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Live! David Gilmour at the Royal Albert Hall October 9th, 2024

John Robinson
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Live! David Gilmour at the Royal Albert Hall October 9th, 2024

David Gilmour is someone who has made a career by letting his guitar do the talking. Rather than emerging on stage in a blaze of laser light to sing a song everyone knows – that does happen, but much later – he begins his instantly sold-out run of six nights at the Albert Hall with an arguably more characteristic motion. He shuffles slowly backwards in the dark, and plays two back-to-back instrumentals from his two most recent solo albums. 

David Gilmour is someone who has made a career by letting his guitar do the talking. Rather than emerging on stage in a blaze of laser light to sing a song everyone knows – that does happen, but much later – he begins his instantly sold-out run of six nights at the Albert Hall with an arguably more characteristic motion. He shuffles slowly backwards in the dark, and plays two back-to-back instrumentals from his two most recent solo albums. 

If at first it seems odd, there may be more wisdom in this move than is immediately obvious. You might not have a particularly deep relationship with “5AM” and “Black Cat”, but there’s a larger point being made here. Even if those songs are minor, they are instantly recognisable as being built from his sound. And that sound is much as it was in 1971: bright and glassy, a weaponised mellow. 

As much as his former Pink Floyd bandmate Roger Waters might like to diminish Gilmour as simply being a good guitarist and a nice singer, his remarks really only serve to illustrate Waters’ limitations as a conceptual thinker. Gilmour’s ownership of this sound – to be clear, the classic Pink Floyd sound – is an extremely persuasive card to hold. In the past, he has resorted to unnecessarily territorial remarks on the poster (“The voice and guitar of Pink Floyd”). These days, it should be abundantly clear to anyone hearing the band launch into “Luck And Strange”, Gilmour singing at the top of his range about the creation moment of the 1960s generation, and how the guitar could be your passport to unimaginable worlds, exactly who he is, where he comes from, and what he continues to be a part of.

The full review will be in Uncut’s Review Of The Year issue, out November 8th. You can pre-order yours here

The latest Ultimate Music Guide: Pink Floyd Solo is out on Friday. You can pre-order your copy here

Introducing the Ultimate Music Guide: Pink Floyd Solo

John Robinson
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Introducing the Ultimate Music Guide: Pink Floyd Solo

The solo works of Syd, David, Roger, Rick and Nick

The solo works of Syd, David, Roger, Rick and Nick

While it began life like a thrilling and improvised space craft, by the time of its most commercially successful work, Pink Floyd was more like a corporation or a rebranded utility company. A highly-organized business with a streamlined visual message, not to mention a phenomenally high turnover.

As you’ll read in this new magazine, what this initially meant for the artistic aspirations of the individual members of Pink Floyd told you a lot about the impulse to create. For David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason solo work clearly began as a release: a break from the responsibilities of the day job. Even Roger Waters, who released a weirdly playful and experimental documentary soundtrack called The Body with Ron Geesin in 1970, seems to have enjoyed himself occasionally. 

When Roger Waters quit Pink Floyd in 1983, however, something changed – and solo music which had previously been a pleasing distraction assumed a far more competitive edge. For Waters, the ongoing existence of a Pink Floyd without him stung him into action: if you were in any doubt about his key contributions to the Pink Floyd albums The Wall and The Dark Side Of The Moon then the many renderings of the material in his solo catalogue should put you straight. 

The solo music that you’ll find covered in this new magazine is important on one level as an inverse history of Pink Floyd. But there are other reckonings going on within it. For Roger Waters it has become a political/personal platform. For David Gilmour meanwhile, it has been a place to articulate himself at his own leisurely pace, and share his thoughts on the consolations of love and family. Richard Wright doesn’t have a large catalogue of work, and seems to have ultimately been rather hard done by the Pink Floyd experience. He may even, as Waters suggests in one of the interviews here, have recorded work which he never released – perhaps so that the music wouldn’t become sullied by commerce.

The most important solo career here, though is the one which flowered most briefly: that of Syd Barrett. The music on his two solo albums is abstract, playful, and sometimes barely there, testament to a personality and mental health which wasn’t built to thrive within the demands of the pop business. As we know, Pink Floyd might have kicked out Syd Barrett, but that didn’t mean Syd would ever leave Pink Floyd: his departure gave them a problem to solve, and as they came to realise, a subject to try and solve it with. 

David Gilmour is on tour now, as Roger Waters often is. It is, though, probably Nick Mason’s work with Saucerful Of Secrets which these days best represents for the soul of Pink Floyd. Nick himself says his revisiting of early Floyd material has a “pleasing circularity” – which it certainly does. You might also say it takes the listener somewhere otherworldly again: an interstellar overdrive, on course for more innocent times. 

Enjoy the magazine. It’s out Friday, but you can pre-order one here.

Jeff Tweedy – Bearsville Theater, NY, October 13

Will Hermes
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Jeff Tweedy – Bearsville Theater, NY, October 13

It’s been remarkable to watch Jeff Tweedy evolve from wired young country-punk to industrious, avuncular indie-rock vet, performing “Freedom Highway” with Mavis Staples on national television during the Democratic Convention in his Chicago hometown, or presiding over Solid Sound, Wilco’s biennial festival in the Berkshire Mountains.

It’s been remarkable to watch Jeff Tweedy evolve from wired young country-punk to industrious, avuncular indie-rock vet, performing “Freedom Highway” with Mavis Staples on national television during the Democratic Convention in his Chicago hometown, or presiding over Solid Sound, Wilco’s biennial festival in the Berkshire Mountains.

So it’s fitting to see him perform at the Bearsville Theater, on the edges of Woodstock – stomping ground of Dylan and Todd Rundgren, minutes from The Band’s old Big Pink house, in the same room where Rick Danko’s memorial service was held. It’s sacred ground for elder statesmen of song, which is exactly what Tweedy has become.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Those who follow his Starship Casual Substack, full of spare solo versions of all manner of songs (recent covers include Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place” and Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love A Bad Name”) know how affecting a busker-style storyteller he can be. Those skills are on full display tonight, the finale of a three-night solo run featuring just Tweedy and a few acoustic guitars (a series of US solo dates continues through to the end of the month).   

After a compelling set by fellow Chicago singer-songwriter Elizabeth Moen (which includes a handsomely hushed version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness On The Edge Of Town”), Tweedy ambles onstage, looking woodsy and comfortable in a denim barn jacket, beard and hair evidently untended. Over 90 minutes or so, he works through roughly 20 songs, with no repeats from the previous two nights, surely pleasing those fans – there were more than a few – who’d attended all three.

Tweedy wonders aloud who’ll be truckin’ up to Buffalo with him, about five hours northwest, for the following night’s gig. The Deadhead-ish dedication of Wilco fans becomes an affectionate running joke between songs.

A lovely and wide-eyed version of Cruel Country’s “The Universe” gets things started. There are a handful of new songs, including one about the heart’s appetite (working title “Enough,” according to the Via Chicago fansite) which notes “It’s hard to stay in love with everyone.” 

