Page 1046 – UNCUT

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

Film
Reviews

Uncut

-

3rd October 2006

You’ve met folks like the Hoovers before in the movies. A collection of dyed-in-the-wool misfits, their antecedents include the Griswolds, stars of the National Lampoon’s … Vacation series, Wes Anderson’s Tenenbaums and many others in between. In truth, the dysfunctional family comedy feels a little exhausted these days, as anyone who’s had the misfortune to see Robin Williams’ latest outing, the dire R.V, will know all too well. But what makes this one fly is its warmth. Little Miss Sunshine is a first class love-letter to a family of losers. Let’s start with lecherous, potty-mouthed Grandpa (Alan Arkin), recently shown the door from his retirement home thanks to an abiding love of heroin. There’s Richard (Greg Kinnear), the nominal head of the family, who’s an appallingly unsuccessful motivational speaker. Wife Sheryl (Toni Collette) struggles against the odds to hold her brood together, and the strain is beginning to show. Stroppy teenager Dwayne (Paul Dano) has taken a vow of silence and spends all day reading Nietzsche. Gay uncle Frank (Steve Carell), a Proust scholar no less, has just been released from hospital after a suicide attempt. So far, so fucked-up. And then there’s Olive (Abigail Breslin), a chubby, bespectacled seven year-old with sweet, innocent dreams of one day becoming a beauty queen. Meanwhile, the rest of the Hoovers bicker, bite and squabble among themselves – except Dwayne, who simply leaves notes for his family bearing such heart-warming sentiments as: “I hate everyone” and, when uncle Frank arrives in the house, one which reads: “Welcome to Hell”. There really doesn’t seem much to like about them – until, by some miraculous turn of events, Olive is chosen to take part in the Little Miss Sunshine kids’ beauty pageant in California and the Hoovers find at last something to unite them in a common cause. They head off in a battered VW camper van from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach, determined that at least one of their clan will achieve something they can all share joy in. The journey – three days cross-country – is rich with comic incident as well as one fatality that feels like an explicit homage to National Lampoon’s Vacation. It’s during this crucial section of the film that first-time screenwriter Michael Arndt gently teases the humanity out of the Hoovers and the film opens up to become more than a quirky, by-numbers family comedy. Arndt, along with former music promo directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, steer the Hoovers into a place where, gradually, little moments of love and affection seep through the bitterness. You’re reminded of the way America’s First Family of freaks – the Simpsons – are held together by familial bonds, that their differences from “normal” folk are what make them special and that, ultimately, is what they’re proudest of. This gets brought into shocking relief by the jaw-dropping third act. As the Hoovers crash into the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, as welcome as a skunk in an elevator, the film becoming a scabrous satire on American concepts of success, perfection and happiness. There’s something grotesque about the American beauty pageant tradition – the pushiness of the parents, the disturbing way the competing children are dressed to look like women in their swimsuits and full make-up – which Arndt clearly relishes demolishing in a way that’s simultaneously uncomfortable to watch and deeply funny. As all these perfect children and their perfect parents rush around getting ready for the contest to begin, dumpy little Olive (a guileless performance from Breslin) experiences a moment of clarity in which she realises she can never be as beautiful as them. Yet that makes her all the more determined to see through to the end the – for want of a better word – extraordinary dance routine Grandpa taught her. At which point, it’s safe to say, The Daily Mail and other self-appointed guardians of our nation’s morals will be spitting blood. It’s become de rigeur for this kind of ensemble movie to attract marquee name casts (think of the incredible talents who appeared in similarly themed movies like The Royal Tenenbaums, Igby Goes Down and The Squid & The Whale), and Dayton and Faris are equally blessed here. You expect pros like Kinnear, Colette and Arkin to deliver, but the key player here is Steve Carell – star of the American version of The Office, whose movie CV to date is headed up by Anchorman and The 40 Year-Old Virgin. You sense, in his quiet and unshowy way, Carell is genuinely exploring Frank’s alienation; his performance crucially suggesting a great comic actor in the making, rather than a comic simply trying his hand at acting for a lark. MICHAEL BONNER

You’ve met folks like the Hoovers before in the movies. A collection of dyed-in-the-wool misfits, their antecedents include the Griswolds, stars of the National Lampoon’s … Vacation series, Wes Anderson’s Tenenbaums and many others in between. In truth, the dysfunctional family comedy feels a little exhausted these days, as anyone who’s had the misfortune to see Robin Williams’ latest outing, the dire R.V, will know all too well. But what makes this one fly is its warmth. Little Miss Sunshine is a first class love-letter to a family of losers.

Let’s start with lecherous, potty-mouthed Grandpa (Alan Arkin), recently shown the door from his retirement home thanks to an abiding love of heroin. There’s Richard (Greg Kinnear), the nominal head of the family, who’s an appallingly unsuccessful motivational speaker. Wife Sheryl (Toni Collette) struggles against the odds to hold her brood together, and the strain is beginning to show. Stroppy teenager Dwayne (Paul Dano) has taken a vow of silence and spends all day reading Nietzsche. Gay uncle Frank (Steve Carell), a Proust scholar no less, has just been released from hospital after a suicide attempt. So far, so fucked-up. And then there’s Olive (Abigail Breslin), a chubby, bespectacled seven year-old with sweet, innocent dreams of one day becoming a beauty queen. Meanwhile, the rest of the Hoovers bicker, bite and squabble among themselves – except Dwayne, who simply leaves notes for his family bearing such heart-warming sentiments as: “I hate everyone” and, when uncle Frank arrives in the house, one which reads: “Welcome to Hell”.

There really doesn’t seem much to like about them – until, by some miraculous turn of events, Olive is chosen to take part in the Little Miss Sunshine kids’ beauty pageant in California and the Hoovers find at last something to unite them in a common cause. They head off in a battered VW camper van from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach, determined that at least one of their clan will achieve something they can all share joy in.

The journey – three days cross-country – is rich with comic incident as well as one fatality that feels like an explicit homage to National Lampoon’s Vacation. It’s during this crucial section of the film that first-time screenwriter Michael Arndt gently teases the humanity out of the Hoovers and the film opens up to become more than a quirky, by-numbers family comedy. Arndt, along with former music promo directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, steer the Hoovers into a place where, gradually, little moments of love and affection seep through the bitterness. You’re reminded of the way America’s First Family of freaks – the Simpsons – are held together by familial bonds, that their differences from “normal” folk are what make them special and that, ultimately, is what they’re proudest of.

This gets brought into shocking relief by the jaw-dropping third act. As the Hoovers crash into the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, as welcome as a skunk in an elevator, the film becoming a scabrous satire on American concepts of success, perfection and happiness. There’s something grotesque about the American beauty pageant tradition – the pushiness of the parents, the disturbing way the competing children are dressed to look like women in their swimsuits and full make-up – which Arndt clearly relishes demolishing in a way that’s simultaneously uncomfortable to watch and deeply funny. As all these perfect children and their perfect parents rush around getting ready for the contest to begin, dumpy little Olive (a guileless performance from Breslin) experiences a moment of clarity in which she realises she can never be as beautiful as them. Yet that makes her all the more determined to see through to the end the – for want of a better word – extraordinary dance routine Grandpa taught her. At which point, it’s safe to say, The Daily Mail and other self-appointed guardians of our nation’s morals will be spitting blood.

It’s become de rigeur for this kind of ensemble movie to attract marquee name casts (think of the incredible talents who appeared in similarly themed movies like The Royal Tenenbaums, Igby Goes Down and The Squid & The Whale), and Dayton and Faris are equally blessed here. You expect pros like Kinnear, Colette and Arkin to deliver, but the key player here is Steve Carell – star of the American version of The Office, whose movie CV to date is headed up by Anchorman and The 40 Year-Old Virgin. You sense, in his quiet and unshowy way, Carell is genuinely exploring Frank’s alienation; his performance crucially suggesting a great comic actor in the making, rather than a comic simply trying his hand at acting for a lark.

