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Interview: Karel Reisz

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UNCUT: Dog Soldiers has been called a study in betrayal. How would you define it? REISZ: Heroism in a bad cause. Debra Winger, who knew Nick Nolte from way back, said that you had to have a few beers just to be on the same planet with him. At some point in the read throughs he got the same insigh...

UNCUT: Dog Soldiers has been called a study in betrayal. How would you define it?

REISZ: Heroism in a bad cause.

Debra Winger, who knew Nick Nolte from way back, said that you had to have a few beers just to be on the same planet with him. At some point in the read throughs he got the same insight. Hey – my character drinks.

That wasn’t my experience. I saw Nolte as a Mid-Western farm boy, the sort of fellow who was never happier than when he was fixing things. You could see him getting under a tractor engine with baling wire. For the film, he took a great pride in being able to strip down an automatic weapon and then reassemble it, and he worked on it until he could do it without looking. He’s a practical actor. And I will only speak off the record about Debra Winger who was with Nick in Everybody Wins.

Would you like to film any other Stone novels? A Flag for Sunrise, for example?

I’m afraid not. You couldn’t get the money. Dog Soldiers was a commercial disaster. Minority views expressed in films simply don’t sell tickets. A Flag for Sunrise is an intensely pessimistic novel about US involvement in Central America, and film audiences do not want to know about that. I’m now beginning to feel that the pessimistic vision is not for the movies. I made two films running, The Gambler and Dog Soldiers, both of which had a pessimistic view of life. You end up making films the audience regards as downers, and they don’t go. So, finally, to whom are you doing a favour? If you’re expressing sentiments that find very little echo in the audience, maybe you should be writing novels or doing theatre where the scale of the audience is commensurate with your views.

Of the film-makers like Lindsay Anderson and Tony Richardson who spearheaded British Free Cinema in the Fifties, you’re the one who lasted. You’ve been criticized both for your early ideological approach, and then for your subsequent move to American subjects.

So often the critics assume that one is the lackey of a corrupt system, but in fact a big element of what they regard as one’s conformity is simply a desire to have an audience. It’s a difficult thing to balance out. I like The Gambler and Dog Soldiers very much, but, to be honest, it gets very disheartening to see them open to empty houses. Your heart sinks.

By Brian Case

Dog Soldiers

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Dog Soldiers

Retitled Dog Soldiers for the UK, 1978's Who'll Stop the Rain - based on the Robert Stone novel and directed by Karel Reisz - is a variant on Vietnam vets bringing the madness home. This madness is a consignment of Saigon heroin, and the enemy that the protagonists encounter back on American soil is as lethal as anything they might find in country. The late Karel Reisz elicited great performances from actresses - Redgrave, Streep, Lange - and not only does he get a definitively stoned performance out of Tuesday Weld, but he rescues Nick Nolte from lunkdom. Probably no-one after The Deep saw him as much beyond the ex-college football player he'd been. At 37, he seemed to be going nowhere until he was cast as Ray Hicks, a marine who read Nietzsche and, all alone on the deck of a ship returning from Vietnam, practised martial arts exercises. The part was the first of Nolte's revelations. Here, he's a man of simple loyalties to the flag and, above all, to his friends. John Converse, (Michael Moriarty) a war correspondent, is his buddy, and Hicks allows himself to be persuaded to smuggle two keys of uncut heroin back to the US. Converse's justification is that "in a world where elephants are pursued by flying men, people naturally want to get high." "I didn't think we were that way," objects Hicks." "This is where everybody finds out who they are," explains Converse. "What a bummer for the gooks," replies Hicks. Great script. The first two drafts were by Stone himself. Back in San Francisco with the drugs, Hicks makes contact with Converse's wife, Marge (Weld). Far from the deal being set up, she knows nothing about it and views life through a Dilaudid haze. Hicks takes over as the bad guys working for bent Narcotics Bureau agent Anthiel (Anthony Zerbe) move in. They're lethal clowns, and Ray Sharkey, like Clu Gulager, Lee Marvin's sidekick in The Killers, is memorably uncontrollable. Hicks seeks refuge in a deserted hippy commune in the mountains. It's still wired for concerts, and there's a touching scene where Hicks and Marge barndance to Hank Snow before the shootout begins. With Creedence Clearwater Revival blasting out over gunfire, you may be reminded of Michael Herr's Dispatches in which rock and war are seen to run off the same current. The end is tragic. If Hicks is gung-ho practicality, Converse is a soured, ineffectual intellectual. A typical Stone hero, he enjoys his ironic spin on quotes like "My desire is to serve God and grow rich like all men," but the real man is expressed in the despairing statement, "I've been waiting all my life to foul up like this." He and Marge are yoyos, and Moriarty and Weld play contemptible without qualms. The acting is superb. Reisz, never a flashy director, moves the camera in on Hicks's face as Marge leaves him behind. "The love of my life, no shit. She didn't even say goodbye. How about that?" And, tenderness over, he's back in samurai mode again. "They got my buddy and they're gonna kill that pretty lady. Now how am I gonna allow that!" He takes out their truck with an M-70 grenade launcher. Not as good as the book is the usual complaint about movies. Well, Stone did worse with WUSA. Here, Reisz preserved the frightening story, made his best film, and if he mainly stripped Hicks down to Elmore Leonard's Gunnery Sergeant in The Hunted, there's enough left to hint at the intellectual depths of the novel. By Brian Case

Retitled Dog Soldiers for the UK, 1978’s Who’ll Stop the Rain – based on the Robert Stone novel and directed by Karel Reisz – is a variant on Vietnam vets bringing the madness home. This madness is a consignment of Saigon heroin, and the enemy that the protagonists encounter back on American soil is as lethal as anything they might find in country. The late Karel Reisz elicited great performances from actresses – Redgrave, Streep, Lange – and not only does he get a definitively stoned performance out of Tuesday Weld, but he rescues Nick Nolte from lunkdom. Probably no-one after The Deep saw him as much beyond the ex-college football player he’d been. At 37, he seemed to be going nowhere until he was cast as Ray Hicks, a marine who read Nietzsche and, all alone on the deck of a ship returning from Vietnam, practised martial arts exercises. The part was the first of Nolte’s revelations. Here, he’s a man of simple loyalties to the flag and, above all, to his friends. John Converse, (Michael Moriarty) a war correspondent, is his buddy, and Hicks allows himself to be persuaded to smuggle two keys of uncut heroin back to the US. Converse’s justification is that “in a world where elephants are pursued by flying men, people naturally want to get high.” “I didn’t think we were that way,” objects Hicks.” “This is where everybody finds out who they are,” explains Converse. “What a bummer for the gooks,” replies Hicks. Great script. The first two drafts were by Stone himself. Back in San Francisco with the drugs, Hicks makes contact with Converse’s wife, Marge (Weld). Far from the deal being set up, she knows nothing about it and views life through a Dilaudid haze. Hicks takes over as the bad guys working for bent Narcotics Bureau agent Anthiel (Anthony Zerbe) move in. They’re lethal clowns, and Ray Sharkey, like Clu Gulager, Lee Marvin’s sidekick in The Killers, is memorably uncontrollable. Hicks seeks refuge in a deserted hippy commune in the mountains. It’s still wired for concerts, and there’s a touching scene where Hicks and Marge barndance to Hank Snow before the shootout begins. With Creedence Clearwater Revival blasting out over gunfire, you may be reminded of Michael Herr’s Dispatches in which rock and war are seen to run off the same current. The end is tragic.

If Hicks is gung-ho practicality, Converse is a soured, ineffectual intellectual. A typical Stone hero, he enjoys his ironic spin on quotes like “My desire is to serve God and grow rich like all men,” but the real man is expressed in the despairing statement, “I’ve been waiting all my life to foul up like this.” He and Marge are yoyos, and Moriarty and Weld play contemptible without qualms. The acting is superb. Reisz, never a flashy director, moves the camera in on Hicks’s face as Marge leaves him behind. “The love of my life, no shit. She didn’t even say goodbye. How about that?” And, tenderness over, he’s back in samurai mode again. “They got my buddy and they’re gonna kill that pretty lady. Now how am I gonna allow that!” He takes out their truck with an M-70 grenade launcher.

Not as good as the book is the usual complaint about movies. Well, Stone did worse with WUSA. Here, Reisz preserved the frightening story, made his best film, and if he mainly stripped Hicks down to Elmore Leonard’s Gunnery Sergeant in The Hunted, there’s enough left to hint at the intellectual depths of the novel.

By Brian Case

Interview: Brad Anderson

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UNUCUT: Your film's been compared to Polanski, Hitchcock, Lynch, Kafka and Dostoevsky. You weren't aiming for Shrek 2 then? ANDERSON: Those guys were all on my mind! It's not like I was trying to make a Hitchcock or Polanski movie, but I know the scriptwriter was reading a lot of Eastern European l...