There’s a generous mix of deep cuts and hits. We get “Company In My Back,” from A Ghost Is Born, alongside a beautiful if begrudged “Handshake Drugs.” After refusing a shouted request for the song, with an extended explanation of why its cyclical construction doesn’t work well without electric guitars, Tweedy eventually caves, with exasperated affability, playing it “just to prove a point.” Of course, halfway in, some wag shouts out, “It’s a little repetitive!” (“See?” Tweedy responds, vindicated.) 

He leans into Summerteeth with aching versions of the title track and “How To Fight Loneliness”, the latter with flamenco guitar flourishes and an impressive audience singalong. Before “Empty Corner”, from 2019’s Ode To Joy, we get a detailed unpacking of the true crime story behind the “Eight tiny lines of cocaine/ Left on a copy machine” lines, which involve a sketchy job Tweedy had at a South Illinois liquor store, a handgun, and suspected arson.

Despite tales of criminality, there’s no explicit reference to the elephant in the room – the looming US presidential election – beyond an elliptical aside about how things we take for granted can easily go away. We hear “Should’ve Been In Love”, a song nearly 30 years old; an absolutely gorgeous “Jesus Etc.”; and the timely “Falling Apart (Right Now)”. 

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Tweedy flubs the words to “Some Birds”, thanking the “human teleprompter” up front for a shouted assist. “Play the 12-string!” someone barks. “You could ask nicely,” Tweedy scolds, yet he still obliges, playing “A Bowl And A Pudding”, the Nick Drake-conjuring song from last year’s excellent Cousin LP, the instrument’s steely overtones suggesting a Portuguese guittara backdropping a shaggy Midwestern fado. And finally, with “Let’s Go Rain” and “A Shot In The Arm,” the assembled were sent out into the drizzle, hopefully fortified for what lies ahead.  

SETLIST
The Universe
Love Is For Love
Cry Baby Cry
Summerteeth
How to Fight Loneliness
Guaranteed
Enough
Handshake Drugs
Tired of Taking it Out On You
An Empty Corner
Company In My Back
Should’ve Been In Love
Jesus, Etc.
What Light
Some Birds
Falling Apart (Right Now)
I Got You (at the End of the Century)
A Bowl And A Pudding
Meant To Be
Let’s Go Rain
A Shot in the Arm

 

Disney+ unveils new Beatles ’64 doc from Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi

Sam Richards
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Disney+ unveils new Beatles ’64 doc from Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi

Beatles '64, an all-new documentary from producer Martin Scorsese and director David Tedeschi, will be available to stream on Disney+ from November 29.

Beatles ’64, an all-new documentary from producer Martin Scorsese and director David Tedeschi, will be available to stream on Disney+ from November 29.

According to a press release, “The film captures the electrifying moment of The Beatles’ first visit to America. Featuring never-before-seen footage of the band and the legions of young fans who helped fuel their ascendance, the film gives a rare glimpse into when The Beatles became the most influential and beloved band of all time.”

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Beatles ’64 includes rare footage filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles, restored in 4K by Park Road Post in New Zealand. Live footage from The Beatles’ first American concert at the Coliseum in Washington, DC has been demixed by WingNut Films and remixed by Giles Martin, along with their appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. The documentary also includes new interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as fans whose lives were transformed by The Beatles.

In case you missed it, you can read all about The Beatles’ first trip to America – along with our investigation of The Beatles: 1964 US Albums In Mono box set – in the November 2024 issue of Uncut, which is still available to buy from our webstore.

Send us your questions for Joe Boyd!

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Joe Boyd!

When you write out Joe Boyd's biography in bullet points, it looks almost unbelievable: production manager when Dylan went electric at Newport; co-founder of London's UFO club; enabler of Britain's folk-rock boom; music supervisor for Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange; producer of Nick Drake, Nico and REM; champion of world music via his Hannibal label.

When you write out Joe Boyd’s biography in bullet points, it looks almost unbelievable: production manager when Dylan went electric at Newport; co-founder of London’s UFO club; enabler of Britain’s folk-rock boom; music supervisor for Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange; producer of Nick Drake, Nico and REM; champion of world music via his Hannibal label.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

All of these experiences and more have fed into his new book, a mightily impressive tome called And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain (after a lyric from Paul Simon’s Graceland). Subtitled A Journey Through Global Music, it explores – in a series of compelling anecdotes – how Western popular music is interwoven with and indebted to cultures from all around the world.

Boyd has kindly agreed to take some time out from his current book tour to submit to a gentle grilling from you, the Uncut readers. So what do you want to ask this font of all musical knowledge? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk and Joe will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Introducing the new Uncut CD – curated by Kim Deal!

Sam Richards
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Introducing the new Uncut CD – curated by Kim Deal!

The new issue of Uncut – in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here – comes with a FREE 14-track CD curated by none other than the legendary Pixie, Breeder and now solo artist, Kim Deal.

The new issue of Uncut – in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here – comes with a FREE 14-track CD curated by none other than the legendary Pixie, Breeder and now solo artist, Kim Deal.

“I don’t know if it’s a driving compilation,” she explains. “But that might be good, because if it’s a real CD then a lot of readers might listen to it in their cars…”

Read on for our track-by-track guide…

1 Joy Division
Warsaw
Kim kicks off with the opening track from the Manchester crew’s debut EP, “An Ideal For Living”. Here are Joy Division at their punkiest, with Ian Curtis sneering and Bernard Sumner’s guitar slashing and savage. Stephen Morris’s innovative drum beat points towards their future, though.

2 Th’ Faith Healers
This Time
One-time support act to The Breeders, this London group were bizarrely called ‘baggy metal’ back in the early ’90s – listening from 2024, though, this track, taken from their 1992 debut Lido, sounds like an impossibly cool and feral collision of Neu! and The Stooges. A rediscovery is definitely overdue.

3 Omertà
Kremer & Bergeret
A psychedelic group from the modern-day French underground, Omertà use two bass guitars to anchor their Gainsbourg funk grooves and Tortoise-esque post-rock keyboards, but it’s Florence Giroud’s voice that calmly mystifies on this highlight from their 2022 album Collection Particulière.

4 Booker T & The MG’s
Green Onions
A bona fide classic largely improvised in the studio around a 12-bar blues riff of Booker T’s, this 1962 B-side (shortly becoming a single in its own right, of course, and then one of the most famous songs of all time) is charged with a spiky electrical rush. The rough energy is infectious, especially during Steve Cropper’s guitar solo.

5 Stereolab
Lo Boob Oscillator
These days one of the ’lab’s best-known tracks, this 1993 single was collected on the peerless Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Volume 2) two years later. In many ways, it captures the essence of the group, with Laetitia Sadier’s indelible melody and vocals eventually giving way to a motorik beat and grinding organ drones.

