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Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner: “I try not to think a lot about past work”

Tom Pinnock
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Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner: “I try not to think a lot about past work”

It’s been a while since Kurt Wagner picked up a guitar and, after such a lengthy period of inactivity, he’s having trouble getting used to it again. To prove his point, he brings his antique Gibson acoustic – “an LG-something” – up from the basement and rests it on his lap. “It’s funny,” he says. “Part of my life was practising and preparing for performance. But when that went away, so did my interaction with this thing.”

A guitar might seem like a step backwards for Wagner, who these days works primarily on his laptop, carving blocks of digital information like a sculptor might do with marble.

“There was a time when I was a typewriter guy,” he explains. “Then when I got a word processor, it really changed how I went about writing. I would move words and phrases around. Getting a laptop changed things because suddenly I was able to do things with music that had only been possible in a studio. I always liked that notion of the power you have as an editor, shaping information you’ve gathered… that’s always been magic for me.”

Lambchop’s new album Showtunes continues Wagner’s ongoing creative negotiations between their country-soul of old and this brave new world. While it is possibly their most technologically advanced yet – a warm, drifting record made on headphones and best experienced that way – it has a lightness of touch that makes it feel more organic than 2016’s FLOTUS and 2019’s This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You). Though the original ideas emerged from the basement of the south Nashville house in which Wagner has lived with his wife for a quarter of a century, most of the work took place in his office room – or out on the porch where the music can mingle with the birds, traffic and trains. “This is where all the magic happens, for sure,” confirms Wagner. “It’s nice to think of the studio experience as more than just being stuck in a little room. It’s a different perspective to watching the little waveforms going up and down.

“I live a quarter of a mile from a major train crossing and they go off all the time,” he adds, while a typically American train horn is heard across our video call. “When I’m talking to
folks in Europe, they really love the train thing. I kinda do too.”

“I was truly intrigued when I heard Showtunes,” says Christof Ellinghaus, founder of City Slang, the label that’s released all of Lambchop’s music in Europe. “On repeated listens, it revealed extraordinary depth and complexity. I think time will show that this album is not just another departure but also a point of arrival. And in the context of his entire body of work, it will prove to be one of his finest moments.”

“Essentially, it was only me on the record – and that was enough,” says Wagner. “But there were things I knew could be enhanced, so that led to what you end up hearing now. I knew this was a sound, even a flavour of writing, that I hadn’t been able to accomplish before. That’s exciting after 30 years of making music.”

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN UNCUT JULY 2021

Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament announces new solo album I Should Be Outside

Matthew Neale
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Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament announces new solo album I Should Be Outside

Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament has announced a fourth solo album under his own name, titled I Should Be Outside.

The album is due on August 10 via Monkeywrench, and follows his surprise-released American Death Squad EP last year.

In a statement shared through Pearl Jam’s Ten Club newsletter on Thursday (June 10), Ament went into more detail about how the new record came together – you can read it below.

Last year’s EP, consisting of five short songs, was also composed during lockdown after Pearl Jam’s planned 2020 tour dates were postponed due to the coronavirus.

“In the days following the postponement of our tour, I found it necessary to find an outlet for the energy we had created going into the tour,” Ament said in a statement at the time. “Pivot was the word of March. So, every morning, I retreated to the studio with the goal of writing a song every day, no matter how shite.

“Days of isolating and watching the news of the destruction courtesy the virus (and the ineptitude of our leadership or as named here, the American Death Squad) made for vivid dreams and a helplessness. These were some of the first songs out of the gate. Raw and succinct.”

You can pre-order the vinyl for the first two songs from I Should Be Outside – “I Hear Ya” and “Bandwidth” – here.

Robert Smith says The Cure’s next album will be their last: “I definitely can’t do this again”

Will Lavin
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Robert Smith says The Cure’s next album will be their last: “I definitely can’t do this again”

The Cure’s Robert Smith has said he thinks the band’s next album will be the last one they do.

Earlier this month, Smith teamed up with Chvrches on a new single called “How Not To Drown“, the second preview from the Scottish trio’s upcoming fourth album, Screen Violence.

Speaking in a new interview alongside Chvrches lead singer Lauren Mayberry, Smith shared a few more details about the long-awaited new album from The Cure.

“The new Cure stuff is very emotional,” Smith told The Sunday Times. “It’s 10 years of life distilled into a couple of hours of intense stuff.”

He then added: “And I can’t think we’ll ever do anything else. I definitely can’t do this again.”

Smith revealed towards the end of 2020 that he had spent the year working on both The Cure’s new album – set to be their first since 2008’s 4:13 Dream – as well as his own solo album.

In a recent interview with Zane Lowe, Smith reaffirmed the two albums, mentioning that one record is notably darker than the other.