UNUCUT: Your film’s been compared to Polanski, Hitchcock, Lynch, Kafka and Dostoevsky. You weren’t aiming for Shrek 2 then?

ANDERSON: Those guys were all on my mind! It’s not like I was trying to make a Hitchcock or Polanski movie, but I know the scriptwriter was reading a lot of Eastern European literature when he wrote it. There’s definitely a through-line from Crime And Punishment to this film, and you can feel the Kafka influence in the idea of a man who feels he’s the victim of some kind of grand conspiracy. I mean, I came at it with my own style and approach, but maybe some of these guys were psychically on the set… For example, Bale’s landlady says “You used to be such a good tenant…”, so there are subtle Polanski references and innuendos…

Like Memento or Fight Club, this creates its own world, its own intense, off-kilter atmosphere…how do you sustain that?

Equal parts dread and a perverse, dark sense of humour. My marching orders to everyone, from set designers to actors, were to create something along the lines of a waking nightmare. Something that felt weirdly familiar, but also very alienating at the same time. Plus, shooting in Barcelona, we ended up with this strange version of a hybrid American reality. Which matches the sense of dislocation the character has. He’s not sure where he is. There’s no sense of place. That helps the overall spooky feeling. You don’t know even know when you are. There’s a timelessness, with no cellphones ringing or computer screens blinking. And zapping the movie of its colour gives it an old-school monochromatic vibe… It feels like a different reality to the one we’re used to now.

Christian Bale is at first completely unrecognisable in the role… his transformation is almost horrifying…

He went well beyond the call of duty! The character was written that way, he was actually described as “a walking skeleton”. So it was implicit he’d have to lose weight. But even I didn’t expect him to go the extremes he went to! I was grateful though, because it helped the German Expressionist feel. Plus it meant nobody on set could ever complain about anything at all, even when we went down into the unpleasant Spanish sewers, because all they had to do was look at what the lead actor was going through. Also, he didn’t have to act the insomnia too much, because one of the side effects of that drastic weight loss was he didn’t sleep much, and lost the capacity to differentiate colours.

Out on a limb here, but: is there any link between Bale’s name “Trevor Reznik” and…

Trent Reznor? Yeah, sure. Scott, the writer, loves Nine Inch Nails, and his original script had a quote from their lyrics on the first page. He always envisaged it having a Reznor soundtrack too, but I didn’t want to go in that direction. So Scott was maybe playing with the name. You don’t want to take these kind of stories about a man under excruciating torment too seriously. There’s something bizarrely funny about a guy who doesn’t realise he’s in essence a dog chasing his own tail. Sure it’s horrific and disturbing, and you mustn’t break the spell, but there’s also a twisted ridiculousness to his quest.

Interview By Chris Roberts

The Machinist

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The Machinist

Trevor Reznik is in Hell. Or, at least, somewhere very close. A wire-thin factory worker who hasnt slept for a year, he's not living but existing - and only just. Imprisoned in his crappy apartment under bruise-coloured night skies that perpetually crackle with electrical storms, Reznik knows some terrible misdeed has driven him into this hallucinatory state. If only he could remember his crime. Then he might figure out why murderous strangers are stalking him at work. And why his fragile grip on reality seems to be loosening by the hour. Shot in Barcelona but set in a deliberately non-specific netherworld, The Machinist is part psychological horror, part noir mystery and part character study of an extreme social misfit on the cusp of mental breakdown. Not since Memento has there been such an engrossingly murky enigma of a film. Loaded with literary allusions and ominous clues, this is a terrific pulp puzzler with artistic ambitions far above its station - the best kind, in other words. Christian Bale's dramatic physical transformation into Reznik is a key selling point. Shedding four stones on a crash diet, the actor's alarming skin-and-bone appearance threatens to drown out the rest of the movie at times. Razor thin, cheeks sunken into deep hollows, ribcage jutting from his skeletal frame, he's terrifyingly alien and barely recognisable on first sight. He could easily be some reptilian junkie on the brink of death. The emaciated, vampiric ogre in Chris Cunningham's video for Aphex Twin's "Come To Daddy" also springs to mind. Scott Kosar's script requires Reznik to be a haunted soul, shrunk to his very bones by guilt and insomnia. But Bale's alarming act of self-harm throws up other nightmarish echoes that reach far beyond the drama at hand. It's difficult to watch him without being reminded of all the horrors of the modern age: famine, torture, AIDS, even concentration camps. The Machinist may not deserve such weighty associations, but they hover like vultures all the same. In an era when even indie-darling directors stick to the blandest of visual grammar, it's also refreshing to see a movie with such a hardcore aesthetic. The prevailing mood is lo-fi Gothic meets industrial grunge. The palette is slate greys and steely blues, desaturated and grubby, drained of life and daylight. The colours of grime and punishment. Some reviews have dismissed Anderson's grim fairy tale as post-MTV fluff, all designer despair with no substance. But the same accusation might be leveled at supreme stylists like Ridley Scott, David Fincher or Darren Aronofsky. The film's nocturnal, subterranean look is also perfectly in keeping with Reznik's purgatorial worldview. Whatever Freudian monster is gnawing at his conscience, it isn't going to be pretty. At times, The Machinist is stunningly beautiful in its ugliness. Along the way, Anderson throws in nudge-nudge references to Dostoevsky and Kafka, but Herman Melville's Bartleby probably also merits a mention. Likewise Fincher's Seven, Aronofksy's Requiem For A Dream, Polanski's Repulsion and Lynch's Lost Highway. Not to mention a raft of rock videos for Prodigy, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica and their ilk. Leigh proves her indie-queen credentials once more as the drowsy, downbeat hooker who tends to Reznik in his lonely hours. Aitana Sánchez-Gijón plays the all-night waitress who seems to offer redemption - and there is a redemption, of sorts. In fact, the fractured plot elements of The Machinist eventually align themselves into a fairly straight Twilight Zone twist that may leave some viewers underwhelmed. But reaching this destination is less important than the journey. And what a weird, dark, savage trip it is. By Stephen Dalton

Trevor Reznik is in Hell. Or, at least, somewhere very close. A wire-thin factory worker who hasnt slept for a year, he’s not living but existing – and only just. Imprisoned in his crappy apartment under bruise-coloured night skies that perpetually crackle with electrical storms, Reznik knows some terrible misdeed has driven him into this hallucinatory state. If only he could remember his crime. Then he might figure out why murderous strangers are stalking him at work. And why his fragile grip on reality seems to be loosening by the hour.

Shot in Barcelona but set in a deliberately non-specific netherworld, The Machinist is part psychological horror, part noir mystery and part character study of an extreme social misfit on the cusp of mental breakdown. Not since Memento has there been such an engrossingly murky enigma of a film. Loaded with literary allusions and ominous clues, this is a terrific pulp puzzler with artistic ambitions far above its station – the best kind, in other words.

Christian Bale’s dramatic physical transformation into Reznik is a key selling point. Shedding four stones on a crash diet, the actor’s alarming skin-and-bone appearance threatens to drown out the rest of the movie at times. Razor thin, cheeks sunken into deep hollows, ribcage jutting from his skeletal frame, he’s terrifyingly alien and barely recognisable on first sight. He could easily be some reptilian junkie on the brink of death. The emaciated, vampiric ogre in Chris Cunningham’s video for Aphex Twin’s “Come To Daddy” also springs to mind.

Scott Kosar’s script requires Reznik to be a haunted soul, shrunk to his very bones by guilt and insomnia. But Bale’s alarming act of self-harm throws up other nightmarish echoes that reach far beyond the drama at hand. It’s difficult to watch him without being reminded of all the horrors of the modern age: famine, torture, AIDS, even concentration camps. The Machinist may not deserve such weighty associations, but they hover like vultures all the same.

In an era when even indie-darling directors stick to the blandest of visual grammar, it’s also refreshing to see a movie with such a hardcore aesthetic. The prevailing mood is lo-fi Gothic meets industrial grunge. The palette is slate greys and steely blues, desaturated and grubby, drained of life and daylight. The colours of grime and punishment.

Some reviews have dismissed Anderson’s grim fairy tale as post-MTV fluff, all designer despair with no substance. But the same accusation might be leveled at supreme stylists like Ridley Scott, David Fincher or Darren Aronofsky. The film’s nocturnal, subterranean look is also perfectly in keeping with Reznik’s purgatorial worldview. Whatever Freudian monster is gnawing at his conscience, it isn’t going to be pretty. At times, The Machinist is stunningly beautiful in its ugliness.

Along the way, Anderson throws in nudge-nudge references to Dostoevsky and Kafka, but Herman Melville’s Bartleby probably also merits a mention. Likewise Fincher’s Seven, Aronofksy’s Requiem For A Dream, Polanski’s Repulsion and Lynch’s Lost Highway. Not to mention a raft of rock videos for Prodigy, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica and their ilk.