6 The Stooges
Dirt
The swaggering heart of Fun House, The Stooges’ second and arguably greatest album, “Dirt” pairs a slow funk beat and bassline with Iggy Pop’s transcendent vocals and Scott Asheton’s wah-wah guitar. As its seven minutes draw on, the atmosphere becomes eerier and darker: it’s quite unlike anything else.

7 Radiohead
Bodysnatchers
Thom Yorke and co have long been inspired by the tumbling rhythms of Can, but on this highlight from 2007’s In Rainbows they channel the power-driving beat of Neu!’s Klaus Dinger. As always with Radiohead, this is an instrumental masterclass, with all five playing their part, fuzzed guitars interlocking until the quieter middle section lets in some fresh air.

8 Neu!
Hallogallo
To maintain that groove, here are the inventors of what they themselves called the ‘apache beat’ with the 10-minute opener of their self-titled debut. There’s no bass guitar; instead, Klaus Dinger keeps that unique beat steady, rising and falling in power, while Michael Rother weaves otherworldly echoed and wah-wah’d guitar. In so many ways, it never gets old.

9 The Trashmen
Surfin’ Bird
From the sublime to the silly, this 1963 surf-rock delight was the debut single by Minneapolis’s Trashmen, and effectively
a medley of two songs by LA doo-wop group The Rivingtons. Covered by The Cramps and the Ramones, the original isn’t short of unhinged mania itself.

10 Kim Deal
Crystal Breath
Here’s a taste of Deal’s album Nobody Loves You More; recorded in her Dayton, Ohio basement, it’s a caustic electro-garage track with buzzing keys, a distorted funk beat and white-noise guitar stabs. Quite simply, no-one else would put a song together quite like this.

11 Courtney Barnett
City Looks Pretty
Another pulsing track from Deal’s pal Barnett, taken from her second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel. Melodic and catchy, it’s elevated by Barnett’s out-there lead guitar work and finally by the closing section, a very Pavement-ish, supremely stoned waltz.

12 Black Sabbath
War Pigs
Keeping the ’eavy 6/8 vibe going is the opening track from Sabbath’s 1970 LP, Paranoid. Veering between stoner-rock riffs and dramatic silences, it climaxes in the lengthy instrumental known on some releases as “Luke’s Wall”. You can easily imagine this blasting out
of cars in Dayton in the ’70s – and, let’s be honest, ever since.

13 Elizabeth Cotten
Freight Train
Taken from her 1958 album Folksongs And Instrumentals With Guitar, here’s ‘Libba’ Cotten with a song she wrote decades earlier. It’s hard to overstate the influence of her unique picking style, and it’s evident all the way through the timeless “Freight Train”.

14 Teenage Fanclub
Everything Flows
“A Good Time Pushed” on Nobody Loves You More features the Fanclub’s Raymond McGinley on lead guitar, and when Deal talks of his meandering solos it’s hard not to think of the band’s debut single. Combining Neil Young with the overdriven clatter of Glasgow grunge, it’s a fine way for Kim to conclude her compilation.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Robert Smith: “I thought that was the end of The Cure”

Sam Richards
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Robert Smith: “I thought that was the end of The Cure”

In the new issue of Uncut – in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here – Robert Smith reveals how he almost disbanded The Cure upon reaching the group's 40th anniversary in 2018.

In the new issue of Uncut – in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here – Robert Smith reveals how he almost disbanded The Cure upon reaching the group’s 40th anniversary in 2018.

“I thought that the Hyde Park show would be it, I thought that was the end of The Cure,” says Smith. “I didn’t plan it, but I had a sneaky feeling that this was going to be it. But it was such a great day and such a great response, I enjoyed it so much and we got
a flood of offers to headline every major European festival. ‘Do you want to play Glastonbury?’ So I thought maybe it’s not the right time to stop.

“I wasn’t stopping because I didn’t want to do it any more, I just thought it would allow me a few years when I’d still be able to do something else. I wasn’t that bothered, funnily enough. I’d arranged everything to end in 2018, so when we got to 2019, I felt relieved. ‘We did it!’ I’ve had a different outlook to everything since.
Pretty much everyone that died that meant something to me died prior to 2019, so I felt like I’ve got to make the most of it.”

Not only was this sequence of events the spur for writing much of new album Songs Of A Lost World, it prompted Smith to start looking even further ahead, to The Cure’s 50th anniversary in 2028 and beyond. “We’ll probably be playing quite regularly through until the 2028 anniversary… The last 10 years of playing shows have been the best 10 years of being in the band. It pisses all over the other 30-odd years!”

You can read much more from Robert Smith in the December 2024 issue of Uncut, in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here.

“I actually have a six-hour cut!”

John Lewis
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“I actually have a six-hour cut!”

Alex Gibney is a film director who, as well as making journalistic documentaries on dozens of subjects, has also made inventive films about some key musicians, including James Brown, Fela Kuti, Frank Sinatra and now Paul Simon with In Restless Dreams: The Paul Simon Story.

Alex Gibney is a film director who, as well as making journalistic documentaries on dozens of subjects, has also made inventive films about some key musicians, including James Brown, Fela Kuti, Frank Sinatra and now Paul Simon with In Restless Dreams: The Paul Simon Story.

“It was my Sinatra film, All Or Nothing At All, that Paul Simon and his people liked,” says Gibney. “So when they sent out feelers for me to make a film about Paul, of course I was interested. I’m a huge admirer of his work and, as with Sinatra, Paul’s career is like a history of America over a 60-year period. But it got interesting when Paul said, ‘I’m working on a new album, do you wanna watch me work on it?’ So that became the entry point – we move back and forth between the history and the present day. And, as well as being a biography, it becomes an extraordinarily moving story of a great composer struggling with his loss of hearing, making an album that deals with mortality and belief and suffering and spirituality, and allowing us intimate access to his creativity during a vulnerable moment.”

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The film runs to three-and-a half hours, but doesn’t feel overlong. “I actually have a six-hour cut!” says Gibney. “So I’ve had to cut a lot out. But we had access to so much new archive footage that has barely been seen before. Paul was very generous with his archive, as were Sony Records. There was a lot of film in the vaults that we had to restore just to find out what it was, and then we’d have to transfer it. We found amazing footage of Art, Paul and Roy Halee working on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album, we found live footage from Zimbabwe, and from both the big Central Park concerts.”

Gibney wanted to avoid the standard music biopics that he finds “formulaic, dreary and routine-ised. Who wants to see a ten-second clip of a song, then a montage of famous celebrities saying how great an artist is? If the artist is any good, you don’t need people to tell you that! The only secondary voices we use are friends and collaborators who have something interesting to say – in this case, the likes of Lorne Michaels, Wynton Marsalis, Edie Brickell. And we wanted to play long clips of songs: once you get involved in a song, it takes you some place, like a dream. And, for an album that’s inspired by a dream, that’s fitting.”

