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Uncut – February 2025

Uncut Staff
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Uncut – February 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 copy of this issue comes with a free 15-track CD featuring brand new music from The Weather Station, The Delines, Richard Dawson, Sunny War and more. Meanwhile, inside the magazine…

THE BAND: 50 years on from the release of The Basement Tapes, Uncut invites compatriots, aficionados and heads – including JASON ISBELL, RICHARD THOMPSON, LUCINDA WILLIAMS, ELVIS COSTELLO, VAN MORRISON, MARGO PRICE, STURGILL SIMPSON – to celebrate the 30 greatest songs of ROBBIE ROBERTSON, RICK DANKO, GARTH HUDSON, RICHARD MANUEL and LEVON HELM.

THE VERVE: Before Urban Hymns briefly made them the biggest band in Britain, THE VERVE summoned some of the most rapturous rock music of the ’90s, fuelled by a prodigious diet of booze, drugs, Rosicrucianism, home-delivered lasagne and lashings of self-belief. Luckily, they lived to tell the tale: “We wanted that rock’n’roll life. It was all that mattered.”

SHARON VAN ETTEN: With her new band THE ATTACHMENT THEORY set to make their debut, SHARON VAN ETTEN reveals how she found fresh inspiration in collaboration. “How can I keep doing what I’ve been doing, but try new things?”

BLUE ÖYSTER CULT: From hippie communal living to sold-out arena tours via heavy licks and eldritch mythologies, BLUE ÖYSTER CULT were one of ‘70s rock’s biggest – and strangest – bands. “We had no concept of being commercial…”

ASWAD: Championed by Bob Marley and lauded by early punk audiences, ASWAD were UK roots reggae pioneers, battling prejudice to share their message of anti-racism, Rastafarianism and community. “We wanted to fight for what we believed was right.”

NADIA REID: After a rollercoaster decade, the stars finally seem to have aligned for New Zealand singer songwriter NADIA REID as she prepares to release her fourth album, Enter Now Brightness. “The whole thing’s been mad.”

THE MOODY BLUES: LSD with Timothy Leary, trips to Disneyland and a Vietnam-inspired hit single. Behold, the lost heroes of psychedelia!

SEAN O’HAGAN: Career highlights from MICRODISNEY to THE HIGH LLAMAS via STEREOLAB and (almost) THE BEACH BOYS.

GARY KEMP: The Spandau Ballet songwriter turned Saucerful Of Secrets frontman talks Soho, Black Midi, Ronnie Kray and kilts…

EDDIE CHACON: The second-chance soulman on the records that bring him pleasure, joy and happiness: “I learned that imperfections can be beautiful”

REVIEWED: New albums by Chris Eckman, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Yazz Ahmed, The Delines, Songhoy Blues, Jim Gedhi; archive releases by Lotti Golden, Doug Sahm & The Sir Douglas Quintet, Television Personalities and Brides Of Funkenstein; Mark Lanegan birthday tribute and The Necks live; James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic on the big screen and the Yardbirds on the small screen

PLUS: Paul McCartney gets back; The Chills; Keith Richards unseen; Candi Staton; Echolalia; farewell Andy Paley and Leah Kunkel and introducing Greg Mendez

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

Introducing the new Uncut: The Band, The Verve, Sharon Van Etten, The Moody Blues and more

Michael Bonner
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Introducing the new Uncut: The Band, The Verve, Sharon Van Etten, The Moody Blues and more

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY

Back in the dim and distant days of June last year, Will Hermes emailed me from Woodstock, where he was interviewing Mercury Rev for us. After several stop-offs at sites of interest, they found themselves in the studio belonging to Aaron Hurwitz, “where they tracked Levon and Garth for Deserter’s Songs”, wrote Will. “Classic Woodstock, truly like stepping back in time. FYI, this was sitting on a coffee-table when we arrived unannounced…” Attached to the email was a photo of Uncut’s April 2005 issue, with The Band on the cover.

As you can imagine, it’s deeply satisfying to find traces of our history lingering in such hallowed spaces. Of course, in 2005, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Robbie Robertson were all still with us; now it’s only Garth. In fact, we started discussing a new Band cover shortly after Robbie’s death in August 2023, which became more advanced as we headed towards this year’s 50th anniversary of the release of The Basement Tapes. Rather than retell familiar tales from The Band’s story, we asked some of our favourite artists to choose their favourite songs, including Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson, who all jumped at the chance to participate. And on it went; you can find out the results of our Top 30 countdown in our latest issue. As our first cover story of 2025, we hope it offers you some light and comfort in an otherwise cold, damp January.

In further good news, a quick note about Uncut+, our new subscription upgrade, free to all existing print subscribers, which unlocks our digital archive, stocked with every issue of Uncut stretching back to Take 1 in 1997 as well as a comprehensive collection of our Ultimate Music Guides and other special editions. You’ll find instructions to login to Uncut+ here. If you’re not already a subscriber but are interested in becoming one, please click here, where we have one of our best Uncut subscription offers running right now.

Enjoy the issue – there’s tons inside, from Blue Öyster Cult to Nadia Reid, Sharon Van Etten to The Verve, The Moody Blues to Echolalia – not to mention an excellent new music CD to banish the January blues featuring Chris Eckman, Jim Ghedi, The Delines, Yazz Ahmed, Sunny War, The Weather Station, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and others.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY

Meanwhile, stand by for a very special cover story and CD next month…

Tributes paid to Johnnie Walker

Michael Bonner
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Tributes paid to Johnnie Walker

Tributes have been paid to Johnnie Walker, who died on January 31, 2024 aged 79. Walker had retired from a long career in broadcasting at the end of October.

Tributes have been paid to Johnnie Walker, who died on January 31, 2024 aged 79. Walker had retired from a long career in broadcasting at the end of October.

His death was announced on air by fellow BBC Radio 2 DJ, Bob Harris, who described Walker as an “incredible, warm, wonderful, superb broadcaster” who “was passionate about his music”.

On Twitter/X, Robert Plant wrote, “so long Johnnie Walker, all across the years ..a defender and gatekeeper of great musical taste .. a cool, kind man who kept the bar high for all of us who loved him ….”

Also on Twitter/X, Joan Armatrading wrote, “RIP Johnnie Walker and thank you. Thank you for all you did for my music and the many other musicians you brought to the public’s attention. I loved talking with you on your shows. I will miss you. You will be very missed by many x”

And Rick Wakeman wrote, “Johnnie Walker was a great friend and stunningly influential within radio. We talked about Caroline a lot and his overall radio knowledge and experiences were second to none. A privilege to have been able to call him a true friend. Radio Heaven now has a real DJ gem”

Fellow broadcasters also paid tribute to Walker, including Ken Bruce: “So sorry to hear the news about the great Johnnie Walker. Not only was he a wonderful broadcaster but also a man of great personal strength and kindness.”

Walker’s radio career spanned 58 years, beginning as a pirate DJ on the offshore station Swinging Radio England, then Radio Caroline, before joining Radio 1 in 1969. He later worked in America before returning to the BBC.

Photo: Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty Images

In 2009, Uncut interviewed Walker – alongside other veteran DJs – about the glory days of pirate radio. You can read the article here.

Neil Young pulls out of Glastonbury

Michael Bonner
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Neil Young pulls out of Glastonbury

Neil Young has pulled out of this year's Glastonbury, saying he believes the festival, which is partnered with the BBC, is now "a corporate turn-off".

Neil Young has pulled out of this year’s Glastonbury, saying he believes the festival, which is partnered with the BBC, is now “a corporate turn-off”.

Writing on his Neil Young Archives website, he said, “The Chrome Hearts and I were looking forward to playing Glastonbury, one of my all-time favorite outdoor gigs. We were told that the BBC were now a partner in Glastonbury and wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in. It seems Glastonbury is now under corporate control and is not the way i remember it being. Thanks for coming to see us the last time!

“We will not be playing Glastonbury on this tour because it is a corporate turn-off, and not for me like it used to be.

“Hope to see you on one of the other venues on the tour.”

Young last played Glastonbury in 2009.

Young’s latest band The Chrome Hearts – comprising guitarist Micah Nelson, bassist Corey McCormick, drummer Anthony LoGerfo and Spooner Oldham on keyboards – recently finished an album at ShangriLa Studios in Malibu with producer Lou Adler.

Uncut’s Best New Albums of 2024

Uncut Staff
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Uncut’s Best New Albums of 2024

50
OREN AMBARCHI/JOHAN BERTHLING/ANDREAS WERLIIN
Ghosted II
DRAG CITY
2022’s improvised mindmeld between Aussie experimental guitarist Ambarchi and the Swedish jazz rhythm section of Berthling and Werliin proved so successful that the trio reconvened for this lively sequel. Their telepathy now honed, Ghosted II was groovier and hookier than its predecessor, Berthling’s propulsive basslines providing structure and drive for Ambarchi’s shimmering bliss-outs.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT FEATURES KATE BUSH, QUINCY JONES, THE WEATHER STATION, THE DAMNED AND OUR ESSENTIAL 2025 PREVIEW – ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

49
STILL HOUSE PLANTS
If I Don’t Make It, I Love U
BISON
The post-rock trio, formed a decade ago at the Glasgow School Of Art, rocketed out of the improv underground with a fissile breakthrough album that recalled Life Without Buildings, Labradford and the slanted, enchanted skronk of Bill Orcutt. But tracks like the standout “Silver Grit Passes Thru My Teeth” were thrillingly all their own work.

48
DAVID GILMOUR
Luck And Strange
SONY
Working with a new producer (Charlie Andrew, notable for his work with prog upstarts Alt-J) and new musicians (including Tom Herbert, bass player with Polar Bear), Gilmour sounded reinvigorated on his fifth solo album – never more so than on a startling cover of the Montgolfier Brothers’ magnificently bleak “Between Two Points”, beautifully sung by his daughter Romany.

47
SARAH DAVACHI
The Head As Form’d In The Crier’s Choir
LATE MUSIC
Her 12th long-player was the most impressive statement yet from the ‘slow music’ figurehead: an exploration of the myth of Orpheus, recorded on four different pipe organs from across the world, not to mention an array of other keyboards and synthesisers, plus choir, trombones, bass clarinets and medieval string instruments. Deep, mysterious and genuinely awe-inspiring.

46
CHARLES LLOYD
The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow
BLUE NOTE
The flower-power jazz veteran extended his late-career renaissance with this album of mellifluous sax and flute marvels. Released on Lloyd’s 86th birthday, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow sounded as fresh and engaged as any of the new-school spiritual jazz touchstones, with “The Water Is Rising” and “Defiant, Tender Warrior” carrying a subtle yet potent political message.

45
LAURA MARLING
Patterns In Repeat
CHRYSALIS
Written and recorded in stray, snatched moments at home with producer Dom Monks when Marling was “high as fuck” after the birth of her first daughter, Patterns In Repeat charted the journey from postpartum euphoria to deeper questions about family and ageing, mortality and memory. These beautifully fingerpicked lullabies were occasionally graced by the elegant strings of violinist Rob Moose.

44
CHRISTOPHER OWENS
I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair
TRUE PANTHER
Perhaps only former Girls frontman Christopher Owens could imbue an album with so much personal tragedy – heartbreak, homelessness, hospitalisation – and still make it sound uplifting. “I died the day you left me/ I die again every day”, he sang desperately on opener “No Good”, and yet the overriding emotions were joy, redemption and a sense that everything was ultimately OK. A truly life- affirming comeback.

43
RICHARD THOMPSON
Ship To Shore
NEW WEST
On his first album in six years, Thompson sang from the perspective of
a traumatised squaddie (“The Fear Never Leaves You”), a lovestruck Jack Tar (“Singapore Sadie”), and even Donald Trump (“Life’s A Bloody Show”). Throughout all this, he kept his musical compass set on the miraculously consistent course of excellence he’s maintained for six decades now.