Leigh proves her indie-queen credentials once more as the drowsy, downbeat hooker who tends to Reznik in his lonely hours. Aitana Sánchez-Gijón plays the all-night waitress who seems to offer redemption – and there is a redemption, of sorts. In fact, the fractured plot elements of The Machinist eventually align themselves into a fairly straight Twilight Zone twist that may leave some viewers underwhelmed. But reaching this destination is less important than the journey. And what a weird, dark, savage trip it is.

By Stephen Dalton

Interview: Marc Riley

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UNCUT: What are your memories of The Fall’s very first Peel session in 1978? RILEY: I didn’t play on it, I came along as a roadie. That was when the bass player, Eric Ferret, left the band because we brought along a bloke on congas. This was Mark’s ruse to up the session fee by bringing along...

UNCUT: What are your memories of The Fall’s very first Peel session in 1978?

RILEY: I didn’t play on it, I came along as a roadie. That was when the bass player, Eric Ferret, left the band because we brought along a bloke on congas. This was Mark’s ruse to up the session fee by bringing along extra musicians. Anyway, Eric saw these congas in the back of the van and said he wasn’t going. But this was after he’d stopped playing halfway through a gig and Mark threw a chair at him, so I think his days were numbered. The next session after that, which is still my favourite, I joined on bass.

Do you have any contact with Mark E Smith these days?

We don’t see each other, no, though we half made up at a friend’s birthday party a few years ago. We’d both had a few drinks and it was like ‘”life’s too short”, we had a great night. He might tell you different, of course. But I was booted out of The Fall in 1983 so I’m probably not the best person to comment on Mark E Smith!

Tom Russell – Hotwalker

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Tom Russell – Hotwalker

A musical companion to Russell’s forthcoming book Tough Company – poetry, short stories and the collected correspondence between the LA-born songsmith and Charles Bukowski – Hotwalker is a colossal achievement. Part Two of Russell’s Americana trilogy that began with his own ancestral folk opera (1999’s The Man From God Knows Where), this is a headlong journey into the soul of "the old America, where the Big Guilt, political correctness and chainstores hadn’t sunk in so deep". Narrated and linked by Russell, it’s the lost post-war landscape of Beat pioneers, outsider poets and drunken angels – interspersed with snippets of Lenny Bruce, Bukowski, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, hobo composer Harry Partch, Edward Abbey and Kerouac. Most strikingly, it’s a carnival-midget speedfreak – Little Jack Horton – who plays Dean Moriarty to Russell’s Sal Paradise. The pair first met on a circus train in the ‘70s. Horton’s tall tales of lost weekends with Bukowski and stealing freight trains in the dead of night serve less as factual fodder than a musical voice on the scales of a disappearing world (indeed, Horton died shortly after his contributions here). The soundtrack is a grand sweep of American history: spooked parlour songs, Jesus ballads, loping carousel waltzes, Mexicali, raw folk-blues, country and squawking jazz. So a tough-love tribute to Dylan mentor and Greenwich Village Pope, Dave Van Ronk (with a snatch of the latter’s "Sportin’ Life Blues") nestles alongside "Bakersfield", a nod and a twang to Buck Owens, Gram Parsons and countless Okies "hopped up on moonshine and amphetamines". The reefer madness of "Border Lights" dives into "that delicious dark-eyed myth" of 1950s Mexico, high on cheap rum and forbidden dreams. Russell gets stellar musical back-up from Gretchen Peters (particularly on poignantly-rendered closer, "America The Beautiful"), Fats Kaplin on fiddle, accordion and pedal steel and Andrew Hardin on guitar, streaming into the recorded consciousness of Kerouac reading "October In The Railroad Earth" and Bukowski doing "On The Hustle". They should seal this in a vault for posterity.

A musical companion to Russell’s forthcoming book Tough Company – poetry, short stories and the collected correspondence between the LA-born songsmith and Charles Bukowski – Hotwalker is a colossal achievement. Part Two of Russell’s Americana trilogy that began with his own ancestral folk opera (1999’s The Man From God Knows Where), this is a headlong journey into the soul of “the old America, where the Big Guilt, political correctness and chainstores hadn’t sunk in so deep”. Narrated and linked by Russell, it’s the lost post-war landscape of Beat pioneers, outsider poets and drunken angels – interspersed with snippets of Lenny Bruce, Bukowski, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, hobo composer Harry Partch, Edward Abbey and Kerouac.

Most strikingly, it’s a carnival-midget speedfreak – Little Jack Horton – who plays Dean Moriarty to Russell’s Sal Paradise. The pair first met on a circus train in the ‘70s. Horton’s tall tales of lost weekends with Bukowski and stealing freight trains in the dead of night serve less as factual fodder than a musical voice on the scales of a disappearing world (indeed, Horton died shortly after his contributions here). The soundtrack is a grand sweep of American history: spooked parlour songs, Jesus ballads, loping carousel waltzes, Mexicali, raw folk-blues, country and squawking jazz. So a tough-love tribute to Dylan mentor and Greenwich Village Pope, Dave Van Ronk (with a snatch of the latter’s “Sportin’ Life Blues”) nestles alongside “Bakersfield”, a nod and a twang to Buck Owens, Gram Parsons and countless Okies “hopped up on moonshine and amphetamines”. The reefer madness of “Border Lights” dives into “that delicious dark-eyed myth” of 1950s Mexico, high on cheap rum and forbidden dreams.

Russell gets stellar musical back-up from Gretchen Peters (particularly on poignantly-rendered closer, “America The Beautiful”), Fats Kaplin on fiddle, accordion and pedal steel and Andrew Hardin on guitar, streaming into the recorded consciousness of Kerouac reading “October In The Railroad Earth” and Bukowski doing “On The Hustle”. They should seal this in a vault for posterity.

The Fall – The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004

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The Fall – The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004

Within hours of the news of John Peel’s death at the age of 65 on October 25, 2004, The Undertones’ "Teenage Kicks" had, by virtue of radio and TV news bulletins, selected itself as the nation’s official requiem. His favourite song, it later took precedent during his funeral service while, in accordance with his wishes, its opening lyric would be inscribed upon the DJ’s headstone. But as anyone who ever listened to his show on a regular basis for any given period since 1978 will tell you, the ultimate Peelie band wasn’t The Undertones: it was the "mighty" Fall. Besides Mark E. Smith, John Peel was the only other stable factor in The Fall’s epic career (28 years and counting). Regardless of line-up, label or whether it really was Smith "and yer Granny on bongos", so long as it was, in name, The Fall, Peel could always be relied upon to give them precious airspace on the BBC. Sentimental tosh aside, you couldn’t ask for a more fitting tribute to the man, or the object of his affection, than this monolithic compendium of all 24 sessions The Fall recorded for his programme between May 1978 and August 2004. Likewise, this plays like the first successful attempt to anthologise the band’s often bamboozling history, pinpointing the various halcyon peaks and turbulent troughs. It’s no surprise, for example, that on the two sessions circa 1985’s masterpiece This Nation’s Saving Grace, Smith sounds invincible (introducing "L.A." with the barmy declaration that "Lloyd Cole’s-ah brain and face is made of cowpat”). In contrast, that from late ’98 is an absolute shambles: the drunken din of a band on the brink of collapse and, sure enough, a few months later in New York, they would. But when The Fall were on form, Peel caught them at their very best. The bulk of these BBC tracks easily rival their vinyl equivalents, or in the case of 1980’s radio ham psycho-drama "New Face In Hell" and the brisk, Brix-ed up remake of "The Man Whose Head Expanded", actually surpass them. Then there’s the glut of rarities: rough drafts, lost songs (eg 1984’s previously unreleased "Words Of Expectation") and idiosyncratic covers of everything from Coast To Coast’s "Do The Hucklebuck" ("Hassle Schmuk") to a seriously weird "Hark The Herald Angels Sing". Though desperately eclectic, even by The Fall’s abstruse standards, it’s hard to imagine a more satisfying or comprehensive career overview than this. As for the irreplaceable Peel, these discs say more about the man’s broadcasting ethos than a thousand broadsheet obituaries. Teenage dreams being so very hard to beat, this gives them a bloody good run for their money. By Simon Goddard

Within hours of the news of John Peel’s death at the age of 65 on October 25, 2004, The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks” had, by virtue of radio and TV news bulletins, selected itself as the nation’s official requiem. His favourite song, it later took precedent during his funeral service while, in accordance with his wishes, its opening lyric would be inscribed upon the DJ’s headstone.

But as anyone who ever listened to his show on a regular basis for any given period since 1978 will tell you, the ultimate Peelie band wasn’t The Undertones: it was the “mighty” Fall. Besides Mark E. Smith, John Peel was the only other stable factor in The Fall’s epic career (28 years and counting). Regardless of line-up, label or whether it really was Smith “and yer Granny on bongos”, so long as it was, in name, The Fall, Peel could always be relied upon to give them precious airspace on the BBC.