Smith also told Lowe that he will have more updates soon. “Probably in about six weeks’ time I’ll be able to say when everything’s coming out and what we’re doing next year and everything…We were doing two albums and one of them’s very, very doom and gloom and the other one isn’t,” he said.

“And they’re both very close to being done. I just have to decide who’s going to mix them. That’s really all I’ve got left to do.”

Hear a preview of the Bruce Springsteen and The Killers collaborative track, “Dustland”

Rhian Daly
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Hear a preview of the Bruce Springsteen and The Killers collaborative track, “Dustland”

The Killers have shared a preview of their upcoming Bruce Springsteen collaboration and announced the release date for the track.

As previously confirmed, the two acts will team up on a release called “Dustland“, which Springsteen revealed during an appearance on Sirius XM’s E Street Radio. The Vegas band had also previously teased a “killer collab” with a mystery artist.

Now, The Killers have posted a short clip of the collaboration to their social media accounts. “Dustland” appears to be a new version of the band’s 2008 track “A Dustland Fairytale“, which featured on the album Day & Age.

The visuals also reveal that “Dustland” will be released this coming Wednesday (June 16).

Watch Jeff and Spencer Tweedy cover Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen’s new single, “Like I Used To”

Will Richards
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Watch Jeff and Spencer Tweedy cover Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen’s new single, “Like I Used To”

Wilco‘s Jeff Tweedy and his son Spencer have covered Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen’s new collaborative single – watch the performance below.

The pair shared the single “Like I Used To” last month, complete with its own video and subsequent late-night TV performance.

Jeff and Spencer‘s performance of the song came as part of the duo’s long-running livestream show The Tweedy Show.

“That’s the best I can do with not knowing the lyrics perfectly yet,” Jeff says after the performance. Watch it below at the 2:30 mark.

Speaking about their collaboration last month, Van Etten remarked: “Even though we weren’t super close, I always felt supported by Angel and considered her a peer in this weird world of touring. We highway high-fived many times along the way…”

Olsen added: “I’ve met with Sharon here and there throughout the years and have always felt too shy to ask her what she’s been up to or working on.

“The song reminded me immediately of getting back to where I started, before music was expected of me, or much was expected of me, a time that remains pure and real in my heart.”

Dorothea Paas – Anything Can’t Happen

Erin Osmon
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Dorothea Paas – Anything Can’t Happen

With Anything Can’t Happen, Canadian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dorothea Paas has crafted one of the most stirring and emotionally resonant break-up albums of recent years, a candid retelling of heartache that doesn’t weaponise pain but instead embraces such darkness as a necessary pairing with light.

A veteran of the Canadian DIY and experimental music scenes, Paas has worked with artists such as US Girls, Jennifer Castle and Badge Époque Ensemble. But this album marks her own studio debut proper, a decade into her career as a self-releasing live performer. Its maturity is unmistakable, demonstrating an evident consideration of instrumental texture, vocal delivery and narrative flow that is restrained and compelling on both micro and macro levels. It’s satisfying to zoom in on each note, to drink in the weight of her feeling as Paas sustains one word over three or four beats, like a condor riding a wind current. But pulling back reveals an equally satisfying connection, where unvarnished emotion melds with aural textures to form a beautiful, devastating and empowering journey.

“I’m not lonely now/Doing all the things I want and working on my mind,” she offers during One, the 30-second album opener sung over spare electric guitar. This vignette portends her journey through the album’s nine songs, a suite of tender ruminations on love, trust, self-doubt and broken relationships that culminates in a reclamation of self. It’s a stunning portrait of a woman deep in those throes, who navigates a long path to healing and acceptance, to the idea that she controls her destiny. “Sorting through old thoughts/
I go through them/One…” she concludes, embracing her singular self as a statement of purpose, less a confession than a revelation, a realisation that being alone is better than being with agony.

The album wades through matters of the heart with an intense focus, a lyrical theme that echoes Joni Mitchell’s Blue and Hejira-era portraits, and Elliott Smith’s trenchant reflections, emotionally weighty but easy to take in. And like the later work of those artists, the music of Anything Can’t Happen signals an evolution from a simple folk music foundation to fleshed-out textural arrangements with a cast of accomplished players.

Paas recruited friends from the Canadian experimental scene, and the instrumentation throughout seems like a natural collaboration and extension of long-forged relationships and mutual appreciation. Paas’ diaphanous voice is easily compared to Mitchell’s but she often infuses her singing with a subtle vibrato more redolent of Mimi Parker of Low, alternately warm and chilling.

The magnetic title track is propelled by a slinking groove that meets flickering electric guitar and jazz-infused percussion as Paas sings, three times, “It’s so hard to trust again/When you don’t even trust yourself.” The repetition underscores the intended emphasis of this self-doubt, while doubling as an act of emotional processing, thinking the same thought over and over until it becomes a real, present truth. It’s a device Paas uses throughout the album to powerful effect, conveying her most urgent observations, conclusions and feelings via repeated words.