42
KIM DEAL
Nobody Loves You More
4AD
The Breeders’ records always contained more stubborn variety than the band’s status as alt.rock hellraisers gave them credit for. On her first ever solo album, Kim Deal expanded those horizons in all directions: from mariachi-tinged swooners to electro-rock thumpers, featuring Brian Wilson’s musical director, as well members of Slint, Savages and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Deal’s unique charisma ensured it all cohered perfectly.

41
PAUL WELLER
66
POLYDOR
1966 may have been the white-hot peak of popular modernism, but 66 the album saw an elegiac mood overtaking the Modfather, with songs like “I Woke Up”, “Sleepy Hollow” and “My Best Friend’s Coat” evoking a Kinksy autumn almanac. Best of a host of co-writes (with Noel Gallagher, Bobby Gillespie, Richard Hawley and Suggs, among others) was “Ship Of Fools”, an unsentimental farewell to the Tories.

40
GRANDADDY
Blu Wav
DANGERBIRD
Inspired by the sound of Patti Page’s 1950 hit “Tennessee Waltz”, Jason Lytle returned with an enchanted album of new-wave bluegrass. These were songs of loss, regret and heartbreak in the mall parking lot (“Jukebox App”), the office cubicle (“Watercooler”) and out on the wide-open American highway, with Max Hart’s pedal steel guitar duetting with the burble of analogue arpeggiators – the sound of cosmic consolation.

39
BROWN HORSE
Reservoir
LOOSE MUSIC
You would have got fairly long odds on this year’s best country-rock debut emerging from the fine city of Norwich, but Brown Horse’s assured take on East Angliana made a whole lot of sense. On Reservoir, their gripping vignettes of stolen horses and “feet wet in the mudflats” were delivered by powerful twin vocals, backed up by rousing guitars, fiddle, accordion and pedal steel.

38
DIRTY THREE
Love Changes Everything
BELLA UNION
It’s been another busy year for Warren Ellis, what with the Wild God album and tour, various film soundtracks and his animal sanctuary on Sumatra. Thankfully he also made time to reconvene his much-loved instrumental trio Dirty Three. Inspired by Alice Coltrane, their first music in a decade was an extended improvised suite, unmoored from conventional structures but full of rapture.

37
SHELLAC
To All Trains
TOUCH AND GO
Steve Albini’s unexpected death just days before its release cast a long shadow over To All Trains, but this was the most unsentimental farewell possible, with Shellac’s metallic machine music at its intense, thrilling best. “I’ll leap in my grave like the arms of a lover”, Albini sang on his final exit. “If there’s a hell, I’m gonna know everyone…”

36
MYRIAM GENDRON
Mayday
THRILL JOCKEY/FEEDING TUBE
Myriam Gendron has made her name as an inspired interpreter of other people’s words – particularly the poems of Dorothy Parker – but Mayday prioritised her own sad, stoical lyrics, sung in both English and French. Jim White and Marisa Anderson applied some subtle shading, though Gendron held fast to her spartan approach – until, right at the end of final song “Berceuse”, all that contained emotion burst out in an ecstatic sax solo by Zoh Amba.

35
BRITTANY HOWARD
What Now
ISLAND
Having successfully established herself as a solo artist with 2019’s raw and personal Jaime, the former Alabama Shake decided it was time to cut loose. What Now was a hard-hitting party record of the type Prince used to make in his prime: funky but thoughtful, and sonically adventurous too: “Another Day” rode a confounding industrial-soul groove, while “Prove It To You” even dabbled in house music.

34
ROSALI
Bite Down
MERGE
After last year’s intriguing solo guitar excursions as Edsel Axle, Rosali Middleman made a triumphant return to the big stage with Bite Down. Featuring staunch backing from Omaha’s Mowed Sound, her fourth album was hard-rocking yet tender, experimental yet anthemic, funny yet sad, exposing the fearless vulnerability of the songwriter behind it all: “I’m letting things come as they may/ Hope you know why I do it this way…”

33
WILLIE NELSON
The Border
LEGACY
At the age of 91, Nelson is still showing few signs of slowing down. This was his 75th album, and his 10th in the last seven years. Rodney Crowell’s two song contributions – the title track and “Many A Long And Lonesome Highway” – struck an ominous tone, but Willie’s restless maverick spirit was still alive on the jauntily madcap “What If I’m Out Of My Mind?”

32
BEAK>
>>>>
INVADA
Beak>’s fourth album turned out to be Geoff Barrow’s swansong with the band, the “mumbling drummer” recently announcing his plan to step down after their current tour. His parting gift was a telling contribution to an album of typically dank Bristolian grooves and ’70s sci-fi dread, but with a surprisingly rich seam of wistful, folky reflection.

31
MABE FRATTI
Sentir Que No Sabes
UNHEARD OF HOPE
Is this pop? Experimental? Post-classical indie jazz? Mexico City-based Guatemalan Mabe Fratti actively embraces such confusion. The title of this album translated as ‘Feel Like You Don’t Know’, which neatly summarised her playful, open-hearted approach, finding kinship with Björk, Julia Holter and fellow cellist Arthur Russell.

30
KIM GORDON
The Collective
MATADOR
Kim Gordon embarked on her seventh decade with an album of savagely satirical sawtooth synthpop, partly inspired by Jennifer Egan’s dystopic novel The Candy House. “Tongues hanging out/ Bodies on the sidewalk/ Driving down Sunset/ Zombie meditation”, she sang on “Psychedelic Orgasm”, like a 21st-century Joan Didion cruising through LA on her way to the apocalypse.

29
OISIN LEECH
Cold Sea
OUTSIDE MUSIC/TREMONE
After a decade-and-a-half in folk duo The Lost Brothers, Dublin’s Oisin Leech announced himself as a singer-songwriter of some distinction with this stunning solo debut. As crisp and clear as the North Atlantic ocean beside which it was recorded, Cold Sea benefitted from the subtle presence of some stellar musicians, namely Steve Gunn, M Ward, Planxty’s Dónal Lunny and Dylan bassist Tony Garnier. But the acute sense of yearning was all Leech’s own.

28
JAKE XERXES FUSSELL
When I’m Called
FAT POSSUM
The discovery of a discarded school journal by the side of a California highway inspired this North Carolina folklorist to make his most enthralling album to date, bringing together songs of wildly disparate origin – Scottish traditionals, Benjamin Britten, cowboy artist Gerald ‘The Maestro’ Gaxiola – for a collection that was not only cohesive but often incredibly moving.

27
ENGLISH TEACHER
This Could Be Texas
ISLAND
The Leeds four-piece delivered one of the most distinctive debuts of the year, a radiant collection of tumbling, twisting prog-pop songs that charted a fiercely lyrical path through the squall of England’s ongoing civil wars. Somewhere at the heart of it, “You Blister My Paint” was an unexpectedly touching ballad, like the sun coming out on a rainy Bank Holiday.

26
MICHAEL HEAD & THE RED ELASTIC BAND
Loophole
MODERN SKY
The Mick Head renaissance continued with the former Pale Fountains frontman’s third album in seven years, another inspired collection of acoustic reveries set adrift on memory bliss, produced by Bill Ryder-Jones. With “Tout Suite!” and “You Smiled At Me”, he casually crafted the sweetest, most swoonsome love songs of the year.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT FEATURES KATE BUSH, QUINCY JONES, THE WEATHER STATION, THE DAMNED AND OUR ESSENTIAL 2025 PREVIEW – ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

25
NALA SINEPHRO
Endlessness
WARP
Sinephro’s blissful 2021 debut Space 1.8 placed the London-based harpist and modular synthesist at the vanguard of the new cosmic jazz movement. This filmic follow-up made fine use of some of the scene’s most expressive players – Sheila Maurice-Grey, Nubya Garcia and Natcyet Wakili among them – but it never felt like a jam session, instead radiating a unanimous sense of wonder and calm.

24
PHOSPHORESCENT
Revelator
VERVE
Matthew Houck’s eighth album as Phosphorescent, and his debut for Verve, was a beautiful refinement of the elegant melancholy he has been steadily crafting since 2013’s Muchacho. A standout was “Poem On The Men’s Room Wall”, which found some respite from the end of the world in a cold beer and the underappreciated erotic charm of Phyllis Diller.

23
HIGH LLAMAS
Hey Panda
DRAG CITY
Turns out you can teach an old Llama new tricks. After three decades of exquisite retro orchestration, Sean O’Hagan took an unexpected left-turn here into digital production and avant-R&B. The results were spectacular, retaining all of O’Hagan’s beloved quirks while allowing guest vocalists like Bonnie “Prince” Billy to indulge their inner pop freak.

22
ALAN SPARHAWK
White Roses, My God
SUB POP
Written and recorded after the loss of wife and bandmate Mimi Parker
in 2022, Sparhawk’s first post-Low release was an astonishing, artful transmutation of grief into cybernetic gospel via the medium of the Helicon VoiceTone pedal. It sounded, on the closing “Project 4 Ever”, like PC Music producing the Book Of Job.

21
JOHN CALE
POPtical Illusion
DOMINO
After the jagged future-shock of last year’s heavily collaborative Mercy, this impressively swift follow-up found Cale in more contemplative mode – though he still sounded more vital than most artists a quarter of his age, dispensing the sagest of wisdoms over dreamily inventive electronic beats: “If you’ve done things you’d wished you’ve never done/ Think of the things you’re going to do tonight…”

20
HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF
The Past Is Still Alive
NONESUCH
“Say goodbye to America, I wanna see it dissolve,” sang Alynda Segarra on “Colossus Of The Roads” – amid stiff competition, the most devastating track on the ninth Riff Raff album. But on songs like the Conor Oberst collaboration “The World is Dangerous”, they remained committed to making astonishing music while the ship goes down.

19
PETER PERRETT
The Cleansing
DOMINO
Perhaps as astonished as anyone to still be here, the mercurial former Only Ones frontman joked about outstaying his welcome on nagging punk earworms “Do Not Resuscitate” and “I Wanna Go With Dignity”. The irony being, of course, that Perrett was in the form of his life, decrying our morally bankrupt leaders and the evils of WhatsApp in his bone-dry south London drawl.

18
SHABAKA
Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
IMPULSE!
Swapping his trusty saxophone for an array of Japanese and South American flutes naturally led Shabaka Hutchings towards more serene waters. But just as you’d hope from the former Comet/Kemet firebreather, he approached this seemingly tranquil music with gripping intensity, the introspective mood matched by guest vocalists including Lianne La Havas and Moses Sumney.

17
JOHNNY BLUE SKIES
Passage Du Desir
HIGH TOP MOUNTAIN
He’s thrown a few curveballs in his time, but country renegade Sturgill Simpson – for it was he – pulled off his greatest trick yet by absconding to Europe and adopting the Johnny Blue Skies moniker to consider the lot of the semi-famous musician from a position of wry remove. Beautifully sung and played, these were also some of the finest songs he’s ever written: soulful, wistful, funny and tender.

16
BILL RYDER-JONES
Iechyd Da
DOMINO
The title is Welsh for ‘good health’, and on his first album in five years the former Coral man set sail from lockdown anguish to calmer waters, buoyed by the kindred spirits of Gal Costa, Echo & The Bunnymen, and – on the gorgeous orchestral interlude “…And The Sea” – the inspired combination of Michael Head and James Joyce.

15
JACK WHITE
No Name
THIRD MAN
“Nothin’ in this world is free”, warned Jack White on No Name’s taut, prowling opener “Old Scratch Blues”. That is, unless you were lucky enough to visit the Third Man store on July 19 to have a copy of this unmarked LP slipped into your bag. But if the release was discreet, the music itself was anything but: a relentless barrage of garage-rock bangers with White in blistering, rabble-rousing form.