MICHAEL BONNER

WORLD TRADE CENTER

Film
Reviews

Uncut

-

3rd October 2006

0

Although the World Trade Center bombings have been scrutinised in unsparing and forensic media detail, Hollywood has been conspicuously slow off the mark to get involved. Five years on from 9/11 itself, Oliver Stone's drama - drawn from the real life testimonies of two New York Port Authority cops extracted from the rubble of Ground Zero - is only the second film, after United 93 earlier this year, to directly address the 21st century's inaugural act of man-made terror. Hollywood studios are often slow and cautious when responding to hot button events like 9/11. For sure, there are already a handful of films that have been informed, to varying degrees, by the attack on the Twin Towers - Fahrenheit 9/11, 25th Hour, War Of The Worlds, even Munich. Yet the fear of alienating great swathes of audience demographics and incurring political censure for tackling this explicitly sensitive issue sends studios scurrying back to their comfort zone of rom-coms, costume dramas and comic book adaptations. Matters presumably are further complicated by daily news broadcasts detailing the latest dispatches from President Bush's vituperative and ill-conceived response to the tragedy - the rollercoaster-to-Armageddon commonly referred to as the War on Terror. Which perhaps explains how United 93 came to be: although bankrolled by Universal, the director, Paul Greengrass, is Irish and the project was developed by Working Title - the English production company best known for Four Weddings And A Funeral. What makes World Trade Center so interesting as the first, full-blooded American take on 9/11 is that Oliver Stone isn't the obvious candidate to helm a film like this. Although Stone has a lengthy history of on-screen political engagement - Salvador, the Vietnam trilogy, JFK, Nixon, his Castro and Arafat documentaries - his film-making style is traditionally too bombastic to handle a subject that's still so raw and painful for many Americans. But Stone has made what might be, if the critical reception to World Trade Center in America can be believed, the most successful film of his career. Ironic, perhaps, as it appears to share little in common with any other movie on his CV. There's no trademark Stone masonry, no great sound and fury (unless you count the breath-taking sequence around the 40 minute mark where the Towers come down), none of the dizzying, sensory overload you expect from the man who made Natural Born Killers. Stone opts for a straightforward approach to this story, which has led some to churlishly suggest World Trade Center is little better than a made-for-TV movie. Arguably, this demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of Stone - a great liberal humanist - and is also extraordinarily ungenerous to a movie that's both commemorative and elegiac in its handling of an event which led to the deaths of 2,749 people, approximately 400 of whom were from the emergency services, there simply to do their job and save lives. Cage is perfect here. He does a great Jimmy Stewart: his John McLoughlin is an Everyman, just doing what he's got to do, whatever it takes, no heroics, no showboating. Stone - like Greengrass - elects to focus solely on the specific events as they unfold. He doesn't acknowledge the wider context of what drove a group of religious fundamentalists to hijack four aeroplanes with the intention of flying them into high-profile targets on American soil. At its heart, World Trade Center is solely about two men struggling to survive in extraordinary, hellish circumstances. And, to Stone's infinite credit, it never descends into schmaltz. The first third of the movie finds McLoughlin and Jimeno gearing up for a day's work - it's rather prosaic, matter-of-fact, following a similar trajectory to Greengrass' film which showed the doomed crew and passengers of United 93 as they went through the equally mundane routines of their own lives prior to embarkation. Once the Towers come down, Stone explores the effects of the disaster on their families. His shrewd casting of Gyllenhaal and Bello means we never once get hysteria, no wailing and gnashing of teeth, just a genuine, impactful sense of the uncertainty, the dreadful not-knowing, as they wait for news. The most contentious character in all this is David Karnes (Michael J Shannon). A former Marine whose response to the catastrophe is to dust off his uniform and go to the site where, with an almost pathological single-mindedness, he yomps across the blasted, nightmare landscape on a one-man mission to find survivors. His two-dimensional, gung-ho fervour is decidedly out-of-synch with the rest of the movie's more rounded characters, and you could argue he's emblematic of the director's most sledge-hammer tendencies. But he reflects a part of the American mindset, and his decision to re-enlist at the end of the film (in a postscript, we learn he's served in the Philippines and Iraq) is based on a very real, clear-cut notion of patriotism. World Trade Center is part of America's healing process after 9/11. And at the risk of sounding trite, it's also part of Stone's own personal healing after the astonishing critical demolition of his last film, Alexander. Here, he's made a humbling and moving movie about enduring against the odds. And for a director who's frequently been misunderstood and misrepresented, this is a particular triumph he should savour. MICHAEL BONNER

Although the World Trade Center bombings have been scrutinised in unsparing and forensic media detail, Hollywood has been conspicuously slow off the mark to get involved. Five years on from 9/11 itself, Oliver Stone’s drama – drawn from the real life testimonies of two New York Port Authority cops extracted from the rubble of Ground Zero – is only the second film, after United 93 earlier this year, to directly address the 21st century’s inaugural act of man-made terror. Hollywood studios are often slow and cautious when responding to hot button events like 9/11. For sure, there are already a handful of films that have been informed, to varying degrees, by the attack on the Twin Towers – Fahrenheit 9/11, 25th Hour, War Of The Worlds, even Munich. Yet the fear of alienating great swathes of audience demographics and incurring political censure for tackling this explicitly sensitive issue sends studios scurrying back to their comfort zone of rom-coms, costume dramas and comic book adaptations. Matters presumably are further complicated by daily news broadcasts detailing the latest dispatches from President Bush’s vituperative and ill-conceived response to the tragedy – the rollercoaster-to-Armageddon commonly referred to as the War on Terror.

Which perhaps explains how United 93 came to be: although bankrolled by Universal, the director, Paul Greengrass, is Irish and the project was developed by Working Title – the English production company best known for Four Weddings And A Funeral. What makes World Trade Center so interesting as the first, full-blooded American take on 9/11 is that Oliver Stone isn’t the obvious candidate to helm a film like this. Although Stone has a lengthy history of on-screen political engagement – Salvador, the Vietnam trilogy, JFK, Nixon, his Castro and Arafat documentaries – his film-making style is traditionally too bombastic to handle a subject that’s still so raw and painful for many Americans. But Stone has made what might be, if the critical reception to World Trade Center in America can be believed, the most successful film of his career. Ironic, perhaps, as it appears to share little in common with any other movie on his CV. There’s no trademark Stone masonry, no great sound and fury (unless you count the breath-taking sequence around the 40 minute mark where the Towers come down), none of the dizzying, sensory overload you expect from the man who made Natural Born Killers. Stone opts for a straightforward approach to this story, which has led some to churlishly suggest World Trade Center is little better than a made-for-TV movie. Arguably, this demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of Stone – a great liberal humanist – and is also extraordinarily ungenerous to a movie that’s both commemorative and elegiac in its handling of an event which led to the deaths of 2,749 people, approximately 400 of whom were from the emergency services, there simply to do their job and save lives. Cage is perfect here. He does a great Jimmy Stewart: his John McLoughlin is an Everyman, just doing what he’s got to do, whatever it takes, no heroics, no showboating.

Stone – like Greengrass – elects to focus solely on the specific events as they unfold. He doesn’t acknowledge the wider context of what drove a group of religious fundamentalists to hijack four aeroplanes with the intention of flying them into high-profile targets on American soil. At its heart, World Trade Center is solely about two men struggling to survive in extraordinary, hellish circumstances. And, to Stone’s infinite credit, it never descends into schmaltz. The first third of the movie finds McLoughlin and Jimeno gearing up for a day’s work – it’s rather prosaic, matter-of-fact, following a similar trajectory to Greengrass’ film which showed the doomed crew and passengers of United 93 as they went through the equally mundane routines of their own lives prior to embarkation. Once the Towers come down, Stone explores the effects of the disaster on their families. His shrewd casting of Gyllenhaal and Bello means we never once get hysteria, no wailing and gnashing of teeth, just a genuine, impactful sense of the uncertainty, the dreadful not-knowing, as they wait for news.

The most contentious character in all this is David Karnes (Michael J Shannon). A former Marine whose response to the catastrophe is to dust off his uniform and go to the site where, with an almost pathological single-mindedness, he yomps across the blasted, nightmare landscape on a one-man mission to find survivors. His two-dimensional, gung-ho fervour is decidedly out-of-synch with the rest of the movie’s more rounded characters, and you could argue he’s emblematic of the director’s most sledge-hammer tendencies. But he reflects a part of the American mindset, and his decision to re-enlist at the end of the film (in a postscript, we learn he’s served in the Philippines and Iraq) is based on a very real, clear-cut notion of patriotism.

World Trade Center is part of America’s healing process after 9/11. And at the risk of sounding trite, it’s also part of Stone’s own personal healing after the astonishing critical demolition of his last film, Alexander. Here, he’s made a humbling and moving movie about enduring against the odds. And for a director who’s frequently been misunderstood and misrepresented, this is a particular triumph he should savour.

MICHAEL BONNER

THE BLACK DAHLIA

Film
Reviews

Uncut

-

3rd October 2006

0

Los Angeles, 1947. Assigned to solve the murder of "the Black Dahlia", an aspiring Hollywood starlet, two cops, Leland "Lee" Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) and "Bucky" Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) find themselves succumbing to various erotic obsessions - with the dead girl, wealthy heiress Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank) and Lee's girlfriend, former call-girl Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson). The second of James Ellroy's LA Quartet novels to be adapted for the screen, almost a decade after Curtis Hanson's triumph with LA Confidential, The Black Dahlia boasts a similar visual Žlan - a meticulous evocation of its period, all sharp suits and sleek sedans and bad-girl pouts. Yet it's a very different film than its predecessor. Ellroy's source novel is based on a true story: the brutal murder, in 1947, of movie starlet Betty Short, which became one of the most notorious unsolved murders in Hollywood history. Ellroy's own mother was strangled in 1958, and the author has explicitly drawn connections between the tragic, violent deaths of these two women. De Palma, a surgeon's son, with a taste for the lurid and a mile-wide streak of cruelty in him that rivals his hero Hitchcock, clearly riffs on this shocking, sensationalist material. The film revels in Ellroy's evocation of a corrupt, seedy and venal post-war LA, where everyone's on the make, constantly hustling, whatever the cost. The opening sequence finds soldiers beating up civilians, cops piling in to take a pop at both sides, blows seemingly exchanged for the sheer, hell of it. This is a lawless town, devoid of any moral centre. Hanson's film benefited from the onscreen pairing of Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, whose brute intensity and physical presence Aaron Eckhart and Josh Hartnett initially appear to struggle in vain to equal. Eckhart acquits himself well enough, but as his obsession with the murdered girl sends him into paranoia and madness, he retreats from the narrative - which focuses instead on the romantic relationships between Hartnett and co-stars Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank. On face value, their performances seem stilted, but you sense that De Palma is playing subtly, artfully, with the hyper-stylised melodramas of film noir standards like Mildred Pierce or Kiss Me Deadly. Arguably, the performances aren't necessarily the chief draw here. In a recent onstage interview at the Edinburgh Film Festival, De Palma admitted that his primary interests these days, as a director, are visual: the onscreen exploration of certain images and sequences, the resolution of various spatial challenges. The influence of Hitchcock has left him with an unrivalled compositional sense, one that's apparent in this film's major set-pieces - notably, a crane shot that manages to encompass, in a single take, both a messy shootout in a tenement, and the simultaneous discovery, a block away, of the murdered Black Dahlia; and a breathless race up a staircase (and subsequent fatal plummet to earth) which the director invests with all the flashy virtuosity of Vertigo. De Palma's homage to noir classics occasionally seems intrusive: Bucky's first meeting with the Linscott family, for example, sees the film shift abruptly, and inexplicably, into the first-person - a nod (for those in the know) to Robert Montgomery's 1947 Chandler adaptation The Lady In The Lake. There's a distinct sense of exaggeration and artifice here - scenes lit as if back-projected, props (newspapers, in particular) ever-so-slightly too large. Not for nothing did legendary critic Pauline Kael once describe De Palma as having "the wickedest baroque style in American cinema". Strict realism, here, isn't the point. As befits a mystery set in the space between the dream factory of Hollywood and the sordid reality of LA, this is a movie - and we're never for a moment allowed to forget it. JOANNA DOUGLAS

Los Angeles, 1947. Assigned to solve the murder of “the Black Dahlia”, an aspiring Hollywood starlet, two cops, Leland “Lee” Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) and “Bucky” Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) find themselves succumbing to various erotic obsessions – with the dead girl, wealthy heiress Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank) and Lee’s girlfriend, former call-girl Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson). The second of James Ellroy’s LA Quartet novels to be adapted for the screen, almost a decade after Curtis Hanson’s triumph with LA Confidential, The Black Dahlia boasts a similar visual Žlan – a meticulous evocation of its period, all sharp suits and sleek sedans and bad-girl pouts. Yet it’s a very different film than its predecessor.

