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Robin Pecknold, Levon Helm Studios, Woodstock, New York, November 14, 2024

Will Hermes
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Robin Pecknold, Levon Helm Studios, Woodstock, New York, November 14, 2024

Robin Pecknold confesses a case of nerves after taking the stage — or the rug, to be more accurate — in Levon Helm Studios, a rustic space in the woods of Woodstock. He blames his mood on the moment: this is the first full-length, fully solo show he’s ever done, the start of a nine-date solo mini-tour crossing North America. Yes, there had been A Very Lonely Solstice, the 2020 pandemic livestream-turned-LP, in which his solo arrangements were abetted by a white-robed, socially-distanced choir. But tonight he is on his own, with five acoustic guitars and a pedal board, though conceivably less lonely, among roughly 200 fans who’d managed to snag tickets, which sold out within minutes of going on sale.

Robin Pecknold confesses a case of nerves after taking the stage — or the rug, to be more accurate — in Levon Helm Studios, a rustic space in the woods of Woodstock. He blames his mood on the moment: this is the first full-length, fully solo show he’s ever done, the start of a nine-date solo mini-tour crossing North America. Yes, there had been A Very Lonely Solstice, the 2020 pandemic livestream-turned-LP, in which his solo arrangements were abetted by a white-robed, socially-distanced choir. But tonight he is on his own, with five acoustic guitars and a pedal board, though conceivably less lonely, among roughly 200 fans who’d managed to snag tickets, which sold out within minutes of going on sale.

Another similarity with the 2020 pandemic show was the ambient sense of crisis, now stemming from the previous week’s presidential election. But Pecknold makes no mention of it, beyond an empathetic nod to collective grief. Instead, after a brief and beguiling opening set by New York singer-songwriter Allegra Kreiger, with light from the full moon brightening trees outside the windows, he creates a sanctuary for 90-some minutes, making the pine-and-bluestone barn feel as sacred as the Brooklyn church that staged …Lonely Solstice.  

The room — where Helm held court in his final years, hosting shows with many great musicians — is full of ghosts and history, so it is fitting that Pecknold packs his set with covers. The recent Judee Sill documentary opens with Pecknold singing the late singer-songwriter’s signature “The Kiss”. Tonight we get another of her forgotten gems, “Loping Along Thru The Cosmos”, Pecknold’s remarkable high tenor riding the curlicues of its rambler’s benediction with warm precision.

He does the same on two Joni Mitchell songs, illuminated by a story of finding himself in the unlikely position of her rhythm guitarist, at her star-studded Hollywood Bowl comeback concerts last month in Los Angeles. Tonight, he streamlines “Amelia” from its mercurial Hejira version, yet delivers it fully-formed with a 12-string Stella acoustic guitar, distilling ‘60s and ‘70s Joni into a single shimmering sound. During “The Silky Veils Of Ardor”, from Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, he marvels aloud at Mitchell’s “wild” chords and tunings (the setlist/ cheat sheet at his feet notes specifics of the latter). Pecknold nails it, making clear why he was drafted by Mitchell — gorgeous voice and unerring feel for harmonies aside, he’s a super-nerd for details, one reason his covers are so satisfying.

There are others — “Morning Of My Life” (aka: “In The Morning”), an early Bee Gees nugget Pecknold has made his own in recent years. He plays the traditional “Silver Dagger” a la Joan Baez’s 1960 debut LP. There is also Arthur Russell’s “Close My Eyes”. And for the finale: Elliot Smith’s “Pitseleh”, preceded by a story about it was the first song he ever played in front of a proper audience (as a precocious schoolboy at a talent show), and how a teacher had thought it was an original. As if, Pecknold chuckles.

Yet what was most remarkable about all these covers is how comfortably his own Fleet Foxes songs nestled alongside them, shining no less bright. “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”, “Oliver James”, “Young Man’s Game”, “Third Of May/ Odaigahara”. He delivers “Mykonos” minus the CSNY-style harmonies of the version from the Sun Giant EP, but it lacked for nothing in musical richness. 

And then there is “Sunblind”, from 2020’s Shore. Pecknold plays it near the start of this set — a song that celebrates swimming “in warm American water with dear friends” (a reference, he noted, to nearby Lake Minnewaska), and the pantheon of passed singer/songwriters he holds dear, among them Richard Swift,  “Judee and Smith”, Arthur Russell, and more, for whom he imagines a “great coronation.” It proved to be a statement of purpose for the evening’s performance — and indeed, for Robin Pecknold’s entire musical journey to date. 

Robin Pecknold played

I Should See Memphis

Sunblind

Tiger Mountain Peasant Song

Loping Along Thru The Cosmos

Close My Eyes (Arthur Russell cover)

Kept Woman

Third Of May / Odaigahara

Young Man’s Game

Isles

I Let You

Silver Dagger (traditional)

Someone You’d Admire

Amelia (Joni Mitchell cover)

Maestranza / Katie Cruel (traditional)

Montezuma

Blue Spotted Tail

Mykonos

The Silky Veils Of Ardor (Joni Mitchell cover)

In The Morning (Bee Gees cover) > Meadowlarks > Oliver James 

Pitseleh (Elliott Smith cover)

George Harrison – Living In The Material World 50th anniversary edition

Tom Pinnock
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George Harrison – Living In The Material World 50th anniversary edition

The rebirth of Richard Alpert is one you can imagine George Harrison being more than a little envious of. Born in Boston, Alpert was an associate of Timothy Leary and deeply entrenched in the American psychedelic counterculture of the ’60s, until he returned after a protracted stay in India reinvented as Ram Dass, a spiritual guru set on popularising eastern teachings in the west.

Buy Living In The Material World here

The rebirth of Richard Alpert is one you can imagine George Harrison being more than a little envious of. Born in Boston, Alpert was an associate of Timothy Leary and deeply entrenched in the American psychedelic counterculture of the ’60s, until he returned after a protracted stay in India reinvented as Ram Dass, a spiritual guru set on popularising eastern teachings in the west.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

Harrison, however, was a Beatle and a star, and no-one was going to let him forget it. Around the time he wrote and recorded his second proper solo album, 1973’s Living In The Material World, he was being pulled between two poles; on one hand, he was deeply exploring spirituality and continuing the inner journey that had begun in his early twenties, but on the other, having to deal with that material world of Beatles-related lawsuits, the first wave of the “My Sweet Lord” copyright infringement case and interminable struggles to get the funds from his pioneering Concert For Bangladesh to the people who needed them.

Consisting almost entirely of brand new tracks, in contrast to 1970’s anthological All Things Must Pass, Living In The Material World perfectly reflects the duality of Harrison’s life at the time. There is devotional material, such as the power-pop delight of “Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long” and the lilting “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)”, sometimes disguised as songs of love to a partner rather than to God. There are songs set purely in the secular world, most notably the exotic R&B of “Sue Me, Sue You Blues”, a bitterly hilarious chronicle of the Fabs’ legal machinations, very much a descendant of “Taxman”.

Many of the other songs are a mix of the two, with Harrison’s trudge towards salvation slowed by petty annoyances – if the material world would only go away and leave him alone, as he pleaded in “Don’t Bother Me”, all those lifetimes ago, then he could reach nirvana. So the grand, baroque “The Light That Has Lighted The World” – the musical essence of “Isn’t It A Pity?” condensed and concentrated – calls out those “hateful” people who misunderstand him and his beliefs, while “The Day The World Gets ’Round” laments “such foolishness in man” and praises the “few who bow before you/In silence, they pray…”

Po-faced? Pretentious? Looking at “this sad world and all the hate” in 2024, you might be stirred to say that Harrison was indeed correct about the paltry grievances that are still causing wars, and wise about the greed and ignorance that continue to poison. If a little enlightenment still wouldn’t go amiss, then two of the album’s finest songs might provide a guide. “Be Here Now”, named after Ram Dass’s first book, is a spectral, droning dirge with some of Harrison’s greatest, sourest chord changes, entreating us to “remember/Be here now… the past was/Be here now”, while “That Is All” ends the record on a hopeful note, Harrison hymning his love to the world over a beautiful, amorphous ballad, like “Something” dissolving in mountain mist.

With strings and the odd choir, this is still an epic-sounding album, but it’s far more stripped-back than All Things Must Pass, and recorded primarily at Harrison’s own Friar Park home studio with a small core of musicians. Harrison takes on all the guitar duties himself this time, including some stunning slide guitar solos and chiming 12-string acoustic work, while there are prominent keys from Nicky Hopkins, and occasional, slightly glam double drumming from Ringo and Jim Keltner. In Phil Spector’s ethanolic absence, Harrison produced himself, and this new 2024 remix by Paul Hicks and Dhani Harrison brings the album into greater relief when compared to previous releases: the orchestral arrangements are brought out of the murk, Harrison’s vocals are clearer and sharper, and the album’s peculiar air of dry, ascetic starkness is increased. The loudest moments, from the wry boogie of the title track to the soulful, rootsy “The Lord Loves The One (Who Loves The Lord)”, are funkier and more present, as if a veil has been lifted.