14
MDOU MOCTAR
Funeral For Justice
MATADOR
Though recorded thousands of miles from Moctar’s Niger homeland, Funeral For Justice went in hard on both the country’s current leaders (the title track) and its malign colonial overlords (“Oh France”). Suffice to say, this fiery rhetoric was more than matched by some incendiary guitar-playing; while to underline the strength of the songwriting, an acoustic version of the album – Tears Of Injustice – is due early next year.

13
FONTAINES DC
Romance
XL
With their colossal fourth album, the Irish post-punkers hooked up with a new label (XL) and a new producer (James Ford) to venture far from the Dublin cobblestones. They drew on the cityscapes of Tokyo, the fashion sense of Korn and apocalyptic arthouse cinema to create an IMAX-scale album of dystopian lovesongs, fit for the stadiums they increasingly seem destined to fill.

12
JULIA HOLTER
Something In The Room She Moves
DOMINO
When Julia Holter topped this chart in 2015 with Have You In My Wilderness, we described its unique sound as “Aphex Twin meets The Beach Boys”. If anything, this album pushed that glorious dichotomy even further as Holter’s psychedelic nursery rhymes inhabited an alluring fourth-world wonderland full of squelching electronics, stacked voices, fluttering flutes and fretless bass.

11
CASSANDRA JENKINS
My Light, My Destroyer
DEAD OCEANS
Cassandra Jenkins proved that An Overview On Phenomenal Nature was no fluke with a cosmic third album that roamed from Betelgeuse to Aurora, Illinois, via the pet shops of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Throughout, her quizzical sprechstimme and calmly forensic eye rooted her in the reality of everyday heartaches.

10
WAXAHATCHEE
Tigers Blood
ANTI-
“You just settle in like a song with no end”, sang Katie Crutchfield, harmonising beautifully with 2024’s MVP MJ Lenderman on “Right Back To It”, the lead single from her boldest, most accessible record yet. Tigers Blood was an album that saw her burnishing the romantic hooks that always lurked in her songwriting and laying a reasonable claim to being the millennial Lucinda Williams.

9
CINDY LEE
Diamond Jubilee
REALISTIK
Patrick Flegel’s seventh release under his indie-drag alias Cindy Lee was a tour de force of lo-fi Lynchian guitar soul lasting more than two hours. Astonishingly for a 32-track album, there were no space-filling goofs and hardly any drop-off in song quality: witness, around 83 minutes in, the heart-tugging triptych of “To Heal This Wounded Heart”, “Golden Microphone” and “If You Hear Me Crying”.

8
MJ LENDERMAN
Manning Fireworks
ANTI-
Still only 25, Jake “MJ” Lenderman is already wiser than most of us
will ever be. On his fourth solo studio album – he’s also notched up another couple as guitarist for the equally excellent Wednesday – he skilfully deployed classic rock references to paint vivid portraits of smalltown ennui (“How many roads must a man walk down ’til he learns/ He’s just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse ’til it burns”). Great solos, too.

7
THE SMILE
Wall Of Eyes
XL
The first of two terrific albums The Smile released in 2024, emphasising the purple-ness of the patch in which Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner currently find themselves. Here, their agitated rhythms were often wreathed in lush orchestral arrangements, though that only seemed to heighten the ever-present sense of threat (“I am going to count to three/ Keep this shit away from me”). Next stop: a rumoured Radiohead live reunion in 2025…

6
ADRIANNE LENKER
Bright Future
4AD
Lenker’s solo career is the opposite of a diversion from her main gig fronting Big Thief. “Real House” continued the raw, autobiographical tale of “Mythological Beauty” from the band’s 2017 album Capacity, while recent single “Vampire Empire” was presented in a radically different form. Yet beyond these fan-pleasing callbacks and overlaps, there is much to be said for hearing Lenker’s precise melodies and perennially wise words in their most unadorned state.

5
JESSICA PRATT
Here In The Pitch
CITY SLANG
Even when playing these songs live in the flesh at a bewitching Union Chapel gig earlier this year, there remained something apparitional about Jessica Pratt, the ghost of LA’s Gold Star Studios. Ingenious arrangements – brass, Mellotron, Brazilian percussion, whole caverns full of echo – warped these songs so far out of time to be completely discombobulating, yet Pratt’s piercing melodies cut straight to the core.

4
AROOJ AFTAB
Night Reign
VERVE
Keen to puncture the myth of the “Sufi goddess” while maintaining the intense and rarified emotion of 2021 breakthrough Vulture Prince, Aftab found the perfect blend of earthiness and otherworldliness in Night Reign’s rich, seductive ambience. A splash of Auto-Tune here and a filthy bassline there showed that she could bend pop techniques to her will, rather than the other way around. And, oh, that voice…

3
BETH GIBBONS
Lives Outgrown
DOMINO
A decade in the making, released as she was about to turn 60, Beth Gibbons’ solo debut proved worth the wait in gold. Working with producer James Ford, she drew upon all the bitter wisdom of midlife. On songs like “Reaching Out” and “Rewind”, she constructed an awesome orchestra of loss from corrugaphone, recorder, folksong and her indomitable, astonishingly wracked voice.

2
GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS
Woodland
ANCONY
Thirty years into their musical partnership, Welch and Rawlings released the first original record credited to the two of them. Maybe it was disaster that strengthened their union? Woodland was full of the stuff, from the 2020 tornado that destroyed their studio to an apocalyptic vision of the Mississippi run dry. They’ve certainly never sounded so attuned, their harmonies blending to uncanny effect on the desolate “What We Had” and the closing “Howdy Howdy”.

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1
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
Wild God
PIAS
“We’ve all had too much sorrow/ Now is the time for joy”. For the first time since 2016, Nick Cave properly reconvened The Bad Seeds – Thomas Wydler on drums, Martyn Casey on bass, Warren Ellis a one-man orchestrator of chaos and grace – and the result was a surging, storming work of radical, Blakean exuberance. It had the form of the blues but felt more like a rapture, full of “bright, triumphant metaphors of love”, with producer Dave Fridmann arranging the tumult like a man conducting a storm-tossed ocean.

Like so much of Cave’s work since 2016, it was addressed to his lost sons, but there were also heartfelt songs of devotion to his wife (“Final Rescue Attempt”), his dear, departed exes (“O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)”) and songs of praise for any creator who saw fit to invent Anita Lane’s panties, cinnamon horses and Kris Kristofferson.

Since the mid-1980s, Nick Cave has been trying on the vestments of these lay preachers – Glen Campbell, Neil Diamond, the Elvis of “An American Trilogy” – and a large part of the charm has been the gall and gumption of this skinny Aussie goth to assume their orphic mantle. But now the robes finally fit, with Cave returning from the drag of hell to ascend to the heavens like… a prehistoric bird? An awestruck frog? A joyful rabbit? Never mind, never mind. Wild God was Nick Cave’s latest, great, indisputable masterpiece. Amen.


Uncut’s Best Reissues, Live Albums and Compilations of 2024

Uncut Staff
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Uncut’s Best Reissues, Live Albums and Compilations of 2024

30
ROYAL TRUX
Twin Infinitives
FIRE
Diving straight in at the deep end, Fire kicked off their Royal Trux vinyl reissue series with this synapse-mangling 1990 double LP which found America’s most gloriously fucked-up rock’n’roll band careering wildly toward the outer limits of convention, taste and sanity. A work of deviant high art or the sound of two people having a breakdown? Let’s say both. 

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29
JOHN LENNON
Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection
CAPITOL/UMe
In 1973, Lennon’s fourth album – which he himself described as “an interim record between being a manic, political lunatic to back to being a musician again” – failed to make the UK Top 10. Half a century later, it was refreshed by this sumptuous box set comprising multiple new mixes, unreleased outtakes, instrumentals, studio chatter and a lavishly detailed coffee-table book.

28
OASIS 
Definitely Maybe (30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
BIG BROTHER
As an aperitif for the forthcoming reunion tour, Oasis’s swaggering debut was reissued with bonus material telling the full messy story of its creation, including eight tracks from the 1993 Monnow Valley sessions and another seven from the January 1994 sessions in Cornwall. A 1992 home demo of “Sad Song” with Liam on vocals was an uncanny reminder of the lightning they were trying to capture.

27 
DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
Southern Rock Opera (Deluxe Edition)
NEW WEST
The Truckers’ great 2001 concept album, an epic tale loosely based on the myths around Lynyrd Skynyrd and the American South, was richly documented on this impressive and timely reissue: a double-turned-triple LP with added outtakes, unreleased overflow songs, live cuts and a meaty new essay by Truckers ringleader Patterson Hood.

26
ROBERTA FLACK
Lost Takes
ARC
Across two days in November 1968, Roberta Flack sat down at a piano in RCA Studios and demoed 39 songs for potential inclusion on her debut album. Many of those that didn’t make the cut – including terrific versions of “Afro Blue” and “To Sir With Love” – languished unheard until the 2020 deluxe edition of First Take. Here, 12 of those songs received their first-ever vinyl release, working perfectly as an enchanting standalone album.

25
PAUL MCCARTNEY & WINGS
Band On The Run (50th Anniversary Edition)
CAPITOL
The definitive album of Macca’s post-Beatles career was given an anniversary makeover, complete with an expanded half-speed remaster and ‘underdubbed’ companion version. Mixed by Geoff Emerick from the original Lagos recordings, before George Martin and Tony Visconti added orchestration, it revealed the unvarnished rock’n’roll roots of songs like “Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five” and “Let Me Roll With It”.

24
LOU REED
Why Don’t You Smile Now: Lou Reed At Pickwick Records 1964-1965
LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
The latest fruits of the ongoing trawl through the Lou Reed archive revisited his time as staff writer for the Pickwick International label/sweatshop in Long Island, specialising in surf, R&B and girl-group knock-offs for budget compilations. There were real jewels amid the hackwork, the pick of the bunch being “Oh No Don’t Do It”, recorded by Ronnie Dickerson – a weird glimpse of Lou’s untravelled path as a Brill Building princeling.

23
EMAHOY TSEGE MARIAM GEBRU
Souvenirs
MISSISSIPPI
Ethiopia’s ‘honky-tonk nun’ lived an incredible life before finally passing on last year, just shy of her 100th birthday. This collection of home-recorded demos from 1977-85 was the first to feature her fragile but defiant singing voice as she reminisced about life before the Red Terror and pondered her future exile in Jerusalem. Sad but hopeful, beautiful and unique.

22
AIR
Moon Safari (25th Anniversary Edition)
PARLOPHONE
Air’s return to the stage – the French duo as suave as ever inside their sleek white box – was one of this year’s live highlights. It was all to celebrate a quarter-century of their swooning, retro-futuristic touchstone Moon Safari, reissued as a 2CD+Blu-Ray package. Among the highlights: an astonishing live synth version of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain”. 

21
SUEDE
Dog Man Star 30
DEMON MUSIC
When anyone tries to tell you that Britpop was all about Blur v Oasis and lager lads in Ben Sherman shirts – and there’ll be a lot of that next year – just play them this: a fabulously grandiose vision of seedy proclivities and love on the dole amid the rapidly fading glamour of England’s capital. As the bonus discs proved, Suede’s B-sides of the time were almost as good as the singles – witness Brian Eno’s eldritch 16-minute remix of “Introducing The Band”.

20
KEVIN AYERS
All This Crazy Gift Of Time: The Recordings 1969-1973
CHERRY RED
The essential works of Herne Bay’s wizard of whimsy, neatly packaged in a 10-disc box set along with lashings of bonus material. Even if you already own all the studio albums, there was plenty here to astound and delight, from a brilliantly haywire 1970 Hyde Park show with The Whole World band (Mike Oldfield, Lol Coxhill et al) to a host of mildly slicker BBC sessions and a suggestive poem about a banana.