Ellroy’s source novel is based on a true story: the brutal murder, in 1947, of movie starlet Betty Short, which became one of the most notorious unsolved murders in Hollywood history. Ellroy’s own mother was strangled in 1958, and the author has explicitly drawn connections between the tragic, violent deaths of these two women. De Palma, a surgeon’s son, with a taste for the lurid and a mile-wide streak of cruelty in him that rivals his hero Hitchcock, clearly riffs on this shocking, sensationalist material.

The film revels in Ellroy’s evocation of a corrupt, seedy and venal post-war LA, where everyone’s on the make, constantly hustling, whatever the cost. The opening sequence finds soldiers beating up civilians, cops piling in to take a pop at both sides, blows seemingly exchanged for the sheer, hell of it. This is a lawless town, devoid of any moral centre.

Hanson’s film benefited from the onscreen pairing of Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, whose brute intensity and physical presence Aaron Eckhart and Josh Hartnett initially appear to struggle in vain to equal. Eckhart acquits himself well enough, but as his obsession with the murdered girl sends him into paranoia and madness, he retreats from the narrative – which focuses instead on the romantic relationships between Hartnett and co-stars Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank. On face value, their performances seem stilted, but you sense that De Palma is playing subtly, artfully, with the hyper-stylised melodramas of film noir standards like Mildred Pierce or Kiss Me Deadly.

Arguably, the performances aren’t necessarily the chief draw here. In a recent onstage interview at the Edinburgh Film Festival, De Palma admitted that his primary interests these days, as a director, are visual: the onscreen exploration of certain images and sequences, the resolution of various spatial challenges. The influence of Hitchcock has left him with an unrivalled compositional sense, one that’s apparent in this film’s major set-pieces – notably, a crane shot that manages to encompass, in a single take, both a messy shootout in a tenement, and the simultaneous discovery, a block away, of the murdered Black Dahlia; and a breathless race up a staircase (and subsequent fatal plummet to earth) which the director invests with all the flashy virtuosity of Vertigo. De Palma’s homage to noir classics occasionally seems intrusive: Bucky’s first meeting with the Linscott family, for example, sees the film shift abruptly, and inexplicably, into the first-person – a nod (for those in the know) to Robert Montgomery’s 1947 Chandler adaptation The Lady In The Lake.

There’s a distinct sense of exaggeration and artifice here – scenes lit as if back-projected, props (newspapers, in particular) ever-so-slightly too large. Not for nothing did legendary critic Pauline Kael once describe De Palma as having “the wickedest baroque style in American cinema”. Strict realism, here, isn’t the point. As befits a mystery set in the space between the dream factory of Hollywood and the sordid reality of LA, this is a movie – and we’re never for a moment allowed to forget it.

JOANNA DOUGLAS

Marie Antoinette

Uncut

-

3rd October 2006

0

A novel spin on the costume genre, Marie Antoinette - Sofia Coppola's follow-up to Lost In Translation - depicts the corridors of power as seen by a spoilt aristocratic ingŽnue: an eighteenth-century Paris (or Versailles) Hilton. Kirsten Dunst plays the sheep-loving monarch, a teenage Austrian princess sent to France to form a marital and political alliance with King Louis XVI. Unfortunately His Majesty (Schwartzman) is a gauche ninny, while life at court is ruled by oppressively stiff rules of etiquette. The young Queen soon finds an escape in wanton expenditure, parties and amateur shepherdessing, blithely unaware that revolution is approaching. Coppola enjoys herself with anachronism, most notably in making the young queen a Californian airhead centuries before her time. The soundtrack is laden with post-punk hits, as if making a connection between 1780s and 1980s excesses - but, while the opening burst of Gang Of Four comes as a bracing shock, later choices (Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bow Wow Wow) are just that bit too obvious for real effect. Gorgeously shot by Lance Acord, the film is much more like a costume drama in the traditional grand fashion than you would expect from a director with Coppola's cutting-edge rep. And, despite an elegant handling of ironies in the first half hour, the film quickly becomes much straighter and staider than it promised. Still, Coppola has a dream cast - apart from a sympathetic, sparkly Dunst, the show is stolen by Asia Argento as the scandalous Countess du Barry and by the magnificently crusty Rip Torn as the old Louis XV. A lavish underachievement, nevertheless Marie Antoinette is a tender and elegant film: wilfully superficial, as befits the portrait of a superficial, doomed culture, but hard not to enjoy. JONATHAN ROMNEY

A novel spin on the costume genre, Marie Antoinette – Sofia Coppola’s follow-up to Lost In Translation – depicts the corridors of power as seen by a spoilt aristocratic ingŽnue: an eighteenth-century Paris (or Versailles) Hilton. Kirsten Dunst plays the sheep-loving monarch, a teenage Austrian princess sent to France to form a marital and political alliance with King Louis XVI. Unfortunately His Majesty (Schwartzman) is a gauche ninny, while life at court is ruled by oppressively stiff rules of etiquette. The young Queen soon finds an escape in wanton expenditure, parties and amateur shepherdessing, blithely unaware that revolution is approaching.

Coppola enjoys herself with anachronism, most notably in making the young queen a Californian airhead centuries before her time. The soundtrack is laden with post-punk hits, as if making a connection between 1780s and 1980s excesses – but, while the opening burst of Gang Of Four comes as a bracing shock, later choices (Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bow Wow Wow) are just that bit too obvious for real effect.

Gorgeously shot by Lance Acord, the film is much more like a costume drama in the traditional grand fashion than you would expect from a director with Coppola’s cutting-edge rep. And, despite an elegant handling of ironies in the first half hour, the film quickly becomes much straighter and staider than it promised. Still, Coppola has a dream cast – apart from a sympathetic, sparkly Dunst, the show is stolen by Asia Argento as the scandalous Countess du Barry and by the magnificently crusty Rip Torn as the old Louis XV. A lavish underachievement, nevertheless Marie Antoinette is a tender and elegant film: wilfully superficial, as befits the portrait of a superficial, doomed culture, but hard not to enjoy.

JONATHAN ROMNEY

Brothers Of The Head

Film
Reviews

Uncut

-

3rd October 2006

0

Fulton and Pepe's last film, the documentary Lost In La Mancha, was a lively record of Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to film Don Quixote, a robust insight into the gaping chasm that occasionally opens up between ambition and reality. For their next trick, Fulton and Pepe have embarked on an altogether more ambitious project. Brothers... is a mock-documentary about the meteoric rise - and inevitable fall - of a rock band fronted by conjoined twins, Tom and Barry Howe. Accordingly, it plays havoc with notions of truth. Constructed from an unfinished Ken Russell film (a fiction Russell himself is on hand to support) and a 1974 documentary which shows how Tom and Barry were coaxed into forming a band, it's a film about filmmaking as much as music. The style flickers between Russell's bombast and shaky, fly-on-the-wall verite, linked by contemporary contributions from the participants. The sense of period - pre-punk - is brilliantly evoked, and the rough energy of the music (by Clive Langer) is spot-on. Tom and Barry are magnificently played by real-life twin brothers Harry and Luke Treadaway, who aren't conjoined but do play their own guitars. This isn't Spinal Tap: there is humour, but the prevailing mood on this darkly bizarre trip is one of disquiet and impending tragedy. ALASTAIR McKAY

Fulton and Pepe’s last film, the documentary Lost In La Mancha, was a lively record of Terry Gilliam’s failed attempt to film Don Quixote, a robust insight into the gaping chasm that occasionally opens up between ambition and reality. For their next trick, Fulton and Pepe have embarked on an altogether more ambitious project.

Brothers… is a mock-documentary about the meteoric rise – and inevitable fall – of a rock band fronted by conjoined twins, Tom and Barry Howe. Accordingly, it plays havoc with notions of truth. Constructed from an unfinished Ken Russell film (a fiction Russell himself is on hand to support) and a 1974 documentary which shows how Tom and Barry were coaxed into forming a band, it’s a film about filmmaking as much as music. The style flickers between Russell’s bombast and shaky, fly-on-the-wall verite, linked by contemporary contributions from the participants. The sense of period – pre-punk – is brilliantly evoked, and the rough energy of the music (by Clive Langer) is spot-on. Tom and Barry are magnificently played by real-life twin brothers Harry and Luke Treadaway, who aren’t conjoined but do play their own guitars. This isn’t Spinal Tap: there is humour, but the prevailing mood on this darkly bizarre trip is one of disquiet and impending tragedy.