As well as a book and copious notes, depending on the edition, this 50th anniversary set comes with an album of alternate versions, not as revelatory as the extra tracks on the 50th box of All Things Must Pass but still with insights to impart. The complex rhythms of “Sue Me…” were pretty much sorted from the start, it seems, but it’s thrilling to hear early takes of “The Light…” and “The Lord Loves The One…”. “Be Here Now”, seemingly a later take than the final chosen one, shows just how much Harrison and his musicians changed their parts on the fly in the studio. Alongside B-side “Miss O’Dell”, there’s also an unearthed, fleet-footed version of the joyful “Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond)”, recorded with Harrison’s heroes The Band (the song appeared with Starr’s vocals on November ’73’s Ringo).

Watch the video for “Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond)”

When stripped of their orchestral and choral sweetening, Living In The Material World’s big ballads feel even more soul-baring. Rather than being driven by a holier-than-thou smugness, this is an album whose wracked, painful honesty and sense of deep disappointment rivals that of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Harrison had attained the wealth, power and adoration that billions dream of and found it lacking, yet he’d glimpsed an alternative. “Got a lot of work to do/Try to get a message through,” he sang on the title track, a man desperately reaching for a chink of light in the gloom of The Beatles’ shadow.

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City To City: Introducing Laurence Jones

Peter Watts
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City To City: Introducing Laurence Jones

In partnership with Marshall

In partnership with Marshall

Laurence Jones was thrilled when he was sent his first Marshall amp after turning professional at 17, but soon realised he needed to send it back. “It was too loud for the size of venues I was playing,” he grins. “I asked Marshall if they could hold on to it until I’d made it into bigger venues. A few years later, I got in touch with the same guy at Marshall and said I was ready to have it back.”

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Now signed to the Marshall record label, Jones picked up his first guitar as a kid, determined to become better than his dad at playing “House Of The Rising Sun”. He was inspired by the blues clubs of Liverpool where his dad – a music lover – would take Jones as a child. His dad introduced him to acts like Jimi Hendrix, The Groundhogs and Cream, while Jones discovered The Cure for himself, falling in love with Robert Smith’s gift for songwriting.

Trained in classical guitar but a rocker and bluesman at heart, Jones was a prodigy, playing his first gigs as a 14-year-old wedding singer and forming a band to play local pubs and clubs. “We called ourselves Free Beer so we could put that on the posters – Free Beer here tonight,” he says. It was surprisingly effective.

Jones hasn’t stopped working since. He has released eight albums – most recently Bad Luck & The Blues – and won numerous awards. He’s also toured with the likes of Ringo Starr – a huge thrill for a Liverpudlian – as well as Buddy Guy and Status Quo. He’s enjoyed success in the Netherlands, where he developed a loyal fanbase and it’s here that he experienced a memorable jam with Buddy Guy.

“Buddy is like the Liam Gallagher of the blues,” says Jones. “He was so rock’n’roll. He was throwing plectrums into the audience while I was playing and loving the fact he didn’t have to do any work because I was there. We did ‘Strange Brew’ because he knew I liked Clapton, then went into ‘Miss You’. While we were playing, he walked off stage and got into his limo. He waved goodbye and drove off. He was back at the hotel before I ended the set. Later, I looked at the plectrum he’d given me and he’d written, ‘Buddy Guy, thank you, go fuck yourself.’ I loved it!”

Since signing with Marshall for his 2022 album Destination Unknown, Jones has revelled in the freedom the label has provided, allowing him to self-produce and forge his own direction. For Bad Luck & The Blues he pared his group back to a trio and recorded them live at the Marshall Studio in Milton Keynes, eager to capture some of the prowling energy of those classic power trios. “I love the look and sound of a power trio,” he says. “There’s nowhere to hide. When we had the keyboard, I was always having to play around it but now I have so much space and freedom. The sound is so big. How do you do that? You need a couple of Marshall stacks and you need to turn them up loud but it’s also about the style of the songs, with the writing driven by guitar rather than piano or vocal. That makes a huge difference.”

Jones had previously recorded most of his albums abroad so loved having the opportunity to record in the UK in a studio that he says was “a real step up” thanks to Marshall’s sourcing of vintage equipment, from the mics and amps to the Neve console. His dream was to capture his live sound in the studio, which means his natural desire to combine classic pop melodies with improvised solos. And his love of The Cure hasn’t gone away either – during one song, “In Too Deep”, he will drop in a little reference to “A Forest”, much to the delight of knowing fans. It’s a reminder that for all the focus on genres, music should never be put in a box. 

“I grew up with the blues and my playing is very bluesy, but my themes are more contemporary and my songwriting is very diverse,” he says. “I’m trying to bring a younger audience into the blues because it can be very purist, but for me, it’s all about the songwriting, the solos and playing my guitar. That’s what excites me.”

City To City: Liverpool

Laurence Jones takes us on a musical history tour of his hometown haunts

Photo: Jeff Pitcher

Gazing out over the Mersey from Liverpool docks towards distant Birkenhead, Laurence Jones is thrilled to be back in his home city. His family moved to Warwickshire before he reached double figures, but Jones was moulded by Liverpool and still considers himself a Scouser at heart. Even after leaving the city, he returned throughout his youth to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and this is where he made some of his first live appearances, playing the city’s network of Labour clubs, performing the blues on guitar between the meat raffle and a stand-up comedian. 

“That’s one thing I really like about Liverpool, it provides a natural progression so you can start in the bars and Labour clubs, and then move up to bigger venues like The Cavern,” he says. “Then you can keep going. There’s the Epstein Theatre, where we supported King King, and the Philharmonic Hall, which has two rooms and is where I played with Status Quo. You can keep going up to the Arena, all the way to Anfield. That’s what made it great to grow up around here. But you have to be tough. It’s hard growing up in the shadow of The Beatles as it means the audiences have very high expectations. It’s a hard fanbase but one of the best as it can be very rowdy and very loyal.”

Images of The Beatles are everywhere in Liverpool. After posing by a statue of the Fab Four at the dock we head towards Mathew Street, home of The Cavern. This alleyway could be the closest thing England has to Memphis’s Beale Street or New Orleans’ French Quarter, a charismatic strip of clubs and bars, with neon lights and live music pounding from every doorway to attract tourists. There are more statues – of Cilla Black as well as John Lennon – plus a wall of bricks with the names of every act that played The Cavern. 

Photo: Jeff Pitcher

The original Cavern Club was demolished in the 1970s before being excavated and reopened in 1984 on a location that covered 70 per cent of its original site. That is authentic enough to attract legions of tourists down the dark stairs into The Cavern’s musty interior for regular gigs. Facing it across Mathew Street is the latest iteration of Eric’s, the legendary punk venue that hosted The Clash, the Ramones, the Pistols and Talking Heads, as well as providing a crucible for Liverpool’s fertile post-punk scene. Mathew Street is also home to the Beatles Museum, which Jones remembers visiting with a
much-missed uncle.

Mathew Street’s reinvention as one of the country’s premier music destinations is typical of Liverpool’s resilience. Jones recently played a show at the Salt And Tar in Bootle, a new 3,000-capacity outdoor venue that occupies the unpromising site of an old car park overlooked by high-rise flats. “I love that about Liverpool,” he says. “They can make something good out of any situation, even an old car park.”

It was at this show that Jones played many of the rockers from his recent album Bad Luck & The Blues. He’d written these at home and then played the demos through his Marshall Bluetooth Middleton speaker. “I love the Bluetooth speaker because they’re portable and easy to use, and that’s important because I’m not very techy,” he says, while his wife and manager Amy nods in agreement. “I really love the fact they look like an amp – you can even stack them, like
a proper Marshall! I use them when I’ve recorded my demos on the phone, because I can really blast it through the speakers and it’s very good at picking up the bass.”

From Mathew Street, we wander down to the tiny record shop,
Probe, which prides itself on being “the home of the underground”. As a child, Jones accompanied his music-loving father to The Musical Box, which was opened in 1947 and is one of the oldest record shops in the world. Customers included John Lennon and Pete Best, already local legends. Jones is a vinyl fan and vividly recalls the first time he heard “Just Like Heaven” on his dad’s stereo. “It’s my favourite song and on vinyl it can’t be beaten,” he says.

Probe hasn’t been around quite as long, having opened in 1971. Later that decade it became the centrepiece of Liverpool’s independent renaissance: shop assistants included Julian Cope, Courtney Love, Pete Burns and Pete Wylie. Founder Geoff Davies died in 2023, but the shop continues, with walls stacked with seven inches from independent bands new and old. While Jones flips through the racks, the shop’s manager quietly disappears into a back room and re-emerges with his pride and joy, a 1963 Jaguar. He hands it to Jones for a play, and soon the two of them are lost in the world of guitars. When Jones finally leaves Probe, he’s practically flying: it’s been another memorable day in the musical life of Liverpool.  