“Oh I know, I know, I know/ You’re calling out for love/But your behaviour is driving me away,” she sings with an arresting soprano on Waves Rising, a folk-rock standout in which her feather-light vibrato ripples the end of each line, like waves of consciousness unfolding amid an impossible situation. This feeling is crystallised on Frozen Window, a snapshot of love slipping away, sung over mesmeric electric guitar, Paas’ voice here projecting a necessary detachment as she declares, “Our memories are useless now.” But then she surprises the listener with a hard-won moment of hope.

“But against all odds/I will open to love again/Like a plant searches for light through a frozen window,” she sings, relaying the road to reconciliation as her voice meets guitar, piano and bass in a freeform dance, a ray of sun piercing a shadow. If love is tantamount to madness, then Anything Can’t Happen is its imperturbable biographer. The album relays past events with clear-eyed wisdom, conveying ups and downs through a well-hewn vision of collaborative beauty. It does not succumb to the tests that love sets but rather plumbs the depths of its paths to reveal the transfiguration of devastation into self-assurance. In a still-uncertain climate, its emotional honesty and crystalline truths are a gift.

Rogér Fakhr – Fine Anyway

Andrew Mueller
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Rogér Fakhr – Fine Anyway

Before Beirut was wrecked by the civil war fought in its streets between 1975 and 1990, it was called “the Paris of the East”. It was a city of bars and boulevards, philosophers and poets – and, it could readily be imagined, wry and reflective singer-songwriters of the calibre of Rogér Fakhr, crooning in some cool café amid mists of arak fumes and Gauloises smoke.

The tracks on Fine Anyway were recorded in Beirut in 1977 and Paris in 1978. Fakhr was, by then, living between the two, busking on the Metro in the latter: balancing, like many Lebanese of the time, the danger of home against the loneliness of exile. It’s unclear just how much this melancholy disorientation directly informed his material, but these songs do not want for a sense of melancholy disorientation. Reference points, contemporary and subsequent, include John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot, Lee Hazlewood, Elliott Smith and Gene Clark. Crucially, Fakhr would not be out of place in their company.

The greatest of these songs are extraordinary. Fakhr created this music against rather considerable odds, which may go some way towards explaining why it has barely been heard. Some of these recordings were originally circulated on cassettes among a mere handful of cognoscenti (and they have the background hiss to prove it), some of them have never been released at all.

Fakhr’s own modesty has also been an obstacle. But after he agreed to contribute to a Habibi funk compilation in aid of Beirut following last year’s explosion in the city’s port, he agreed to this.

It’s difficult, on listening to Fine Anyway, to altogether suppress outrage that this fine material has been so long unavailable. The more straightforwardly singer-songwriter cuts set Fakhr’s husky, plaintive voice to intricately picked acoustic guitar, occasionally augmented by flute, piano or tambourine. Some, such as Lady Rain and My Baby, She Is As Down As I Am, are exquisitely mournful. Others, like Insomnia Blue and Everything You Want, are more upbeat, gently essaying a slight country-rock swagger (there’s a parallel universe in which either or both of these were covered by Emmylou Harris and made Fakhr wealthy beyond imagining). With a band in tow, Fakhr gets funkier: “Had To Come Back Wet” includes busy bass that buoys a surging electric piano; The Wizard sounds like something left in error off an early-’70s Byrds album.

Little ties these recordings explicitly to the Lebanon of its time, give or take the coda of gunfire and air raid sirens on Keep Going. Fakhr seems to have been too ambitious to be
a mere protest singer or a chronicler of events. He did not see why Lebanon’s circumstances should confine him – and, on the evidence of these wonderful songs, they didn’t.

50th anniversary of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass celebrated with new special editions

Cillian Breathnach
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50th anniversary of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass celebrated with new special editions

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass this year, a suite of new editions of the album has been announced, including a massive 5CD/8LP Uber Deluxe set.

The anniversary editions – all of which feature outtakes and other extras – have been executive-produced by Harrison’s son Dhani, and feature a new mix of the album by the Grammy-winning Paul Hicks. The releases, ranging from the Uber Deluxe to a standard 2CD version, will arrive on August 6, 2021.

Dhani Harrison said of the origins of the expanded releases: “Since the 50th-anniversary stereo mix release of the title track to my father’s legendary All Things Must Pass album in 2020, my dear pal Paul Hicks and I have continued to dig through mountains of tapes to restore and present the rest of this newly remixed and expanded edition of the album you now see and hear before you.”

 

The most expansive collection is the Uber Deluxe Edition, which includes a total of 70 tracks, housed on five CDs and eight LPs, as well as a Blu-Ray with a 5.2 mix of the original album.