ALASTAIR McKAY

KATIE MELUA’S NEW WORLD RECORD

News

Uncut

-

3rd October 2006

0

Katie Melua, Britain’s biggest-selling female singer, yesterday set the Guinness World Record for the deepest underwater concert when she performed at the bottom of a 303ft-deep oil rig. The concert was held at the bottom of a shaft at the Statoil Troll A Platform gas rig, Europe’s largest. They invited Melua to play as part of the gas platform’s 10th anniversary celebrations. In addition to the gas rig staff, the audience included an adjudicator for Guinness World Records to make sure the record criteria was met. She performed her hit singles "Closest Thing To Crazy" and "Nine Million Bicycles" with a full live band. Guinness World Records confirmed that the record has been set. Melua is one of Britain’s most successful exports, having sold more than six million albums worldwide. The concert was filmed for Norwegian television. Melua has a new single, "It’s Only Pain", out later this year. www.katiemelua.com

Katie Melua, Britain’s biggest-selling female singer, yesterday set the Guinness World Record for the deepest underwater concert when she performed at the bottom of a 303ft-deep oil rig.

The concert was held at the bottom of a shaft at the Statoil Troll A Platform gas rig, Europe’s largest. They invited Melua to play as part of the gas platform’s 10th anniversary celebrations.

In addition to the gas rig staff, the audience included an adjudicator for Guinness World Records to make sure the record criteria was met.

She performed her hit singles “Closest Thing To Crazy” and “Nine Million Bicycles” with a full live band. Guinness World Records confirmed that the record has been set.

Melua is one of Britain’s most successful exports, having sold more than six million albums worldwide.

The concert was filmed for Norwegian television.

Melua has a new single, “It’s Only Pain”, out later this year.

www.katiemelua.com

The La’s – BBC In Session

Uncut

-

3rd October 2006

0

Somewhere in Liverpool, The La’s sit on a stack of songs that may one day comprise the follow-up to their 1990 debut album. Lee Mavers, now 44, remains their silent spokesman, their inconspicuous focal point, their inactive driving force. Mavers, a Merseybeat aficionado with vinegar for charisma, was always a contradiction in terms. Most paradoxically, his effortless songwriting talent co-existed with a crippling perfectionism, meaning his two-minute tunes took three years – and five producers – to record onto tape. Endlessly dissatisfied, Mavers shocked his fans by disowning the resulting album. (Some of us liked it.) If Steve Lillywhite’s production of that album toned down their rainbow, the 17 tracks on BBC In Session present The La’s in unflinchingly vivid light. The lads who recorded these Radio 1 sessions (1987-90) did not prevaricate or second-guess themselves in the BBC’s Maida Vale complex. They rolled up for a day’s work, lit a cigarette and plugged in. And how ideally those prosaic Beeb schedules suited Mavers’s pared-down, cock-a-hoop songs and his bandmates’ gutsy playing. BBC In Session, give or take a few overdubs, sounds as ‘live’ as if The La’s were performing on a small platform ten feet in front of us. It’s oncoming. It’s revelatory. Broadcast across four Radio 1 evening shows, the sessions document four different La’s line-ups, each with distinct characteristics. For Bob Harris in 1990, they were super-abrasive (“Callin’ All”), squealing with feedback (“Feelin’”), almost Who-like (“I Can’t Sleep”). For Nicky Campbell in 1989, they were raggedy-arsed and bronchial (Mavers straining for his high notes), yet rhythmically subtle thanks to connoisseur drummer Chris Sharrock. What’s really striking is how good the first session is. Recorded for Janice Long in August 1987, shortly before Go! Discs released their debut 45 “Way Out”, these are the muscle-flexings of a group with the confidence to ignore every trend the ‘80s have to offer, preferring to endorse 1950s primitivism (skiffle-esque acoustic guitars), 1960s songcraft (nods to Beatles and Kinks) and pride in their origins (Scouse accents that could strip wallpaper). You would go and see this band live. You might even run. It’s hard, admittedly, to discern any staggering musical development over the four years. Nevertheless, The La’s did tinker with their methodology from time to time. Recording for Liz Kershaw as a trio in 1988, they frustratingly botch “I Can’t Sleep”, a shadow of the locomotive Mod riot they’ll nail for Harris 28 months later. Another Kershaw disappointment is Mavers’ heavy-handed intro to “There She Goes”, an affront to the glittering carillons we know and love from the 1990 hit single. Generally, however, the songs on BBC In Session far exceed the Lillywhite-produced models (not least “Timeless Melody”, “Doledrum” and “Son Of A Gun”), and inevitably, when the 1990 album is played for comparison, it sounds muffled, distant and annoyingly slow. BBC In Session should therefore become your household’s La’s album of choice. DAVID CAVANAGH

Somewhere in Liverpool, The La’s sit on a stack of songs that may one day comprise the follow-up to their 1990 debut album. Lee Mavers, now 44, remains their silent spokesman, their inconspicuous focal point, their inactive driving force. Mavers, a Merseybeat aficionado with vinegar for charisma, was always a contradiction in terms. Most paradoxically, his effortless songwriting talent co-existed with a crippling perfectionism, meaning his two-minute tunes took three years – and five producers – to record onto tape. Endlessly dissatisfied, Mavers shocked his fans by disowning the resulting album. (Some of us liked it.)

If Steve Lillywhite’s production of that album toned down their rainbow, the 17 tracks on BBC In Session present The La’s in unflinchingly vivid light. The lads who recorded these Radio 1 sessions (1987-90) did not prevaricate or second-guess themselves in the BBC’s Maida Vale complex. They rolled up for a day’s work, lit a cigarette and plugged in. And how ideally those prosaic Beeb schedules suited Mavers’s pared-down, cock-a-hoop songs and his bandmates’ gutsy playing. BBC In Session, give or take a few overdubs, sounds as ‘live’ as if The La’s were performing on a small platform ten feet in front of us. It’s oncoming. It’s revelatory.

Broadcast across four Radio 1 evening shows, the sessions document four different La’s line-ups, each with distinct characteristics. For Bob Harris in 1990, they were super-abrasive (“Callin’ All”), squealing with feedback (“Feelin’”), almost Who-like (“I Can’t Sleep”). For Nicky Campbell in 1989, they were raggedy-arsed and bronchial (Mavers straining for his high notes), yet rhythmically subtle thanks to connoisseur drummer Chris Sharrock. What’s really striking is how good the first session is. Recorded for Janice Long in August 1987, shortly before Go! Discs released their debut 45 “Way Out”, these are the muscle-flexings of a group with the confidence to ignore every trend the ‘80s have to offer, preferring to endorse 1950s primitivism (skiffle-esque acoustic guitars), 1960s songcraft (nods to Beatles and Kinks) and pride in their origins (Scouse accents that could strip wallpaper). You would go and see this band live. You might even run.

It’s hard, admittedly, to discern any staggering musical development over the four years. Nevertheless, The La’s did tinker with their methodology from time to time. Recording for Liz Kershaw as a trio in 1988, they frustratingly botch “I Can’t Sleep”, a shadow of the locomotive Mod riot they’ll nail for Harris 28 months later. Another Kershaw disappointment is Mavers’ heavy-handed intro to “There She Goes”, an affront to the glittering carillons we know and love from the 1990 hit single.

Generally, however, the songs on BBC In Session far exceed the Lillywhite-produced models (not least “Timeless Melody”, “Doledrum” and “Son Of A Gun”), and inevitably, when the 1990 album is played for comparison, it sounds muffled, distant and annoyingly slow. BBC In Session should therefore become your household’s La’s album of choice.

DAVID CAVANAGH

The Clash – Singles Box Set

Uncut

-

3rd October 2006

0

There’s a lot to celebrate here. To be precise, in one edition, there’s every Clash UK single and its B-side, available on vinyl on separate discs in facsimiles of their original sleeves. The CD box set, on sale simultaneously, has all the singles plus additional bonus tracks – US and Argentinean promos, Canadian, Dutch and Spanish B-sides – again presented individually in replica sleeves. Both editions, by the way, include the “Capital Radio EP”, originally given away with NME, and now available for the first time commercially. Over the two formats, there are over 60 tracks and the packages are completed by a 44-page booklet, with rare and unseen pictures and entries on their favourite Clash tracks by, among others, Pete Townshend, Nick Hornby, The Edge, Tony Parsons, Bobby Gillespie, Irvine Welsh, Bernard Sumner, Ian Brown and, er, Sharleen Spiteri. You come away from both versions inevitably elated – this is terrific music, after all – but also regret at the foolhardiness of Joe Strummer’s disastrous sacking of Mick Jones, an act of reckless folly that not only sent The Clash into premature decline but precipitated Joe’s own wilderness years. Whenever I met Strummer in the aftermath of the band’s pitiful demise, there would inevitably be much sad acknowledgement that he had so utterly fucked up. When Mick was given the boot, they were even then barely into their prime, much great music still to come - the muggily hallucinatory “Straight To Hell” as notable a step towards something previously uncharted as “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” had been from the screechy excitement of the early singles. It’s not merely that by some benign alchemy time has been unusually kind to this music. That so much of it even now is so electrifying is rugged testimony to the sturdy basics of the Strummer-Jones songwriting partnership and the incremental wallop of the band’s musical clout. Beyond their sometimes pantomimic rebel posturing, Joe’s ill-conceived admiration for a variety of squinty-eyed killers passing themselves off as revolutionary freedom fighters, and an apparent thrall at one point to the epaulette as a sartorial signature of their uncompromisingly radical intent, The Clash have a by-now pretty incontestible claim to make for themselves as rock immortals. Strummer’s unbridled passion was an indelible component of what made them unforgettable, and since his death he has been virtually canonised. It would be critically negligent, however, not to similarly hosanna Mick Jones, whose ear for a great tune, fantastic riff and gift for arrangement on all fronts gloriously enhanced Joe’s raucous rebel yell. ALLAN JONES

There’s a lot to celebrate here. To be precise, in one edition, there’s every Clash UK single and its B-side, available on vinyl on separate discs in facsimiles of their original sleeves. The CD box set, on sale simultaneously, has all the singles plus additional bonus tracks – US and Argentinean promos, Canadian, Dutch and Spanish B-sides – again presented individually in replica sleeves. Both editions, by the way, include the “Capital Radio EP”, originally given away with NME, and now available for the first time commercially. Over the two formats, there are over 60 tracks and the packages are completed by a 44-page booklet, with rare and unseen pictures and entries on their favourite Clash tracks by, among others, Pete Townshend, Nick Hornby, The Edge, Tony Parsons, Bobby Gillespie, Irvine Welsh, Bernard Sumner, Ian Brown and, er, Sharleen Spiteri.