Photo: Jeff Pitcher

Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to King Crimson

John Robinson
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Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to King Crimson

Neurosurgeons scream for more...

Neurosurgeons scream for more…

As you’ll discover in this deluxe and expanded Ultimate Music Guide, when we speak of King Crimson, we’re really speaking of Robert Fripp, the guitarist and sole member to have lasted the 50 years of the band’s lifetime. So warm is his greeting, so insistent his use of one’s first name, you could come to think you and Robert Fripp were pretty well acquainted even though you have only met on a video call a few times.

He can be wonderfully candid. He will speak very movingly about fallen band members like John Wetton, who fronted the group at the time of Red (which celebrates its 50th anniversary round about now), or Bill Rieflin, the American drummer/polymath who was a key part of the last three drummer line-up of the group, until his untimely death from cancer. 

More cheerily, he might allow himself to digress into discussing the shortcomings of former members. With a twinkle of the eye, he might tell you with devastating dismissiveness about the former member who is “A good man. A very good man. A century ago who would have commanded a colonial outpost somewhere…” On one occasion he spent maybe 10 minutes patiently waiting as he guided me in trying to articulate a musician’s character flaws – “You’re very close…” – presumably so he might have the satisfaction of knowing his feelings weren’t held in isolation. He took a toilet break while I gathered my thoughts.

His is an unknowable combination of candour and reserve, control and release, spirituality and fun. The churn of Crimson members down the band’s history suggest that it’s not been a combination to work for everyone, but it has produced an impressively powerful musical legacy, which evolved in influence down the decades as the band took on new shapes.

If Fripp was present it was always King Crimson, though, and that’s the story, along with coverage of solo work and collaborations, which is told here. Much as Fripp has defined the course of the group through its life, so now, after five years which have found the band reconfiguring, negotiating the pandemic, touring with several of its members in their mid-70s, and revivifying their older material in new arrangements, that the band’s work is now finished.  

“I’ll bring you up on that if I may,” Fripp told me a couple of years ago. “There are three forms of ending: a conclusion, a completion and a finish. When you finish a process, something is lost, like King Crimson in 2008 really was finished. A conclusion is where nothing is lost but nothing particularly is gained. And a completion is a new beginning.”

King Crimson, he went on to say, had reached a completion. But he acknowledged that the sound of a new beginning would always be tantalising. 

“I don’t have to worry about it,” he said, retreating into a rather more mysterious space. “Whatever seeks to come next in my life will tell me.”

Enjoy the magazine. You can get one in the shops now – or here.

Jack White has shared a new track, “You Got Me Searching”

Michael Bonner
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Jack White has shared a new track, “You Got Me Searching”

Jack White has shared a new track, "You Got Me Searching", which is being released as the B-side to his next single, "That's How I'm Feeling". You can hear the track below.

Jack White has shared a new track, “You Got Me Searching“, which is being released as the B-side to his next single, “That’s How I’m Feeling“. You can hear the track below.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

White has also announced a slew of tour dates:

NOVEMBER14 – Austin, TX – Mohawk*15 – San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger*17 – Mexico City, MX – Corona Capital*  DECEMBER1 – Hong Kong – Clockenflap Music & Arts Festival *2 – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – Capital Theatre *5 – Brisbane, Australia – Fortitude Music Hall6 – Ballarat, Australia – Civic Hall *7 – Melbourne, Australia – Corner Hotel *9 – Melbourne, Australia – Forum Melbourne11 – Hobart, Australia – Odeon Theatre13 – Sydney, Australia – Enmore Theatre17 – Auckland, New Zealand – Auckland Town Hall FEBRUARY 20256 – Toronto, ON – HISTORY7 – Toronto, ON – Massey Hall8 – Toronto, ON – Massey Hall11 – Brooklyn, NY – Kings Theatre12 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount17 – Boston, MA – Roadrunner18 – Boston, MA – Roadrunner MARCH 202510 – Hiroshima, Japan – Blue Live Hiroshima12 – Osaka, Japan – Gorilla Hall13 – Nagoya, Japan – Diamond Hall15 – Tokyo, Japan – Toyosu PIT17 – Tokyo, Japan – Toyosu PIT APRIL 20253 – St. Louis, MO – The Factory4 – Kansas City, MO – Uptown Theater5 – Omaha, NE – Steelhouse Omaha7 – Saint Paul, MN – Palace Theatre8 – Saint Paul, MN – Palace Theatre10 – Chicago, IL – The Salt Shed (Indoors)11 – Chicago, IL – The Salt Shed (Indoors)12 – Detroit, MI – Masonic Temple Theatre13 – Detroit, MI – Masonic Temple Theatre15 – Grand Rapids, MI – GLC Live at 20 Monroe16 – Cleveland, OH – Agora Theatre18 – Nashville, TN – The Pinnacle19 – Nashville, TN – The Pinnacle MAY 20254 – Austin, TX – ACL Live at the Moody Theater5 – Austin, TX – ACL Live at the Moody Theater6 – Dallas, TX – South Side Ballroom8 – Denver, CO – Mission Ballroom9 – Denver, CO – Mission Ballroom10 – Salt Lake City, UT – Union Event Center12 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium13 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium15 – Santa Barbara, CA – Santa Barbara Bowl16 – Oakland, CA – Fox Theater17 – San Francisco, CA – The Masonic19 – Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre20 – Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre22 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom23 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom24 – Troutdale, OR – Edgefield Concerts on the Lawn * PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED

Introducing The 500 Greatest Albums of the 2010s-Now…Ranked!

John Robinson
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Introducing The 500 Greatest Albums of the 2010s-Now…Ranked!

You want it darker?

You want it darker?

In our introductions to other decades in this series, we’ve often spoken about bold innovations, and how the key recordings made in the period reflected wider cultural change. Since they’re so close at hand, it seems reasonable that it may take a while for the years we’ve covered in this new magazine, from 2010 to the present, to fully reveal themselves. Right now, though, the records that have reached the top of this list have got there because of – maybe in spite of – their weightiness.

Quite simply, the big hitters here are often making very serious music. Rightly, and heavily represented is Nick Cave, whose most recent albums cluster in the upper reaches of the chart. Of course, there’s Push The Sky Away, his breakthrough album of 2013 (in which he and Warren Ellis conspire to melt the traditional structures of popular song). But there are also two records born from personal calamity, the tragic death of his son Arthur. In 2016’s Skeleton Tree, recorded in the immediate aftermath, Cave’s continued experiments in sound and composition gave rise to a spartan, humming menace. Ghosteen, which arrived during the pandemic, was born from a more sustained and mystical meditation on these terrible events. 

Although these and other records in this list are often deeply personal, something in them speaks to our collective times. It might mean Kendrick Lamar placing his ascent to hip hop royalty in a wider context of political extremism and negative social change. Or it might mean Leonard Cohen creating profound work, painted in sombre colours. Cohen had already wryly tipped a hat to his audience when he called himself “Leonard…A sportsman and a shepherd” on an album called Old Ideas. Impressively, he had the resource to do so again, and conflate the personal and the political in an even more serious fashion. It should almost go without saying that he would call it You Want It Darker?. 

Most impressively, Cohen’s was a record which advanced the position taken by Johnny Cash’s American Recordings series nearly 20 years previously. Namely, how might an artist confront and transform their late life experience into something universal. 2016, the year in which Cohen (and Merle Haggard, and Prince) died also marked the passing of David Bowie. Blackstar, his final album, was more than a gravitas record, though. Instead, leaving life as he had lived it, Bowie made his passing his latest reinvention, a strangely moving and uplifting experience.

Older than most of his contemporaries, it was Bob Dylan who showed how it was done. You wanted it darker? Death was all around Rough And Rowdy Ways, but Dylan made himself its master: rollicking through the political horror of the past 100 years if only to show that what doesn’t kill you might make you stronger, and funnier, and cleverer than everyone else.

Of course Blackstar was released only eight years ago; the Dylan album a mere four. It may be that decades in the future a publication like this shines a light on far different parts of the musical decade. It may decide that times weren’t quite so serious that they warranted all this gravitas, and go on to praise different greats. It certainly may be so. Or, of course, it may not. 

Enjoy the magazine. It’s in shops Friday. Or you can get one here.

Watch the trailer for Martin Scorsese’s documentary, Beatles ’64

Michael Bonner
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Watch the trailer for Martin Scorsese’s documentary, Beatles ’64

The first trailer for Martin Scorsese's upcoming documentary, Beatles '64 has been released. You can watch it below.

The first trailer for Martin Scorsese‘s upcoming documentary, Beatles ’64 has been released. You can watch it below.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

The documentary airs on Disney+ from November 29.

The documentary uses footage originally shot by David and Albert Maysles during the band’s first visit to America, alongside new interview footage with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and other eyewitnesses.