Alongside the music itself comes an expanded 96-page version of the album’s scrapbook, a second 44-page book chronicling the making of All Things Must Pass, a wooden bookmark made from a felled Oak in Friar Park, a limited-edition illustration by Klaus Voormann, a copy of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Light From The Great Ones, Rudraksha beads contained in individual custom-made boxes, a replica of the original album poster and 1/6th-scale replica figurines of Harrison and the garden gnomes featured on the cover art.

See the album’s trailer and the Uber Deluxe tracklisting below, and find out more at georgeharrison.com.

Disc 1 (Main Album) (LP tracklist is the same as CD tracklist, split across more discs)

1. I’d Have You Anytime
2. My Sweet Lord
3. Wah-Wah
4. Isn’t It A Pity (Version One)
5. What Is Life
6. If Not For You
7. Behind That Locked Door
8. Let It Down
9. Run Of The Mill

Disc 2 (Main Album)

1. Beware Of Darkness
2. Apple Scruffs
3. Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)
4. Awaiting On You All
5. All Things Must Pass
6. I Dig Love
7. Art Of Dying
8. Isn’t It A Pity (Version Two)
9. Hear Me Lord
10. Out Of The Blue *
11. It’s Johnny’s Birthday *
12. Plug Me In *
13. I Remember Jeep *
14. Thanks For The Pepperoni *

* Newly Remastered/Original Mix

Disc 3 (Day 1 Demos – Tuesday May 26, 1970)

1. All Things Must Pass (Take 1) †
2. Behind That Locked Door (Take 2)
3. I Live For You (Take 1)
4. Apple Scruffs (Take 1)
5. What Is Life (Take 3)
6. Awaiting On You All (Take 1) †
7. Isn’t It A Pity (Take 2)
8. I’d Have You Anytime (Take 1)
9. I Dig Love (Take 1)
10. Going Down To Golders Green (Take 1)
11. Dehra Dun (Take 2)
12. Om Hare Om (Gopala Krishna) (Take 1)
13. Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll) (Take 2)
14. My Sweet Lord (Take 1) †
15. Sour Milk Sea (Take 1)

Disc 4 (Day 2 Demos – Wednesday May 27, 1970)

1. Run Of The Mill (Take 1) †
2. Art Of Dying (Take 1)
3. Everybody/Nobody (Take 1)
4. Wah-Wah (Take 1)
5. Window Window (Take 1)
6. Beautiful Girl (Take 1)
7. Beware Of Darkness (Take 1)
8. Let It Down (Take 1)
9. Tell Me What Has Happened To You (Take 1)
10. Hear Me Lord (Take 1)
11. Nowhere To Go (Take 1)
12. Cosmic Empire (Take 1)
13. Mother Divine (Take 1)
14. I Don’t Want To Do It (Take 1)
15. If Not For You (Take 1)

† Previously Released

Disc 5 (Session Outtakes and Jams)

1. Isn’t It A Pity (Take 14)
2. Wah-Wah (Take 1)
3. I’d Have You Anytime (Take 5)
4. Art Of Dying (Take 1)
5. Isn’t It A Pity (Take 27)
6. If Not For You (Take 2)
7. Wedding Bells (Are Breaking Up That Old Gang Of Mine) (Take 1)
8. What Is Life (Take 1)
9. Beware Of Darkness (Take 8)
10. Hear Me Lord (Take 5)
11. Let It Down (Take 1)
12. Run Of The Mill (Take 36)
13. Down To the River (Rocking Chair Jam) (Take 1)
14. Get Back (Take 1)
15. Almost 12 Bar Honky Tonk (Take 1)
16. It’s Johnny’s Birthday (Take 1)
17. Woman Don’t You Cry For Me (Take 5)

Blu-ray Audio Disc (Main Album Only; Surround, Atmos, Hi-Res)

1. I’d Have You Anytime
2. My Sweet Lord
3. Wah-Wah
4. Isn’t It A Pity (Version One)
5. What Is Life
6. If Not For You
7. Behind That Locked Door
8. Let It Down
9. Run Of The Mill
10. Beware Of Darkness
11. Apple Scruffs
12. Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)
13. Awaiting On You All
14. All Things Must Pass
15. I Dig Love
16. Art Of Dying
17. Isn’t It A Pity (Version Two)
18. Hear Me Lord
19. Out Of The Blue
20. It’s Johnny’s Birthday
21. Plug Me In
22. I Remember Jeep
23. Thanks For The Pepperoni

Tom Petty’s She’s The One reimagined as Angel Dream for 25th anniversary

Will Lavin
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Tom Petty’s She’s The One reimagined as Angel Dream for 25th anniversary

A reimagined version of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ 1996 album She’s The One has been announced to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Entitled Angel Dream, the updated album is a remixed, remastered and reimagined version of the group’s Songs And Music From The Motion Picture “She’s The One”, set for release on July 2.