In Restless Dreams: The Paul Simon Story is in cinemas for one night only on October 13 – buy tickets here – and then on Blu-ray and digital platforms from October 28

Listen to The Cure’s new track, “A Fragile Thing”

Michael Bonner
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Listen to The Cure’s new track, “A Fragile Thing”

The Cure have shared a second track from their upcoming album, Songs Of A Lost World. You can hear "A Fragile Thing" below.

The Cure have shared a second track from their upcoming album, Songs Of A Lost World. You can hear “A Fragile Thing” below.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

In September, the band previously released “Alone“, their first new single for 16 years.

Read a new interview with Robert Smith in the new Uncut – in shops from October 11

Songs Of A Lost World will be released on November 1 by Fiction/UMe as a 1LP, a half-speed master 2LP, marble-coloured 1LP, double Cassette, CD, a deluxe CD package with a Blu-ray featuring an instrumental version of the record and a Dolby Atmos mix of the album, and digital formats.

The tracklisting for the album is:

Alone
And Nothing Is Forever
A Fragile Thing
Warsong
Drone:Nodrone
I Can Never Say Goodbye
All I Ever Am
End Song

Hear Nadia Reid’s new track, “Baby Bright”

Michael Bonner
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Hear Nadia Reid’s new track, “Baby Bright”

Nadia Reid returns with a new track, "Baby Bright", which you can hear below. This latest release follows "Changed Unchained" which she released last month.

Nadia Reid returns with a new track, “Baby Bright“, which you can hear below. This latest release follows “Changed Unchained” which she released last month.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Both tracks will appear on Enter Now Brightness, Reid’s new album which is released by Chrysalis on February 7, 2025. You can pre-order a copy here.

The tracklisting for Enter Now Brightness is:

Emmanuelle

Cry On Cue

Baby Bright

Hold It Up

Changed Unchained

Second Nature

Even Now

Hotel Santa Cruz

Woman Apart

Send It

Down The Line 

Reid also plays the UK and ROI. You can buy tickets here.

10.03.25 UK, London – EartH Theatre
11.03.25 UK, Brighton – CHALK
12.03.25 UK, Leeds – Brudenell Social Club
13.03.25 UK, Glasgow – Room 2
14.03.25 UK, Bangor – Court House
15.03.25 IE, Dublin – Whelans
17.03.25 UK, Nottingham – The Bodega
18.03.25 UK, Bristol – Strange Brew
19.03.25 UK, Manchester – YES (Pink Room)

Watch Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in a new trailer for A Complete Unknown

Sam Richards
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Watch Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in a new trailer for A Complete Unknown

A new trailer has been released for James Mangold's upcoming Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, due in cinemas on January 17.

A new trailer has been released for James Mangold’s upcoming Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, due in cinemas on January 17.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

The first trailer released back in July featured lead actor Timothée Chalamet singing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”; here, he can be heard having a crack at “Girl From The North Country” before hooking up with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) – we see them duetting at the 1963 Monterey Folk Festival – and controversially going electric with “Like A Rolling Stone” at Newport.

We also get a glimpse of Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash. Watch the trailer below:

Introducing the new Uncut: The Cure, Bryan Ferry, Radiohead, MC5, Queen, a free 14-track CD and more

Michael Bonner
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Introducing the new Uncut: The Cure, Bryan Ferry, Radiohead, MC5, Queen, a free 14-track CD and more

March 2, 2022. I’m at the Brixton Academy, backstage during the NME Awards, waiting for an audience with Robert Smith. Smith is co-recipient of Best Song By A UK Artist with CHVRCHES for “How Not To Drown” and he’s taken the opportunity to reveal the title of The Cure’s long-awaited new album, Songs Of A Lost World. Eventually – things move very much at Robert’s place – we meet. A firm handshake, strong eye contact. Conversation touches on The Glove – the one-off band he formed with fellow Banshee Steve Severin – a memorable Cure gig at Crystal Palace Bowl in 1990 and his latest, tantalising update on the new album. Smith, politely, won’t be drawn further. “That is for another day,” he says with a smile.

March 2, 2022. I’m at the Brixton Academy, backstage during the NME Awards, waiting for an audience with Robert Smith. Smith is co-recipient of Best Song By A UK Artist with CHVRCHES for “How Not To Drown” and he’s taken the opportunity to reveal the title of The Cure’s long-awaited new album, Songs Of A Lost World. Eventually – things move very much at Robert’s place – we meet. A firm handshake, strong eye contact. Conversation touches on The Glove – the one-off band he formed with fellow Banshee Steve Severin – a memorable Cure gig at Crystal Palace Bowl in 1990 and his latest, tantalising update on the new album. Smith, politely, won’t be drawn further. “That is for another day,” he says with a smile.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

That day has finally come, of course. Songs Of A Lost World underscores the singular creative vision of its chief architect – an album of ravishing, windswept musicality and lyrical intensity, as Smith grapples with notions of ageing and mortality, made all the more vivid by his own relatively recent losses. In many ways, Smith is a singular British artist along with Kate Bush and Radiohead, who have the ability to create compelling worlds from their own idiosyncratic preoccupations.

As well as a new interview with Robert Smith, there’s plenty else inside this issue of Uncut, including new interviews with sundry members of Radiohead (Colin and Jonny can both be found in these pages), Art Garfunkel, Howard Devoto, Bryan Ferry, Joan Armatrading and Paul Weller. I can’t recommend highly enough Jennifer Castle’s new record Camelot, which is our Album Of The Month on page 24. Finally, I’d also draw your attention to what’s outside the magazine – and a wonderful CD compiled for us by Kim Deal, which includes (deep breath) studio tracks from the Stooges, Black Sabbath, Neu!, Th Faith Healers and Joy Division. It’s quite a thing, as I hope you agree.

The sad news of Kris Kristofferson’s death reached us just as we were going to print, but we’ll carry a full tribute to him next issue.

Uncut – December 2024

Uncut Staff
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Uncut – December 2024

CLICK TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

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Every print edition of this issue comes with a free, 14-track CD compiled by Kim Deal and featuring music from The Stooges, Radiohead, Black Sabbath, Joy Division, Neu!, Stereolab and more

THE CURE: 16 years on from their last album, The Cure return with a powerful and emotional new record. But as Robert Smith reveals, Songs Of A Lost World is only half the story…

KIM DEAL: The Pixie, Breeder and now solo artist explains how iguanas, ukeleles and the Florida Keys have shaped her new album

THE MC5: This extract from a new oral history tells the turbulent tale of Kick Out The Jams

RADIOHEAD: Bassist Colin Greenwood guides us through two decades of behind-the-scenes photography

MAGAZINE: Howard Devoto and his cohorts reflect on their brilliant but doomed trajectory as post-punk pioneers

JOAN ARMATRADING: Looking back over half a century’s work as a new album continues her journey

AN AUDIENCE WITH… ROGER TAYLOR: The Queen drummer on predicting punk, cocaine myths and tiger skin trousers

THE MAKING OF “SUPPLEMENT 66” BY PAUL WELLER: The inside story of his new EP – and the final recordings of a Brit-folk legend