You can buy Uncut’s deep dive into The Beatles’ first US visit from our online store by clicking here

Bob Dylan, Royal Albert Hall, London, November 13, 2024

Nick Hasted
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Bob Dylan, Royal Albert Hall, London, November 13, 2024

The waiting gear has hardly changed since 1966. Jim Keltner’s drumkit looks Ringo-minimal behind the piano, guitars and upright bass scattered beneath Old Hollywood Klieg lights, the basic materiel of a mid-20th century roadhouse touring band – the Hawks, say. And when those lights go up, a gold-jacketed electric guitarist sits in the band’s half-circle with his straight back enigmatically to us, as if cooking up tunes in an after-hours joint, not the Albert Hall. Then Bob Dylan turns to the piano, Keltner’s bass-drum whomps, and “All Along The Watchtower” gradually coalesces.

The waiting gear has hardly changed since 1966. Jim Keltner’s drumkit looks Ringo-minimal behind the piano, guitars and upright bass scattered beneath Old Hollywood Klieg lights, the basic materiel of a mid-20th century roadhouse touring band – the Hawks, say. And when those lights go up, a gold-jacketed electric guitarist sits in the band’s half-circle with his straight back enigmatically to us, as if cooking up tunes in an after-hours joint, not the Albert Hall. Then Bob Dylan turns to the piano, Keltner’s bass-drum whomps, and “All Along The Watchtower” gradually coalesces.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

Dylan’s casual return to guitar to open the first few songs tonight – his precise contribution hard to extract from Doug Lancio and Bob Britt’s interweaving – is one of several rebuttals to the passing of time. When I saw the second European night of the now epic Rough And Rowdy Ways tour in a gloomy Stockholm arena in 2022, Dylan, then 81, stood only occasionally and, it seemed, shakily. The three-year tour he’d announced to showcase his new songs seemed quixotically optimistic then. Yet tonight he starts most songs standing among his compadres before leaning conspiratorially on the piano, apparently stronger now than when he started, rejuvenated even.

READ OUR REVIEW OF BOB DYLAN LIVE AT USHER HALL, EDINBURGH, NOVEMBER 5, 2024

Many other things have changed at the venue where Dylan first, famously, appeared in ’65 before returning in 2013 with the reborn voice and stable setlists which have radically transformed the last decade’s iteration of the Never-Ending Tour. Alongside Rough And Rowdy Ways songs which have evolved far beyond the album, the breezy, minor back-catalogue which studded his 2022 UK visit has been replaced by heavy ‘60s hitters, in a powerfully rebalanced set.

“It Ain’t Me, Babe” follows “Watchtower”. “It sure ain’t me, babe,” Dylan sings, words ringing out over a minimalist piano jangle which veers into avant-garde pathways, till Keltner steers back to firm ground. “I play Beethoven… and Chopin,” Bob adds on “I Contain Multitudes”, but his sometimes discordant piano strays closer to jazz, where Keltner follows him with delicate attentiveness, running the ship between them.

This is also often the closest Dylan has been to rock for many years. His piano shoots “False Prophet” somewhere tumultuous, Keltner essays stormy rolls,and Britt’s lightning-bolt guitar recalls the sound made by Robbie Robertson here a lifetime ago. There’s an Elvis shiver to his vocal on “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, Dylan’s harmonica solo echoing in from Oh Mercy’s swamps and followed by dark, slow stride piano. Britt’s fuzzed chords drop like controlled explosions into the heavy blues of “Crossing The Rubicon”, as Dylan considers heroes of his youth from Martin Luther King to Montgomery. The vigorous sound he’s plugged back into hilariously climaxes with “Desolation Row”. Students of his hide-and-seek chorus from “Like A Rolling Stone” circa 2019 will surely place this still higher among his iconoclastic rearrangements. Verses are hurled overboard to permit rocketing Rawhide rockabilly, Keltner’s rumbling toms maintaining the relentless pace, till Dylan’s final piano solo pulls the sound still tighter in this wild new place.

Dylan moves directly from this legendary address to “Key West”, a Rough And Rowdy Ways song of equal majesty. It’s an example of tonight’s other dominant mode, with Dylan’s voice and words front and centre, and the band in barely perceptible support. The song hangs suspended outside time, adjacent to its mystical Florida “horizon line”, as Dylan lays out lines with quiet inevitability. He swallowed words early in the show, but now every phrase, and his pride in them, is clear.

A little earlier, “My Own Version Of You” was revealed as another of his great epics in similar Bob-centric fashion. “I say to hell with all things that used to be,” he snarls during this Frankenstein tale like no song he or anyone has written before. “I can see the whole history of the human race…on your face,” he adds with relish, and you believe him. “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” begins with a dramatic, stark vocal flourish and clarion power, as Dylan plays sad cantina piano. His consistency of purpose and achievement across his whole career is set in relief by these past and present songs.

Along with pride in his songs and performance, there’s a modesty to Dylan and his band, heard in the way they vanish into the jump-blues drive of “Goodbye Jimmy Reed”, as infinitely timeless in its own way as “Key West”. Teenage Bob’s ambition was to join Little Richard’s band. Here for a few minutes, he has.

Dylan stands to preach “Every Grain Of Sand”, a Blakean prayer written by a Bob hitting 40 and hovering between faith and doubt, when “sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me.” He hits mighty gospel chords, then plays a harmonica solo whose giant, reverberating notes fill the hall. It might be the last time for all this one day. But not yet.

Bob Dylan and his band setlist Royal Albert Hall, November 13, 2024:

All Along The Watchtower

It Ain’t Me Babe

I Contain Multitudes

False Prophet

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Black Rider

My Own Version Of You

Crossing The Rubicon

Desolation Row

Key West (Philosopher Pirate)

Watching The River Flow

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You

Mother Of Muses

Goodbye Jimmy Reed

Every Grain Of Sand           

Jerry Garcia’s voice recreated by AI for books, articles and more

Michael Bonner
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Jerry Garcia’s voice recreated by AI for books, articles and more

The voice of the late Grateful Dead's frontman and guitarist Jerry Garcia has been recreated by AI, reports Billboard.

The voice of the late Grateful Dead‘s frontman and guitarist Jerry Garcia has been recreated by AI, reports Billboard.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

The Garcia estate has partnered with AI voice company ElevenLabs to bring his voice to its Iconic Listening Experience on the ElevenReader app.

Garcia’s voice model adds to a list of other artifically generated voices by the company, including Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds and John Wayne.

Garcia’s voice has been used to read out audiobooks, e-books, articles, poetry, PDFs and more in 32 different languages on the app.

Additionally, Garcia’s voice model will also be used in various upcoming projects associated with the Jerry Garcia Foundation, which could include documentaries, audio art exhibits and more.

“My father was a pioneering artist, who embraced innovative audio and visual technologies,” Garcia’s daughter Keelin said.

Sunny War announces new album, Armageddon In A Summer Dress

Michael Bonner
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Sunny War announces new album, Armageddon In A Summer Dress

Sunny War returns with a new album, Armageddon In A Summer Dress, which is due on February 21 from New West Records.

Pre-order Armageddon In A Summer Dress here

Sunny War returns with a new album, Armageddon In A Summer Dress, which is due on February 21 from New West Records.

You can hear the first track from the album below: “Walking Contradiction” featuring Steve Ignorant from Crass.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

Armageddon In A Summer Dress follows on from 2023’s Anarchist Gospel and was produced by Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray for the Riff Raff) and features guest appearances by Valerie June, X‘s John Doe of X, Tré Burt, the Raconteurs‘ Jack Lawrence, Kyshona Armstrong and John James Tourville of the Deslondes as well as Ignorant.

The tracklsting for Armageddon In A Summer Dress is:

One Way Train

Bad Times

Rise

Ghosts

Walking Contradiction (feat. Steve Ignorant)

Cry Baby (feat. Valerie June)

No One Calls Me Baby

Scornful Heart (feat. Tré Burt)

Gone Again (feat. John Doe)

Lay Your Body

Debbie Downer

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Throwing Muses share new single, “Drugstore Drastic”

Michael Bonner
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Throwing Muses share new single, “Drugstore Drastic”

Throwing Muses return with new single "Drugstore Drastic", out today on Fire Records, with an extensive 2025 UK and EU Spring/Summer tour on sale now.

Throwing Muses return with new single “Drugstore Drastic“, out today on Fire Records, with an extensive 2025 UK and EU Spring/Summer tour on sale now.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

“Drugstore Drastic” follows the Muses 2020 album Sun Racket and is the first salvo from a batch of new material due to come next year.