Ahead of its official release date, the reissue will be released on limited-edition cobalt blue vinyl this Saturday (June 12) for Record Store Day. You can find out more info about the RSD release here.

The album’s new title is a nod to its opening track, “Angel Dream No.2”, which you can listen to below.

“She’s The One was originally a great way to include some of the songs that didn’t make it on to Wildflowers, but it has its own thing to it, its own charm, and putting it out now in a restructured form makes for a sweet little treat,” Heartbreaker Benmont Tench said of Angel Dream in an interview on SiriusXM’s Tom Petty Radio yesterday (June 10).

“At the time in the studio, it was fun working as a band to improvise the scoring cues for the movie rather than playing to pre-set click tracks and a written score. And it was interesting to try to cut covers of others’ songs for a record, instead of learning covers just for live shows.

“We got a nice vibey version of Beck’s song and I’ve always loved Lucinda’s song ‘Change The Locks‘, so I was more than happy to cut it with our band.  Oh, and this album has Angel Dream on it, one of the loveliest songs Tom ever wrote.”

Petty‘s long-term engineer and co-producer Ryan Ulyate remixed the audio for the reissue and worked with the late musician on the mixes before his passing. The song selection was designed to work as a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers album rather than a film soundtrack.

Four unreleased tracks have been added: “One Of Life’s Little Mysteries“, written by Petty; “Thirteen Days“, a JJ Cale cover; “105 Degrees“, another Petty original; and “French Disconnection“, an instrumental in the same vein as those on the original album. An extended version of “Supernatural Radio” has also been included.

Tom Petty
Tom Petty. CREDIT: Getty Images

Petty‘s widow Dana Petty said of the album: “These songs are extremely special. I am grateful this record is getting the recognition it deserves. The remix Ryan Ulyate did sounds amazing, and the unreleased gems are a lovely bonus. Annakim, Adria, and I took a lot of time finding artwork that reflects the mood of the album. I think we finally achieved that with Alia Penner’s work. It is surreal and beautiful, just like life during that time.”

Angel Dream (Songs And Music From The Motion Picture She’s The One) is available for pre-order here. You can see the track listing below.

Side 1:

Angel Dream (No. 2)
Grew Up Fast
Change The Locks
Zero From Outer Space
Asshole

Side 2:

One of Life’s Little Mysteries
Walls (No. 3)
Thirteen Days
105 Degrees
Climb That Hill
Supernatural Radio (Extended Version)
French Disconnection

The original 1996 album included several songs that were left off the final Wildflowers tracklist but were featured on last year’s critically acclaimed Wildflowers & All The Rest collection.

Richard Ashcroft announces two new autumn acoustic shows

Sam Moore
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Richard Ashcroft announces two new autumn acoustic shows

Richard Ashcroft has announced two new acoustic shows for the autumn.

The former Verve frontman has expanded his upcoming tour, which already includes two sold-out dates at the London Palladium on October 16-17.

Ashcroft will perform two more “acoustic evenings of his classic songs” in Liverpool and London following those Palladium shows later this year.

He’ll head to the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool on October 29, before playing at the Royal Albert Hall on November 1.

The four gigs will serve as “a special celebration of [Ashcroft’s] repertoire of songs, which will feature new interpretations of many of his classic solo and The Verve compositions,” according to a press release.

Tickets for the newly announced Ashcroft shows in Liverpool and London will go on sale at 9:30am tomorrow (June 11) from here.

Ashcroft is already set to perform at Nottingham’s Splendour Festival and Sheffield’s Tramlines Festival in July, before another date at Victorious Festival in Portsmouth in August.

Ashcroft’s last release, a cover of John Lennon’s 1973 protest song “Bring On The Lucie (Freda Peeple)”, arrived back in February.

Elton John says UK will lose “generation of talent” due to post-Brexit touring rules

Nick Reilly
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Elton John says UK will lose “generation of talent” due to post-Brexit touring rules

Elton John has warned that the UK is in danger of losing “a generation of talent” after the UK government failed to secure a touring breakthrough with the EU.

The government’s failure to negotiate visa-free travel and Europe-wide work permits for musicians and crew in Lord Frost’s Brexit deal has long been a topic of discussion.

It has sparked fears that artists will face huge costs to take part in live music tours off the continent which could create a glass ceiling that prevents rising and developing artists from being able to afford to do so.

John shared the post to his Instagram, revealing that he – alongside his partner and Rocket Entertainment CEO David Furnish, promoter Craig Stanley and Lord Paul Strasberger – met with Lord Frost “to spell out the damage the trade agreement he negotiated with Europe is doing to the UK’s music industry”.

“Despite this looming catastrophe, the government seems unable or unwilling to fix this gaping hole in their trade deal and defaults to blaming the EU rather than finding ways out of this mess,” he said.