19
APHEX TWIN
Selected Ambient Works II (Expanded Edition)
WARP
As we all know, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was a high-water mark for British electronic music, but it wasn’t strictly ambient. Richard D James rectified that with his 1994 follow-up, two discs of atmospheric yet increasingly sinister pieces with blurry photos of random stuff for names. Bonus tracks on this expanded edition included a stunning orchestral version of “#3” (AKA “Rhubarb”).

18
GALAXIE 500
Uncollected Noise New York ’88​-​’​90
SILVER CURRENT
A fantastic shadow history of the short-lived but hugely influential dream-pop trio, across two LPs of non-album tracks, outtakes, alternate versions (“Blue Thunder” with bonus wailing sax!) and cover versions; in their trembling hands, both Joy Division/New Order’s “Ceremony” and The Rutles’ “Cheese And Onions” sounded equally spellbinding.

17
SONIC YOUTH
Walls Have Ears
GOOFIN’ RECORDS
In a year when great new albums by both Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore continued the Sonic Youth mission, it was intriguing to be thrust back to 1986, when the band began to transcend their downtown art-scuzz beginnings for a more universal kind of teenage riot. A former bootleg barely cleaned up for this official release, it’s not the live album Sonic Youth themselves would have sanctioned, but it’s a compelling document nonetheless.

16
ELVIS COSTELLO
King Of America & Other Realms
UMe
Much more than just a remaster of Costello’s pivotal 1986 album King Of America, this mammoth six-disc box set ventured both inward and outward to take in everything from original solo demos to unreleased collaborations with Allan Toussaint and duets with Lucinda Williams  and Emmylou Harris. A new habanera version of “Brilliant Mistake” brought it right up to date.

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15 
ANNE BRIGGS
Anne Briggs
TOPIC
A stone-cold British folk classic, rendered all the more precious by Briggs’ reluctance to add to her slender catalogue down the years. As a result, the four unreleased recordings included as a bonus 7” with this remastered vinyl reissue – including typically spare, devastating takes on “The Cruel Mother” and “Bruton Town” – were something of a holy grail. 

14
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Congo Funk! 
ANALOG AFRICA
James Brown’s visit to Kinshasa in 1974 inspired bands on both sides of the mighty Congo River to pick up electric guitars and incorporate American funk moves into their rambunctious, rumba-derived rhythms. This terrific comp showcased the unfailingly uplifting results.

13
MARGO GURYAN
Words And Music
NUMERO GROUP
Margo Guryan sadly left us in 2021, her uniquely sophisticated soft-pop compositions never properly celebrated in her lifetime. This deluxe three-disc boxset, collecting her slender but essential complete recorded output – plus sundry demos and curiosities – recorded her journey from Bach devotee to jazz wunderkind to gently psychedelic baroque pop magician. A fitting tribute at last.

12
THE WATERBOYS
1985
CHRYSALIS

This enthralling 6CD trawl explored every stage in the creation and performance of The Waterboys’ ‘big music’ statement This Is The Sea, unpacking the panoramic visions of Mike Scott and the musical innovations of Karl Wallinger (who sadly passed away in March). The cherry on top was a fast version of “This Is The Sea”  with elemental guitar breaks by Tom Verlaine.

11
DOROTHY ASHBY
Afro-Harping (Deluxe Edition)
VERVE/UMR
In a great year for jazz harp reissues, Dorothy Ashby’s once-obscure and now highly-prized 1968 LP – expect to pay £200 for an OG copy – finally received the deluxe treatment. The vibe was more swinging than spiritual, evidenced by two (arguably superior) alternate takes of “Theme From Valley Of The Dolls” and a slower, sultrier version of the much-sampled “Soul Vibrations”, with bonus theremin freakout.

10
GASTR DEL SOL
We Have Dozens Of Titles
DRAG CITY
Both David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke have become prolific contributors to the musical avant-garde over the last few decades; here was a chance to revisit their inquisitive, influential work together in the 1990s as post-rock duo Gastr Del Sol. Rounding up rare and unreleased material, including their last ever live performance from 1997, this 3LP set was an endearing study in how to gently wriggle free from convention.

9
NICO
The Marble Index 
DOMINO
“A weird excursion into atonality that will appeal only to a selective audience,” sneered a contemporary review quoted in the liner notes of this reissue. Forbidding and foreboding it may be, but in the intervening 56 years, Nico’s second solo album – her harmonium locked into a death spiral with John Cale’s gnawing viola – has become an essential part of the Velvet Underground story. Some versions came with a bonus 7”, the first time on vinyl for key outtakes “Roses In The Snow” and “Nibelungen”.

8
BOB DYLAN & THE BAND
The 1974 Live Recordings
COLUMBIA
If you ever felt shortchanged by Before The Flood’s anthology of Dylan and The Band’s barnstorming 1974 arena tour, here was a colossal 431-track, 27-disc collection, capturing the full force gale of the concerts from Chicago through to LA. It found Dylan on his own career precipice, returning from the commercial wilderness, The Band at the peak of their powers. The box vividly demonstrates how Dylan’s songs change as he looks for fresh treatments.

7
DOROTHY CARTER
Troubadour
DRAG CITY
This masterful reissue of the 1976 private press album by nomadic dulcimer visionary Dorothy Carter revealed a mesmerising tapestry of medievalism, folk, new age and ambient music. Ahead and out of her time, Carter connected ancient psalms, hymns and carols from across Europe and Asia to the burgeoning US counterculture and avant-folk underground.

6
JONI MITCHELL
Archives Vol 4: The Asylum Years (1976-1980)
RHINO
Joni’s archive series reached the most fascinating phase of her career, as she hitched a ride with the Rolling Thunder Revue and ended up consorting with Charles Mingus. As well as offering a glimpse into the creative processes behind Hejira and Don Juan…, there was a real sense of joy to these many unreleased live performances, whether Mitchell was road-testing an a capella version of “The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines” (“one more verse!”) or pausing “A Case Of You” halfway through to extol the medicinal virtues of Canada Dry.

5
NEIL YOUNG
Archives Vol III (1976-1987)
REPRISE
Across 17 discs, 198 tracks plotted the turbulent tale of Neil’s unhinged late ’70s and wild ’80s, including a series of glorious live sets from 1976, an entire set of songs recorded in Linda Ronstadt’s kitchen and the full shitkicking country set from his mid-’80s International Harvesters tour. For extra ragged glory, a deluxe edition (sadly only available in the US) added five Blu-Ray discs of live shows and gonzo cinema.

4
BROADCAST 
Distant Call / Spell Blanket
WARP
Billed as the last ever Broadcast releases, these two demo collections – the latter destined for their tragically unfinished fifth album – turned out to be as magical as anything in their catalogue. As Trish Keenan trilled these embryonic (yet often still perfectly structured) songs, as if to herself, it’s clear that Broadcast would have been otherworldly and transportive even without their banks of antique synths. 

3
CAN
Live In Paris 1973
SPOON / MUTE
The only release in Can’s revelatory live series to feature the impish presence of Damo Suzuki, and therefore instantly essential. As with the band’s other concert recordings, recognisable ‘hits’ like “Spoon” and “One More Night” were subsumed into longer, mesmeric jams, surging into the stratosphere with maximum countercultural force. A couple of excellent 1977 recordings (from Aston and Keele universities) completed Can’s invigorating archive trawl.

2
DAVID BOWIE
Rock ‘N’ Roll Star!
PARLOPHONE
“I don’t mean heavy loud but heavy sweet,” intoned the unmistakable voice of David Bowie, gently instructing Mick Ronson as to how many saxophones he wanted on “Soul Love”. Not every recent collection of Bowie demos have been essential, but this one was a revelation, offering you a ringside seat as a generational pop genius knocked together his game-changing Ziggy Stardust… project in real-time. 

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1
ALICE COLTRANE
The Carnegie Hall Concert
IMPULSE!
Finally, it appears that Alice Coltrane has taken her deserved place at the top table of 20th century musical icons, alongside her trailblazing husband. Rifle through Uncut’s best albums of 2024, and her influence is everywhere – not just on harpists like the amazing Nala Sinephro and Brandee Younger (who makes several key contributions to Shabaka’s recent album) but on artists as diverse as Julia Holter, The Smile, Arooj Aftab and Dirty Three. 

Naturally, the Impulse! archivists have been furiously trawling the vaults to see if there might be anything from Alice’s early ’70s heyday to match the jaw-dropping discovery of John Coltrane’s lost album Both Directions At Once a few years ago. With The Carnegie Hall Concert, they hit the jackpot. 

Recorded live in New York in the same month as the release of her spiritual jazz touchstone Journey In Satchidananda, it featured the first two tracks from that album blissfully spun out to more than twice their original length with the help of an expanded ‘double quartet’, including the likes of Jimmy Garrison and Clifford Jarvis. But it’s on an incredible version of John Coltrane’s “Africa” – with Alice having switched from harp to piano – where dual saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp really earned their corn, trading blazing solos for almost half an hour with no let-up in intensity. 

“The spirit was there at all times,” recalled bassist Cecil McBee in the liner notes. “I’ve never heard anything that I played that was more intense… It was absolutely amazing.” Listening back today, it’s hard to disagree.

Ringo Starr joins Paul McCartney onstage at London’s O2 Arena

Sam Richards
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Ringo Starr joins Paul McCartney onstage at London’s O2 Arena

Ringo Starr joined Paul McCartney onstage at the London’s O2 Arena last night (December 19) for the final 2024 date of Macca’s Got Back tour. The former Beatles bandmates teamed up in the encore for a run through “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club (Reprise)” and “Helter Skelter”.

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Earlier in the show, McCartney had welcomed Rolling Stone Ron Wood onto the stage to play “Get Back”.

There was a third surprise special guest: McCartney’s long-lost Hofner 500/1 bass guitar, which was stolen from him in 1972 but returned earlier this year. “And here to make its first stage appearance in 50 years… is my original bass!” declared McCartney. “I haven’t played it in 50 years.”

Read Uncut’s review of Paul McCartney’s Got Back tour in Manchester (December 14) here.

Send us your questions for Vashti Bunyan!

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Vashti Bunyan!

It’s fair to say that Vashti Bunyan’s musical career hasn’t followed a conventional path. After a faltering attempt to make it as a pop singer in Swinging London, she dropped out of the rat race and journeyed by horse-drawn wagon to the Isle Of Skye, an experience that informed her startling 1970 debut Just Another Diamond Day, recorded with assistance from members of Fairport Convention and The Incredible String Band.

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It proved to be Bunyan’s last recording for more than 30 years, until her rediscovery by freak-folk luminaries such as Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Animal Collective prompted a remarkable renaissance, leading to her 2005 Max Richter-producer comeback album Lookaftering and its 2014 follow-up Heartleap.

Lookaftering is about to be reissued for its 20th anniversary, augmented by a host of demo versions, alternate takes and live performances. But before that, Vashti has kindly agreed to undergo a gentle grilling from you, the Uncut readers. So what do you want to ask a wandering soul? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Friday January 3 and Vashti will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band – Still Barking

Nigel Williamson
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Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band – Still Barking

Hedonism and angst, heartbreak and rapture, bombast and tenderness – rock music does them all with an often startling brilliance. Humour? Not so much. Randy Newman – possibly the whip-smartest, funniest songwriter who has ever lived – was once asked by this reviewer why rock’n’roll has such an under-developed funny bone. His answer was simple: rock stars take themselves far too seriously and want to be remembered for saving the world rather than playing it for laughs. 