Meanwhile, Throwing Muses tour:

May 12: Blå, Oslo, Norway 
May 13: Vega Hall, Copenhagen, Denmark 
May 14: Lido, Berlin, Germany 
May 15: Gebaude 9, Cologne, Germany 
May 17: Waterfront, Norwich, UK 
May 18: Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, UK 
May 19: The Cluny, Newcastle, UK 
May 20: The Garage, Glasgow, UK 
May 21: Cyprus Avenue, Cork, Ireland 
May 22: Roisin Dubh, Galway, Ireland 
May 23: Whelan’s, Dublin, Ireland 
May 24: Academy 2, Manchester, UK 
May 25: Bearded Theory, Derbyshire, UK 
May 26: The Fleece, Bristol, UK 
May 27: Electric Ballroom, London 
May 28: White Rock Studio, Hastings, UK 
May 29: Chalk, Brighton, UK 
May 30: Cactus Club, Bruges, Belgium 
May 31: La Marberie, Paris, France 
June 2: The Chelsea, Vienna, Austria 
June 3: Strom, Munich, Germany 
June 4: Santeria Toscana 31, Milan, Italy 
June 5: Molotov, Marseille, France 

Bobby Gillespie: “I’m trying to work out what you do with a band that’s been going as long as we have”

Nick Hasted
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Bobby Gillespie: “I’m trying to work out what you do with a band that’s been going as long as we have”

Primal Scream’s twelfth album Come Ahead marks a distinctive break with recent records. In this extended version of the interview in this month’s Uncut, Bobby Gillespie talks us through the radical changes in the Scream’s music-making from the ‘80s through Screamadelica to the present, social justice, his deep bonds with Andrew Innes and his late dad, and writing age-appropriate songs as a sixty-something rocker.

Buy Come Ahead here

Primal Scream’s twelfth album Come Ahead marks a distinctive break with recent records. In this extended version of the interview in this month’s Uncut, Bobby Gillespie talks us through the radical changes in the Scream’s music-making from the ‘80s through Screamadelica to the present, social justice, his deep bonds with Andrew Innes and his late dad, and writing age-appropriate songs as a sixty-something rocker.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

UNCUT: It seems like the lyrics on Come Ahead follow on from some of the breakthroughs you made on Utopian Ashes, the album you made with Jehnny Beth.

BOBBY GILLESPIE: Definitely. I wrote the lyrics for Utopian Ashes just before I wrote my book Tenement Kid, and between those two releases something was unlocked and made free.

Had you become more confident that you could stand up and make art outside of Primal Scream?

With the book, definitely. We could actually have released Utopian Ashes as a Primal Scream album because I wrote 90% of the lyrics and about 90% of the melodies, and Andrew [Innes] and myself did all of the chords. But also with that record my writing process was different. Since Vanishing Point in ’96, it would be Andrew and myself in the studio, and Andrew would build up textures and atmospheres and rhythms, then I’d write lyrics that I felt would go with that particular soundscape. And we did away with chords. I’m not putting us up with these guys, but with let’s say James Brown or Fela Kuti or Miles Davis, everything’s just on the one chord, and there was influence from that stuff. We would go to the studio five days a week, Andrew would play synths and sequencers, and we’d build tracks from the bottom up, making albums as studio creations. We started Utopian Ashes like that, but thenI started adding chords with an acoustic guitar here at home and shaping the songs in a more traditional way. I was doing it on my own, and that gave me courage. And when it came to Come Ahead I found that I’d written all the lyrics before the record. They were poems. Whole sets of lyrics would come to me, and then I’d pick up the acoustic guitar.

It’s quite a psychological shift in your role in the band. Now it all starts with you.

That’s true, the collaboration comes later. We had this really good thing going for years. But I’d been writing lyrics to try and fit the music, and that was very constricting. I felt that I had more to say, and I found myself writing these long-forms songs. I thought, is this gonna be a folky kind of record? Is it gonna be singer-songwriter? You’ve gotta understand that we grew up in the ‘70s, and the blueprint for commercial rock and roll was two verses and two choruses. It takes a lot of skill to say a lot in two verses, and a lot of the times what I was saying was quite fractured, but I was writing to fit into a structure that would make an exciting pop or rock and roll record. With the original guitarist Jim [Beattie]’s beautiful elegiac 12-string then Robert Young and Andrew Innes, I was always thinking about hooks and guitar riffs. That busted open with Screamadelica when we started writing on keyboards and collaborating with Weatherall – I think the only guitar song on Screamadelica was originally “Shine Like Stars” and “Damaged”, and that changed everything as well. But being brought up on the pop song is kinda in your blood, we didn’t do the long-form song with loads of lyrics. And now I wanna write, I don’t wanna be hemmed in by having to make a three-minute song.“Settler’s Blues” on Come Ahead has 16 verses!

And along with your expansive lyrics, Andrew’s playing Floydian solos.

Before, me and him coproduced the records as well, we had so much work to do, and I think he concentrated less on guitar. This time he’s really had to think hard because there was limited space for guitar, and what he’s come up with is incredible.

You’ve both gone back to your essential talents.

I hope so. When I sing and he plays guitar, we’ve got a groove and an understanding and we know where each other’s going. And that’s Primal Scream. There’s a connection that goes all the way back to being 16.

With all that history, you’ve been quoted as saying you thought there might not be another Scream album.

That’s been overstated. In 2021, Utopian Ashes and Tenement Kid came out, I had so much work to do. David Holmes caught me up that year and said, ‘Let’s do a record.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, man, I’m not right, I don’t wanna do another record’ – at that point. At the beginning of 2020, I sat down and wrote a list of things that I wanted to do, and things I didn’t. And one of the things I didn’t wanna do was start a new Primal Scream record, and I knew that there had to be a different approach to making music. Because every year Andrew and I would make the album in the studio, it would be presented to whichever record company we were signed to, and a few months later they would release it. We would have to rehearse the band with the songs that we’d written, tour for a year ending in December, and then in the first week of January, Andrew and I would be back in the studio, feeling around in the dark to see if we could find something that sounded good.

So it became like clocking on, more than being creative?

We wanted to be creative, and also we’re workers. We didn’t wanna be lazy people. There was a period where that really did work, from ‘96 to maybe 2002, and after that, I’m not so sure. We both started having kids and families, and I guess it was just keeping ourselves busy. It would’ve been maybe better to take a couple of years off, but we wanted to keep working because it was the way we were brought up. You know, our parents worked.

Effectively, you did take a couple of years off from Primal Scream, and it seems you’ve refreshed the band and your place in it.

One-hundred percent. I’m trying to work out what you do with a band that’s been going as long as we have. I just wanna make records and write songs that reflect how I feel at the age I’m now and the world in which I find myself living, and I’m very curious about the world. It’s not like you’re trying to be better than anyone else. I just wanna make a contribution to music.

Thinking about Come Ahead’s themes, are the soldier from the closed-down mining town in “False Flags”, the cycles of colonial violence in “Settlers Blues” and the oppression and division of the working-class on other songs all sides of the same story?

“False Flags” is about someone like my father, a typical young man who joined the Army at 17. He had next to no education, my dad. He grew up during the war, his father wasn’t around. His mother was working very hard in the uranium factory. She may have got cancer working there, and he was brought up by his sister who left a home at 16. He ended up on the streets. My dad had malnutrition, he was put in homes, he was shunted from relative to relative. And he was clearly not a stupid man. He was self-educated, but he joined the Army as a way to get outta Glasgow. And he said the Army made a man of him, right? There’s a little bit of that story in there, but also about deindustrialization, and how the Army’s recruited from the poorest, most ill-educated people in society, the lower ranks. And my dad was one of them. So it’s that soldier’s tale, and how I think they were used, abused and discarded. And “Settlers Blues” is about the religion of the flag, just like the army is, and it goes through a few different centuries, and shows how the victim historically becomes the victimizer, like what’s happening just now in Gaza.

If there’s a dominant sound to Come Ahead, it’s funk or even disco. How did that come about?

The initial rhythmic tracks were breakbeats that David Holmes sent over to me, and then I would do a very lo-fi acoustic guitar sketch on my phone. It began when I got a text from David, who goes, ‘Check your email.’ I checked and heard these breakbeat drums, and “Ready To Go Home” sounded really good with it, if I modified it to fit the new, funky rhythm, and the chords moved faster. He went, ‘Brilliant. You ready for another one?’, and it was a disco rhythm. I tried the lyrics to “Innocent Money” over that, edited, because it was a long-form poem. He emailed back and said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve just started the new Primal Scream album.’ Holmes is instrumental in this record. I wanted to be produced, that was the thing. I remember calling up Andrew and saying, ‘I’m gonna make a record with David Holmes. I’d love you to play guitar.’ And he goes, ‘I’m in.’ And so Holmes has gotta get equal credit, because his ideas have been fantastic. I went over to Belfast and recorded my vocals with him, and then Andrew went over separately and did his guitars.

Come Ahead’s cover photo is of your late dad. Is this record for him?