ALBUM BY ALBUM WITH DANNY KORTCHMAR: The session musician’s session musician on James Taylor, Carole King, Dylan and more

MY LIFE IN MUSIC WITH PHIL MANZANERA: The Roxy Music guitarist on his most impactful albums

REVIEWED: Jennifer Castle, Mount Eerie, Underworld, Rogê, Warmduscher, Andrew Gabbard, Bryan Ferry, Aphrodite’s Child, Tina Turner, Talking Heads, Jack White, Ryley Walker, Leonard Cohen, Mike Batt and more

PLUS: The Animals, The Hacienda, Art Garfunkel, Suzi Quatro and introducing One True Pairing

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Paul Heaton – My Life In Music

Sam Richards
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Paul Heaton – My Life In Music

The Housemartins and Beautiful South singer on his happiest hours by the stereo: “It still sounds exciting now”

The Housemartins and Beautiful South singer on his happiest hours by the stereo: “It still sounds exciting now”

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

DAVID BOWIE

The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars

RCA, 1972

I shared a room with my middle brother growing up, and this is one of the records that seeped through the walls of my oldest brother’s room into ours. It was just really different – it was on the edge of glam rock, I suppose, but it was also totally by itself. I had no idea what “Suffragette City” was, or “Moonage Daydream”, and Ziggy Stardust sounded like the name of a wrestler. But it was really exciting to watch it have influence over ordinary people. You could see quite hard lads in Sheffield trying to have their hair cut like Bowie and wearing these big stack heels. Some of the songs make no sense at all – I didn’t know what “Lady Stardust” meant and probably still don’t – but his voice is beautiful.

ARETHA FRANKLIN

Aretha With The Ray Bryant Combo

COLUMBIA, 1961

The first soul record I got was called This Is Soul – there’s a song by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and I worked backwards from each of the artists on there. I think I’ve got about 25 different albums by Aretha, but this was one I found quite late. It’s jazzy but it’s also very gospel-y as well. There are a couple of really nice songs: “Are You Sure”, which I think is from a musical, “Today I Sing The Blues” and “Love Is The Only Thing”… It’s more uptempo than her other early stuff, and I used to like Ray Bryant anyway. It’s just a really nice album to find after you thought you’d secured most of her records.

THE LURKERS

Fulham Fallout

BEGGARS BANQUET, 1978

I was really struggling to decide which punk album to pick. I was thinking the Buzzcocks or The Clash or maybe even Siouxsie & The Banshees, but I went for The Lurkers’ first album <Fulham Fallout>. I wanted to be Pete Shelley, but I also wanted to be Howard Wall, the lead singer from The Lurkers. I just loved the album because it felt like it was within my grasp, in terms of musical ability. They were obviously quite an underrated band. They were really good live, but they were unassuming – they didn’t speak much, didn’t say much outrageous, which a lot of people used to go to concerts for then. So it doesn’t surprise me that they went under the radar a little bit.

OWEN GRAY

The Singles Collection 1960-1962

NOT BAD RECORDS, 2014

When punk was happening, I started pinching bluebeat records from upstairs at Beanos in Croydon – I do apologise to Beanos for this! There was one artist called Owen Gray who I absolutely loved. So a few years ago I went out and bought this compilation, which had all four of the singles I’d pinched. It was a weird era for Jamaican music, because it was before ska and reggae and everything that came after that. It’s basically blues, but with a very faint skank on it. The musicianship on those early Jamaican records, especially with the brass, was quite out-there. They weren’t like the jazz musicians of New York – they were a lot more free with the tuning, but the trombone solos were fantastic. It still sounds exciting now.

THE PERSUASIONS

Street Corner Symphony

ISLAND, 1972

Of all the a capella bands, they’re probably the most well-known – one of their songs, “Good Times”, is in an advert that’s on permanently at the moment. My Mum went to see Lou Reed in Sheffield in 1973 with The Persuasions supporting, which is pretty incredible, and she brought this record back with her. I didn’t play it until much later, but obviously The Housemartins went on to sing quite a bit of acapella vocals live, so it became quite an influence. Even before “Caravan Of Love”, we used to do a lot of quasi-religious stuff like “Joy Joy Joy” and “We Shall Not Be Moved”. So Street Corner Symphony really set that up.

SILAS HOGAN

Trouble

EXCELLO, 1971

When I was 17, I was a massive blues fan. I played this a lot when I was learning harmonica, and it’s an absolutely brilliant album. Silas Hogan was only discovered later in life, in his fifties, and you can tell it in the way he plays. It’s electric guitar instead of acoustic, a little bit like Jimmy Reed, that sort of sound. He didn’t play harmonica himself, but the guy who does, Moses Smith, is absolutely fantastic. It’s one of those records that I went out and bought on CD much later, because I needed it in my CD collection as well. I still occasionally play it, which says a lot because I don’t listen to a lot of blues at the moment.

VARIOUS ARTISTS

The Gospel At Colonus

WARNER BROS, 1984

This was something my Mum recorded off the telly. She knew I was a fan of gospel music, so she sent the video up to me. It was such a good thing to do, because it’s beautiful. It’s the story of Sophocles’ Oedipus At Colonus but it’s got The Blind Boys Of Alabama in it, and the JD Steele Singers – Jevetta Steele’s got an incredible voice – and Morgan Freeman doing the main source of speech. I think you have to watch it before buying the record which may sound daft, but it’s quite a spectacle. It’s one of the last chances to see really powerful performances by Clarence Fountain and people like that. It was a big influence on me making [2012 stage show and album] The 8th.

BILL WITHERS

Making Music

CBS, 1975

It’s not one of his famous ones, but it’s such a great example of his songwriting. “Paint Your Pretty Picture” was the song that me and my wife came out to when we got married, so it has enormous significance for me. I do think Bill Withers is a bit underrated because the modern era cuts it down to a couple of songs, “Lean On Me” and “Lovely Day”. They were great hit records, but there’s so much more to his character than that. There’s a beautiful documentary called <Still Bill> where you can see why he’s underrated, because he’s not impressed by his own ability at all. He will not blow his own trumpet, and he’s just a very nice fella. So I was sad when he died.

Paul Heaton’s new album The Mighty Several is released by EMI on October 11; he tours the UK from November 29, see paulheaton.co.uk for the full list of dates

Chuck Prophet: “It’s been a journey”

Rob Hughes
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Chuck Prophet: “It’s been a journey”

2022 was a crisis year for Californian roots veteran Chuck Prophet. Diagnosed with stage four lymphoma, the ex-Green On Red guitarist was kept waiting on his chances of survival. “After they discovered I had a mass in my intestines, I was in a kind of no-man’s land for about 14 days,” he explains. “That was real fear, like a wooden stake being driven into me. Eventually I was told there were options in terms of treatment, and things lifted from there. But it was music that got me out of my head.”