Buy Still Barking here

Hedonism and angst, heartbreak and rapture, bombast and tenderness – rock music does them all with an often startling brilliance. Humour? Not so much. Randy Newman – possibly the whip-smartest, funniest songwriter who has ever lived – was once asked by this reviewer why rock’n’roll has such an under-developed funny bone. His answer was simple: rock stars take themselves far too seriously and want to be remembered for saving the world rather than playing it for laughs. 

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There are exceptions that prove the rule, of course – Frank Zappa managed to be a serious musician and to inject a caustic wit into the Mothers Of Invention’s early records. Yet no rock’n’roll band has ever set out with quite such an endearingly eccentric, consistent and overarching objective to make us laugh as the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

Over 17 CDs and three DVDs this extravaganza of countercultural hilarity is the ultimate guide to the Bonzos’ unique mix of highbrow surrealism, lowbrow smut, seaside postcard humour with a psychedelic twist, slapstick, vaudeville and mordant satire, all spiced with a delicious silliness that traces its legacy back to The Goon Show and helped to beget Monty Python’s Flying Circus. As such it represents a vast upscaling on the previously definitive Bonzos collection, the 1992 triple disc set Cornology, which was reissued in 2011 as A Dog’s Life and which compiled the five original Bonzos studio albums plus singles and a sprinkling of rarities.

The full title, We Are Normal But We Are Still Barking, was dreamt up by the band’s guitarist, co-writer and unofficial musical director Neil Innes, who passed away during the seven painstaking years it took to put the project together while masters were tracked down, rare and previously unreleased material was sourced and cleared and a court case that threatened to kibosh the entire enterprise was fought and won. Two other Bonzos, Vernon Dudley Bowhay-Nowell and Martin “Sam Spoons” Ash, were also sadly lost in action during the long haul.

The first half of the box consists of the five original albums remastered, with the first two presented in mono and stereo iterations. Needless to say, it’s all essential stuff, but if you were forced to cram the dog’s bollocks on to a single ‘best of’ disc there are certain landmarks we can probably all agree on. From their 1967 debut Gorilla you would need “Cool Britannia”, Viv Stanshall’s unforgettable Elvis impersonation on “Death Cab For Cutie” and the mind-bendingly wonderful “The Intro And The Outro” (“and looking very relaxed, Adolf Hitler on vibes – nice!”). From the 1968 follow-up The Doughnut In Grany’s Greenhouse you’d want “Can Blue Men Sing The Whites” and the hysterically ridiculous “My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe” and from 1969’s Tadpoles it would be impossible to live without the hit single “I’m The Urban Spaceman”, produced by Paul McCartney under the pseudonym Apollo C Vermouth. When it comes to 1969’s Keynsham you’d surely take Innes’ “You Done My Brain In”, and from 1972’s posthumous Let’s Make Up And Be Friendly the nine-minute “Rawlinson End” – the first official appearance of Stanshall’s famous Sir Henry character – is a must.

After that, though, we take a deeper dive into a cornucopia of outtakes, demos, rehearsal tapes, BBC sessions and concert recordings plus vintage TV and film footage. Not included in the latter is the magnificently bonkers nightclub performance of “Death Cab For Cutie” from The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, which was the wider world’s first exposure to the Bonzos when the film premiered on BBC 1 on Boxing Day, 1967. Never mind, for the rest of the visual content we get over three DVDs is wonderfully evocative, from an improbable performance of “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey” on Blue Peter in early 1966 when the Bonzos were still a trad jazz combo to appearances on ITV’s New Faces in 1967 and on BBC 2’s short-lived Colour Me Pop the following year. Perhaps best of all, though, is the disc compiling the Bonzos’ appearances on the anarchic comedy series Do Not Adjust Your Set, which launched the TV careers of future Pythons Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

The first episode – on which the group performed the music-hall song “Jollity Farm” – was broadcast on ITV on the same day as Magical Mystery Tour premiered, which meant the Bonzos outdid The Beatles that Christmas by appearing on both main channels. As regulars on the weekly show, they went on to perform such favourites as “The Intro And The Outro”, “Death Cab For Cutie” and the splendid “Harvey The High School Hermit”, which they never recorded, and which features Stanshall and Roger Ruskin Spear debating the respective merits of using cooking fat or porridge as hair gel.

The outtakes expand on the Bonzos’ love of a preposterous cover, first heard on the “Sound Of Music” piss-take on Gorilla, and include an inscrutable take on Sonny and Cher’s “Bang Bang” and a ridiculously mannered “Blue Suede Shoes”.

Among the demos are numerous songs that never saw the light of day including “The Boiled Ham Rhumba” (“Cat meat, cat meat in your tin, did you once walk around like me?”), “Boo”, a comedic ghost story with references to Macbeth and Hamlet, and the doo-wop pastiche “The Mr Hyde In Me” (“two gins will set him free”).

The concert material suggests the Bonzos’ spontaneous musical mayhem translated sometimes messily to the live stage – or as Legs Larry Smith proudly puts it, their improvs were “never knowingly over-rehearsed”.

A tendency to swap instruments and throw in gratuitously mad deconstructions of tunes such as “I’m For Ever Blowing Bubbles” and the “Dragnet” theme might have been amusing if you were there; invariably they work less well on playback. On the other hand, it’s impossible not to love a band that when supporting The Who in their post-Woodstock pomp at the Fillmore East in November 1969 dared to follow a riotous version of saxophonist Spear’s “Trouser Press” with an outrageous piss-take of “Pinball Wizard”. The Bonzos were never the sort to worry about upsetting fragile rock star egos.

Almost 60 tracks from 15 BBC Radio One sessions between 1967 and 1969 offer a better representation of their unique ability to do irony with a warm-hearted mix of affection and affectation. Peel loved them, of course, and they kept some of their best japes for his shows, including a side-splitting cover of “The Monster Mash” and the splendiferous “The Craig Torso Show” and its seasonal sequel “The Craig Torso Christmas Show”.

Needless to say, they also sent up Peel mercilessly. “The other day I was collecting shells on the seashore to stick on a coffee table that I’d made into a hamster when suddenly a Tyrannosaurus Rex attacked a woman and pulled her leg off”, Innes deadpans in a perfect imitation of the DJ’s voice by way of introducing the country spoof “I Found The Answer”, yet another song that never made its way on to a studio album.

There was simply nothing quite like the Bonzos and there’s more than enough intro here to keep you smiling all the way to the outro and beyond.

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Bridget Hayden And The Apparitions – Cold Blows The Rain

Rob Young
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Bridget Hayden And The Apparitions – Cold Blows The Rain

The Yorkshire moors, wrote the novelist Emily Bronté, were a place to walk where your own nature would lead you. If only Emily could had lived in the age of Spotify and earbuds, she could have had the ideal soundtrack as she hiked away from the shadowy region, whose unsustaining vastness waxes drear. That soundtrack being Cold Blows The Rain, the first album which prolific vocalist and freeform avant rocker Bridget Hayden has released with this trio, The Apparitions.

Buy Cold Blows The Rain on vinyl here

The Yorkshire moors, wrote the novelist Emily Bronté, were a place to walk where your own nature would lead you. If only Emily could had lived in the age of Spotify and earbuds, she could have had the ideal soundtrack as she hiked away from the shadowy region, whose unsustaining vastness waxes drear. That soundtrack being Cold Blows The Rain, the first album which prolific vocalist and freeform avant rocker Bridget Hayden has released with this trio, The Apparitions.

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It’s difficult to escape the shadowy regions of the Calder Valley, as the prevailing climate – as the album title implies – is in a mostly minor mode. Fretting drizzle and moky fogs. About a half hour’s drive south west of the Bronte village of Haworth, just on the other side of the untamed moor that Emily took as the setting for her novel Wuthering Heights, lies Todmorden. It’s here in West Yorkshire that Hayden, and the Todfellows’ Hall where these songs were recorded in 2022, and the Basin Rock label that’s now releasing them, are based. Tod-morden: death and murder appear to be woven into the ancient cloth of its very name. And while there isn’t exactly a murder ballad among this batch of eight English and Irish traditional songs, there are plenty of wounded souls suffering terrible loss, and restless spirits whose graves were not dug deep enough.

The Apparitions are well named. The arrangements, sparse but never parched, are an ethereal blend of Hayden’s banjo, cello and synth; Sam McLoughlin’s harmonium and Dan Bridgewood-Hill’s violin. On tunes like “When I Was In My Prime” and “Factory Girl”, plucked banjo stalks across vibrating strings and squeezed air, like a skeleton tiptoeing through a field of windblown grass.

The opening “Lovely On the Water”, a song originally collected by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1908, sets the tone for the rest. It’s a lament for a pair of young lovers ripped apart. A last, tearful embrace before he must set sail for a distant war. The incomplete song’s last lines describe the collective mourning on Tower Hill of bereaved mothers, wives and lovers. The Apparitions take the song at a steady, funereal pace, adding dignity to devastation. Next comes “Blackwater Side”, a tale told from the woman’s perspective of a love betrayed. It’s a familiar entry in the English folk canon, but where earlier versions by everyone from Anne Briggs to Sandy Denny and Oysterband tend to enhance its rhythmic perkiness, here Hayden drapes the song in a shroud of despond.

On “She Moved Through The Fayre”, a lyric mostly written by a pair of Irish folk collectors just over 100 years back, Hayden’s gentle vocal swoops and glides. It’s a milder nod to a signature technique familiar from singers like Maddy Prior. Mostly, though, Hayden’s plays her vocal straight and unmannered. In this way she comes across as an inheritor of Shirley Collins’ mantle: a vessel pouring these old songs out in a neutral English timbre.

Another key figure is Margaret Barry, the Irish singer who recorded “The Factory Girl” three times in the 1950s with key folk figures Peter Kennedy, Ewan MacColl and Bill Leader. Hayden and the Apparitions’ version of the same song is quietly heart-rending. A wealthy man falls in love with a goddess he sees trudging off to work in a factory. It’s an enigmatic ballad where myth collides with the harsh realities of the industrial revolution, although the trio abandon the narrative in mid-lyric, just as he is trying to tempt her to leave her place of work. She gets to exercise her blue notes in “Red Rocking Chair”, a traditional tune channelled from Dock Boggs in the 1920s via the New Lost City Ramblers in the post-war folk revival. This track includes some satisfyingly deep-throated tones dredged from the bottom end of McLoughlin’s harmonium.

Hayden has a long, peerless pedigree in the broad realm of British underground experimental music. She cut her teeth in the Leeds avant rock/improv/free folk collective Vibracathedral Orchestra, and as a sometime collaborator with US outsiders Sunburned Hand Of The Man and British alternative veterans The Telescopes. These are all groups whose MO involves jumping off a rock face and embracing the free fall, however sticky the end may be. Since her 2011 solo album An Indifferent Ocean, she has become adept in sculpting intimate drone/noise artefacts, notched and pitted like potsherds pulled from the Yorkshire earth. Her more recent contributions to Folklore Tapes (including several collaborations featuring Apparitions member Sam McLoughlin) have refined this approach. In the past few years Hayden and McLoughlin have teamed up with Richard Chamberlain in Schisms. Their ultra-lo-fi fuzzball psychedelic improv can be exhilarating, but exists on a very different planet (or at least in a far muggier climate) than the exquisite acoustic snowglobe of Cold Blows The Rain.