You come away from both versions inevitably elated – this is terrific music, after all – but also regret at the foolhardiness of Joe Strummer’s disastrous sacking of Mick Jones, an act of reckless folly that not only sent The Clash into premature decline but precipitated Joe’s own wilderness years. Whenever I met Strummer in the aftermath of the band’s pitiful demise, there would inevitably be much sad acknowledgement that he had so utterly fucked up. When Mick was given the boot, they were even then barely into their prime, much great music still to come – the muggily hallucinatory “Straight To Hell” as notable a step towards something previously uncharted as “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” had been from the screechy excitement of the early singles.

It’s not merely that by some benign alchemy time has been unusually kind to this music. That so much of it even now is so electrifying is rugged testimony to the sturdy basics of the Strummer-Jones songwriting partnership and the incremental wallop of the band’s musical clout.

Beyond their sometimes pantomimic rebel posturing, Joe’s ill-conceived admiration for a variety of squinty-eyed killers passing themselves off as revolutionary freedom fighters, and an apparent thrall at one point to the epaulette as a sartorial signature of their uncompromisingly radical intent, The Clash have a by-now pretty incontestible claim to make for themselves as rock immortals. Strummer’s unbridled passion was an indelible component of what made them unforgettable, and since his death he has been virtually canonised. It would be critically negligent, however, not to similarly hosanna Mick Jones, whose ear for a great tune, fantastic riff and gift for arrangement on all fronts gloriously enhanced Joe’s raucous rebel yell.

ALLAN JONES

The Killers – Sam’s Town

Uncut

-

3rd October 2006

0

When they arrived on these shores in late 2003, the hype claimed that The Killers were the best British group in the world who weren’t from Britain. They were also the best ‘80s group in the world who weren’t from the ‘80s, but that’s beside the point. Because, somewhere in their meteoric rise from shy indie kids to Glastonbury 2007 headliners, The Killers became sick of the constant Smiths comparisons and looked towards home for inspiration. Only America could have spawned a record like Sam’s Town. In the past, Brandon Flowers has expressed patriotic admiration for George W Bush, and Dubya’s gung-ho “bigger is better” mantra is present here from the moment the record roars into action. You can virtually smell the money – a flawless production by Flood and Alan Moulder makes sure the fretless bass, giddy synth rushes and spiralling crescendos are pushed to the fore. The result remains in the ‘80s, but Flowers now privileges a bigger and more ambitious vision of the decade: that of U2, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Nicks’ wonderful Wildheart LP. “When You Were Young”, “For Reasons Unknown” and “My List” (which sounds uncannily like The Waterboys’ “The Whole Of The Moon”) are all songs to stand on cliffs and beat chests to, whereas the cinematic synth hum of “Read My Mind” covers the same terrain as Springsteen’s “Streets Of Philadelphia”. The problem, though, is that size seems to be used here as an excuse for the lack of musical ideas. Along with Razorlight, The Killers’ bid for greatness involves aping their stadium-straddling forbears rather than exploring new paths. Instead of the era-defining classic the band claim, Sam’s Town works best as a ludicrous pop album (check “Uncle Jonny”’s opening gambit: “When everybody else refrained/My uncle Jonny did cocaine”). “Why Do I Keep Counting” even wobbles into Meatloaf territory, with an ending that lasts several weeks. Perhaps it’s best to forget authenticity and experimentation and merely enjoy the preposterous show. After all, if you believed they were Britain’s best band in 2003, what’s to stop you thinking they’re the best band in America this time around? TIM JONZE

When they arrived on these shores in late 2003, the hype claimed that The Killers were the best British group in the world who weren’t from Britain. They were also the best ‘80s group in the world who weren’t from the ‘80s, but that’s beside the point. Because, somewhere in their meteoric rise from shy indie kids to Glastonbury 2007 headliners, The Killers became sick of the constant Smiths comparisons and looked towards home for inspiration.

Only America could have spawned a record like Sam’s Town. In the past, Brandon Flowers has expressed patriotic admiration for George W Bush, and Dubya’s gung-ho “bigger is better” mantra is present here from the moment the record roars into action. You can virtually smell the money – a flawless production by Flood and Alan Moulder makes sure the fretless bass, giddy synth rushes and spiralling crescendos are pushed to the fore. The result remains in the ‘80s, but Flowers now privileges a bigger and more ambitious vision of the decade: that of U2, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Nicks’ wonderful Wildheart LP. “When You Were Young”, “For Reasons Unknown” and “My List” (which sounds uncannily like The Waterboys’ “The Whole Of The Moon”) are all songs to stand on cliffs and beat chests to, whereas the cinematic synth hum of “Read My Mind” covers the same terrain as Springsteen’s “Streets Of Philadelphia”.

The problem, though, is that size seems to be used here as an excuse for the lack of musical ideas. Along with Razorlight, The Killers’ bid for greatness involves aping their stadium-straddling forbears rather than exploring new paths. Instead of the era-defining classic the band claim, Sam’s Town works best as a ludicrous pop album (check “Uncle Jonny”’s opening gambit: “When everybody else refrained/My uncle Jonny did cocaine”). “Why Do I Keep Counting” even wobbles into Meatloaf territory, with an ending that lasts several weeks. Perhaps it’s best to forget authenticity and experimentation and merely enjoy the preposterous show. After all, if you believed they were Britain’s best band in 2003, what’s to stop you thinking they’re the best band in America this time around?

TIM JONZE

The Who – Endless Wire

Uncut

-

3rd October 2006

0

So here it is. Almost exactly 24 years since The ‘Oo’s last studio album (1982’s It’s Hard), Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey have finally overcome their studio phobia and delivered a 19 track, 56 minute song suite comprising vaporous acoustic laments, nihilistic numbskull Who-rock and – naturally - a ten-song mini-opera. En route, there are enough thematic riddles and symptoms of mid-life malaise (they are both in their early sixties) to keep students of Who-ology in business for a decade. But there’s also a sense of closure, which suggests these grizzled veterans may finally have found a way of tackling their demons outside of the psychiatrist’s chair. Not that The Who’s 11th studio album serves as some form of musical rapprochement. Despite all they’ve been through in the last few years, Endless Wire is – like all Who albums - Townshend’s record to the core; pretentious and portentous, but packed with spirit and a lacerating intelligence. Things start briskly enough. Ushered in by an oscillating riff hijacked from “Baba O’Reilly”, “Fragments” is a thinly disguised call-to-arms for fans of Tommy to dust off their credit cards and worship once more at the altar of the powerchord. When the crashing guitars and strident holler of “The Mike Post Theme” follows shortly after (think “We’re Not Gonna Take It”), you can almost see Tommy Saxondale lighting up a spliff and saluting the “descending arpeggios reminiscent of autumn leaves”. So far, so good. It’s with the Dylan-esque “Man In A Purple Dress”, though, that Endless Wire begins to get really interesting. Incontestibly about the media circus surrounding Townshend’s police caution for a single case of accessing child pornography in 2003, it’s a vicious sideswipe at those who used it to score points at his expense. “How dare you be the one to assess?/Me in this God-forsaken mess/You, a man in a purple dress!” rages Daltrey, touchingly, in Townshend’s defence, whilst the line, “Men above men/Or prats?/With your high hats,” should, at the very least, have them rolling in the aisles at Westminster Abbey. There’s hope amidst the fury, too. “You Stand By Me”, sung by Towshend himself, testifies to the healing power of love whilst hinting at the humbling dark nights of the soul he surely suffered: “You take my side/Against those who lied/ Gimme back my pride”. It’s hardly laugh-a-minute stuff, but the schizophrenic drive which has seen Townshend morph from Barthes-quoting mod, to boiler-suited boffin, to good-natured host of his own website TV show, ensures tunes also come thick and fast. Deep breath. The second half of the album consists of a ten song mini-opera entitled “Wire And Glass”, previewed in the summer on the similarly-titled EP and based on Townshend’s novella, The Boy Who Heard Music, that he published as a blog on his website last year. Tempting as it is to see “Wire And Glass” as an extra twist to the Gordian knot of the never-ending Lifehouse project (famously dismissed by Daltrey with the words, “Nah, won’t work -you’ll never get enough wire”) Wire & Glass instead deals with an apocalyptic vision of a “society strangled by communications” and sounds – thankfully - as though it could have been rescued from the cutting room floor of Quadrophenia. “I fear the future as I take in the view/ Don’t know where to head to now,” gasps Daltrey on the storming “Sound Round”, whilst a thunderous “Pick Up The Peace” wouldn’t be out of place on the next Oasis album - if it didn’t segue, after a minute and a half, into a jaunty banjo-led jig called “Unholy Trinity’”. Exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, it climaxes with “Mirror Door”, an utterly bonkers rollcall of the musical greats (“Johnny Cash and Johnnie Ray/ Amadeus and Ludvig Van/ Henry, Johann and the Doo-Dah Band”), before finally bidding us a very British farewell with “Tea & Theatre”. “Before we walk from the stage/ Will you have more tea?” None of it, for all the digital jiggery-pokery Townshend catalogues in the sleevenotes, sounds like it was written or recorded after 1974. Despite all of this, Endless Wire doesn’t feel like some Life On Mars-style glitch in the time-space continuum. Having spent the last 20 years touring intermittently as a Greatest Hits cash-cow - even after the tragic death of John Entwhistle in 2002 - the over-riding sensation is of The Who Two and their cohorts (Pino Palladino on bass, Zak Starkey and Peter Huntingdon on drums, Townshend’s brother Simon on backing vocals, the faithful John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick on keys) battling heroically to conjure up music that can match The Who in their pomp. Part exorcism, part quixotic attempt to raise the bar for rock’s modern day songwriters, Endless Wire serves as both an accomplished sonic full-stop for the band and a brave and necessary means for Pete Townshend to address his core audience in the wake of his brush with the tabloids. Madly ambitious and deeply heartfelt, it’s a grand folly in the great tradition of Brish rock. “I’m still briefly alive,” wrote Townshend gloomily in his sleevenotes for the Thirty Years Of Maximum R&B box set. Ten years on, he sounds reinvigorated. PAUL MOODY