Sentimental tosh aside, you couldn’t ask for a more fitting tribute to the man, or the object of his affection, than this monolithic compendium of all 24 sessions The Fall recorded for his programme between May 1978 and August 2004. Likewise, this plays like the first successful attempt to anthologise the band’s often bamboozling history, pinpointing the various halcyon peaks and turbulent troughs. It’s no surprise, for example, that on the two sessions circa 1985’s masterpiece This Nation’s Saving Grace, Smith sounds invincible (introducing “L.A.” with the barmy declaration that “Lloyd Cole’s-ah brain and face is made of cowpat”). In contrast, that from late ’98 is an absolute shambles: the drunken din of a band on the brink of collapse and, sure enough, a few months later in New York, they would.

But when The Fall were on form, Peel caught them at their very best. The bulk of these BBC tracks easily rival their vinyl equivalents, or in the case of 1980’s radio ham psycho-drama “New Face In Hell” and the brisk, Brix-ed up remake of “The Man Whose Head Expanded”, actually surpass them. Then there’s the glut of rarities: rough drafts, lost songs (eg 1984’s previously unreleased “Words Of Expectation”) and idiosyncratic covers of everything from Coast To Coast’s “Do The Hucklebuck” (“Hassle Schmuk”) to a seriously weird “Hark The Herald Angels Sing”. Though desperately eclectic, even by The Fall’s abstruse standards, it’s hard to imagine a more satisfying or comprehensive career overview than this.

As for the irreplaceable Peel, these discs say more about the man’s broadcasting ethos than a thousand broadsheet obituaries. Teenage dreams being so very hard to beat, this gives them a bloody good run for their money.

By Simon Goddard

Interview: Solomon Burke

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Interview: Solomon Burke
UNCUT: Were you surprised by the success of Don't Give Up On Me? SOLOMON BURKE: I'm still amazed people remembered and didn't give up on me. It was a special record at a special moment in my life that I'll always cherish. How did you choose the songs? I got real lucky because Don Was was there to...

UNCUT: Were you surprised by the success of Don’t Give Up On Me?

SOLOMON BURKE: I’m still amazed people remembered and didn’t give up on me. It was a special record at a special moment in my life that I’ll always cherish.

How did you choose the songs?

I got real lucky because Don Was was there to help. Initially we chose 47 songs and then got it down from there to what you hear on the record..

And 40 years after the Stones covered you, here you are covering them…

I don’t know how I had the audacity!

Did Dr John write the title track especially for you?

Yes, and he delivered it in person. I’ll never forget it because it was the day Ray Charles died.

With Ray gone, does that make you the last of the great soul survivors?

That’s a heavy thought but it’s an incredible moment in time for me just to be here.

Interview by Nigel Williamson

Solomon Burke – Make Do With What You Got

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Solomon Burke – Make Do With What You Got

When something works as well as Solomon Burke's 2002 renaissance, Don't Give Up On Me, the temptation to repeat the formula is irresistible. That album appeared on indie label Fat Possum. Then it wins a Grammy, and Sony muscles in and employs producer Don Was to make part two in the safe knowledge that the template can't really fail. Take the last of the classic '60s soul singers and a bunch of songs by the most literate writers of our age and glowing reviews will follow as surely as night succeeds day. And, of course, Burke doesn't fail. Was does his bit, too, brilliantly coaxing an authentic '60s Memphis stew from the band. Yet there's a lurking suspiscion of contrivance here, as opposed to the joyous spontaneity that characterised Don't Give Up On Me. On that album, Burke sounded genuinely thrilled that the likes of Dylan, Van Morrison, Costello, Waits and Brian Wilson should remember him, let alone supply him with songs. Here you suspect the heavy hand of A&R arm-twisting. They've gone back to Dylan, but this time he didn't have a new song, so Burke covers "What Good Am I?" It's a noble version, but it doesn't have the excitement of an unheard composition. True, Dr John (who wrote the title track) and Morrison (who additionally penned the liner notes) contribute new songs. But covering "I Got The Blues" from Sticky Fingers smacks of a stunt: 'Hey, 40 years ago the Stones sang Solomon's Everybody Needs Somebody To Love. What a great story if he now returned the Compliment. . .' If only all the choices were as inspired as his heartfelt rendition of Hank Williams' cautionary “Wealth Won't Save Your Soul”. But objectively, the difference is more of nuance more than substance. At 64, Burke still has the mightiest voice you've heard since Otis died. And if you loved Don't Give Up On Me, you're unlikely to be disappointed with Make Do With What You Got. By Nigel Williamson

When something works as well as Solomon Burke’s 2002 renaissance, Don’t Give Up On Me, the temptation to repeat the formula is irresistible. That album appeared on indie label Fat Possum. Then it wins a Grammy, and Sony muscles in and employs producer Don Was to make part two in the safe knowledge that the template can’t really fail. Take the last of the classic ’60s soul singers and a bunch of songs by the most literate writers of our age and glowing reviews will follow as surely as night succeeds day. And, of course, Burke doesn’t fail. Was does his bit, too, brilliantly coaxing an authentic ’60s Memphis stew from the band. Yet there’s a lurking suspiscion of contrivance here, as opposed to the joyous spontaneity that characterised Don’t Give Up On Me. On that album, Burke sounded genuinely thrilled that the likes of Dylan, Van Morrison, Costello, Waits and Brian Wilson should remember him, let alone supply him with songs. Here you suspect the heavy hand of A&R arm-twisting. They’ve gone back to Dylan, but this time he didn’t have a new song, so Burke covers “What Good Am I?” It’s a noble version, but it doesn’t have the excitement of an unheard composition.

True, Dr John (who wrote the title track) and Morrison (who additionally penned the liner notes) contribute new songs. But covering “I Got The Blues” from Sticky Fingers smacks of a stunt: ‘Hey, 40 years ago the Stones sang Solomon’s Everybody Needs Somebody To Love. What a great story if he now returned the Compliment. . .’ If only all the choices were as inspired as his heartfelt rendition of Hank Williams’ cautionary “Wealth Won’t Save Your Soul”.

But objectively, the difference is more of nuance more than substance. At 64, Burke still has the mightiest voice you’ve heard since Otis died. And if you loved Don’t Give Up On Me, you’re unlikely to be disappointed with Make Do With What You Got.

By Nigel Williamson

Interview: Rufus Wainwright

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Interview: Rufus Wainwright
UNCUT: Is Want Two in any way the flipside to, or a contrast to, Want One? Or is it just a companion collection? "I see it as kind of a yin to the other’s yang. It’s sort of the shadow or the dark side. It’s the feminine to Want One’s masculine. Both are them are still trying to be somewhat...

UNCUT: Is Want Two in any way the flipside to, or a contrast to, Want One? Or is it just a companion collection?

“I see it as kind of a yin to the other’s yang. It’s sort of the shadow or the dark side. It’s the feminine to Want One’s masculine. Both are them are still trying to be somewhat grandiose, but whereas the first record was centred around my own personal struggles, this one is much more of a view of the outside world and how dark it still is.”

Are you happy with the balance you’ve struck between rock and pre-rock arrangements on the Want albums? “Little Sister” could have been written by Mozart.

“My voice is somewhat ravenous and tends to require blood in order to survive, so I like singing stuff that’s challenging, but also that people want to hear.”

Did you know Jeff Buckley at all or is “Memphis Skyline” a kind of homoerotic fantasy?

“I met him once and we hung out and he died not long after. I hated him when he first came out. I thought he was riffy and kind of boring and I didn’t really get it. But there was also a deeper rivalry with Buckley that existed in my mind. I don’t know if we could outsing each other, but it would have been interesting to have had a singing competition with him.”

What did Van Dyke Parks, who had so much to do with your first album, do on Want Two?

“He did the arrangement for “Little Sister”. He told me when I started out, “Rufus, in Japan there’s a saying: ‘It’s the nail that sticks out that gets hammered down the hardest.’ “That’s always helped me.”

Is homosexuality becoming more or less of an issue for you as your career develops? Do you still want to be a “Gay Messiah”?

“Well, unfortunately I think that homosexuality has become a paramount issue in the future of the United States. I truly believe that for the voters who voted Bush back into power, the real enemy isn’t terrorists but gay people and women. Someone asked me the other day if I felt like a Jew before the Holocaust and I said ‘No, I feel like a homosexual before the Holocaust’.”

Do you feel any more or less encouraged by the state of the music industry than you did when you started out?

“I think it all kinda comes out in the wash. My parents’ generation had so much opportunity – every one of their friends was a songwriter with a record deal – but in a weird way that kind of distorted what they did because they could never get over the fact that the party was over. So I feel in a strange way that I’m lucky now because it is so hard to reach the top if you’re doing something on your own with your own theories and your own passion and not just sitting there at some computer. You’ve got a wall to bash up against, and I think I like that better.”