By their nature, folk songs are like ghosts. They keep insisting on being sung, again and again, returning to haunt the singers who voice them, and we who listen. They seem to know us, adapting to our own times and our current ways of hearing. It’s only when they remain bogged down in customs and traditions that they seem smaller, under control, exorcised of their power. Perhaps it’s this that makes “The Unquiet Grave” such a perfect end note to this album. Appearing in the Child Ballads published in 1860, “The Unquiet Grave” is one of those archetypal works of folk art whose central mythology can be traced back to ancient Greek, Roman and Norse folklore. A dead woman’s spirit returns to tell her abandoned lover to pipe down after a year of wailing. Otherwise she can’t rest in peace. And he can’t join her in death, as he wishes, because then their hearts would wither away. Perversely, this mordant lyric is as much about living the earthly life to the full, even as it focuses on the minutiae of grief and loss. Scores of artists have recorded this song since the Second World War, yet by suppressing all sense of melodrama and focusing on the pure emotion of the situation, Hayden has pulled off one of the greatest renditions of them all.

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Paul McCartney, Co-op Live, Manchester, December 14

Rob Hughes
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Paul McCartney, Co-op Live, Manchester, December 14

“This opening is pretty good,” says Paul McCartney, having already burned through “A Hard Day’s Night”, Wings double “Junior’s Farm” and “Letting Go”, plus “Drive My Car”. “I’m going to take a little moment to enjoy it for myself.” Hands clasped in front of him, leaning back as if to admire a work of art in a gallery, McCartney has every right to indulge in a spot of jocular self-appreciation. Tonight’s show in Manchester – his first UK gig since headlining Glastonbury in 2022 – is a triumph on every level.

“This opening is pretty good,” says Paul McCartney, having already burned through “A Hard Day’s Night”, Wings double “Junior’s Farm” and “Letting Go”, plus “Drive My Car”. “I’m going to take a little moment to enjoy it for myself.” Hands clasped in front of him, leaning back as if to admire a work of art in a gallery, McCartney has every right to indulge in a spot of jocular self-appreciation. Tonight’s show in Manchester – his first UK gig since headlining Glastonbury in 2022 – is a triumph on every level.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT FEATURES KATE BUSH, QUINCY JONES, THE WEATHER STATION, THE DAMNED AND OUR ESSENTIAL 2025 PREVIEW – ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

He’s here at the 23,500-capacity Co-op Live (playing the first of two sold-out performances) as part of the European leg of his global Got Back tour, having wound through Latin America over the last couple of months. This week, two nights at London’s O2 beckon. “It’s good to be back,” he declares, clearly in the mood for a celebration.

And a celebration is exactly what we get. A jubilant “Got To Get You Into My Life” plays out against a backdrop of animated scenes from The Beatles’ career, a flash flood of cultural revolution. It’s just one of so many songs familiar enough to serve as waymarkers of our own lives, not just McCartney’s, lending the show – despite its size and scale – the feel of an intimate communal experience.

The tributes come thick and fast, too. Jimi Hendrix gets a nod after a particularly fiery climax to “Let Me Roll It”, McCartney riffing freely on his Gibson as the whole band (keyboardist Paul Wickens, guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, all-action drummer Abe Laboriel Jr and the three-piece Hot City Horns) leaning into an extended jam. Closer to home, the intro spiel to “Love Me Do” – “the first song we recorded with George Martin” – is the signal for house lights to dim and mobile phones to torch up.

The latter lands between “In Spite Of All The Danger” and the mandolin-led “Dance Tonight”, forming a through-line from The Quarrymen to early Beatles to 2007’s (i)Memory Almost Full(i), with McCartney and the band huddled close in an approximation of a skiffle band busking for spare change.

The Got Back setlist has seen the introduction of “Now And Then”, the restored Beatles tune that John Lennon first demoed around 1977. It makes its UK debut tonight, complete with Peter Jackson’s AI-assisted video, featuring clowning Beatles past and present. Coming after 1982’s “Here Today”, written about McCartney’s relationship with the recently-deceased Lennon – and played solo on acoustic guitar here – it’s a fitting, poignant tribute to his old friend.

And then there’s George. Whipping out a ukulele, McCartney recalls Harrison’s membership of the George Formby fan club as a youth. “He used to go up to Blackpool, thousands of them in one room,” he marvels, before strumming the opening verse of “Something”. The band strike up behind him on cue, elevating the whole thing beautifully.

It’s party time from thereon in. “Live And Let Die” – the greatest ever Bond theme, no question – is a pyrotechnic spectacle, fireworks popping and flames bolting upwards. Bouncing gleefully, “Ob La Di, Ob La Da” puts us in mass singalong territory. But this is nothing compared to “Hey Jude”, McCartney taking his place behind his multi-coloured piano, the entire crowd lost in “na-na-na na” rapture.

The 82-year-old’s energy reserves still seem fully intact as he leads an unstoppable encore of “I’ve Got A Feeling” (duetting with Apple-rooftop John on the screen behind him) and a “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” that segues into the white noise of “Helter Skelter”. Over two-and-a-half hours since he started, it all comes to a close in the only way it can: the Abbey Road triptych of “Golden Slumbers”, “Carry That Weight” and “The End”. “And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make,” sings McCartney, beaming. Tonight offers absolute proof.

SETLIST
A Hard Day’s Night
Juniors Farm
Letting Go
Drive My Car
Got To Get You Into My Life
Come On To Me
Let Me Roll It
Getting Better
Let ‘Em In
My Valentine
Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five
Maybe I’m Amazed
I’ve Just Seen A Face
In Spite Of All The Danger
Love Me Do
Dance Tonight
Blackbird
Here Today
Now And Then
Lady Madonna
Jet
Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite
Something
Ob La Di, Ob La Da
Band On The Run
Wonderful Christmas Time
Get Back
Let It Be
Live And Let Die
Hey Jude
ENCORE
I’ve Got A Feeling
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band / Helter Skelter
Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End

Listen to Neil Young’s Christmas playlist

Michael Bonner
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Listen to Neil Young’s Christmas playlist

Neil Young has posted a Christmas playlist on his YouTube channel. Running to an hour and three quarters, it includes Young's own material - including tracks from Harvest, After The Goldrush, American Stars 'n' Bars and Harvest Moon - as well as music taken from Seven Gates: A Christmas Album (later reissues as Christmas At The Ranch), a 1994 collection by his long-serving collaborator Ben Keith which featured Young alongside Johnny Cash, Nicolette Larson, J.J. Cale and others.

Neil Young has posted a Christmas playlist on his YouTube channel. Running to an hour and three quarters, it includes Young’s own material – including tracks from Harvest, After The Goldrush, American Stars ‘n’ Bars and Harvest Moon – as well as music taken from Seven Gates: A Christmas Album (later reissues as Christmas At The Ranch), a 1994 collection by his long-serving collaborator Ben Keith which featured Young alongside Johnny Cash, Nicolette Larson, J.J. Cale and others.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT FEATURES KATE BUSH, QUINCY JONES, THE WEATHER STATION, THE DAMNED AND OUR ESSENTIAL 2025 PREVIEW – ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

The tracklisted, as reported by Louder, is:

Greensleeves (Archives Volume II: 1972–1976)
Winterlong (Early Daze)
Hitchhiker (Hitchhiker)
Xmas Time’s A Comin’ (Seven Gates: A Christmas Album)
Winter Winds (Archives Volume III: 1976–1987)
Heart Of Gold (Harvest)
Silver Bells (Seven Gates: A Christmas Album)
When God Made Me (Prairie Wind)
Ave Maria (Christmas At The Ranch)
Harvest Moon (Harvest Moon)
Les Trois Cloches (Seven Gates: A Christmas Album)
Blue Xmas (Seven Gates: A Christmas Album)
Old Man (Harvest)
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear (Seven Gates: A Christmas Album)
Star of Bethlehem (American Stars & Bars)
Little Drummer Boy (Seven Gates: A Christmas Album)
Lotta Love (Comes A Time)
Dreamin Man (Harvest Moon)
After the Gold Rush (After The Gold Rush)
Greensleeves (Christmas At The Ranch)
One of These Days (Harvest Moon)
Thrasher (Vol. 3, Boarding House)
Harvest (Harvest)
Away in the Manger (Seven Gates: A Christmas Album)
Love Is a Rose (Homegrown)
Unknown Legend (Harvest Moon)
This Old House (Recorded live at Farm Aid 1985 with the International Harvesters)

Gram Parsons remembered: “He was too much of a purist…”

David Cavanagh
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Gram Parsons remembered: “He was too much of a purist…”

From Uncut's February 2011 issue (Take 189). Summer 1972, GRAM PARSONS had patented his Cosmic American Music with The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, but failed to see any of the profits. Now, thrown out of The Rolling Stones' inner circle, he launches himself as a solo artist. On the 40th anniversary of his solo debut, Uncut's David Cavanagh hunted down Parson's closest collaborators to tell the untold story of an American legend's last act...

From Uncut’s February 2011 issue (Take 189). Summer 1972, GRAM PARSONS had patented his Cosmic American Music with The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, but failed to see any of the profits. Now, thrown out of The Rolling Stones’ inner circle, he launches himself as a solo artist. On the 40th anniversary of his solo debut, Uncut’s David Cavanagh hunted down Parson’s closest collaborators to tell the untold story of an American legend’s last act…

The Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall is not the sort of place you’d expect to find Gram Parsons. Home to the southernmost tip of the British mainland, the Lizard is a remote landscape steeped in Daphne Du Maurier, shipwrecks and smugglers. But it was here that Parsons came in 1971, licking his wounds after being banished by Anita Pallenberg from Villa Nellcôte in the south of France. On the peninsula, Gram exchanged Babylonian debauchery with the Stones for peace and quiet with an old friend in a 14th-Century farmhouse.

“It’s extremely rural,” explains Ian Dunlop, Gram’s mid-‘60s comrade in the International Submarine Band, who still lives on the peninsula today. “There’s no glamour. No music industry. We’re in the hinterlands. In those days it was like Eastern Europe. The roads were miniscule. There was no M5. The A30 was a winding, asphalt-covered cart track.” Parsons, detoxing from heroin, took coastal strolls and supped pints of ale in the local pub. “England’s a place I’ve always dug for the simplicity in lifestyle,” he once said.

“There are things about Gram that people don’t understand,” insists Dunlop. “It serves the interest of myth to portray him as a decadent wastrel. But he came from a background of outdoor activity and sport. During our time in the Submarine Band, he and I would go fishing together. People like to believe that he was born with a bottle in one hand and a needle in the other. It suits their idea of the ‘persona’.”

So here was Parsons relaxing among Cornish fishermen, with his 19-year-old girlfriend Gretchen Burrell by his side. His lungs tasted fresh air: it was his career prospects that looked anaemic. The Byrds were in the past. The Flying Burrito Brothers had kicked him out. A solo album for A&M in 1970 had been abandoned. Post- Nellcôte, any hope that Keith Richards might sigh him to Rolling Stone Records – and produce his music – seemed tenuous at best. Dunlop remembers someone phoning from California one day, but otherwise there was no Parsons project on the horizon, no reason to hurry home. He was 24. Dunlop: “In hindsight he was just a little sapling.”

He had exactly two years to live.

The music made by Gram Parsons in 1972 – 73 (two studio albums and an American tour yielding a live album) was characterised by first-night nerves, reckless disregard for rehearsals and an uncanny ability to pull something special out of the hat when it mattered. The GP album (released January, 1973) and Grievous Angel (released posthumously in 1974) are pillars of Parsons’ legacy, not because they show us a country-rock trustafarian squandering his talent – although some of his former associates argue that he did precisely that – but because they reveal an unusually intimate singer facing down his demons and taking command of some truly moving material.