So here it is. Almost exactly 24 years since The ‘Oo’s last studio album (1982’s It’s Hard), Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey have finally overcome their studio phobia and delivered a 19 track, 56 minute song suite comprising vaporous acoustic laments, nihilistic numbskull Who-rock and – naturally – a ten-song mini-opera. En route, there are enough thematic riddles and symptoms of mid-life malaise (they are both in their early sixties) to keep students of Who-ology in business for a decade. But there’s also a sense of closure, which suggests these grizzled veterans may finally have found a way of tackling their demons outside of the psychiatrist’s chair.

Not that The Who’s 11th studio album serves as some form of musical rapprochement. Despite all they’ve been through in the last few years, Endless Wire is – like all Who albums – Townshend’s record to the core; pretentious and portentous, but packed with spirit and a lacerating intelligence.

Things start briskly enough. Ushered in by an oscillating riff hijacked from “Baba O’Reilly”, “Fragments” is a thinly disguised call-to-arms for fans of Tommy to dust off their credit cards and worship once more at the altar of the powerchord. When the crashing guitars and strident holler of “The Mike Post Theme” follows shortly after (think “We’re Not Gonna Take It”), you can almost see Tommy Saxondale lighting up a spliff and saluting the “descending arpeggios reminiscent of autumn leaves”. So far, so good.

It’s with the Dylan-esque “Man In A Purple Dress”, though, that Endless Wire begins to get really interesting. Incontestibly about the media circus surrounding Townshend’s police caution for a single case of accessing child pornography in 2003, it’s a vicious sideswipe at those who used it to score points at his expense. “How dare you be the one to assess?/Me in this God-forsaken mess/You, a man in a purple dress!” rages Daltrey, touchingly, in Townshend’s defence, whilst the line, “Men above men/Or prats?/With your high hats,” should, at the very least, have them rolling in the aisles at Westminster Abbey.

There’s hope amidst the fury, too. “You Stand By Me”, sung by Towshend himself, testifies to the healing power of love whilst hinting at the humbling dark nights of the soul he surely suffered: “You take my side/Against those who lied/ Gimme back my pride”. It’s hardly laugh-a-minute stuff, but the schizophrenic drive which has seen Townshend morph from Barthes-quoting mod, to boiler-suited boffin, to good-natured host of his own website TV show, ensures tunes also come thick and fast.

Deep breath. The second half of the album consists of a ten song mini-opera entitled “Wire And Glass”, previewed in the summer on the similarly-titled EP and based on Townshend’s novella, The Boy Who Heard Music, that he published as a blog on his website last year. Tempting as it is to see “Wire And Glass” as an extra twist to the Gordian knot of the never-ending Lifehouse project (famously dismissed by Daltrey with the words, “Nah, won’t work -you’ll never get enough wire”) Wire & Glass instead deals with an apocalyptic vision of a “society strangled by communications” and sounds – thankfully – as though it could have been rescued from the cutting room floor of Quadrophenia.

“I fear the future as I take in the view/ Don’t know where to head to now,” gasps Daltrey on the storming “Sound Round”, whilst a thunderous “Pick Up The Peace” wouldn’t be out of place on the next Oasis album – if it didn’t segue, after a minute and a half, into a jaunty banjo-led jig called “Unholy Trinity’”. Exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, it climaxes with “Mirror Door”, an utterly bonkers rollcall of the musical greats (“Johnny Cash and Johnnie Ray/ Amadeus and Ludvig Van/ Henry, Johann and the Doo-Dah Band”), before finally bidding us a very British farewell with “Tea & Theatre”. “Before we walk from the stage/ Will you have more tea?” None of it, for all the digital jiggery-pokery Townshend catalogues in the sleevenotes, sounds like it was written or recorded after 1974.

Despite all of this, Endless Wire doesn’t feel like some Life On Mars-style glitch in the time-space continuum. Having spent the last 20 years touring intermittently as a Greatest Hits cash-cow – even after the tragic death of John Entwhistle in 2002 – the over-riding sensation is of The Who Two and their cohorts (Pino Palladino on bass, Zak Starkey and Peter Huntingdon on drums, Townshend’s brother Simon on backing vocals, the faithful John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick on keys) battling heroically to conjure up music that can match The Who in their pomp. Part exorcism, part quixotic attempt to raise the bar for rock’s modern day songwriters, Endless Wire serves as both an accomplished sonic full-stop for the band and a brave and necessary means for Pete Townshend to address his core audience in the wake of his brush with the tabloids.

Madly ambitious and deeply heartfelt, it’s a grand folly in the great tradition of Brish rock.

“I’m still briefly alive,” wrote Townshend gloomily in his sleevenotes for the Thirty Years Of Maximum R&B box set. Ten years on, he sounds reinvigorated.

PAUL MOODY

THE BEATLES’ NEW LOVE ALBUM

News

Uncut

-

2nd October 2006

0

Experimental versions of The Beatles’ original Abbey Road studio master tapes are on ‘Love’, a new collection due out next month. The highly anticipated album was created by legendary Beatles producer Sir George Martin while working on a collaboration with Cirque Du Soleil. The remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as Yoko Ono Lennon, helped on the album. Martin, working with his son Giles, has meticulously trawled through the entire archive of Beatles recordings in a quest to create this new Beatles album. The album is dense with remixes and snippets taken from the entire catalogue. Tracks include “Eleanor Rigby”, “A Day In The Life”, “Here Comes The Sun” and “Dear Prudence”. Sir George Martin told Uncut: “It’s a Da Vinci Code for Beatles fanatics, isn’t it? It’s the most supreme puzzle of all time. I wanted to have a competition to see if anyone could spot everything we’d done in the right sequence. No one will be able to do it.” An added highlight of ‘Love’ for Beatles completists is an unearthed demo version of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Martin has said of the album: “The Beatles always looked for other ways of expressing themselves and this is another step forward for them.” The album will be released worldwide in November 2006.

Experimental versions of The Beatles’ original Abbey Road studio master tapes are on ‘Love’, a new collection due out next month.

The highly anticipated album was created by legendary Beatles producer Sir George Martin while working on a collaboration with Cirque Du Soleil.

The remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as Yoko Ono Lennon, helped on the album.

Martin, working with his son Giles, has meticulously trawled through the entire archive of Beatles recordings in a quest to create this new Beatles album.

The album is dense with remixes and snippets taken from the entire catalogue. Tracks include “Eleanor Rigby”, “A Day In The Life”, “Here Comes The Sun” and “Dear Prudence”.

Sir George Martin told Uncut: “It’s a Da Vinci Code for Beatles fanatics, isn’t it? It’s the most supreme puzzle of all time. I wanted to have a competition to see if anyone could spot everything we’d done in the right sequence. No one will be able to do it.”

An added highlight of ‘Love’ for Beatles completists is an unearthed demo version of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.

Martin has said of the album: “The Beatles always looked for other ways of expressing themselves and this is another step forward for them.”

The album will be released worldwide in November 2006.

PATTI SMITH SAYS GOODBYE TO CBGBs

News

Uncut

-

2nd October 2006

0

Patti Smith will play the final ever gig at the legendary New York venue CBGBs in a fortnight. Smith, an original icon of the ‘70s New York music scene, who helped create CBGBs' cool punk reputation, is a fitting addition to the club’s final show bill. CBGBs is being forced to close after a disagreement over future rent with its landlord. Hilly Kristal, owner of CBGBs, has also confirmed that the club will re-open in a similar guise in Las Vegas, Nevada. The new venue is expected to open in 2008. About playing at the historic venue at a show earlier this year, Smith said she “had the Jackie Onassis spirit of preservation of our historic architecture. One of the things that has drawn so many people down to the Bowery area—the people living there and the housing and shops and all of the revitalization of that area—was CBGB." Tickets for the final show went on sale yesterday, but are already sold out.

Patti Smith will play the final ever gig at the legendary New York venue CBGBs in a fortnight.

Smith, an original icon of the ‘70s New York music scene, who helped create CBGBs’ cool punk reputation, is a fitting addition to the club’s final show bill.

CBGBs is being forced to close after a disagreement over future rent with its landlord. Hilly Kristal, owner of CBGBs, has also confirmed that the club will re-open in a similar guise in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The new venue is expected to open in 2008.

