story attests. Nominally a celebration of the posthumous – and now radically expanded – The Autumn Stone album, our cover story explores the band’s tumultuous 1968, discovering along the way tantalising new insights into the music they made in their final year together. “It’s amazing how many songs we did in such a short space of time,” says Jones. “And how much we’ve touched people. Did I think it was going to last? It never entered my mind. But here we are, 60 years later, still talking about it.”

You’ll have also noticed, I’m sure, that print editions of this month’s issue also come with an exclusive Small Faces CD featuring a slew of rare mixes, alternate takes and live cuts. Everything a young mod could possibly ask for, in other words.

As usual, there’s an embarrassment of riches inside, from Slade to Keith Jarrett, Suzanne Vega to Oasis, Jonathan Richman to These New Puritans. While I wouldn’t normally single out any specific feature for your attention, do please check out Alastair McKay’s piece on Lou Reed’s fearsome Metal Machine Music, which makes for both incredibly funny and deeply insightful reading.

You’ll also find advice from Lou’s guitar tech on how to recreate Metal Machine Music in the comfort of your own home.

What will the neighbours think? Let’s hope they’ve got room for ravers after all.

Uncut May 2025

Uncut Staff
-
0
Uncut May 2025

CLICK HERE TO GET THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

CLICK HERE TO GET THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

EVERY PRINT EDITION OF THIS ISSUE OF UNCUT COMES WITH A COPY OF SOMETHING NICE – A FREE AND EXCLUSIVE SMALL FACES CD OF ALTERNATE MIXES, RARITIES AND LIVE CUTS

SMALL FACES: 1968 was a year of extremes, from hit singles and a career-defining album to a final, on-stage bust-up. But while the bonds between them were strained by internal tensions and external dramas, the music Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagen and Kenney Jones made in their final months together pointed tantalizingly in bold, new directions…

LOU REED: In 1975, Metal Machine Music almost destroyed its creator’s career. But was it a drug-crazed act of self-sabotage, a venomous rebuke to a record label expecting hits… or the latest in a long line of experimental projects Reed had pursued since his earliest musical forays?

BOOTSY COLLINS: 73-years-young, P-Funk’s talismanic showman is still the No #1 Funkateer, full of tales about the glory days aboard the Mothership, life lessons from James Brown and misadventures in the Bermuda Triangle.

RADIOHEAD: The Bends was both Thom Yorke and co’s reaction to sudden fame and their first experimental art-rock blockbuster. On tour in America with R.E.M. in 1995, backstage pranks and on the road ennui helped make sense of their place at music’s top table.

THESE NEW PURITANS: From their base in the Essex hinterlands, sonic mystics Jack and George Barnett have created a singular body of work that has evolved beyond its nervy post-punk roots to encompass English classicism, visionary pop and taut, experimental music.

DEAN WAREHAM: From Galaxie 500 onwards, the singer-guitarist has been making quietly influential indie-rock for almost 40 years now. But that’s only part of a story that runs from New Zealand to Harvard, from supporting The Velvet Underground to a parallel career in film.

SUZANNE VEGA: The quintessential New York singer-songwriter on rats, remixes and “Luka”.

BELLY: Misheard lyrics, a Pixies tour and a studio “taskmaster” contribute to the genesis of an early-’90s indie-pop gem.

REVIEWED: New albums by Kassi Valazza, Bon Iver, William Tyler, Benmont Tench, Hawkwind, Jerry David DeCicca, Evan Parker, Salif Keita, Màiri Morrison & Alasdair Roberts; archive releases by The Blasters, Lonnie Liston Smith, Jeff Bridges, Henry Badowski and Julee Cruise; Jonathan Richman and Sturgill Simpson live; Pink Floyd, Neil Young and John & Yoko on Screen Extra and The Shangri-Las and Mike Campbell in books.