GP and Grievous Angel were made during bonanza years for country-rock (or Cosmic American Music, as Parsons always called it), years that witnessed bumper harvests for Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. Nobody knows what the future might have held if Parsons hasn’t succumbed to an overdose of morphine and alcohol at the age of 26. “I’ve played with all the great country artists you could name” says ND Smart, the drummer of the Gram Parsons & The Fallen Angels tour in 1973. “I was the music director of a TV show in Canada called Nashville North for seven years, and we had every top country singer on our show. Gram’s right up there with all of them. If he’d lived, he would have written more records and been an icon.” Barry Tashian, rhythm guitarist on the GP album is not so convinced. “Whether he would have become a worldwide star, I don’t know. You mention the Eagles, but their sound was perfect for the masses. I don’t think Gram would have gone near that. He was too much of a purist…”

FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT FEBRUARY 2011/TAKE 189 IN THE ARCHIVE

Jeff Beck: “I was a good bowler, but I just wanted to crack a six…”

David Cavanagh
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Jeff Beck: “I was a good bowler, but I just wanted to crack a six…”

From Uncut's August 2016 issue (Take 231): a conspiratorial chat with JEFF BECK, in which the guitar maestro looks back on a lifetime reinventing rock music...

From Uncut’s August 2016 issue (Take 231): a conspiratorial chat with JEFF BECK, in which the guitar maestro looks back on a lifetime reinventing rock music…

In a sunlit room on the top floor of a Bayswater mansion block, a laptop sits open on a table, a small wodge of Blu-Tack stuck over its camera. “A friend in the FBI told me to do that,” says Jeff Beck, and he’s not joking. One of rock’s most famous lone wolves, Beck rails at Newspeak, double-think and government surveillance. Everything Orwell predicted has come true, he maintains, “and like mugs we pay Apple to spy in our homes.” He hates the EU, the Obama administration and political correctness.

Beck turns 72 on June 24, but has the physical electricity of a much younger man. His classic posture is a tense slouch, one arm draped behind his head, fiddling with a handful of hair. He laughs often, but he eyes are challenging. Next to the laptop sits a bound copy of BECK01, a book of photographs illustrating his twin passions for guitars and cars. Alongside photos of hot rods he’s built over the years are pictures from his five-decade music career: with The Yardbirds, David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Ronnie Wood (a former Jeff Beck Group bassist) and Buddy Guy – one of his guitar heroes – with whom he’s touring America this summer.

Beck’s new album, Loud Hailer, is his first in six years. On the last one, Emotion & Commotion, he played “Nessun Dorma” with a 40-piece orchestra. Loud Hailer, however, is a squeal of brakes followed by a sharp left turn. Beck’s gone back to noise and aggression and singer, Rosie Bones, is prominent throughout. Her voice reminds him of Brenda Lee. Other might hear someone trying too hard to sing social commentary lyrics in a streetwise patois. But Beck likes her and that’s final.

The pages of his book open at a poster for The Girl Can’t Help It, a 1956 Jayne Mansfield film featuring Gene Vincent, Little Richard and Eddie Cochran. Beck saw it at the Granada Sutton when he was 12. “If ever a movie was life-changing,” he says. “I saw there in that beautiful old cinema and thought, ‘That’s what I’m gonna do.’”

This book isn’t an autobiography per se, is it?

Not yet. That’s the book we’re talking about doing next. I see a blockbuster movie at the end of it. A funny, tear-jerking tragic movie. It could unfold as a really heart-warming book in a way. The fights at school, they’ll be in there. The blossoming friendships, the awkwardness with girls. Having a great mum. She and her brother were my guiding forces when I was young. My dad couldn’t be bothered. He was wrapped up with cricket. From the minute he got in on Friday, it was cricket and that was it. He used to report for the local paper. He wanted me to play for Surrey.

Really? Would you have been a batsman or a bowler?

Batsman. I was a good bowler, but I just wanted to crack a six. I had a game with Jagger when we were rehearsing for the tour that wasn’t to be. [Beck pulled out of Jagger’s 1988 Australian tour at the last minute.] I said, “Mick, I haven’t played cricket for years.” Whack! I hit the ball so hard it went over a bus in a nearby road. We used to play tennis in Barbados. That album [Primitive Cool] must have been the most expensive to make ever. One minute we’re on an island off the coast of Florida, then we’re in New York or LA. I just thought, ‘Wow, what a waste of money.’

How would you describe your own new album?

It’s good. It’s not bad. It’s got some powerful stuff on it.

In 2014 you said it was going to sound like “a rabid Turkish bar band”. Now that it’s finished, would you stand by that comment?

Which album? This one was made last Christmas.

Maybe you were talking about a different album. Did you record one and scrap it?

Yeah, I shelved it. There was some unrest in the band, a lot of muso pushing and shoving, trying to turn it into a sort of esoteric fusion. I couldn’t get far enough away from that…

FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT AUGUST 2016/TAKE 231 IN THE ARCHIVE

Joanna Newsom: arc of a diver

Jaan Uhelszki
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Joanna Newsom: arc of a diver

It's time for breakfast in LA with JOANNA NEWSOM. In this extract from Jaan Uhelszki's interview with Newsom in Uncut's November 2015 issue (Take 222), she prepares to reveal the mysteries of her magical fourth album, Divers...

It’s time for breakfast in LA with JOANNA NEWSOM. In this extract from Jaan Uhelszki’s interview with Newsom in Uncut’s November 2015 issue (Take 222), she prepares to reveal the mysteries of her magical fourth album, Divers…

East of the Hollywood sign and a mile and a half straight downhill from the three imposing Art Deco orbs of the Griffith Observatory lies Los Feliz. It’s a town whose history is stowed discreetly beneath the lacy purple jacaranda and ancient pepper trees that line its well-scrubbed sidewalks. This is where Walt Disney drew his first sketches of Mickey Mouse and where Courtney Love first showed her “Celebrity Skin”, stripping off at Jumbo’s Clown Room for the lordy sum of $300. Since 2008 or so, the hipster glitterati have been increasingly congregating here in their hoodies, yoga pants and cross-bodies, clutching paper cups from The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and sharing counter space with the likes of Ryan Gosling, Scarlett Johansson and Dakota Johnson.

But Los Feliz wasn’t always such an appealing place. Two days after killing Sharon Tate and four others at Roman Polanski’s Beverly Hills home, Charles Manson’s followers travelled east 11 miles and brutally murdered grocery store owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary here on August 10, 1969. One suspects that the reason Joanna Newsom chose this little warren of celebrity to discuss her fourth album with Uncut has more to do with the LaBianca killings and less to do with its proximity to her nearby home or the strong filtered coffee. It’s a geographical and historical signifier that plays neatly into one of the important themes of her new album, Divers. But there are other, more rarified concerns on the record, too. As Newsom explains, she was drawn to the friendly competition between Percy Bysshe Shelley and his friend Horace Smith. Each composed a poem entitled “Ozymandias” about the same topic – the idea that prominent figures and the empires that they build are impermanent and their legacies are very likely to fall into decay and oblivion. “I had never known about the second ‘Ozymandias’ poem, the Horace Smith poem,” Newsom says from her seat in the wood-panelled vestibule of Little Dom’s restaurant. “The Horace Smith one is essentially the same and maybe better, but the Shelley one became part of the popular consciousness. If you say ‘Ozymandias’, it’s shorthand for an idea, and people who aren’t English scholars or even poetry fans know about it.

“Within that context, the Horace Smith ‘Ozymandias’ is just lost, and I was thinking about the phenomenon of one of those poems becoming what it describes. It doesn’t just describe the poem, it describes the process of the rendering of obsolescence. I think any record, any remnant is inherently cryptic. We’re just seeing those elements are in many cases the results of bias, in many cases the result of arbitrariness, randomness, in many cases the result of acts of God, as it were. We’re never experiencing anything as real, we’re experiencing a distorted, adulterated, or aggrandised, or lionised, or different version of the past. It was a really exciting idea for me.”

It has been five years since Joanna Newsom last released an album. During that time, she left her arboreal home in Nevada City, married comic actor Andy Samberg, and continued her gentle flirtation with high fashion, modelling for Marc Jacobs and Michael van der Ham. She moved first to New York, then Los Angeles, where in between her touring schedule she found time to appear in an episode of Portlandia (with erstwhile Fleet Fox Robin Pecknold) as a disgruntled flower child, and also make her feature film debut in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. She appeared on the soundtrack to the 2011 Muppets move and became the subject of a tribute album, Versions Of Joanna (and a scholarly tribute book, Visions Of Johanna). She even had a Jell-O shot “Peach, Plum, Pear” named after a track from 2004’s The Milk-Eyed Mender. It’s a miracle, really, that she even had time to think about another album, let alone record one. Newsom claims to be lazy (“I definitely have wasted a lot of time on the internet,” she says. Researching? “No, shopping.”), but the truth is she’s been working on Divers since 2011, pondering a series of historical anomalies and seemingly disparate events that proved to be interconnected across the centuries, lining up like a novel by Inherent Vice author Thomas Pynchon or at the very least Dan Brown….

SEARCH FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT NOVEMBER 2015/TAKE 222 IN THE ARCHIVE

Tangled Up In Cool: Bryan Ferry on Bob Dylan

Stephen Troussé
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Tangled Up In Cool: Bryan Ferry on Bob Dylan

In 2006, with work on a much-anticipated new Roxy Music LP on hiatus, BRYAN FERRY recorded a collection Bob Dylan covers – The Dylan Album. In this extract from our interview with Ferry in Uncut's March 2007 issue (Take 118), Stephen Troussé meets the Geordie Jay Gatsby to discuss soul boys, jazz clubs, Dylan and more...

In 2006, with work on a much-anticipated new Roxy Music LP on hiatus, BRYAN FERRY recorded a collection Bob Dylan covers – The Dylan Album. In this extract from our interview with Ferry in Uncut’s March 2007 issue (Take 118), Stephen Troussé meets the Geordie Jay Gatsby to discuss soul boys, jazz clubs, Dylan and more…

I’m sitting down in Bryan Ferry’s west London studios, checking back through my notes one last time before we begin to talk about his new album, when the man himself appears – still that distractedly dashing mix of minor Royal, dreamy academic and doomed romantic: the Geordie Jay Gatsby. Ever the stickler for accessories and minor details, he comments approvingly on my chunky new notebook. Oh, I tell him, it’s one of those stupidly overpriced ones that try and con you out of believing that you’re joining the ranks of Picasso and Hemingway simply by owning one. “Ah yes,” he says, taking out his own. “I have to use these slim things. They fit into my jacket pocket, but there’s not much room for many details…”

You could take this as a classic Ferry comment – the dapper poet, unwilling to spoil the line of his suit for the sake of his muse. And indeed, while Bryan has been busy modelling the latest range of menswear for M&S, the new Roxy Music LP – so keenly anticipated since Ferry, Andy Mackay and Phil Manzanera reunited in 2001 – seems to have temporarily run aground on his writer’s block.

In the meantime, Ferry has kept himself busy and tried to jumpstart his writing, by recording an album of Bob Dylan covers called, simply, The Dylan Album. Recorded in just three days in 2006 on the back of last summer’s Roxy gigs, it’s a surprisingly straight rendition of some of Dylan’s greatest hits, from “The Times They Are A-Changing” to “All Along The Watchtower”. In a sense Ferry performs them as surreal 20th century torch songs – a kind of missing link between Leadbelly and Cole Porter.

I tell him that I came across an old interview where he talked about doing an album of Dylan covers way back in 1973. “You shouldn’t believe my interviews,” he sighs wistfully. “They’re all wrong. They’re all made up…”

UNCUT: You first mentioned your intention to make an album of Dylan songs way back in 1973 – what finally spurred you into getting round to it?

FERRY: You’ve got to remember that the first hit, the first single I did as a solo artist, was “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, and I recall commenting at the time that I’d like to do a whole album of songs by him, just as I’d like to do an album of songs by Cole Porter. There are just certain writers who have a huge body of work of very high standard. As a singer you’re always looking for quality material, and I’ve never been able to write fast enough to fulfil my needs as a singer. But why it took so long to do a Dylan record, I don’t know. I’d been on tour, and when you come off tour you often feel in the mood for recording. Earlier in the year I’d been working on some Roxy tracks with Andy and Phil and I wasn’t getting very far. I thought, ‘Let’s book a week in the studio with Rhett Davies and do some Dylan songs.’