About playing at the historic venue at a show earlier this year, Smith said she “had the Jackie Onassis spirit of preservation of our historic architecture. One of the things that has drawn so many people down to the Bowery area—the people living there and the housing and shops and all of the revitalization of that area—was CBGB.”

Tickets for the final show went on sale yesterday, but are already sold out.

BJORK TO REJOIN THE SUGARCUBES

News

Uncut

-

2nd October 2006

0

The Sugarcubes are to reform for a one-off gig in Iceland, when quirky singer Bjork rejoins them to mark the cult band’s 20th anniversary. This concert will be the first time the band have played together in 14 years. It is also 20 years since Smekkleysa, the band’s label, released their debut single ‘Birthday’. The Sugarcubes were born on exactly the same day as Bork’s’ first child, in 1986. They had their first bona fide UK Top 20 single with the aptly named ‘Hit’ in January 1992. However, the band’s success was short-lived. They had three top 20 UK albums - 1988’s ‘Life’s Too Good’, 1989’s ‘Here Today, Tomorrow, Next Week!’ and 1992’s ‘Stick Around For Joy’ – before calling it quits. They split when singer Bjork left to pursue an incredibly successful solo career. 1993’s Debut was a massive success, including several hit singles and earning two Brit award nominations. Bjork also performed at the opening ceremony for the Olympics in Athens in 2004. All profits from the concert, with the support of FL Group, will go back into Smekkleysa SM. Bjork states on her website that the money will allow the company to "continue to work on a non-profit basis for the future betterment of Icelandic music". Other artists on the label include Gus Gus and Sigor Ros. www.Icelandair.net are offering flight and ticket packages for the gig on November 17th.

The Sugarcubes are to reform for a one-off gig in Iceland, when quirky singer Bjork rejoins them to mark the cult band’s 20th anniversary.

This concert will be the first time the band have played together in 14 years.

It is also 20 years since Smekkleysa, the band’s label, released their debut single ‘Birthday’.

The Sugarcubes were born on exactly the same day as Bork’s’ first child, in 1986. They had their first bona fide UK Top 20 single with the aptly named ‘Hit’ in January 1992.

However, the band’s success was short-lived. They had three top 20 UK albums – 1988’s ‘Life’s Too Good’, 1989’s ‘Here Today, Tomorrow, Next Week!’ and 1992’s ‘Stick Around For Joy’ – before calling it quits.

They split when singer Bjork left to pursue an incredibly successful solo career. 1993’s Debut was a massive success, including several hit singles and earning two Brit award nominations.

Bjork also performed at the opening ceremony for the Olympics in Athens in 2004.

All profits from the concert, with the support of FL Group, will go back into Smekkleysa SM.

Bjork states on her website that the money will allow the company to “continue to work on a non-profit basis for the future betterment of Icelandic music”.

Other artists on the label include Gus Gus and Sigor Ros.

www.Icelandair.net are offering flight and ticket packages for the gig on November 17th.

JACK WHITE GOES ORCHESTRAL

News

Uncut

-

2nd October 2006

0

White Stripes and Raconteurs man Jack White has put together ‘Aluminium’ – an avant-garde album of orchestral recordings. The album – co-produced by Richard Russell and Joby Talbot, the latter formerly of The Divine Comedy - will be available in limited quantities: 3,333 CDs and 999 LPs to be precise, and only through the Aluminium website. The album will come accompanied by a series of 10 special images, created by artist and White Stripes collaborator, Rob Jones. The arty LP format will also feature a silk screen print by Jones. As if that wasn’t enough, choreographer Wayne McGregor has incorporated several tracks from the haunting ‘Aluminium’ into a piece he is putting together for the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden this November. Aluminium will be available for pre-order from November 6th, through XL, also label home to The White Stripes. More details on the classical concept album can be found at www.alumiiinium.com

White Stripes and Raconteurs man Jack White has put together ‘Aluminium’ – an avant-garde album of orchestral recordings.

The album – co-produced by Richard Russell and Joby Talbot, the latter formerly of The Divine Comedy – will be available in limited quantities: 3,333 CDs and 999 LPs to be precise, and only through the Aluminium website.

The album will come accompanied by a series of 10 special images, created by artist and White Stripes collaborator, Rob Jones. The arty LP format will also feature a silk screen print by Jones.

As if that wasn’t enough, choreographer Wayne McGregor has incorporated several tracks from the haunting ‘Aluminium’ into a piece he is putting together for the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden this November.

Aluminium will be available for pre-order from November 6th, through XL, also label home to The White Stripes.

More details on the classical concept album can be found at www.alumiiinium.com

JAMES BLUNT IS TOP OF THE STIFFS

News

Uncut

-

2nd October 2006

0

“Goodbye My Lover” by James Blunt is officially the most popular funeral song request in Britain. Last year’s winner, “Angels” by Robbie Williams, is relegated to second place. The Bereavement Register survey also unearthed a diverse selection of songs in the Top 20, including Daniel O’Donnell’s “Danny Boy” at number 11 and S Club 7’s “Reach For The Stars” marking the kids’ top request at Number 20. Here’s the gloomy yet strangely uplifting Top 10 in full: 1. Goodbye My Lover – James Blunt 2. Angels – Robbie Williams 3. I’ve Had The Time of My Life – Jennifer Warnes & Bill Medley 4. Wind Beneath My Wings – Bette Midler 5. Pie Jesu – Requiem 6. Candle In The Wind – Elton John 7. With Or Without You – U2 8. Tears From Heaven – Eric Clapton 9. Every Breath You Take – The Police 10. Unchained Melody – Righteous Brothers The Bereavement Register helpfully removes names and addresses of the deceased from companies’ mailing lists; to register a relative, visit www.the-beareavent-register.org.uk

“Goodbye My Lover” by James Blunt is officially the most popular funeral song request in Britain. Last year’s winner, “Angels” by Robbie Williams, is relegated to second place.

The Bereavement Register survey also unearthed a diverse selection of songs in the Top 20, including Daniel O’Donnell’s “Danny Boy” at number 11 and S Club 7’s “Reach For The Stars” marking the kids’ top request at Number 20.

Here’s the gloomy yet strangely uplifting Top 10 in full:

1. Goodbye My Lover – James Blunt

2. Angels – Robbie Williams

3. I’ve Had The Time of My Life – Jennifer Warnes & Bill Medley

4. Wind Beneath My Wings – Bette Midler

5. Pie Jesu – Requiem

6. Candle In The Wind – Elton John

7. With Or Without You – U2

8. Tears From Heaven – Eric Clapton

9. Every Breath You Take – The Police

10. Unchained Melody – Righteous Brothers

The Bereavement Register helpfully removes names and addresses of the deceased from companies’ mailing lists; to register a relative, visit www.the-beareavent-register.org.uk

BECK – THE INFORMATION

Uncut

-

29th September 2006

0

Though he may be styled as a maverick, Beck Hansen has stuck to a pretty predictable routine in the decade since Odelay. He releases a hip-hop/pop/blues romp, produced by the Dust Brothers, showcasing his post-modern hipster schtick. Then he follows it up with a faintly ethereal, largely straight-faced singer-songwriter album, helmed by Nigel Godrich. Fine records all, but a little formulaic. Beck’s ninth album represents a twist, of sorts. As the schedule dictates, Godrich is on duty (The Dust Brothers having handled last year’s Guero). But instead of muted introspection, The Information finds Godrich complicit in one of Beck’s elaborate party projects. Stickers allow you to design the sleeve. Daft, cute, lo-fi videos for every track come on a bonus DVD. Puppets dance at the accompanying gigs. As for the music, the first half-dozen songs are terrific, and suggest Godrich has introduced Beck to a crateful of British music he’d hitherto ignored. The glittering synth-pomp of Simple Minds’ “New Gold Dream” is invoked by “Soldier Jane”, while “Loaded”-era Primal Scream are manifest on “Cellphone’s Dead” and “Strange Apparition”. Spooks from old Warp records squelch and hiss in the background throughout. Over 17 tracks, however, something more compromised emerges - a spacey, live reconfiguring of Odelay’s sample-heavy sound. As Radiohead can testify, Godrich’s precise, airless style can add other-worldly gravitas to a conventional rock song. But another former client, Stephen Malkmus, described his work on Pavement’s Terror Twilight as putting “Nigel Godrich swooshing” all over it. Similarly, The Information often feels hygienised and missing some grit: the clanking metal percussion for “1000 BPM” is unencumbered by rust; the harmonica on “Dark Star” tastes resolutely spittle-free. There are plenty of good things here, but there’s also a sense of artist and producer (and Godrich’s presence sometimes overwhelms even Beck) operating in default mode. Only “Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton” totally fulfils the promise of risk-taking: a 12-minute sprawl that takes in ambient jams, disruptive electric guitar, shades of Serge Gainsbourg and Boards Of Canada, the shipping forecast, a conversation between Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, and an edginess that breaks up the prevailing sheen. “There’s a light beaming through the galaxy, telling you everything’s gonna be OK,” Beck claims on “Motorcade”. Once, we’d have taken it as fabulist irony. Now, the thought occurs that it may be Scientologist rhetoric. It’s a paradox that could usher in a tricky and interesting phase of Beck’s career: how best to resolve the realities of his life with the flippancy of his best art? By John Mulvey

Though he may be styled as a maverick, Beck Hansen has stuck to a pretty predictable routine in the decade since Odelay. He releases a hip-hop/pop/blues romp, produced by the Dust Brothers, showcasing his post-modern hipster schtick. Then he follows it up with a faintly ethereal, largely straight-faced singer-songwriter album, helmed by Nigel Godrich. Fine records all, but a little formulaic.