Well, I’ll tell you. When we were researching album titles, I had a few that were a bit serious – we might have called it Manichean Times. But I thought Come Ahead works on a variety of levels. If somebody challenges you they say, ‘Come ahead’. And also, I’m not Miles Davis – far from it – but Miles had Miles Ahead, and it’s quite a cheeky title. And when I was looking for photographs for Tenement Kid, my mum had these photographs of her and my dad the year before I was born, 1960. My dad looked half Teddy Boy, half Mod, and I thought, ‘Man, that’s a really powerful image.’ Also a lot of the things I sing about on the record and my attitudes and feelings about things come from my upbringing with my dad. He was all for social justice. Some of those themes were in the record, and it all came together. I just thought it was a great rock and roll picture for the cover – Morrissey would die for that! – and a good rock’n’roll title. We’re saying, we’re still here and we’re still rocking. The Scream are rolling on and we’ve made a record we’re very proud of. It’s the kind of songs and music we should be making at this point in our career. I think I’m getting better and Andrew’s getting better. We’re doing our best.

Come Ahead is out now on BMG

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Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, O2 Arena, London, November 9, 2024

Sam Richards
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Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, O2 Arena, London, November 9, 2024

“Fucking London!” bellows Nick Cave with affectionate gusto, surveying the vast crowd who have come to pay homage in the city where he first made his name. “It seems like we’ve been on tour forever, but now we’re here.” Cave is a pretty good showman these days, so it’s possible he says this kind of thing wherever he plays. But there must be a part of him that thinks back to those famously confrontational Birthday Party shows at West Hampstead’s Moonlight Club almost 45 years ago and wonders exactly how he ended up headlining two nights at the O2.

“Fucking London!” bellows Nick Cave with affectionate gusto, surveying the vast crowd who have come to pay homage in the city where he first made his name. “It seems like we’ve been on tour forever, but now we’re here.” Cave is a pretty good showman these days, so it’s possible he says this kind of thing wherever he plays. But there must be a part of him that thinks back to those famously confrontational Birthday Party shows at West Hampstead’s Moonlight Club almost 45 years ago and wonders exactly how he ended up headlining two nights at the O2.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

It’s been a long and sometimes troubled journey, but Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are defiantly an arena band now. 2024’s Wild God is the first album they’ve written specifically to fill venues of this magnitude, and an awesome opening one-two punch of “Frogs” and “Wild God” demonstrates how well they’ve judged the situation.

With a bank of four gospel singers offering an omnipotent wall of sound, Cave immediately assumes the mantle of a crazed TV evangelist, lyrics from the new songs flashing up on the big screen like subliminal messages imploring us to submit to the power of whatever religion this might be: “Bring your spirit down!”

It’s an undeniably stunning spectacle, though potentially for seasoned Bad Seeds watchers it lacks a little bite. For the first few numbers it could be anyone up there playing those songs, the band deliberately hanging back to allow Cave to seize the stage. But gradually their individual personalities begin to affect proceedings.

There’s the irrepressible Warren Ellis with a jaw-dropping violin solo on “O Children”, not to mention his haunting falsetto refrain on a devastating “Bright Horses”. Guitarist George Vjestica is a glowering presence stage-left, while Big Jim Sclavunos stands directly behind Cave, silhouetted by the gospel singers’ glittering robes, bashing away at his tubular bells like bones against a rock. And then there’s stand-in bassist Colin Greenwood, grinning nervously while Cave gleefully insults a fan in the front row for wearing a Radiohead T-shirt. 

“Jubilee Street”, from the transitional 2013 album Push The Sky Away, is a great showcase for this band of Bad Seeds old and new. It retains a pleasingly raw and combustible edge, exploding into life on the all-consuming coda (“I’m transforming! I’m vibrating!”), when the stage glows orange as if it’s on fire.

How to successfully incorporate elements of the old, belligerent Nick Cave has clearly been a conundrum. There’s understandably no sign of former live staple “Stagger Lee”, its morally ambivalent tale of a psychotic rampage proving hard to square with the hard-won euphoria of a new song like “Joy”.

However, “Red Right Hand” survives and thrives in this new context. It’s always been a little bit cabaret, and here Cave amplifies those elements, turning its organ motif into a terrace chant to be sung by the “balcony people” all the way up in the second tier. “The Mercy Seat” is a harder sell, though “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry” proves to be an invigorating encore stomp. Most impressively, the band somehow turn the carnage of “White Elephant” – key lyric: “I’ll shoot you in the fucking face” – into a wildly celebratory set-closer, with the gospel singers leaving their perch to jive with Cave at the lip of the stage.

Even amid the old fire and brimstone, his piano ballads always offered solace, and here they slot seamlessly into Cave’s new era of emotional availability. “I Need You”, from the grief-wracked Skeleton Key, is a moment of heart-stopping vulnerability in the midst of a grand spectacle. And finally, after an unfeasibly rousing rendition of “The Weeping Song”, Cave heartily thanks each individual Bad Seed before returning alone to the piano for his evergreen love song “Into Your Arms”.

With the big screen camera now trained intently on his face, it looks like Cave’s eyes are moistening along with ours. After all, these are songs in which to weep. But we won’t be weeping long – catharsis has been triumphantly achieved.

SETLIST
Frogs
Wild God
Song Of The Lake
O Children
Jubilee Street
From Her To Eternity
Long Dark Night
Cinnamon Horses
Tupelo
Conversion
Bright Horses
Joy
I Need You
Carnage
Final Rescue Attempt
Red Right Hand
The Mercy Seat
White Elephant
ENCORE
O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)
Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry
The Weeping Song
Into My Arms

Read much more about Nick Cave in the new issue of Uncut, on sale now – order your copy by clicking here

Inside this month’s free Uncut CD – the Best Of 2024

Uncut Staff
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Inside this month’s free Uncut CD – the Best Of 2024

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Jack White, Beth Gibbons, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings and more appear on our latest free CD compilation.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Jack White, Beth Gibbons, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings and more appear on our latest free CD compilation.

All copies of the Review Of The Year 2024 issue of Uncut come with a free, 15-track CD – Best Of 2024 – that showcases many of the albums that appear in our Albums Of The Year.

See below for the full tracklisting…

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

1 NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS

Wild God

[Taken from the Bad Seed Ltd album Wild God]

2 FONTAINES DC

Death Kink

[Taken from the XL album Romance]

3 GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS

Empty Trainload Of Sky

[Taken from the Acony album Woodland]

4 JACK WHITE

That’s How I’m Feeling

[Taken from the Third Man album No Name]

5 MABE FRATTI

Kravitz

[Taken from the Unheard of Hope album Sentir Que No Sabes]

6 RICHARD THOMPSON

Freeze

[Taken from the New West album Ship To Shore]

7 BETH GIBBONS

Reaching Out

[Taken from the Domino album Lives Outgrown]

8 THE SMILE

Read The Room

[Taken from the XL album Wall Of Eyes]

9 CHRISTOPHER OWENS

Beautiful Horses

[Taken from the True Panther album I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair]

10 GRANDADDY

Nothin’ To Lose

[Taken from the Dangerbird album Blu Wav]

11 BASIC

New Auspicious

[Taken from the No Quarter album This Is BASIC]

12 BILL RYDER-JONES

If Tomorrow Starts Without Me

[Taken from the Domino album Iechyd Da]

13 STILL HOUSE PLANTS

M M M

[Taken from the Bison album If I Don’t Make It, I Love U]

14 BEAK>

Hungry Are We

[Taken from the Invada album >>>>]

15 SARAH DAVACHI

Night Horns (edit)

[Taken from the Late Music album The Head As Form’d In The Crier’s Choir]

“…a 1960s alternative reality where Dusty Springfield, Françoise Hardy and Brenda Lee worked in the same warehouse and smoked hash together on breaks…”

Uncut Staff
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“…a 1960s alternative reality where Dusty Springfield, Françoise Hardy and Brenda Lee worked in the same warehouse and smoked hash together on breaks…”

Since we introduced My Life In Music back in 2006, in Take 108*, it’s become an essential component of Uncut, an opportunity for the artists we most admire to reveal all about the albums that have inspired them.

Since we introduced My Life In Music back in 2006, in Take 108*, it’s become an essential component of Uncut, an opportunity for the artists we most admire to reveal all about the albums that have inspired them.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

As this is our Review Of The Year issue, we thought it might be fun to tweak the My Life In Music format accordingly. So we asked the stars of 2024 to tell us about the musical discoveries that have blown them away this year, from new albums and reissues to music books, documentaries and gigs. The result is a 32-page A5 book given away free with our Review Of The Year issue.

As with the very best examples of My Life In Music, the 23 entries in this My Year In Music book are full of revelations and surprises. As a consequence, we hope you’ll find some exciting treasures of your own – much as you would, really, in a regular issue of Uncut.

Notebooks at the ready, then, for some precious recommendations direct form rock’s top table – including deep steers from Thurston Moore, Richard Thompson, Bill Callahan, Yasmin Williams, Bill Ryder-Jones, Nubya Garcia.