By Barney Hoskyns

Rufus Wainwright – Want Two

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Rufus Wainwright – Want Two

Late last year, Rufus Wainwright was a guest on Tom Robinson’s BBC6 radio show, answering questions about music and celebrity while pointedly avoiding allusion to his host’s former incarnation as the author of "Glad To Be Gay". At the same time, Robinson - The Boy Who Should Have Been Loudon IV, remember - managed to be splendidly catty about Dame David Bowie, heavily implying that the sometime "bisexual" had felt threatened by the younger, flamingly out-there singer. Tetchy queen that Rufus can be, how great to have a truly gay, unapologetically effeminate Star at last: no sly closet clues required for this diva. But he’s much more than that. Rufus Wainwright, spawn of Loudon and (perhaps more importantly) Kate McGarrigle, has ten times the talent of admirer Elton John – or even of a Jobriath. This torch-song troubadour, trading in elegant melancholia, is one of the only great singer-songwriters working in pop music today. With that effortless tenor – bel canto with a vital edge of petulance – he’s Thom Yorke reborn on the stage of La Scala. In this facile pop-idol age when actual talent counts for so little, Rufus’ extravagant gifts should be clung to like life rafts. Part-throwback to a golden era of post-folk-boom auteurs - of which his parents were a core part - he has veteran nurturer Lenny Waronker to thank for shepherding him through three stunning albums to get to this latest one. Many an A&R department would have gone cold on him, reneging on their duty to let talent flower at its own right pace. When Wainwright came out with his self-titled 1998 debut, it was instantly clear that he had craft and schooled sophistication in spades. Here was a beautiful voice singing songs with artful arrangements, aided by the likes of Jon Brion and the venerable Van Dyke Parks. What wasn’t clear was how Rufus was going to get on the radio, a dilemma that 2001’s Poses partially solved by dispensing with the palm-court Parks factor and replacing with it with bluesy guitars, Propellerheads collaborations and the like. Reassuringly, Want One (2003) revealed the sheer spectrum of his musical palette. Rufus’ talent hadn’t contracted in pursuit of the commercial rewards his narcissism demanded. He’d stayed faithful to his swooning muse, to a place where Radiohead met Mahler. Here was bold pop ("I Don’t Know What It Is"), pouty self-pity ("Pretty Things"), delicious pathos ("Vibrate") and searing intensity ("Go Or Go Ahead"), all bathed in luscious orch-pop soundscapes. It confirmed once and for all that Wainwright was more than a mannerist: that a genuine ache, a yearning sorrow, lay in his ravaged heart. Want Two is more, and even better, of the same - one of the dead-cert Albums of The Year. Echoing the cover of One, Two gives us the other side of Rufus’ androgynous split-self: an armoured knight for Want One, on Two he’s a bereft and possibly ravaged damsel, laid out on a bed of straw. On "The Art Teacher", recorded live in Montreal, Rufus sings in the guise of a Desperate Housewife – wearing a "uniformish pantsuit sort of thing" – harking back to a schoolgirl crush on the man who led her around the Metropolitan Museum looking at Rubens and Rembrandt. On the baroque "Little Sister", with its ornate ballroom string arrangement, he dresses up memories of early musical education with sibling Martha and asks her to "remember that your brother is a boy". Elsewhere Wainwright is gleefully Queer: the Second Coming of "Gay Messiah" ("No, I won’t be the one/Baptized in cum"), the power breakfast of "Old Whore’s Diet", featuring fellow Gothamite Antony (repaying Rufus’ cameo on I Am a Bird Now’s "What Can I Do?"). Squeamish homophobes out there shouldn’t be put off: hearing Want Two might even cure them of their benighted prejudices. It’s an album brimming over with beauty. With its scraped-viola intro and impassioned Arabic feel, "Agnus Dei" serves as a sort of overture, Rufus soaring like a debauched monk over swelling strings and rippling pianos. Single "The One You Love" sets off like vintage Squeeze before flowing into a declaration of devotion as glisteningly pretty as "Grey Gardens" or "I Don’t Know What It Is". Wouldn’t it be a treat to see Rufus on Top Of The Pops? The keynote feel of Want Two, though, is of what the great James Wood calls "measured lament": the sound of Wainwright at the piano, "tired of waiting in restaurants/Reading the critics and comics alone" ("Peach Trees"), "bruising from you" ("This Love Affair"), or simply "waiting… for the present to pass" ("Waiting for a Dream"). If Want One was all seedy Gotham glam, Want Two is the aftermath of that album’s restless wanderlust. Most moving of all is "Memphis Skyline", an elegy for another beautiful boy blessed with more than mere attitude and exhibitionism. "Always hated him for the way he looked/in the gaslight of the morning," Rufus croons of Jeff Buckley, to whom this is a sweetly homoerotic tribute: "So kiss me, my darling, stay with me till morning…" If I have any quibbles it’s that Wainwright’s swishiness is sometimes too obviously a mask. Will the real Rufus Wainwright ever step out from behind it and give us his feelings pure and unadorned? That might be when he becomes a truly great artist. And can Rufus break through? Supporting Keane on their upcoming Euro tour is something of a gamble. I’m not saying he’ll be bottled offstage, but the whole point about Keane is that they provide ersatz Jeff Buckley emotion for students who wouldn’t know real beauty or feeling if it came in Alcopop bottles. Having said that, the live Fillmore DVD that comes free with Want Two – with its version of (Jeff Buckley’s version of) Leonard Cohen’s "Hallelujah" – makes it plain: Wainwright could hold his own with any headliner on earth. By Barney Hoskyns

Late last year, Rufus Wainwright was a guest on Tom Robinson’s BBC6 radio show, answering questions about music and celebrity while pointedly avoiding allusion to his host’s former incarnation as the author of “Glad To Be Gay”. At the same time, Robinson – The Boy Who Should Have Been Loudon IV, remember – managed to be splendidly catty about Dame David Bowie, heavily implying that the sometime “bisexual” had felt threatened by the younger, flamingly out-there singer.

Tetchy queen that Rufus can be, how great to have a truly gay, unapologetically effeminate Star at last: no sly closet clues required for this diva.

But he’s much more than that. Rufus Wainwright, spawn of Loudon and (perhaps more importantly) Kate McGarrigle, has ten times the talent of admirer Elton John – or even of a Jobriath. This torch-song troubadour, trading in elegant melancholia, is one of the only great singer-songwriters working in pop music today. With that effortless tenor – bel canto with a vital edge of petulance – he’s Thom Yorke reborn on the stage of La Scala.

In this facile pop-idol age when actual talent counts for so little, Rufus’ extravagant gifts should be clung to like life rafts. Part-throwback to a golden era of post-folk-boom auteurs – of which his parents were a core part – he has veteran nurturer Lenny Waronker to thank for shepherding him through three stunning albums to get to this latest one. Many an A&R department would have gone cold on him, reneging on their duty to let talent flower at its own right pace.

When Wainwright came out with his self-titled 1998 debut, it was instantly clear that he had craft and schooled sophistication in spades. Here was a beautiful voice singing songs with artful arrangements, aided by the likes of Jon Brion and the venerable Van Dyke Parks. What wasn’t clear was how Rufus was going to get on the radio, a dilemma that 2001’s Poses partially solved by dispensing with the palm-court Parks factor and replacing with it with bluesy guitars, Propellerheads collaborations and the like.

Reassuringly, Want One (2003) revealed the sheer spectrum of his musical palette. Rufus’ talent hadn’t contracted in pursuit of the commercial rewards his narcissism demanded. He’d stayed faithful to his swooning muse, to a place where Radiohead met Mahler. Here was bold pop (“I Don’t Know What It Is”), pouty self-pity (“Pretty Things”), delicious pathos (“Vibrate”) and searing intensity (“Go Or Go Ahead”), all bathed in luscious orch-pop soundscapes. It confirmed once and for all that Wainwright was more than a mannerist: that a genuine ache, a yearning sorrow, lay in his ravaged heart.

Want Two is more, and even better, of the same – one of the dead-cert Albums of The Year. Echoing the cover of One, Two gives us the other side of Rufus’ androgynous split-self: an armoured knight for Want One, on Two he’s a bereft and possibly ravaged damsel, laid out on a bed of straw. On “The Art Teacher”, recorded live in Montreal, Rufus sings in the guise of a Desperate Housewife – wearing a “uniformish pantsuit sort of thing” – harking back to a schoolgirl crush on the man who led her around the Metropolitan Museum looking at Rubens and Rembrandt. On the baroque “Little Sister”, with its ornate ballroom string arrangement, he dresses up memories of early musical education with sibling Martha and asks her to “remember that your brother is a boy”.

Elsewhere Wainwright is gleefully Queer: the Second Coming of “Gay Messiah” (“No, I won’t be the one/Baptized in cum”), the power breakfast of “Old Whore’s Diet”, featuring fellow Gothamite Antony (repaying Rufus’ cameo on I Am a Bird Now’s “What Can I Do?”). Squeamish homophobes out there shouldn’t be put off: hearing Want Two might even cure them of their benighted prejudices.