John described touring as “an essential part” of education for artists, but said it risked becoming prohibitive for artists under the current arrangement.

“The situation is already critical and touring musicians, crews and support staff are already losing their livelihood,” he said.

John went on to explain that he was not concerned with the risk for artists on a similar level to himself, who frequent arenas and stadiums.

“We are lucky enough to have the support staff, finance and infrastructure to cut through the red tape that Lord Frost’s no deal has created,” he said.

Elton added: “During our meeting Lord Frost said trying to solve this issue is a long process.”

“Unfortunately, our industry doesn’t have time. It is dying now. The government have broken the promise they outlined in 2020 to protect musicians and other creative industries from the impact of Brexit on tours to Europe.”

Concluding his statement, Elton said the government risked ruining a “window of opportunity” that had been presented by the way in which the pandemic has halted touring.

“I call on the government to sort this mess out or we risk losing future generations of world-beating talent,” he said.

“This is about whether one of the UK’s most successful industries, worth £111bn a year, is allowed to prosper and contribute hugely to both our cultural and economic wealth, or crash and burn.”

Last weekend, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden was also criticised when he boasted that trade deals with Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein would allow seamless touring – with musicians pointing out that all three countries make up a small proportion of the continent.

Elsewhere, European festival promoters have said that they could be likely to book fewer UK acts as a result of Brexit, while figures from the UK music industry have expressed concern that the impact of the deal on musicians who might not be able to tour Europe could also potentially prevent them from acquiring a visa to play in the United States.

The government was also previously accused of treating the sector like “an afterthought” in Brexit negotiations compared to the £1.2billion fishing industry.

Nick Cave’s advice on getting old: “Grow a porn star moustache and learn the electric guitar – it worked for me”

Sam Moore
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Nick Cave’s advice on getting old: “Grow a porn star moustache and learn the electric guitar – it worked for me”

Nick Cave has given one of his fans some advice in his inimitable style after being asked for his “perspective on getting old”.

The artist offered his perspective on his Red Hand Files website, where he regularly answers questions sent in by his fans.

In his latest post on the site, Cave responded to a fan from Lanaken, Belgium who asked: “I’m struggling a bit with the fact I’m turning 40 in a week. Some people say ‘You’re in the brightest part of your life’, others say you are an ‘old man’. What is your perspective on getting old?”

Cave replied: “My advice to you is to grow a porn star moustache and learn the electric guitar – it worked for me – and try to hang in there until you’re 60.

“Then you’ll find you don’t have to worry about what people say any more and, as a consequence, life becomes a whole lot more interesting.”

Cave, who is 63, continued by speaking about his experience of now being in his 60s.

“Entering your 60s brings with it a warm and fuzzy feeling of freedom through redundancy, through obsolescence, through living outside of the conversation and forever existing on the wrong end of the stick,” he said.

“What a relief it is to be that mad, embarrassing uncle in the corner of the room, a product of his age, with his loopy ideas about free speech and freedom of expression, with his love of beauty, of humour, chaos, provocation and outrage, of conversation and debate, his adoration of art without dogma, his impatience with the morally obvious, his belief in universal compassion, forgiveness and mercy, in nuance and the shadows, in neutrality and in humanity – ah, beautiful humanity – and in God too, who he thanks for letting him, in these dementing times, be old.”

Last month Cave shared the full version of his song “Letter To Cynthia” online – a track inspired by a fan letter that was sent to him on Red Hand Files.

Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to PJ Harvey

John Robinson
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Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to PJ Harvey

BUY THE PJ HARVEY ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE

Demo in the 1990s wasn’t an especially aspirational word. When PJ Harvey released her debut album Dry with an accompanying record called Demonstration, however, she elevated the whole enterprise from implying an occasionally half-baked means of securing a gig into a much bolder statement.

In Harvey’s view her actual “finished” album came to seem something of a compromise, defanged and domesticated by familiarity. These initial versions, she seemed to be saying, were how the songs were meant to be heard.

As you’ll read in Stephen Troussé’s in-depth review of the new PJ Harvey vinyl releases of the demos she made to prepare each of her albums, the demos reveal an intrinsic part of Polly Harvey’s creative work, a process from which she has never wavered in the unbelievable 30 years of recording since the release of her debut single, Dress in 1991.

The vision for the record is in place from the start – there might be small issues with fidelity and arrangement to resolve, but the core sound and vision for the record is already utterly intact. That might on the one hand entail the raw proposals for Dry (these, tellingly, were slated to be called Dryer), or the (even more) haunting demos for White Chalk. Or in a more lateral sense, it might mean the live, public-facing Somerset House Sessions for what became Hope Six Demolition Project.