Find out about…

“…a beautiful record of drone electronics…”

“…moving, grown-ass music…”

“…a modern wonky disco classic… ”

“…very cool, riffy chamber jazz…”

“…a 1960s alternative reality where Dusty Springfield, Françoise Hardy and Brenda Lee worked in the same warehouse and smoked hash together on breaks…”

* In case you were wondering, the first artist in the MLIM hotseat was Siouxsie Sioux

LCD Soundsystem share new track, “X-Ray Eyes”

Michael Bonner
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LCD Soundsystem share new track, “X-Ray Eyes”

LCD Soundsystem have released a new track, “X-Ray Eyes”. You can hear it below.

LCD Soundsystem have released a new track, “X-Ray Eyes”. You can hear it below.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

The band debuted the track on NTS Radio in October.

The band’s James Murphy has also shared a statement that acted. as an update on the band’s mooted fifth album. Their last was American Dream in 2017.

so there’s a new lcd song now called x ray eyes.

it’s the first single of what’s shaping up to be a new album. don’t ask me when that is, because we’re still working on it. but it feels very good to be putting out new music. we made a small run of silkscreened 12❞s that will sell at the upcoming LA and NYC shows, and DFA will have a limited grip of them, but don’t freak out if you don’t get one because there will be a more readily available commercial release of the same record when we can get it together. we just made a pile of white labels and are screening 100 at a time for each gig. it’s a short lead time thing. and it’s fun.

but, no, there’s no finished LP yet. but when we’re not playing shows, it’s getting closer and closer to completion. so that’s the news. anything else you hear is bullshit speculation.

go vote.

j

Echo & The Bunnymen album gets debut vinyl release

Michael Bonner
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Echo & The Bunnymen album gets debut vinyl release

Echo & The Bunnymen's 1999 album What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? is getting its debut release on vinyl in time to mark its 25th anniversary.

Order What Are You Going to Do with Your Life here

Echo & The Bunnymen‘s 1999 album What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? is getting its debut release on vinyl in time to mark its 25th anniversary.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

The album – the last to feature Les Pattison on bass – is released on November 29, both on crystal clear vinyl and on limited edition rust orange vinyl.

Fully remastered, the 1999 album will also be reissued on an expansive 34-track double CD edition featuring B-sides, alternative takes and live versions of Bunnymen classics and tracks from the album. The video for the album’s lead single “Rust” has been newly restored in HD.

The tracklisting for the expanded CD is:


Disc 1
What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?
Rust
Get In The Car
Baby Rain
History Chimes
Lost On You
Morning Sun
When It All Blows Over
Fools Like Us
The Fish Hook Girl *
See The Horizon *
Sense Of A Life **
Beyond The Green **
The Wood +
Rust (Video Edit)
Fools Like Us (Alternate Extended Mix) +
Baby Rain (Alternative Mix 1) +
History Chimes (Piano and Guitar Version) +
 
Disc 2
What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (Radio Edit) +
Get In The Car (Radio Edit) ++
Top Of The World (Band Version) +
Rust (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999) +
Fools Like Us (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999) +
Baby Rain (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999) +
What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999)+
All That Jazz (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
Back Of Love (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
People Are Strange (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
The Cutter (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
Lips Like Sugar (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
Over The Wall (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
Do It Clean Medley (Live At Cream, 1997) +
The Killing Moon (Live At Cream, 1997) +
Rust (BBC Radio 1 – Live Lounge, 1999)

 * From Rust CD Single 1
 ** From Rust CD SIngle 2
+ previously unreleased
++ from Get in The Car CD Single

AAA

Aphrodite’s Child – 666 – The Apocalypse Of St John: 50th Anniversary Boxset

Piers Martin
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Aphrodite’s Child – 666 – The Apocalypse Of St John: 50th Anniversary Boxset

If The Rolling Stones’ notorious free concert at Altamont in December 1969 signalled the end of the ’60s’ hippie ideal, then Aphrodite’s Child’s 666 is the sacrificial ceremony where the hopes and dreams of that decade are finally turned to dust in a beautiful, cacophonous, ridiculous melange of progressive rock, psychedelic folk, Greek myth, Christian scripture, Monty Python surrealism and countercultural conspiracy. The victims at this ceremony? Aphrodite’s Child themselves, whose four members went their separate ways long before this controversial 83-minute double-album based on the Book of Revelations was released in June 1972, two years after the band had delivered it to their label, Mercury.

If The Rolling Stones’ notorious free concert at Altamont in December 1969 signalled the end of the ’60s’ hippie ideal, then Aphrodite’s Child’s 666 is the sacrificial ceremony where the hopes and dreams of that decade are finally turned to dust in a beautiful, cacophonous, ridiculous melange of progressive rock, psychedelic folk, Greek myth, Christian scripture, Monty Python surrealism and countercultural conspiracy. The victims at this ceremony? Aphrodite’s Child themselves, whose four members went their separate ways long before this controversial 83-minute double-album based on the Book of Revelations was released in June 1972, two years after the band had delivered it to their label, Mercury.

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

Stewarded by the Greek maestro Vangelis Papathanassiou – the visionary behind the Blade Runner and Chariots Of Fire scores – and fronted by the singer and bassist Demis Roussos – later, the kaftan king of ’70s kitsch – alongside guitarist Silver Koulouris and drummer Lucas Sideras, Aphrodite’s Child began life as Athens’ answer to The Byrds or The Beatles. Drawing on psych-rock, flower power and the lush balladry of Mikis Theodorakis, they achieved notable success in Europe with their first two albums, End Of The World (1968) and It’s Five O’Clock (1969), and singles “I Want To Live” and “Rain And Tears”.

But Vangelis, the driving musical force, soon tired of that charade and sought new challenges to match his colossal ambition. Based in Paris to escape the right-wing dictatorship in Greece – like the rest of the band – he’d experienced the riots of May ’68 and, though not political, sensed something in the air. An encounter the following year with the writer and filmmaker Costas Ferris, who’d touted a script for a film called Aquarius to an unimpressed Pink Floyd, led to Ferris proposing a theme for an Aphrodite’s Child concept album based on either a modern-day Passion Play or the Revelation of St John (known as Apocalypse in Greece), set in the here and now. The idea of Apocalypse – renamed 666 – appealed to Vangelis, who felt the need to compose music not as a celebration of the Swinging ’60s but rather as an almost violent reaction to it. On jazz freak-out “Altamont”, for example, the gods view the unfolding chaos from a mountain: “We saw a lamb with seven eyes/We saw a beast with seven horns,” intones the album’s English narrator John Forst. He also mentions “the rolling people”, which The Verve would use for Urban Hymns.

To that end, Vangelis composed a Tommy-style rock oratorio based on Ferris’s script in which an audience at a circus watches the animals and performers act out a diabolical ritual while the real Armageddon whips up chaos outside the big top. While the audience thinks this is part of the show, the all-seeing narrator becomes more and more exasperated. When the two scenes collide, all hell breaks loose – realised by Vangelis in the penultimate 20-minute jam “All The Seats Were Occupied”, which weaves excerpts from the whole album into a frenetic finale. Much like Alejandro Jodorowsky’s contemporaneous film The Holy Mountain, which also blends religion and magical realism, the more you think you understand 666, the less sense it makes.

Vangelis and his bandmates spent 10 months in Europa Sonor studios in Paris, burning through $90,000 in the process and forbidding their paymasters to hear the works in progress. If Mercury had come to terms with the fact that Aphrodite’s Child no longer produced chart-topping romantic pop, they struggled with the potentially blasphemous nature of 666 – not helped by the four weatherbeaten musicians who, with their flowing locks and furrowed brows, resembled fallen apostles. Yet there are some sublime songs, such as “The Four Horsemen” and “Loud Loud Loud”. In the end, the one track that most vexed the label was “∞” (Infinity), in which the Greek actress Irene Papas chants, “I was, I am, I am to come” as an improvised, orgasmic a cappella, becoming increasingly hysterical as Vangelis rattles percussion approvingly. Intended to convey the Second Coming of Christ through the pain of birth and the joy of sex, its X-rated content vexed Mercury who, fearing a “Je T’aime”-style backlash, asked Vangelis to cut it from the album. He refused, and so the label sat on the record for two years, only then releasing it via their new leftfield Vertigo imprint. On the one-year anniversary of the album’s completion, a miffed Vangelis threw a party in the studio where it was recorded and played it in full to his guests. One admirer in attendance, Salvador Dali, proposed a lavish stunt in Barcelona to promote it, which didn’t happen.

The original recording of Papas apparently lasts 39 minutes, which Vangelis cut to five, and some fans might feel short-changed that this fabled onanistic odyssey has been omitted from this 50th-anniversary boxset. In addition to the video of a rare 1972 Discorama documentary and a Dolby Atmos revamp, what’s of interest here are the new remasters – overseen by Vangelis before he died in May 2022 – of both the Greek pressing of 666 and the one released in the rest of the world. On the more desirable Greek version, several songs are longer and mixed differently; “Battle Of The Locusts” features extra Hendrix riffing from Koulouris, while the bluesy groove of “Hic Et Nunc” plays on for two further minutes.