Was it a way of getting out of the impasse you’ve reached with the new Roxy material? Like when you did the Taxi covers when you stalled on Mamouna?

Yeah, quite possibly. You get fed up of the writing and you want to perform and get some “product” out there. Horrible word. To add to the repertoire. Because I’ve been doing quite a lot of live work in the past few years – more than ever before, it seems to me. And sometimes you’re on stage and you think, ‘Ah – I wish I had a couple of new things, some songs that I haven’t done before.’ And these would be great to play live, which is why I’m going to be touring in March.

Can you recall when you first became aware of Dylan?

It must have been around ‘64/’65. I certainly remember not liking him then! I didn’t really get into him. When Dylan first came out, he was too folky for me.

You were a soul boy…

Yes, a soul boy. Mohair suits, you know. The folk people wore jumpers, duffle coats, sandals. And pipes. And beards. None of which was part of my act at the time! I was a Northern Soul boy. But I did rub shoulders with bearded people. Before I went to university, I used to go to the New Orleans Jazz Club. They played bebop music and Eric Burden would appear. It was a great atmosphere: a mixture of drinking, smoking and music. I was quite overawed. Because I love jazz. The guy who played trumped there became John Peel’s producer. John Walters – great trumpeter. He was also an abstract expressionist painter…

FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT MARCH 2007/TAKE 113 IN THE ARCHIVE

The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time…Ranked!

John Robinson
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The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time…Ranked!

Expand your collection and hear more great music...

Expand your collection and hear more great music…

How do you go about making a great album? We can know them when we hear them, enjoy the music down the decades, and – best of all – discover a new one when one sneaks up on us unexpectedly. But with the best will in the world, the readers and compilers of publications like ours are probably always destined to guess at this magic from the outside, forever pressing our noses up against the glass. 

If, like Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera, you were actually behind that glass contributing to the greatness of albums like Avalon or For Your Pleasure, then you’ve clearly got a much better idea. But as the genial musician/producer explains to us on the following pages, that doesn’t mean that you’re not prey to unexpected forces while you’re doing so. You might be fighting a misfiring tape machine. Or you might find tension. While one person thinks they’re making a commercial record, another (like, say, Brian Eno) might think that they’re making something a bit more avant garde. But that, as Phil tells us, isn’t necessarily a problem. 

“When there is some tension in the creative process, it can create something better than just one person’s single vision,” he tells Mark Beaumont. “Roxy was never a band where Bryan [Ferry] would come in like Bob Dylan comes in and then they do hundreds of takes trying to get the feeling that Bob likes. It just wasn’t that, and that’s why it became unique. There was jeopardy in the method…you never knew what the song was or how it was going to turn out, because you never really heard it until it was finished.”

Phil clearly still takes delight in the magic of record making, and it’s infectious: the joy of the unknown turning into something you can’t live without is a recognisable feeling to anyone who has ever considered reading – or contributing to – a publication like this one. Which leads to a second major theme of lists of great music: where do you start, or finish? And how much should you recognise, and how much should come as a complete surprise along the way? 

Our list, I think, will offer a happy medium. Even in the years I’ve been involved with magazines like this, there has been some movement in the universe – even though the major planets are still in a fairly familiar alignment. There have been major new talents, and new entries at a great height, not to mention shifts in our priorities as listeners. Beatle-watchers, for example, will have observed down the decades since the 1970s the changing fortunes of Sgt Pepper, which was once thought to display everything an LP could aspire to: from devastating stereophonic music to an air of mystery, and a free moustache. 

These days it’s a different Beatles which speaks most to us, and as years pass it will undoubtedly change again. Don’t spoil it for yourself if you don’t like to know the ending, but Phil Manzanera guesses our number 1 with very little nudging. But then of course, he should do – he knows something we don’t.

Enjoy the magazine. You can get one in the shops from Friday, or here.

Kraftwerk, Psychedelic Furs, Jesus & Mary Chain for Forever Now festival

Michael Bonner
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Kraftwerk, Psychedelic Furs, Jesus & Mary Chain for Forever Now festival

Kraftwerk, The The, Death Cult, Billy Idol, Johnny Marr, The Psychedelic Furs, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Happy Monday are among the names announced for Forever Now, a brand new one-day festival launching at The National Bowl, Milton Keynes on June 22, 2025. 

Kraftwerk, The The, Death Cult, Billy Idol, Johnny Marr, The Psychedelic Furs, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Happy Monday are among the names announced for Forever Now, a brand new one-day festival launching at The National Bowl, Milton Keynes on June 22, 2025. 

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT FEATURES KATE BUSH, QUINCY JONES, THE WEATHER STATION, THE DAMNED AND OUR ESSENTIAL 2025 PREVIEW – ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

The line-up also includes The Damned, Public Image Ltd, Berlin, Theatre of Hate, Chameleons and The Motels.

The festival title, of course, comes from the title of the Furs’ second album. Says the band, “Forever Now started as an idea…then became a song….then an album…and has lived on through the years. Now it’s also become a gathering of some legendary musicians on one day in one place, which we are proud to be part of…”

Tickets for Forever Now are available from here.

Elvis Costello to revisit “early songs” on tour

Michael Bonner
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Elvis Costello to revisit “early songs” on tour

Elvis Costello & The Imposters are heading out on an American tour in 2025, performing Costello's early repertoire from My Aim Is True to Blood & Chocolate.

Elvis Costello & The Imposters are heading out on an American tour in 2025, performing Costello’s early repertoire from My Aim Is True to Blood & Chocolate.

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT FEATURES KATE BUSH, QUINCY JONES, THE WEATHER STATION, THE DAMNED AND OUR ESSENTIAL 2025 PREVIEW – ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

Joined by Charlie Sexton, Radio Soul! The Early Songs Of Elvis Costello tour opens in Seattle on June 12 and runs through to July 12 in Miami Beach.

“For any songwriter, it has to be a compliment if people want to hear songs written up to 50 years ago,” says Costello.

“You can expect the unexpected and the faithful in equal measure. Don’t forget this show is ‘Performed by Elvis Costello & the Imposters’, an ensemble which includes three people who first recorded this music and two more who bring something entirely new.”

He continued: “They are nobody’s tribute band. The Imposters are a living, breathing, swooning, swinging, kicking and screaming rock & roll band who can turn their hands to a pretty ballad when the opportunity arises.”

Julia Holter – My Life In Music

Sam Richards
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Julia Holter – My Life In Music

LA’s musical magic realist reveals her loud city songs: “There’s sorrow and ecstasy and all the feelings”

LA’s musical magic realist reveals her loud city songs: “There’s sorrow and ecstasy and all the feelings”

THE NEW ISSUE OF UNCUT FEATURES KATE BUSH, QUINCY JONES, THE WEATHER STATION, THE DAMNED AND OUR ESSENTIAL 2025 PREVIEW – ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

LINDA PERHACS

Parallelograms

KAPP RECORDS, 1970

One of the first shows I ever played was a big Linda Perhacs event in 2009. I met her there, and I got really deep into her music. I loved how she was just her own person. Even though she was part of a scene in Topanga Canyon, she was on her own plane. Her sense of melody and harmony is kind of incredible, and she made this record out of nowhere. There are definitely elements of the harmonies of that period, but I think Linda’s always been a visionary. I worked with her for a long time and her music has inspired me in a lot of ways. It has a very unique sensitivity to tone, to sound, to timbre, and her lyrics are so evocative.

SIMONE FORTI

Al Di Là

SALTERN, 2018

I’ve become acquainted with Simone Forti through Tashi [Wada, Holter’s husband and collaborator]. She’s an important dancer and choreographer and writer and artist. She’s not known principally as a musician by any means, but these recordings have been very influential on me. She sings some Italian folk songs from her past, and she uses handmade instruments, like this thing she calls a molimo, which is a flute-like instrument made out of plumbing material. Then there’s other things like <Face Tunes>, where she’s responding sonically to a line that is drawn of someone’s face. I don’t even know how to explain it, it’s just really good, very moving. Check it out.

FAIROUZ

Maarifti Feek

RELAX-IN, 1987

Fairouz is a very famous Lebanese singer and I’ve been listening to lots of different tracks of hers over the past few years. But there’s some really great ones on this album, and it inspired my most recent record – not in a direct way, just that when you listen to something a lot, it gets in your head. This record took on a funky sound, which I think was a shift for Fairouz, as she started working with her son. The song “Li Beirut” is very moving to me right now, because of what’s going on in Lebanon. It’s like her love song to Beirut, written during the civil war, and it’s kind of devastating.

TASHI WADA

Duets

SALTERN, 2014

You probably think it’s funny that I put this record of my husband on here, but it was an important one for me. I actually heard this before we were dating, and it was very influential on me, both poetically and sonically. It’s very minimal compared to his current music – it’s just two two cellos playing in unison in various ways. It brings out the impossibility of the unison, which I find really moving, because obviously you don’t ever have perfect unisons. Do we talk about music conceptually together? Yeah, definitely. I mean, we talk about really stupid things in music too – it’s not always about the poetic aspects of the unison!

JEANNE LEE

Conspiracy

EARTHFORMS, 1975

I came across this record a few years ago, and it’s become very foundational to me, particularly her use of language. The track “Yeh Come T’ Be” is an example of how she works with words and the deconstruction of the words into sounds. The way she’s exploring the sounds and the layering of the vocals is really great to me, it feels very elemental. She was coming from a jazz background and she has a great record with Ran Blake where she sings jazz standards – they do an incredible version of “Laura” on that. But she also did a lot of undefinable, experimental sound-work. She has this very strong sense of giving things space, which is always important to me in music.

TIRZAH

Devotion

DOMINO, 2018

It’s something I come back to again and again. It’s very lulling and hypnotic, the way she uses repetition in her work. Her singing feels intimate and conversational, in a calming way. When I listen to Tirzah’s music, there’s this overwhelming feeling and emotion that feels kind of unique. It’s one of those things where it sounds effortless, but you know a lot of work was put into it. It’s very delicate and intricate in its own way, but the approach feels very genuine, whereas a lot of music in this crazy, Spotify-playlist-obsessed pop world sometimes feels a little calculated. So much music has been fussed over to the minute detail, whereas this just feels like someone’s poem.

JOANNA NEWSOM

Have One On Me

DRAG CITY, 2010

I’ve probably talked about this for the last 14 years, but it’s a really good record. Every time I listen to it, it just feels so good. And it’s also massive, so you don’t really get tired – you can revisit it, and it changes. I used to love talking about the arrangements, which are so great, but now what moves me a lot is the way she tells a story, and the trajectory of each song. It’s something that I admire because I’m not so good at it, being able to evoke characters and tell a story. But I love how Joanna Newsom does it in a surreal style where it twists and turns and meanders, so it’s not like a folk ballad in a traditional sense, it’s more literary.

JESSIKA KENNEY & EYVIND KANG

Azure

IDEOLOGIC ORGAN, 2023

For my last one, I thought I’d talk about a more recent record. I’m a big fan of these two humans, they’re just really great musicians. Sometimes they’re doing the most minimal things, but it’s so powerful because they’re so skilled and so sensitive and such interesting artists. There’s a track called “Ocean” where they’re exploring the ring modulations of two simultaneous frequencies, and Jessika is singing this crazy, very wide vibrato, over and over again. She’s studied Persian singing extensively, and has incredible control of her voice. Again, it’s hard for me to explain this record, but it has an incredible depth of emotion in it. There’s sorrow and ecstasy and all the feelings – it’s so good.

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