Last year, guitarist Joe Gore told Uncut’s Peter Watts about his work on the breakthrough album To Bring You My Love in 1995. Gore had come from the USA bringing with him strong chops, a top-end fuzzbox, and a determination to use both. It wasn’t to be. As Gore recalled: “She said to me, can you just play it a bit more like I played it?”

This singularity of vision is what you’ll discover more about in this deluxe, anniversary Ultimate Music Guide. Along the way you’ll read in-depth reviews of every album, and archive features which reveal how PJ Harvey’s original quest for extremity (something that links the brutality and noise of Rid Of Me, with the ghostlike delicacy of White Chalk getting on for 15 years later), has since fine-tuned itself into polemical folk rock and a hope for making impactful work. “I want to give something back of worth,” she told Uncut in 2013. “I want to make something worthwhile and meaningful.”

So far so good, then. What happens next will be worth waiting for.

Buy a copy of the magazine here. Missed one in the series? Bundles are available at the same location…

PJ Harvey – Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide

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PJ Harvey – Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide

Meet ze monsta! Presenting the definitive, deluxe 148-page guide to PJ Harvey, from Dry and Dorset to Afghanistan and the Hope Six Demolition Project. All the albums, reviewed. The best archive interviews, rediscovered. The new demos, considered and admired at length.

Buy a copy here!

David Gilmour reveals he is working on a new album

Daniel Seah
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David Gilmour reveals he is working on a new album

David Gilmour is working on a new album that he hopes will be out in the next year or two.

Gilmour, speaking together with his wife Polly Samson, revealed the forthcoming album in a new interview with Rolling Stone.

“I’m hoping that I will have an album ready in the next year or two; I’m not that fast,” the 75-year-old guitarist said. He explained that lockdown was “one of the problems” hindering the record’s production.

“Getting other people in to listen, to help, and to play on things has been kind of impossible in the last year,” Gilmour said. “I do look forward to actually playing some songs with a bunch of actual musicians at some point.”

Gilmour’s last release, Yes, I Have Ghosts, was a single to support the launch of his wife’s novel A Theatre For Dreamers. The acoustic guitar-driven song was the Pink Floyd guitarist’s first release in five years since his solo studio album, Rattle That Lock.

While Gilmour’s upcoming album will feature acoustic guitar and “more harp”, it will also mark his return to the electric guitar.

“I will play electric guitar again,” he said. “But the electric guitar I’m currently playing is just not quite as ‘rock god’ as one might expect.”

As for whether Gilmour has plans to tour in the future, he said he hasn’t “given that a moment’s thought”: “At this very moment, playing to a group of 10,000 people, tightly packed together in an arena, is a nightmare, so I wouldn’t want to do that. So we’ve got to let a little time pass.”

Watch Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen’s live TV debut of “Like I Used To”

Sam Moore
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Watch Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen’s live TV debut of “Like I Used To”

Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen on Tuesday (June 8) performed their track “Like I Used To” on TV for the first time – you can watch their Tonight Show performance below.

The two artists released their collaborative song, which was produced by John Congleton, last month.

Van Etten and Olsen recorded their live performance of “Like I Used To” for the Tonight Show at the LA music venue Zebulon.

The two artists’ live setup included drummer Rhys Hastings and guitarist Emily Elhaj (who usually play as part of Olsen’s backing band), as well as Van Etten’s keyboardist Charley Damski, guitarist Nicole Lawrence and drummer Griffin Goldsmith.

Watch the performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon below:

Watch AC/DC’s new video, for “Witch’s Spell”

Matt Doria
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Watch AC/DC’s new video, for “Witch’s Spell”

AC/DC have released a music video for their new single, “Witch’s Spell“.

The video, which features animations by production company Wolf & Crow, shows the rock ’n’ roll icons performing on a set of tarot cards and while trapped inside a crystal ball.

Watch the video for “Witch’s Spell” below:

The clip comes ahead of AC/DC’s tie-in with Record Store Day 2021, for which they’ll release a limited-edition picture disc featuring “Witch’s Spell” on one side, and another Power Up single, “Through The Mists Of Time“, on the other.

AC/DC released Power Up, their 17th studio album in November last year. In Uncut‘s 8/10 review of the record, we said: “There being no imaginable mileage in comparing any of Power Up to anything but previous AC/DC albums, it’s a solid second-tier AC/DC record: it’s no Highway To Hell or Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, but it wouldn’t be at all embarrassed by the company of, say, Ballbreaker or The Razor’s Edge.“

Buena Vista Social Club album reissued for 25th anniversary

Sam Richards
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Buena Vista Social Club album reissued for 25th anniversary

Buena Vista Social Club, the landmark 1996 celebration of Cuban music, is being reissued by World Circuit for its 25th anniversary on September 17.