Heavier than Led Zeppelin, saucier than Serge and wilder than The White Album – in these secular times, every home should have a copy of 666.

Bob Dylan, Usher Hall, Edinburgh, November 5, 2024

Michael Bonner
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Bob Dylan, Usher Hall, Edinburgh, November 5, 2024

If, at this late date, you still need proof Bob Dylan is not a man to be trusted, then this unexpected return to the UK for the latest leg of the Rough And Rowdy Ways tour is a good place to start. Certainly, after the triumphant fourth and final show at the London Palladium – with its two extra curtain calls – you could have been forgiven for thinking that Dylan was bidding farewell to the capital, before making a last, dignified excursion round the country. So it came as a surprise when this latest run of 10 UK shows were announced in July – not just simply Dylan’s decision to return to the UK, but the question this inevitably raised. When you’ve played shows as good as the ones Uncut witnessed in London, Glasgow and Oxford in 2022 what, then, do you do for an encore?

If, at this late date, you still need proof Bob Dylan is not a man to be trusted, then this unexpected return to the UK for the latest leg of the Rough And Rowdy Ways tour is a good place to start. Certainly, after the triumphant fourth and final show at the London Palladium – with its two extra curtain calls – you could have been forgiven for thinking that Dylan was bidding farewell to the capital, before making a last, dignified excursion round the country. So it came as a surprise when this latest run of 10 UK shows were announced in July – not just simply Dylan’s decision to return to the UK, but the question this inevitably raised. When you’ve played shows as good as the ones Uncut witnessed in London, Glasgow and Oxford in 2022 what, then, do you do for an encore?

THE REVIEW OF 2024, NICK CAVE, ALICE COLTRANE, ELVIS COSTELLO, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, CASSANDRA JENKINS AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE!

The answer lies somewhere in the 25 dates Dylan played on this year’s Outlaw Music Festival Tour between June and September. Appearing in outdoor venues as part of a larger line-up, Dylan replaced drummer Jerry Pentacost with Jim Keltner, swapping out the Rough And Rowdy Ways-heavy sets for more festival-friendly material including “Highway 61 Revisited”, “Simple Twist Of Fate” and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”. Reconvening the Rough And Rowdy Ways tour in Prague in October, Dylan retained Keltner and also a couple of the big hitters from the Outlaw shows. As a consequence, this leg of the tour has shifted focus and tone; Dylan, once again, is moving on.

Superficially, he’s changed three songs in the setlist since 2022 – “Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine)”, “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “That Old Black Magic” are out, replaced by three older songs. But the key to this 2024 version is Keltner. I last saw Keltner play with Dylan at Docklands Arena in 2002 – and much as then it’s impossible to take your eyes off him this evening. The 2022 shows had a very aquatic, slow-moving quality, partly down to the feline brushwork of Dylan’s then-drummer, Charlie Drayton. Keltner – wearing aviator shades for the entire show, silver hair swept back – is a much more emphatic player than Drayton. His explosive playing on tonight’s opener “All Along The Watchtower”, for instance, sets the agenda for what follows. His drumming on “Desolation Row”, meanwhile, recalls the machine gun intro to “Peggy Sue”, but sustained over nine minutes. He brings similar potency to the bluesier songs on Rough And Rowdy Ways, where his solidity and swing carries “False Prophet” and “To Be Alone With You” as much as, say, Doug Lancio’s jarring bursts of guitar. But despite the intensity of Keltner’s delivery in these lounder moments, his discreet brushwork brings warmth and intimacy to more lambent numbers like “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” and “I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You”. Elsewhere, “Watching The River Flow” carries an additional poignancy: the original 1971 recording was Keltner’s first session with Dylan. As if to underscore their shared history, the two men routinely exchange looks and comments with one another between songs.

If the focus has shifted in Keltner’s favour, nevertheless the rest of the band are still on point. Dylan’s baby grand is centre stage, with the other musicians placed around it, in the same positions they took in 2022. Tony Garnier and Doug Lancio are still stage right, closely following Dylan’s piano playing, with Bob Britt on stage left. Dylan is far more active than I’ve seen him in a long time. He started “All Along The Watchtower” sitting down, playing guitar with his back to the audience. By “I Contain Multitudes”, the third song, he’s upright – which is how he spends most of the show. We even get a little jig during “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” which raises a cheer from the stalls. But for the most part, Dylan leans across his baby grand, as if conspiratorially addressing the audience, occasionally reaching down to play piano or playing harp. The piano playing is every bit as strong and resourceful as in 2022 – on a particularly radical overhaul of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, Dylan channels Thelonious Monk, finding angular, spacious shapes between the melodies while on “To Be Alone With You” he’s playing wild honky tonk riffs.

And then, just after 9pm, he’s gone. There are still seven shows left to play, including three at the Albert Hall. But after that, nothing has been announced. Is this, then, the end of the Rough And Rowdy Ways tour? And if so, what comes next? I like to think we’ll find out soon enough…

Bob Dylan and his band setlist Usher Hall, Edinburgh, November 6, 2024:

All Along The Watchtower

It Ain’t Me, Babe

I Contain Multitudes

False Prophet

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Black Rider

My Own Version Of You

To Be Alone With You

Crossing The Rubicon

Desolation Row

Key West (Philosopher Pirate)

Watching The River Flow

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You

Mother Of Muses

Goodbye Jimmy Reed

Every Grain Of Sand

Uncut Review Of The Year 2024

Uncut Staff
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Uncut Review Of The Year 2024

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All print copies come with two gifts: a 32-page, A5 book, My Year In Music, where the stars of 2024 share their albums, books, gigs and other musical highlights from the last 12 months; and also a 15-track Best Of 2024 CD starring Jack White, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Beth Gibbons, The Smile, Richard Thompson, Bill Ryder-Jones and more!

NICK CAVE: After a period of carnage and contemplation, Wild God found the legendary band in rip-roaring form, powered by their leader’s emotional candour and renewed lust for life. Back in Berlin, a location that looms large in the group’s lore, Cave and cohorts consider their ongoing transformation: “It’s really about the present moment…”

UNCUT’S REVIEW OF THE YEAR: Standby for the definitive look back at 2024. The 80 Best New Albums Of 2024, 30 Best Archive Releases, 20 Best Films, 10 Best Books and 10 Best Music Documentaries… plus Bruce Springsteen, Waxahatchee, Beak> and English Teacher speak!

ALICE COLTRANE: Since her death in 2007, the reputation of this spiritual jazz pioneer has continued to grow to the point where it now matches that of her esteemed husband John. In what has been designated The Year Of Alice, we hear from those who worked, lived and prayed alongside the musician and teacher to discover what drove her to create such transcendent music: “There was an energy around her, a sacredness”…

ELVIS COSTELLO: With an enhanced reissue of his much-loved King Of America album, EC explores the new shoots in the old routes that have taken him around America’s greatest music cities for the last 40 years. “I’m grateful for the trip I’ve been on,” he tells us.

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: Singer, film star, soldier, academic and activist, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, who died last month, could seemingly turn his hand to anything – not least songwriting, where he helped take country music in bold new directions. But as we discover, success sat awkwardly with his rebel spirit. “Mark Twain was special, Bob Dylan’s special, all The Beatles are special. Kris fits in with that lot, you know?”

CASSANDRA JENKINS: The singer-soungwriter’s latest record My Light, My Destroyer is one of the breakthrough albums of this year: a rich, emotional blend of warmth and melancholy set against cosmic awe. In Portland, Oregon, she explains how she overcame self-doubt and grief to discover truths about herself and her songwriting. “I’m just a delicate flower,” she explains. “So it’s pretty funny tothrow a delicate flower into a tornado.”

AN AUDIENCE WITH… JOE BOYD: The folk-rock super-producer talks Syd, Sandy, 6am calls from Kubrick and ping-pong with John Cale.

THE MAKING OF “WILD THING” BY THE TROGGS: A “weird demo with cuckoo noises” touted by a country songsmith flops for The Wild Ones but catches the ear of Hampshire’s beat hopefuls. “It had something about it…”

ALBUM BY ALBUM WITH MICK HEAD: The rocky road from The Pale Fountains to Shack to Strands to the New Elastic Band and back.

MY LIFE IN MUSIC WITH JULIA HOLTER: LA’s musical magical realist on her loud city songs: “There’s sorrow and ecstasy and all the feelings…”

REVIEWED: White Denim, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Father John Misty, Joni Mitchell, Michael Kiwanuka, Randy Newman, Dusty Springfield, Jeff Parker, Paul Simon, The Shovel Dance Collective, George Harrison, David Gilmour, Haley Heynderickx, Silk Road Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens, Ray Charles, Trees Speak and more.

PLUS: Phil Lesh and Barbara Dane RIP, Blur, John Peel’s record collection, Jesse Malin, an REM/Black Crowes/Screaming Trees supergroup and introducing… Fievel Is Glauque.

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