It’s an album brimming over with beauty. With its scraped-viola intro and impassioned Arabic feel, “Agnus Dei” serves as a sort of overture, Rufus soaring like a debauched monk over swelling strings and rippling pianos. Single “The One You Love” sets off like vintage Squeeze before flowing into a declaration of devotion as glisteningly pretty as “Grey Gardens” or “I Don’t Know What It Is”. Wouldn’t it be a treat to see Rufus on Top Of The Pops?

The keynote feel of Want Two, though, is of what the great James Wood calls “measured lament”: the sound of Wainwright at the piano, “tired of waiting in restaurants/Reading the critics and comics alone” (“Peach Trees”), “bruising from you” (“This Love Affair”), or simply “waiting… for the present to pass” (“Waiting for a Dream”). If Want One was all seedy Gotham glam, Want Two is the aftermath of that album’s restless wanderlust.

Most moving of all is “Memphis Skyline”, an elegy for another beautiful boy blessed with more than mere attitude and exhibitionism. “Always hated him for the way he looked/in the gaslight of the morning,” Rufus croons of Jeff Buckley, to whom this is a sweetly homoerotic tribute: “So kiss me, my darling, stay with me till morning…”

If I have any quibbles it’s that Wainwright’s swishiness is sometimes too obviously a mask. Will the real Rufus Wainwright ever step out from behind it and give us his feelings pure and unadorned? That might be when he becomes a truly great artist.

And can Rufus break through? Supporting Keane on their upcoming Euro tour is something of a gamble. I’m not saying he’ll be bottled offstage, but the whole point about Keane is that they provide ersatz Jeff Buckley emotion for students who wouldn’t know real beauty or feeling if it came in Alcopop bottles. Having said that, the live Fillmore DVD that comes free with Want Two – with its version of (Jeff Buckley’s version of) Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” – makes it plain: Wainwright could hold his own with any headliner on earth.

By Barney Hoskyns

V For Vendetta

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Legendary 1980s graphic novel V For Vendetta is being brought to the big screen by the team behind the Matrix trilogy. Currently shooting in Berlin and London, Alan Moore's parable about a masked freedom fighter battling the authorities in a fascist-run Britain has been scripted by Andy and Larry Wachowski. Other Matrix veterans behind the camera include producer Joel Silver and assistant director James McTeigue, who’s taking charge of his first full feature. James Purefoy will play the charismatic, mysterious V, while Natalie Portman co-stars as his confidante Evey. "It’s going to be a very challenging role," Purefoy told a press conference on March 4 at Babelsberg studios near Berlin, where the bulk of shooting will take place. "You will never see my face, and I think that’s something that the fans of the comic book will be really pleased about. You should never see the guy’s face because that makes him infinitely more mysterious." Drawn by artist David Lloyd, V For Vendetta made its debut in the short-lived early 1980s comic Warrior, and was finally published in full by DC in 1988. Speaking from a soundstage designed to resemble the roof of the Old Bailey, McTeigue insisted the film will stick closely to Moore’s dark vision. "It’s very close to Alan Moore’s graphic novel," the director said. "Like all great adaptations for film there are things you have to lose and things you have to keep. But it runs very close to what Alan Moore wrote and what he was trying to say." A disgruntled Moore has disowned several previous features based on his work, including From Hell and the recent Keanu Reeves thriller Constantine. But Silver said the author is being supportive of V For Vendetta, which the producer claims will be more "people centric" and less effects-driven than the Matrix trilogy. "Larry Wachowski has been speaking to Alan about it," Silver said. "He hasn’t been very happy with some of the movies that have been made from his comic books, but he was very excited about Larry and Andy’s script. We hope to see him at some point when we’re in the UK. We’d just like him to know what we’re doing, and be part of what we’re trying to do." Fans of the original comic will also be delighted to hear that V For Vendetta is scheduled to open on November 4th, just in time for the 400th anniversary of The Gunpowder Plot. By Stephen Dalton

Legendary 1980s graphic novel V For Vendetta is being brought to the big screen by the team behind the Matrix trilogy. Currently shooting in Berlin and London, Alan Moore’s parable about a masked freedom fighter battling the authorities in a fascist-run Britain has been scripted by Andy and Larry Wachowski. Other Matrix veterans behind the camera include producer Joel Silver and assistant director James McTeigue, who’s taking charge of his first full feature. James Purefoy will play the charismatic, mysterious V, while Natalie Portman co-stars as his confidante Evey.

“It’s going to be a very challenging role,” Purefoy told a press conference on March 4 at Babelsberg studios near Berlin, where the bulk of shooting will take place. “You will never see my face, and I think that’s something that the fans of the comic book will be really pleased about. You should never see the guy’s face because that makes him infinitely more mysterious.”

Drawn by artist David Lloyd, V For Vendetta made its debut in the short-lived early 1980s comic Warrior, and was finally published in full by DC in 1988. Speaking from a soundstage designed to resemble the roof of the Old Bailey, McTeigue insisted the film will stick closely to Moore’s dark vision.

“It’s very close to Alan Moore’s graphic novel,” the director said. “Like all great adaptations for film there are things you have to lose and things you have to keep. But it runs very close to what Alan Moore wrote and what he was trying to say.”

A disgruntled Moore has disowned several previous features based on his work, including From Hell and the recent Keanu Reeves thriller Constantine. But Silver said the author is being supportive of V For Vendetta, which the producer claims will be more “people centric” and less effects-driven than the Matrix trilogy.

“Larry Wachowski has been speaking to Alan about it,” Silver said. “He hasn’t been very happy with some of the movies that have been made from his comic books, but he was very excited about Larry and Andy’s script. We hope to see him at some point when we’re in the UK. We’d just like him to know what we’re doing, and be part of what we’re trying to do.”

Fans of the original comic will also be delighted to hear that V For Vendetta is scheduled to open on November 4th, just in time for the 400th anniversary of The Gunpowder Plot.

By Stephen Dalton

The Bravery – The Bravery

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The Bravery – The Bravery

Apparently they’ve developed a new computer programme which can accurately predict the hit potential of any prospective record release. One spin of The Bravery’s debut album should blow it to smithereens. So very now it hurts, The Bravery are every record executive’s wet dream. Five ruggedly handsome Noo Yawk dudes with Lothario’s eyes for the ladies and a pervy penchant for leather and eyeliner, they make a gritty New Wave noise that is a suspiciously precise fusion of Duran Duran and The Strokes. They’re so perfect, in fact, that, to paraphrase the late Billy Mackenzie, the fault is, I can find no fault in them. This album really is just too good to be true. Crooner Sam Endicott practically sobs with narcissistic regret, wondering over and over why the world isn’t as wonderful as he is and apologising profusely for past romantic misdemeanours he’s about to commit all over again. A liar, a cheat and yet a victim of his own dark passions, this Casablancas clone is handsomely aided and abetted by the kind of muscular whiteboy would-be funk that underpinned the New Romantic giants, while John Conway‘s pompous keyboards and Michael Zakarin‘s razor slash guitar are the very aching epitome of tacky ‘80s grandeur. There are at least seven Killer(s) hits on the album. "Honest Mistake", "Unconditional" and "Fearless" ( which boasts the wonderful line: "I know that’s why you love me Chico") all recall the strident majesty of vintage Simple Minds. "Public Service Announcement", "Ring Song" and "Out Of Line" ("Hey sweet Cassandra, remember me?") have that sultry something of the young Lou Reed about them. And the truly vicious "Tyrant Mouth" finds our hero "stuck just like a pig roasting in your eyes". All are pumped up to bursting by a production strung out on steroids; not so much songs as mini-melodramas frantic with testosterone, tailor-made to soundtrack future series of The OC. This album is already one of the debuts of the year. All hail The Bravery and their new bold dream. By Steve Sutherland

Apparently they’ve developed a new computer programme which can accurately predict the hit potential of any prospective record release. One spin of The Bravery’s debut album should blow it to smithereens. So very now it hurts, The Bravery are every record executive’s wet dream. Five ruggedly handsome Noo Yawk dudes with Lothario’s eyes for the ladies and a pervy penchant for leather and eyeliner, they make a gritty New Wave noise that is a suspiciously precise fusion of Duran Duran and The Strokes. They’re so perfect, in fact, that, to paraphrase the late Billy Mackenzie, the fault is, I can find no fault in them. This album really is just too good to be true.

Crooner Sam Endicott practically sobs with narcissistic regret, wondering over and over why the world isn’t as wonderful as he is and apologising profusely for past romantic misdemeanours he’s about to commit all over again. A liar, a cheat and yet a victim of his own dark passions, this Casablancas clone is handsomely aided and abetted by the kind of muscular whiteboy would-be funk that underpinned the New Romantic giants, while John Conway‘s pompous keyboards and Michael Zakarin‘s razor slash guitar are the very aching epitome of tacky ‘80s grandeur.