The deluxe version of the remastered album comes with 19 previously unreleased tracks and alternate takes from the original sessions at Havana’s EGREM/Areito studios in March 1996, convened by Juan de Marcos González, Ry Cooder and Nick Gold. Watch a video for one of those, “Vicenta”, below:

“Vicenta” is vocal duet between Eliades Ochoa and Compay Segundo, written by Segundo, which follows the story of a 1909 fire which destroyed almost all of the village of La Maya, close to Santiago de Cuba, where Ochoa was born.

“Buena Vista Social Club brought together great musicians from the golden age of Cuban music and successfully took our traditional music to the rest of the world,” recalls Ochoa. “It allowed me to be recognised internationally by the sones, guarachas, and boleros I had been doing since I was young. It also made me reconnect with musicians with great experiences whom I admired. Buena Vista brought us together through music, and we were a well-run family. On this 25th anniversary, we will remember with deserved pride those great legends who will always be present among us.”

Producer and guitarist Ry Cooder says: “The Buena Vista boys fly high and never lose a feather. If you miss the boat this time, you’ll have the blues forever.”

Peruse the tracklistings for the various formats of Buena Vista Social Club: 25th Anniversary Edition and pre-order here.

Tracey Thorn: “Global superstardom? It’s tiring”

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Tracey Thorn: “Global superstardom? It’s tiring”

Tracey Thorn is well aware of the absurdity of the situation that she and her Everything But The Girl partner Ben Watt found themselves in after Missing scaled charts around the world in the mid-’90s. “I remember thinking, ‘This is brilliant, I’ve loved it, but I couldn’t live like this forever.’ We’d already been along a road with some real ups and downs, so it was almost like someone waving a magic wand and saying, ‘After all that, you’re gonna have the fun of an absolutely massive fuck-off hit!’ Then we did the follow-up record, which was successful again, then I retired. Global superstardom? It’s exhausting!”

Her retirement has been unusually productive: as well as three solo albums and a Christmas record, Thorn has also written four non-fiction books, with the latest, My Rock’n’Roll Friend, charting her long friendship with Go-Betweens drummer Lindy Morrison with typical humour and emotional depth. “A few people had said to Lindy, ‘You should write a book,’ and she went, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ I said quite jokingly to her, ‘I’ll write a book about you.’ Then I thought, ‘Hang on, that could be really interesting…’”

On a grey spring day, Thorn is on a video call with Uncut to answer your questions on the book, her newfound interest in gardening, her work with Paul Weller, what’s next for her music and more. “I imagined music would be something I just did for a while,” she says. “Back then I was imagining that what I was studying at university – English – was what I’d do as my career. I’ve kind of ended up there in the end, I just took a circuitous route.”

If you could become friends with and write a biography of any deceased female musician, who would it be?

Dusty, I think – imagine being actual friends with Dusty! Judee Sill is really interesting, but it’s all a bit dark. The good thing about Lindy is that she’s this incredibly outspoken, no-filter person. It’s great raw material. I didn’t want it to be all worthy and miserable – there is some anger in there but also just the sense of: ‘Here she is, this fucking amazing woman who I want to celebrate.’ Dusty’s story has been told, but if I’d been friends with her and had all these great anecdotes about going clubbing with her, that would just be fabulous.

Have you found the publishing industry friendlier towards women than the music industry?

There are certainly more women in it! My editor now is a man, but I think he’s almost the only man I work with. Whereas in the music business, so much of the time I was surrounded by men. The literary audiences are different too – I did a book event and the organiser looked out at the crowd and said, “Oh, it’s nice to see some men here!”

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN UNCUT JULY 2021

King Crimson to tour North America in 2021 with the Zappa Band

Daniel Seah
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King Crimson to tour North America in 2021 with the Zappa Band

King Crimson are planning to hit the road this summer in a North American tour called Music Is Our Friend. They’ll be supported by the Zappa Band on a number of dates.

Music Is Our Friend is set to kick off July 22 in Clearwater, Florida with a show at the Ruth Eckerd Hall, and end on September 11 in Washington DC at The Anthem.

Along the way, the prog-rock legends plan to hit the states of Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Colorado, Utah, California, Arizona, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

King Crimson mastermind Robert Fripp will be joined by bassist Tony Levin, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jakko Jakszyk, multi-instrumentalist Mel Collins and three drummers: Pat Mastelotto, Gavin Harrison and Jeremy Stacey.

The California Guitar Trio will support King Crimson for the first leg of the tour, while the Zappa Band will join the second.

The Zappa Band comprises singer-guitarist Ray White, multi-instrumentalists Mike Keneally and Robert Martin, bassist Scott Thunes, guitarist Jamie Kime, and drummer Joe “Vaultmeister” Travers.

In a statement announcing the tour, Fripp said: “The Crimson Beast of Terror has woken from its enforced slumbering and is venturing out to stomp flat the psyches of innocents not yet experienced in the hammering onslaught of King Crimson’s uncompromising pounding – bish! bish! bish!”

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