PLUS: David Johansen and Brian Jones depart; Slade In Flame at 50; Bridget St John returns; Oasis unseen; Keith Jarrett‘s Kohn concert: the documentary!; Peter Capaldi‘s favourite albums… and introducing indie-folk quartet, Florist.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

And Bob Dylan’s new drummer is…

Michael Bonner
-
0
And Bob Dylan’s new drummer is…

Bob Dylan began his Rough And Rowdy Ways spring tour on Tuesday night [March 25, 2025] in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

While the majority of Dylan’s band remained the same – Tony Garnier (electric and stand-up bass), Bob Britt (acoustic guitar, electric guitar) and Doug Lancio (acoustic guitar, electric guitar) – Jim Keltner, who had been drumming with Dylan since the Outlaw Festival last June, was replaced by Anton Fig.

Fig has previously played with Dylan before, on “Clean Cut Kid” from 1985’s Empire Burlesque and “Drifting Too Far From Home” on 1986’s Knocked Out Loaded. He was also drummer at the 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration in October, 1992.

As a session musician, Fig’s credits include Paul Simon, Warren Zevon, Roseanne Cash, Rodney Crowell and Cyndi Lauper, as well as being drummer with David Letterman‘s house band from 1986 – 2015.

Aside from Fig’s introduction, the setlist remained unchanged from the previous leg of the tour:

All Along the Watchtower
It Ain’t Me, Babe
I Contain Multitudes
False Prophet
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Black Rider
My Own Version of You
To Be Alone with You
Desolation Row
Key West (Philosopher Pirate)
Watching the River Flow
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You
Mother of Muses
Goodbye Jimmy Reed
Every Grain of Sand

Adam Buxton, Grace Campbell and Stewart Lee top End Of The Road’s comedy bill

Sam Richards
-
0
Adam Buxton, Grace Campbell and Stewart Lee top End Of The Road’s comedy bill

The comedy and literature lineups have been announced for this year’s End Of The Road festival, taking place at Larmer Tree Gardens on August 28-31.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

Following last year’s packed-out cameo, Stewart Lee returns to top the comedy bill, alongside Grace Campbell, Michelle de Swarte and Adam Buxton (who will host a special live edition of The Adam Buxton Podcast).

Ivo Graham and Alex Kealy bring their own podcast Gig Pigs to the festival, Adam Riches hosts his Dungeons ‘n’ Bastards gameshow, while Harriet Kemsley, Sean McLoughlin, Helen Bauer and Sharon Wanjohi are among the other comedians appearing.

On the literature front, Belle And Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch presents his debut novel Nobody’s Empire, Audrey Golden will discuss her book about The Raincoats with Gina Birch, and there will also be talks with Miranda Sawyer, John Harris, Joe Dunthorne and 2024 Booker Prize winner Samantha Harvey.

Tickets for End Of The Road 2025 are still available here.

Pete Shelley’s first two solo albums to be reissued by Domino

Sam Richards
-
0
Pete Shelley’s first two solo albums to be reissued by Domino

Pete Shelley’s first two post-Buzzcocks solo albums, Homosapien and XL-1, will be reissued by Domino on June 6.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

Both LPs will come housed in gatefold sleeves featuring the original fully restored artwork, plus an extra disc featuring B-sides, dubs and extended mixes. The inserts will feature new photos and extensive sleevenotes from Clinton Heylin. Both albums will also be available on CD for the first time since 2006.

Pre-order Homosapien here and XL-1 here.

Domino have also created a Pete Shelley exclusive for Record Store Day (April 12). Yesterday Is Not Here: Radio Sessions 1979-1983 is a collection of three never-before-released radio sessions – an acoustic one broadcast on Piccadilly Radio on in January 1979, and the other two recorded with full bands for David ‘Kid’ Jensen in December 1981 (prior to the release of Homosapien) and Feb 1983 (prior to the release of XL-1). More details on that here.