There are at least seven Killer(s) hits on the album. “Honest Mistake”, “Unconditional” and “Fearless” ( which boasts the wonderful line: “I know that’s why you love me Chico”) all recall the strident majesty of vintage Simple Minds. “Public Service Announcement”, “Ring Song” and “Out Of Line” (“Hey sweet Cassandra, remember me?”) have that sultry something of the young Lou Reed about them. And the truly vicious “Tyrant Mouth” finds our hero “stuck just like a pig roasting in your eyes”. All are pumped up to bursting by a production strung out on steroids; not so much songs as mini-melodramas frantic with testosterone, tailor-made to soundtrack future series of The OC. This album is already one of the debuts of the year. All hail The Bravery and their new bold dream.

By Steve Sutherland

Interview: Sam Endicott

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UNCUT:What’s with all the Duran Duran comparisons? ENDICOTT: I can say in all honesty that I don’t own a single Duran Duran record! I’ve heard them on the radio of course, but I don’t really know their stuff. Do you worry that you may be over-hyped? Hype's a double edged sword. On one lev...

UNCUT:What’s with all the Duran Duran comparisons?

ENDICOTT: I can say in all honesty that I don’t own a single Duran Duran record! I’ve heard them on the radio of course, but I don’t really know their stuff.

Do you worry that you may be over-hyped?

Hype’s a double edged sword. On one level it’s great since it draws people’s attention to you. But on the other side, you get people who want to be the cool guy who hates the popular bands. Everyone wants to be the first guy to call ‘Emperor’s new clothes’. So what it means for us is that we have to work harder to make sure that, when you come to see us or listen to our album, we kicked your ass; we have to work harder to prove that it’s not bullshit. Which is good, cos it keeps us on our toes.

Interview By Kirsten Brearley

Interview: Stephen Morris

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Was this one easier to make than Get Ready? It was a bit, yes. I think we’re a bit more comfortable with being ourselves. I think with Get Ready we wanted to do something a bit different and so it’s got a bit of a heavy guitar-y vibe. This time, as much as we have any ideas before we go in, we ...

Was this one easier to make than Get Ready?

It was a bit, yes. I think we’re a bit more comfortable with being ourselves. I think with Get Ready we wanted to do something a bit different and so it’s got a bit of a heavy guitar-y vibe. This time, as much as we have any ideas before we go in, we wanted to do a record which was… varied.

Which songs are you particularly pleased with?

I like “Told You So” because you don’t get a bit of reggae with New Order very often, do you? It’s a reggae-fusion record I think. think it was inspired by Bernard’s holiday trip to Bognor Regis.

Apparently there’s another film in production…

There’s actually two! One is based on Deborah Curtis’s book, with Anton Corbijn signed up to direct. And there’s another in America. Now we’ve finished the record we can sit down and talk to them and either be Henry Kissinger and get them to make friends so they only make one film, or suggest that they just fight, and let the winner make the film.

New Order – Waiting For The Sirens’ Call

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New Order – Waiting For The Sirens’ Call

Like battleships or hurricanes, New Order albums traditionally have classical, stately, one-word titles. So 2001’s slack Get Ready seemed like an admission that they were still warming up after that decade apart. Borne aloft on critical goodwill, in retrospect the record sounds tentative and rudderless, with special guests in place of strong ideas. But then the original New Order didn’t hit their stride straight away. Returning with guitarist Phil Cunningham in place of the retired Gillian, on lead single "Krafty" they sound relaxed and reinvigorated, self-composed rather than chasing trends. With its breezy, kiddy-Kraftwerk electraglide, the song lent some substance to the rumours that Waiting… was to be a return to the pinnacle of Technique – the band’s most prescient rewiring of rock dynamics with dance technology. Ironically, the songs most blatantly aimed at the dancefloor may be the weakest. Stuart Price (aka Jacques Lu Cont, whose remixes make no secret of his fandom) is one of four producers – Stephen Street, John Leckie and the band themselves - and his two contributions "Jetstream", featuring Scissor Sister Ana Matronic, and "Guilt…" are bizarrely lifeless exercises. In fact, Waiting… makes more sense as an emotional, rather than a sonic, sequel to Technique. Although the earlier record was a magnificent, flawless piece of machinery, its charm lay also in the fact that it was kind of a holiday romance, a pilled-up, Ibizan Grease. You might listen to Waiting… as an update on that chemical romance, 15 rocky years into the relationship. The most affecting songs here are about second chances, reaffirming commitments and the terrible seduction of straying. Sumner has rarely sung better and "Dracula’s Castle" and "Turn" feel like older, wiser revisions of "Run" or "Fine Time". The title track, meanwhile, is a superb example of the surging, bittersweet grace of classic New Order, at once Apollonian and mordantly English. With one or two exceptions - the daft Egyptian Ragga of "I Told You So", and the sub-Stooges closer "Working Overtime" - it’s a remarkably coherent, consistent record. This may seem like faint praise for a band who once veered so flukily between the divine and asinine. But if nothing here is quite touched by the hand of God, then maybe it’s all the more engagingly human. By Stephen Trousse

Like battleships or hurricanes, New Order albums traditionally have classical, stately, one-word titles. So 2001’s slack Get Ready seemed like an admission that they were still warming up after that decade apart. Borne aloft on critical goodwill, in retrospect the record sounds tentative and rudderless, with special guests in place of strong ideas.

But then the original New Order didn’t hit their stride straight away. Returning with guitarist Phil Cunningham in place of the retired Gillian, on lead single “Krafty” they sound relaxed and reinvigorated, self-composed rather than chasing trends. With its breezy, kiddy-Kraftwerk electraglide, the song lent some substance to the rumours that Waiting… was to be a return to the pinnacle of Technique – the band’s most prescient rewiring of rock dynamics with dance technology.

Ironically, the songs most blatantly aimed at the dancefloor may be the weakest. Stuart Price (aka Jacques Lu Cont, whose remixes make no secret of his fandom) is one of four producers – Stephen Street, John Leckie and the band themselves – and his two contributions “Jetstream”, featuring Scissor Sister Ana Matronic, and “Guilt…” are bizarrely lifeless exercises.

In fact, Waiting… makes more sense as an emotional, rather than a sonic, sequel to Technique. Although the earlier record was a magnificent, flawless piece of machinery, its charm lay also in the fact that it was kind of a holiday romance, a pilled-up, Ibizan Grease.

You might listen to Waiting… as an update on that chemical romance, 15 rocky years into the relationship. The most affecting songs here are about second chances, reaffirming commitments and the terrible seduction of straying. Sumner has rarely sung better and “Dracula’s Castle” and “Turn” feel like older, wiser revisions of “Run” or “Fine Time”. The title track, meanwhile, is a superb example of the surging, bittersweet grace of classic New Order, at once Apollonian and mordantly English.

With one or two exceptions – the daft Egyptian Ragga of “I Told You So”, and the sub-Stooges closer “Working Overtime” – it’s a remarkably coherent, consistent record. This may seem like faint praise for a band who once veered so flukily between the divine and asinine. But if nothing here is quite touched by the hand of God, then maybe it’s all the more engagingly human.

By Stephen Trousse

Interview: Josh Homme

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UNCUT: Did you feel pressure about going it alone? JOSH HOMME: No. I think I’m built for situations like that. I felt really free, like I could do anything, because no one would know what to expect. It was actually really comfortable. I just did what I learned to do on the other three records. ...

UNCUT: Did you feel pressure about going it alone?

JOSH HOMME: No. I think I’m built for situations like that. I felt really free, like I could do anything, because no one would know what to expect. It was actually really comfortable. I just did what I learned to do on the other three records.

It starts off really tight, then goes off on a tangent. Accident or design?

We start doing it, basically, midway through the album. It goes through a series of aggro left and right punches, into making out, and then doing it.

How did Brody and Shirley Manson get involved?

They were drinking wine in the other room. So I was like, ‘Hey you sexy babies, can you sing on my record?’ I’ll be damned if they didn’t go ahead and do it.

Are some of the songs on the album about Brody?

They’re about my life…. So yeah, she’s in there somewhere. How’s that for vague?

How are things with Nick?

Well, I’m going to record three or four tracks on his new record. So obviously, we can’t stand each other.