2022 was a crisis year for Californian roots veteran Chuck Prophet. Diagnosed with stage four lymphoma, the ex-Green On Red guitarist was kept waiting on his chances of survival. “After they discovered I had a mass in my intestines, I was in a kind of no-man’s land for about 14 days,” he explains. “That was real fear, like a wooden stake being driven into me. Eventually I was told there were options in terms of treatment, and things lifted from there. But it was music that got me out of my head.”

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Stretching back three decades, Prophet’s highly eclectic solo work tends to involve surf, punk, rock‘n’roll, folk and country. Yet it was the hitherto unexpected delights of cumbia music that guided him during his illness and recovery from chemotherapy. In particular, a band of brothers from Salinas, a farming community a hundred miles south of his San Francisco home.

“I’d seen ¿Qiensave? at a club in the Mission District,” he explains. “They were such characters. I think they were getting a kick from the fact I was digging them. They invited me to Salinas, so I started going down there and jamming with them. Then I asked them to play with me at a festival in Big Sur. The whole place was dancing, it was a real thrill. Cumbia music transcends language. I became a complete evangelist.”

The upshot of this unlikely collaboration – a year since Prophet was finally given the all-clear from cancer – is the aptly-titled Wake The Dead. Recorded with ¿Qiensave? and Prophet’s regular backing band The Mission Express, the album teems with infectious grooves, cumbia rhythms and what Prophet calls “blast-off choruses”. In the studio, “there were eight guys all playing at the same time. It was pretty exciting, but also chaotic.”

Wake The Dead deals with hope, terror, unseen forces and the restorative properties of love. Inspired by the Mexican tradition of honouring the deceased with altars laden with offerings, the title track feels very much like a mission statement. “It’s part Day Of The Dead, part zombie movie, part resurrection, the way I felt after being done with my treatment,” says Prophet. “I just fell into that song. It’s been a journey.”

The album’s arrival roughly coincides with the 40th anniversary of Green On Red’s first ever show in London. “It was in a basement called Gossip’s, I think it was a goth club,” he recalls. “There were probably 25 people there, as well as these other guys lurking around. They turned out to be the Jesus And Mary Chain. They got thrown off stage after three songs, for pushing amps over to get feedback, but they were super-charming.”

Green On Red’s messy career was ultimately doomed to failure, but not before they hit artistic peaks with blasted country-rock gems like Gas Food Lodging and Here Come The Snakes. “There was never really a plan,” Prophet offers. “That led to a lot of hard feelings and things that eventually broke us up, [but] we had our moments, for sure.”

Plans are afoot for a Green On Red boxset next year, though by the time it lands, Prophet will be deep into his Wake The Dead tour. The logistics are proving a challenge he’s only too willing to take on: “We’ll have a six-piece band: half of ¿Qiensave?, a couple of my guys and me. It’s a real leap of faith. And there’s a little mischief involved. It’s like, ‘This is gonna be fun to lay on people!’”

Wake The Dead is released on October 25 by Yep Roc Records; Chuck Prophet’s UK tour kicks off at The Bullingdon, Oxford, on February 19 – see chuckprophet.com for the full list of dates

Simon Raymonde – My Life In Music

Sam Richards
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Simon Raymonde – My Life In Music

The Cocteau Twin turned Bella Union boss itemises his aural treasures: “It sounds like it’s from another universe”

The Cocteau Twin turned Bella Union boss itemises his aural treasures: “It sounds like it’s from another universe”

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD

Metal Box

VIRGIN, 1979

Me and my friends were obsessed with punk. Of course, it burned out rather quickly. John Lydon was such a divisive figure, but at that point in time I still loved him. The stuff he said was confrontational but always tinged with a certain amount of intelligence. I don’t feel like that about the latter part of his career, I should add! I wasn’t a fan of anything after Metal Box, really. But when that came out, it was like, ‘What is this? What are these sounds?’ They were subverting everything they’d been in other bands. It’s such an anarchic record because they’re literally making stuff up in the studio as they go along. There isn’t another record in history that is comparable sonically to Metal Box.

CULTURE

Two Sevens Clash

JOE GIBBS RECORD GLOBE, 1977

Reggae was as important to many of us as punk. I think it was The Clash who brought this record to our attention. Joe Gibbs was the producer, and having him at the controls was really important. I love Lee Perry, I love King Tubby, but this is not a dub record – these are beautiful songs where the lyrics are really important. The singer Joseph Hill had a vision that on the seventh of July 1977, an apocalypse would happen. Back in Jamaica, people actually believed this, and all the businesses shut! It’s almost like a pop record, the songs are so catchy and memorable, and I think that’s why it’s lasted so long in people’s minds. It’s just a proper, proper, great reggae album.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Prayers On Fire

4AD, 1981

I’m sure Nick Cave has probably said a million times that he can’t listen to those early records and they’re embarrassing or whatever. But I don’t look at it like that. For me, it’s a little time capsule. When I hear those songs, I’m back in the in the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead, thinking, ‘Fuck me, this the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.’ It’s so visceral and in-your-face, just pure energy and aggression, but done in such an artful way. I was madly in love with The Birthday Party for a brief period of time, and it helped my friendship with Robin and Elizabeth from Cocteau Twins because they were huge fans too. We had this little bond immediately.

TELEVISION

Marquee Moon

ELEKTRA, 1977

I’ve probably bought this 20 times over the years. It’s an immaculately made record – it’s hard to believe there’s only four four people playing on it. What’s interesting to me is that Eno was touted as a producer. He did some demos and Tom Verlaine hated the coldness of the sound. He did not want to go in the studio with somebody that would tell him what to do, that was his biggest fear. And I can totally relate to that from our career. Weirdly enough, we did meet Brian Eno with a view to him producing Treasure and that didn’t work out either! Not really anything that Brian did, more because we all realised that we should just do it ourselves.

THE ASSOCIATES

Sulk

ASSOCIATES / BEGGARS BANQUET, 1982

My first job was working at the Beggars Banquet record shop in South Kensington. Billy MacKenzie would ask me to walk his dogs for him while he was having his meetings with the label upstairs. So I already had a deeper connection with The Associates before Sulk came out. It’s one of the best-sounding records ever. I used to listen to it and think, ‘How did they do that? What instruments are they?’ It does sound like it’s from another universe. After Billy died, I got a call to ask if I’d be interested in co-producing the unfinished tracks that Billy had left behind. It was obviously very sad working on songs by someone who’s not there anymore, who you’ve idolised for twenty years. But it was a massive privilege.

PRINCE

Lovesexy

PAISLEY PARK / WARNER BROS, 1988

Here’s a bit of an outlier. I don’t know if your readers know this, but Prince was a huge Cocteau Twins fan. He wanted to sign us to Paisley Park, and he said some really lovely things about us in the press. So there was obviously a kind of mutual admiration there. I went to see the Lovesexy tour at Wembley when he played in the round. He drove a car onto the stage, it was so over the top! It was delightfully camp and very theatrical – I’d never seen anything like that before. But if you strip all that away, what he’s actually doing on those records is very pioneering and adventurous. He’s a phenomenal musician, and one of the greatest guitarists I’ve ever seen.