Sex Pistols, Royal Albert Hall, London, March 24, 2025

Peter Watts
-
0
Sex Pistols, Royal Albert Hall, London, March 24, 2025

Moments before the Sex Pistols launch into a scathing version of “Problems”, frontman Frank Carter tells the massed punks in the Royal Albert Hall that is the first time Steve Jones has ever visited the venue. That’s something of a surprise given that not only has Jones spent 50 years in the music industry, but before that he was the teenage master of blagging his way into West London venues, usually to liberate some of the gear. But this evening’s show marks his debut – as well as one of the more unlikely shows the hall has seen in its 154-year history.

THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE

A few days previously, the band warmed up for this Teenage Cancer Trust charity show with a rambunctious secret gig (under their old SPOTS pseudonym) in the more familiar setting of the 100 Club watched by a crowd that included Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher, Bobby Gillespie and Gary Kemp. Outside the Royal Albert Hall, fans young and old – but mostly old – swap punk rock war stories and compare tattoos. The Pistols aren’t the first punk band to play the venue, but there still seems something very implausible about this appearance, not just in terms of their own history as one-time scourges of the establishment as much as the fact the band have reunited at all.

The three original Pistols – Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook – recruited Frank Carter, previously of Gallows, as their new singer in autumn 2024. It’s worked incredibly well. Carter brings energy and enthusiasm to the role, allowing the three older members to focus on the music. Carter, dressed for the occasion in a Mark Powell suit, tackles Pistols songs without resorting to a Johnny Rotten impression, an accomplishment in itself, and spends most of the gig in the audience. He’s standing on the barricade for “Pretty Vacant” – placed surprisingly early in the set – and then belts out “Bodies” while surfing through the crowd on the heads and shoulders of the fans. For “Silly Thing” he takes his mic stand and plants it like a military standard in the middle of the pit as the crowd surges around him like a human whirlpool. Back on stage, Glen, Paul and Steve shrug and carry on. They’ve seen worse.

John Lydon had always seemed so irreplaceable, that it was unimaginable the Pistols would perform with another singer. But Lydon’s failed attempt to ban the use of Sex Pistols music for Danny Boyle’s Pistol miniseries appears to have broken the last remaining bond between the group. The Pistols felt liberated, finally ready to replace Lydon with somebody a little less awkward and cynical, but with their own charisma and presence.

There must be something very cathartic about this. Back in the day, the Sex Pistols came and went in the blink of an eye – half a blink for Matlock – leaving a totemic legacy that even Lydon has struggled to overcome. The reunions with Lydon felt forced and were nakedly commercial – the band seemed to distance themselves from the shows even as they were playing them, with Lydon lacing everything in mockery and contempt. But now, the Sex Pistols can embrace that history, that music, and claim it for themselves.

Because it bears repeating that the Pistols wrote half-a-dozen of the best pop songs of the decade. They open with “Holidays In The Sun” and then dip into the classics throughout a short, intense set that also includes a fine pair of covers: “No Fun”, which is Frank doing Johnny doing Iggy; and “My Way”, one Frank doing Sid murdering another Frank. But strip away those layers of irony and this is a fantastic, frantic show, with a wild mosh pit, pogoing in the Royal Box and just the right balance between music and mayhem. The band end on “Anarchy In The UK”. With Frank Carter once more lost in the crowd, Matlock and Jones drop out, leaving Cook to maintain the beat while the audience repeat an a cappella refrain of “I wanna be anarchy”. At first it sounds menacing, then it sounds beautiful, then it sounds like “Kumbaya”, so Jones hammers down the riff, Matlock picks up the bass and the Sex Pistols bring the Royal Albert Hall back to the boil.

The Sex Pistols’ set list, the Royal Albert Hall, London, March 24, 2025:

Holidays In The Sun
Seventeen
New York
Pretty Vacant
Bodies
Silly Thing
Liar
God Save The Queen
No Fun
Satellite
No Feelings
Problems
EMI
My Way
Anarchy In The UK

123...1,268Page 1 of 1,268

SHOP UNCUT