Queens Of The Stone Age – Lullabies To Paralyze

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Queens Of The Stone Age – Lullabies To Paralyze

When word came out of the California desert last year that maniacal singing bassist Nick Oliveri and third vocalist Mark Lanegan had left Queens Of The Stone Age, few doubted that founding member Josh Homme couldn’t persevere capably without them. The man’s muse is manic — since 2002’s Song for the Deaf, he’s released an excellent PJ Harvey-graced instalment of his Desert Sessions series and played drums in his silly-boogie side-project, Eagles of Death Metal. Still, the pressure must have been tremendous. QOTSA’s second album, 2000’s Rated R, established ex-Kyuss members Homme and Oliveri as America’s most vibrant heavy rock band, and Songs emphatically consolidated that reputation. Here was a band that could woo with melodious, dark pop just as easily as it could wallop with bone-crushing, metal-fisted rock’n’roll. Lullabies to Paralyze suggests that Homme, faced with this legacy, couldn’t decide whether to lean towards immediate, straight-for-the-jugular pop, or thunderous, rambling psychedelia. So he did both. Effectively embracing the entire history of the band’s sound, the album sprawls over an hour, and has so many peaks and valleys it’s practically topographical. After lovely madrigal-like opener "Lullaby", the following seven songs are tight, perfectly-formed examples of QOTSA’s signature driving repetition, multi-tracked falsetto vocals, and edgy, punky hooks. Homme’s energy proves uncontainable, though, and around the album’s halfway mark he cuts loose. "Skin On Skin" slinks into an unmade bed with wah-wah pedals and longing groans, while the downright weird "Someone’s In The Wolf" is a seven-minute epic riddled with seasick riffs and distorted vocals. Lyrically, Lullabies seems preoccupied with the problem of errant women, which might have something to do with Homme’s girlfriend, notorious Distillers’ frontwoman Brody Dalle (who appears with Shirley Manson on backing vocals on the coolly swinging "You Got a Killer Scene"). "Everybody Knows That You’re Insane" and "Tangled Up In Plaid" ("Like to keep you all to myself/ I know you got to be free/ to kill yourself"), in particular, are love songs struggling to hold the squirming object of their affection. Without Oliveri’s lunacy and Lanegan’s lugubrious gravity, Homme obviously has a few less tricks in his bag, but that’s only a minor disappointment. Queens Of The Stone Age have always been able to reshape even the most hackneyed rock’n’roll motifs into something fresh, strange, and exciting. In that sense, at least, nothing’s changed. By April Long

When word came out of the California desert last year that maniacal singing bassist Nick Oliveri and third vocalist Mark Lanegan had left Queens Of The Stone Age, few doubted that founding member Josh Homme couldn’t persevere capably without them. The man’s muse is manic — since 2002’s Song for the Deaf, he’s released an excellent PJ Harvey-graced instalment of his Desert Sessions series and played drums in his silly-boogie side-project, Eagles of Death Metal. Still, the pressure must have been tremendous. QOTSA’s second album, 2000’s Rated R, established ex-Kyuss members Homme and Oliveri as America’s most vibrant heavy rock band, and Songs emphatically consolidated that reputation. Here was a band that could woo with melodious, dark pop just as easily as it could wallop with bone-crushing, metal-fisted rock’n’roll.

Lullabies to Paralyze suggests that Homme, faced with this legacy, couldn’t decide whether to lean towards immediate, straight-for-the-jugular pop, or thunderous, rambling psychedelia. So he did both. Effectively embracing the entire history of the band’s sound, the album sprawls over an hour, and has so many peaks and valleys it’s practically topographical.

After lovely madrigal-like opener “Lullaby”, the following seven songs are tight, perfectly-formed examples of QOTSA’s signature driving repetition, multi-tracked falsetto vocals, and edgy, punky hooks. Homme’s energy proves uncontainable, though, and around the album’s halfway mark he cuts loose. “Skin On Skin” slinks into an unmade bed with wah-wah pedals and longing groans, while the downright weird “Someone’s In The Wolf” is a seven-minute epic riddled with seasick riffs and distorted vocals.

Lyrically, Lullabies seems preoccupied with the problem of errant women, which might have something to do with Homme’s girlfriend, notorious Distillers’ frontwoman Brody Dalle (who appears with Shirley Manson on backing vocals on the coolly swinging “You Got a Killer Scene”). “Everybody Knows That You’re Insane” and “Tangled Up In Plaid” (“Like to keep you all to myself/ I know you got to be free/ to kill yourself”), in particular, are love songs struggling to hold the squirming object of their affection.

Without Oliveri’s lunacy and Lanegan’s lugubrious gravity, Homme obviously has a few less tricks in his bag, but that’s only a minor disappointment. Queens Of The Stone Age have always been able to reshape even the most hackneyed rock’n’roll motifs into something fresh, strange, and exciting. In that sense, at least, nothing’s changed.

By April Long

Interview: Brendan Benson

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Interview: Brendan Benson
UNCUT: What lessons did you learn from the Virgin experience? BENSON: It took me a while to regain my confidence. I think I fell into a depression. I was insecure and unsure of my ability as a songwriter. But I have a more realistic approach now. Then, everyone was promising me the world – telli...

UNCUT: What lessons did you learn from the Virgin experience?

BENSON: It took me a while to regain my confidence. I think I fell into a depression. I was insecure and unsure of my ability as a songwriter. But I have a more realistic approach now. Then, everyone was promising me the world – telling me I’d be the next big thing and crap like that – and I believed it. I didn’t realise that’s what everyone says all the time. I’ve learned so much, like the kind of music I write isn’t hugely popular. I’ve got no business being on a major label really.

How do you achieve that freshness of sound?

I don’t know if it’s a conscious thing, but they do sound spontaneous. [Mixer] Tchad Blake has a lot to do with it too.

Brendan Benson – Alternative To Love

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Brendan Benson – Alternative To Love

The White Stripes have already covered "Good To Me", a stand-out from Brendan Benson’s 2002 album, Lapalco. Now, Jack White is apparently recording Elephant’s follow-up at Benson’s home studio in Detroit, and there’s a joint Benson/White venture slated for next year, trailed as Cat Stevens-meets-Led Zep. It’s easy to see why White is so keen. Benson’s glittering pop songs are descendants of every boy-girl psychodrama from The Beach Boys to Big Star. But, much like their predecessors, there’s a damaged undertow. The caffeinated rush of 2002’s Lapalco – five years in the making - belied a tortuous major label experience in the mid-to-late ‘90s, when Benson was dropped from Virgin after the release of debut One Mississippi. Hauling himself back home to Detroit from LA, he poured his insecurities into a fistful of irresistible tunes. Lapalco’s critical success was testament to both his self-belief and staying power. Similarly, Alternative To Love is impossible not to love. With only longtime bandmates Matt Aljian and Chris Plum on board – alongside mixer and co-producer Tchad Blake – it’s a jubilee of full-fat riffs, nagging hooks and melodies like ornate sugar sculptures. Lyrically though, it remains troubled. "I Feel Like Myself Again" may appear to be a joyous rebirth from romantic wreckage, but it’s more likely a riposte to old record company execs or even the father that abandoned him. Likewise, the Spectoresque "Pledge And Allegiance" is no lover’s entreaty, but seems to be a loyalty pact between Benson and music itself: it’s clear he’s in it for the duration. The downbeat acoustic shuffle of "Them And Me" reinforces the point, his own third-party muse urging him on: "Isn’t this everything you ever wanted?" Yes, but there’s a price. At times – as on "What I’m Looking For" - he sounds like Evan Dando offering confessions at Gold Star Studios. At others, as on the grandly ambitious mini-suite "Flesh And Bone", like Brian Wilson himself. In a just world, he’d be huge. Wouldn’t that be nice? By Rob Hughes

The White Stripes have already covered “Good To Me”, a stand-out from Brendan Benson’s 2002 album, Lapalco. Now, Jack White is apparently recording Elephant’s follow-up at Benson’s home studio in Detroit, and there’s a joint Benson/White venture slated for next year, trailed as Cat Stevens-meets-Led Zep.

It’s easy to see why White is so keen. Benson’s glittering pop songs are descendants of every boy-girl psychodrama from The Beach Boys to Big Star. But, much like their predecessors, there’s a damaged undertow. The caffeinated rush of 2002’s Lapalco – five years in the making – belied a tortuous major label experience in the mid-to-late ‘90s, when Benson was dropped from Virgin after the release of debut One Mississippi. Hauling himself back home to Detroit from LA, he poured his insecurities into a fistful of irresistible tunes. Lapalco’s critical success was testament to both his self-belief and staying power.

Similarly, Alternative To Love is impossible not to love. With only longtime bandmates Matt Aljian and Chris Plum on board – alongside mixer and co-producer Tchad Blake – it’s a jubilee of full-fat riffs, nagging hooks and melodies like ornate sugar sculptures. Lyrically though, it remains troubled. “I Feel Like Myself Again” may appear to be a joyous rebirth from romantic wreckage, but it’s more likely a riposte to old record company execs or even the father that abandoned him. Likewise, the Spectoresque “Pledge And Allegiance” is no lover’s entreaty, but seems to be a loyalty pact between Benson and music itself: it’s clear he’s in it for the duration. The downbeat acoustic shuffle of “Them And Me” reinforces the point, his own third-party muse urging him on: “Isn’t this everything you ever wanted?” Yes, but there’s a price.

At times – as on “What I’m Looking For” – he sounds like Evan Dando offering confessions at Gold Star Studios. At others, as on the grandly ambitious mini-suite “Flesh And Bone”, like Brian Wilson himself. In a just world, he’d be huge. Wouldn’t that be nice?

By Rob Hughes

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