RICHARD H KIRK

Virtual State

WARP, 1993

When this came out, it was a very difficult period in the Cocteau Twins’ history. We’re on tour around the US in a big bus, Robin and Elizabeth have split up, and I’m stuck in the middle. When I was 17, music was all about expanding my awareness of what’s going on, energy, emotions, all that stuff. But at this point I am definitely using music as a way of just getting out of my head. I only bought this CD because I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the guy from Cabaret Voltaire.’ But it got me through that tour. It uses lots of found sounds and beats and textures from other cultures. I would lay in my bunk and it would take me off into other worlds where I could be at peace.

VINCE GUARALDI TRIO

A Charlie Brown Christmas

FANTASY, 1965

This is partly inspired by my wife, because she was like, ‘Oh, you’re gonna pick some cool records again. Why don’t you look at the ones by the turntable that you’ve been playing constantly?’ So I found A Charlie Brown Christmas. I’ve probably listened to that album more than any other – it comes out every single Christmas, without fail. It’s so joyous: the children’s choir, the jazz feel. It’s one of the biggest-selling Christmas albums of all-time, which is weird if you think about it, because there’s not really any songs you can sing along with. Obviously the motifs are very memorable, but it’s not like Slade, is it? It’s just an exceptionally evocative record. Listening to it makes you happy.

Simon Raymonde’s memoir In One Ear is out now, published by Nine Eight Books

Anna Butterss – Mighty Vertebrate

Wyndham Wallace
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Anna Butterss – Mighty Vertebrate

‘Jazz.’ It’s a funny old word, isn’t it? Encompassing over a century of music, it conjures a mass of styles, from Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop to Ornette Coleman’s freeform extemporisation to Nubya Garcia’s afro-futurism, and all stops in-between. Even Jamiroquai is classed as, of all things, ‘acid jazz’, and like ‘classical’ – which embodies Beethoven, Shostakovich, Cage and Max Richter – and, of course, ‘indie’, ‘jazz’’s almost limitless scope has rendered the word strangely meaningless.

Buy Mighty Vertebrate here

‘Jazz.’ It’s a funny old word, isn’t it? Encompassing over a century of music, it conjures a mass of styles, from Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop to Ornette Coleman’s freeform extemporisation to Nubya Garcia’s afro-futurism, and all stops in-between. Even Jamiroquai is classed as, of all things, ‘acid jazz’, and like ‘classical’ – which embodies Beethoven, Shostakovich, Cage and Max Richter – and, of course, ‘indie’, ‘jazz’’s almost limitless scope has rendered the word strangely meaningless.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Indeed, the genre’s become such a broad church its associations can seem bewildering, contradictory and even occasionally off-putting. These days it’s often used as a mere nod to instrumentation, but to some it’s a signal of free-thinking improvisation, to others technical discipline, while it’s as good as a red flag to those whose prejudices are based on limited experience (or The Fast Show’s Louis Balfour).

Nonetheless, it covers 2022’s Activities, Anna Butterss’ acclaimed debut, and Jeff Parker’s gently free-wheeling Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy, released the same year and on which Butterss also performs. Then there’s last year’s Lados B, recorded by Daniel Villareal with Parker and Butterss, and this year’s fusion-filled Small Medium Large by quintet SML, which Butterss co-founded in her adopted Los Angeles hometown.

Now it’s to be applied to Mighty Vertebrate, which provokes an urge – albeit unnecessary – to be defensive of Butterss’ second solo album. Not that it’s undeserving of the label. The bassist studied jazz at the University of Adelaide, the city where they were born, and afterwards received a scholarship to earn a Master of Music at Indiana University. In addition, aside from the aforementioned Parker, to whom the 33-year-old is something of a protégé, they’ve worked with, among others, Grammy-nominated Larry Goldings and Grammy-winning Meshell Ndegeocello.

Certainly, “Ella” is a nocturnal number on which SML bandmate Josh Johnson’s breathy saxophone casts a smoky spell, and “Lubbock” explores brighter but similar territory, a lilting tremolo guitar joining co-producer Ben Lumsdaine’s brushed cymbals and, again, Johnson’s saxophone. But any emphasis on such traditions risks overlooking other influences – afrobeat, hip-hop, post-rock, funk – with which this record’s been ‘jazzed up’.

Given the nature of others who’ve called upon Butterss’ talents, this is hardly surprising. They include Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes and both Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O and MGMT’s Ben Goldwasser, to whose Where Is Anne Frank? soundtrack the Australian contributed. Each has found something in Butterss’ work that aligns closely with their own, and it’s most likely a shared innovatory spirit. Of Activities, they told online zine Off Shelf, “I didn’t want to make a jazz record, or that if there were jazz elements in the music – which there definitely are – that we filtered them through a different lens.”

Thus, like their debut, Mighty Vertebrate exhibits broad but blurred horizons on which jazz is just one of many features, often only a shade more prevalent than on, say, Tortoise’s TNT (on which Parker himself played in 1998, and whose Johnny Herndon provides this album’s artwork). Opener “Bishop”’s intoxicatingly airy shuffle starts with Butterss’ winding bassline, easily mistaken for one from The Smile’s Wall Of Eyes – like “Read The Room”’s or “Friend Of A Friend”’s – but adds Latin percussion and flashes of a guitar riff recalling TNT’s “In Sarah, Mencken, Christ And Beethoven There Were Women And Men”. There are also hints of the latter in the fragile “Pokemans”, while “Breadrich” is built around a simple riff and a lumbering, looped rhythm which patiently develops into a dramatic, funk-and prog-fuelled feast of soaring synths and haphazard guitar solos which Lalo Schifrin might have admired.

There’s a hint of Schifrin, too, in the delightfully meandering “Shorn”, whose polyrhythms spur on Johnson’s often racing saxophone lines, while a muted, pastoral breakdown heralds a return to Butterss’ first instrument, flute. The brooding “Seeing You” builds in the manner of Every Day-era Cinematic Orchestra, and “Dance Steve” opens like a track from the same band, adding spartan programmed drums to cultivate a daylight comedown before Parker steps in on guitar, energising the track with pleasingly breezy melodies in a soulful, almost ’80s vein.

Mighty Vertebrate concludes with “Saturno”, whose complex rhythm carries another smooth sax solo over Butterss’ solid bass. It’s ‘jazz’ through and through, and yet not long ago this progressive approach might also have been called post-rock – had the right ’90s Chicago band, for instance, performed it – while nowadays one might be tempted instead to call this ‘post-jazz’. Nonetheless, perhaps the best way to think of Butterss’ work is as simply ‘jazz plus’. It’s suitably inclusive and ultimately most reflective of her sweeping ambitions.