Beck’s ninth album represents a twist, of sorts. As the schedule dictates, Godrich is on duty (The Dust Brothers having handled last year’s Guero). But instead of muted introspection, The Information finds Godrich complicit in one of Beck’s elaborate party projects. Stickers allow you to design the sleeve. Daft, cute, lo-fi videos for every track come on a bonus DVD. Puppets dance at the accompanying gigs. As for the music, the first half-dozen songs are terrific, and suggest Godrich has introduced Beck to a crateful of British music he’d hitherto ignored. The glittering synth-pomp of Simple Minds’ “New Gold Dream” is invoked by “Soldier Jane”, while “Loaded”-era Primal Scream are manifest on “Cellphone’s Dead” and “Strange Apparition”. Spooks from old Warp records squelch and hiss in the background throughout.

Over 17 tracks, however, something more compromised emerges – a spacey, live reconfiguring of Odelay’s sample-heavy sound. As Radiohead can testify, Godrich’s precise, airless style can add other-worldly gravitas to a conventional rock song. But another former client, Stephen Malkmus, described his work on Pavement’s Terror Twilight as putting “Nigel Godrich swooshing” all over it. Similarly, The Information often feels hygienised and missing some grit: the clanking metal percussion for “1000 BPM” is unencumbered by rust; the harmonica on “Dark Star” tastes resolutely spittle-free.

There are plenty of good things here, but there’s also a sense of artist and producer (and Godrich’s presence sometimes overwhelms even Beck) operating in default mode. Only “Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton” totally fulfils the promise of risk-taking: a 12-minute sprawl that takes in ambient jams, disruptive electric guitar, shades of Serge Gainsbourg and Boards Of Canada, the shipping forecast, a conversation between Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, and an edginess that breaks up the prevailing sheen.

“There’s a light beaming through the galaxy, telling you everything’s gonna be OK,” Beck claims on “Motorcade”. Once, we’d have taken it as fabulist irony. Now, the thought occurs that it may be Scientologist rhetoric. It’s a paradox that could usher in a tricky and interesting phase of Beck’s career: how best to resolve the realities of his life with the flippancy of his best art?

By John Mulvey

RYAN ADAMS GOES HIP HOP!

News

Uncut

-

29th September 2006

0

Ryan Adams has streamed a new track online at Ryan-Adams.com called “Look Who's Got A Website” - and it marks yet another surprising new musical direction for the ever-changing Americana singer-songwriter. The track sees Adams trying his hand at rapping in a similar style to Beck. Sounding also a bit like The Beastie Boys, Adams gives shout-outs to New York, Kevin Costner and witches. He also takes the opportunity to rap about his recent albums and the critical maulings and low sales they’ve suffered: "Two and a half star... My record went balsa wood... basically he's alternative country but crappy.” The website has been revamped in a garish ‘80s retro-galactic style – with a Cardinals Radio flight deck to ensure safe passage through a moving cartoon galaxy. Hidden gems on the site include a Space Invaders-style game, while hitting random buttons reveals links to New York weather, Google Earth and geometric visual puzzles. It’s all guaranteed to make your eyes hurt. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Adams is set to play London's Shepherds Bush Empire on Saturday (September 30) - however, it's unclear whether or not he will be on a hip hop tip.

Ryan Adams has streamed a new track online at Ryan-Adams.com called “Look Who’s Got A Website” – and it marks yet another surprising new musical direction for the ever-changing Americana singer-songwriter.

The track sees Adams trying his hand at rapping in a similar style to Beck. Sounding also a bit like The Beastie Boys, Adams gives shout-outs to New York, Kevin Costner and witches.

He also takes the opportunity to rap about his recent albums and the critical maulings and low sales they’ve suffered: “Two and a half star… My record went balsa wood… basically he’s alternative country but crappy.”

The website has been revamped in a garish ‘80s retro-galactic style – with a Cardinals Radio flight deck to ensure safe passage through a moving cartoon galaxy.

Hidden gems on the site include a Space Invaders-style game, while hitting random buttons reveals links to New York weather, Google Earth and geometric visual puzzles.

It’s all guaranteed to make your eyes hurt.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Adams is set to play London’s Shepherds Bush Empire on Saturday (September 30) – however, it’s unclear whether or not he will be on a hip hop tip.

JAZZ LEGEND GETS POSTHUMOUS ACCOLADE

News

Uncut

-

29th September 2006

0

Yesterday (Sep 28) saw Miles Davis inducted into Hollywood’s RockWalk, for his significant contribution to music with landmarks albums such as Kind Of Blue, On The Corner and Bitches Brew. His son Erin Davis was at the induction to accept the special award. Former RockWalk inductee, celebrated guitar wizard Carlos Santana, said of Davis’ recognition, “He represents the very best that the human mind, soul, and spirit have ever conceived.” Previous inductees have included Elvis Presley, Stevie Wonder and B.B. King.

Yesterday (Sep 28) saw Miles Davis inducted into Hollywood’s RockWalk, for his significant contribution to music with landmarks albums such as Kind Of Blue, On The Corner and Bitches Brew.

His son Erin Davis was at the induction to accept the special award.

Former RockWalk inductee, celebrated guitar wizard Carlos Santana, said of Davis’ recognition, “He represents the very best that the human mind, soul, and spirit have ever conceived.”

Previous inductees have included Elvis Presley, Stevie Wonder and B.B. King.

GIG ON A RIG PLANNED BY KATIE MELUA

News

Uncut

-

29th September 2006

0

Katie Melua will attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the deepest underwater concert when she performs a concert at the bottom of the North Sea on October 2nd. The concert will be held at the bottom of one of the four shafts of the Statoil Troll A Platform gas rig, Europe’s largest. They invited Melua to play as part of the gas platform’s 10th anniversary celebrations. In addition to the gas rig staff, the audience will include Craig Glenday, Editor-in Chief of Guinness World Records, to make sure the right criteria are met. Melua will perform a fully live concert in order to be eligible for a Guinness World Record, and will be likely performing tracks from her debut album ‘Call Off The Search’ (from 2004) and its 2005 follow-up ‘Piece By Piece’. Katie Melua is one of Britain’s most successful exports, having sold more than 6 million albums globally. The concert will premiere on Norwegian television. Melua releases a new single, ‘It’s Only Pain’, later this year. www.katiemelua.com

Katie Melua will attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the deepest underwater concert when she performs a concert at the bottom of the North Sea on October 2nd.

The concert will be held at the bottom of one of the four shafts of the Statoil Troll A Platform gas rig, Europe’s largest. They invited Melua to play as part of the gas platform’s 10th anniversary celebrations.

In addition to the gas rig staff, the audience will include Craig Glenday, Editor-in Chief of Guinness World Records, to make sure the right criteria are met.

Melua will perform a fully live concert in order to be eligible for a Guinness World Record, and will be likely performing tracks from her debut album ‘Call Off The Search’ (from 2004) and its 2005 follow-up ‘Piece By Piece’.

Katie Melua is one of Britain’s most successful exports, having sold more than 6 million albums globally.

The concert will premiere on Norwegian television.

Melua releases a new single, ‘It’s Only Pain’, later this year.

www.katiemelua.com

ROBERT PLANT PLAYS BENEFIT SHOW FOR NEIGHBOUR

News

Uncut

-

29th September 2006

0

ROBERT PLANT PLAYS BENEFIT SHOW FOR NEIGHBOUR

Robert Plant is staging a benefit gig at his local town hall, in, of all places, Kidderminster! He hopes to raise £25,000 to help pay for specialist medical treatment required by local resident named Jackie Jennings. Jennings needs treatment for a recurring brain tumour. The kind-hearted Plant heard that she’d already raised £75,000, and so offered to stage the gig as the quickest way to raise the remainder, since time is of the essence. Plant is to be backed by a group of musicians who are billed as "The Return Of The Honeydrippers". 1984’s Return Of The Honeydrippers: Volume One was a Plant solo album. It featured cameos from Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, among others. However, it is not known who the latterday version of The Honeydrippers will be. Plant and Co are booked to play the Kidderminster Town Hall, Worcestershire, on December 23rd.

Robert Plant is staging a benefit gig at his local town hall, in, of all places, Kidderminster!

He hopes to raise £25,000 to help pay for specialist medical treatment required by local resident named Jackie Jennings.

Jennings needs treatment for a recurring brain tumour. The kind-hearted Plant heard that she’d already raised £75,000, and so offered to stage the gig as the quickest way to raise the remainder, since time is of the essence.

Plant is to be backed by a group of musicians who are billed as “The Return Of The Honeydrippers”.

1984’s Return Of The Honeydrippers: Volume One was a Plant solo album. It featured cameos from Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, among others. However, it is not known who the latterday version of The Honeydrippers will be.

Plant and Co are booked to play the Kidderminster Town Hall, Worcestershire, on December 23rd.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

WORLD TRADE CENTER

THE BLACK DAHLIA

Marie Antoinette

Brothers Of The Head

KATIE MELUA’S NEW WORLD RECORD

The La’s – BBC In Session

The Clash – Singles Box Set

The Killers – Sam’s Town

The Who – Endless Wire

THE BEATLES’ NEW LOVE ALBUM

PATTI SMITH SAYS GOODBYE TO CBGBs

BJORK TO REJOIN THE SUGARCUBES

JACK WHITE GOES ORCHESTRAL

JAMES BLUNT IS TOP OF THE STIFFS

BECK – THE INFORMATION

RYAN ADAMS GOES HIP HOP!

JAZZ LEGEND GETS POSTHUMOUS ACCOLADE

GIG ON A RIG PLANNED BY KATIE MELUA

ROBERT PLANT PLAYS BENEFIT SHOW FOR NEIGHBOUR

SHOP UNCUT

Uncut June 2025

The new Ultimate Music Guide: Siouxsie & The Banshees

500 Greatest Albums of the 1950s…Ranked!

Uncut May 2025

Ultimate Record Collection: The Beatles, 1965-1970