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Faces – Faces At The BBC Complete BBC Concert And Session Recordings 1970-1973

Peter Watts
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Faces – Faces At The BBC Complete BBC Concert And Session Recordings 1970-1973

“Our second group this evening is the excessively rowdy Faces,” promises John Peel, whose voice introduces this set of (almost) complete BBC sessions from the Faces. It’s an appropriate start. When the Faces released their debut single, “Flying”, the Beeb didn’t take them seriously. It took John Peel to step in as an early champion, recording their first BBC session in March 1970. Peel pops up throughout this 8CD/1Blu-ray box that has rescued almost every Faces BBC session from archives and private collections – there’s just one set of three songs missing, believed wiped. It includes the Faces playing outstanding versions of “You’re My Girl”, “Oh Lord I’m Browned Off”, “Stay With Me” and “Miss Judy’s Farm”, singing Christmas Carols and performing one infamous concert that was never actually broadcast.

Buy Faces At The BBC here

“Our second group this evening is the excessively rowdy Faces,” promises John Peel, whose voice introduces this set of (almost) complete BBC sessions from the Faces. It’s an appropriate start. When the Faces released their debut single, “Flying”, the Beeb didn’t take them seriously. It took John Peel to step in as an early champion, recording their first BBC session in March 1970. Peel pops up throughout this 8CD/1Blu-ray box that has rescued almost every Faces BBC session from archives and private collections – there’s just one set of three songs missing, believed wiped. It includes the Faces playing outstanding versions of “You’re My Girl”, “Oh Lord I’m Browned Off”, “Stay With Me” and “Miss Judy’s Farm”, singing Christmas Carols and performing one infamous concert that was never actually broadcast.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

The box begins with 10 songs from John Peel’s Sunday Concert – one set of five songs recorded in July 1970 and another five from November – and by the time you reach the deranged cover of “Maybe I’m Amazed” from November that year, you can see what the BBC were worried about – and grateful that Peel had such sway. Those Sunday Concert sessions weren’t the first appearance by the Faces on the BBC. They came in March 1970, when the band recorded sessions for Top Gear and Dave Lee Travis in quick succession. These shorter studio sessions are on Discs 7 and 8, with the first six discs reserved for longer live sessions.

One of those Top Gear sessions sees the band play a great medley of “Around The Plynth” and “Gasoline Alley” – the latter of course being a Rod Stewart solo number that became assimilated into the Faces setlist. It isn’t the only Rod number the band would perform at the BBC: the set ends with a rousing rendition of “Maggie May” from October 1971 sans mandolin solo while Disc 4’s 13-song set recorded for John Peel’s Sunday Concert in February 1972 includes a rollicking “Every Picture Tells A Story” and three-song medley of “That’s All You Need/Country Honk/Gasoline Alley”.

This concert is classic Faces: unpolished, good times, well lubricated. There are moments on “Three-Button Hand Me Down” where it sounds like everything is about to fall apart, but then the band plunge straight into “Miss Judy’s Farm”, propelled by Ian McLagan’s thunderous boogie piano, and it’s all good again. The band tear through “Too Bad”, “(I Know) I’m Losing You” and “Stay With Me”, then sing short bursts of Frankie Vaughan’s “Give Me The Moonlight” and “Underneath The Arches” to the appreciative studio audience. Always up for a laugh, the Faces take part in a Christmas concert for John Peel on Disc 7, with Rod crooning “Away In The Manger” before the band, crew, Peel and Marc Bolan sing a medley of carols.

The Faces have never really been well served by live albums – Coast To Coast: Overture And Beginners came at the very end of their career, when Ronnie Lane had already departed. That makes the Sunday Concert shows and two longer In Concertdiscs (Disc Five and Disc Six) particularly welcome, as it presents the Faces in a live but controlled environment. Or relatively controlled, anyway. The first In Concert show at the BBC’s Paris Cinema in February 1973 was never broadcast because of exchanges between the band and a crowd that included record label hangers-on who’d had too much sherbet. The BBC invited the band back a couple of months later to do it all over again – some of these tracks featured on Rhino’s Five Guys Walk Into A Bar box.

Both shows are fabulous and chaotic, with the unbroadcast concert featuring terrific versions of “Memphis, Tennessee” and “You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want To Discuss It)” before Stewart announces that “(I Know) I’m Losing You” will be the last number because they want to get to the pub before it closes. The second Paris show is tighter, with a similar setlist, but this time including covers of Free’s “The Stealer” and Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” plus three additional ones from Ooh La La: “Borstal Boys”, “My Fault” and Ronnie Lane’s “If I’m On The Late Side”.

This is the first in a series of Faces reissues, which will include rarities and unreleased material. The sound quality is superb, and the accompanying booklet contains interviews with Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood and Kenney Jones, all of whom have been involved in the process. “The Faces… still the best rock’n’roll band in the world for those of us who really care,” says Peel at the end of an electric “(I Know) I’m Losing You” from the Paris Cinema show. Take it from a man who knew.

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Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy to tour R.E.M.’s Fables Of The Reconstruction

Michael Bonner
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Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy to tour R.E.M.’s Fables Of The Reconstruction

Following the success of their tour this year, performing R.E.M.'s debut album Murmur in full, Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy have announced plans to play the band's third album Fables Of The Reconstruction next year to mark it's 40th anniversary.

Following the success of their tour this year, performing R.E.M.‘s debut album Murmur in full, Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy have announced plans to play the band’s third album Fables Of The Reconstruction next year to mark it’s 40th anniversary.

THE BEATLES, JONI MITCHELL, VAN MORRISON, MICHAEL KIWANUKA AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE!

Shannon and Narducy — along with Superchunk/Mountain Goats/Bob Mould drummer Jon Wurster, Wilco’s John Stirratt on bass, guitarist Dag Juhlin and keyboardist Vijay Tellis-Nayak — begin their tour in February.

The tour dates are:

Friday, February 14 – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy & Harriets
Saturday, February 15 – Los Angeles, CA @ Bellwether
Sunday, February 16 – Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up
Tuesday, February 18 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
Friday, February 21 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
Saturday, February 22 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
Monday, February 24 – Indianapolis, IN @ The Vogue
Tuesday, February 25 – St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall
Thursday, February 27-28 – Athens, GA @ 40 Watt
Saturday, March 1 – Carrboro, NC @ Catʼs Cradle
Monday, March 3 – Richmond, VA @ The National
Tuesday, March 4 – Washington, D.C. @ 9:30 Club
Thursday, March 6 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
Friday, March 7 – Boston, MA @ Royale
Saturday, March 8 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
Wednesday, March 12 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Ave
Thursday, March 13 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom
Friday, March 14 – Chicago, IL @ Metro

Introducing the Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey

John Robinson
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Introducing the Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey

As we take a moment to collect ourselves after her visit to the UK and celebrate the 10th anniversary of her debut album, we’d like to introduce the latest Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey. 

As we take a moment to collect ourselves after her visit to the UK and celebrate the 10th anniversary of her debut album, we’d like to introduce the latest Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey. 

The dark and involving albums. The slyly controversial singles. We’ve reviewed them all to bring you a definitive guide to the music of Lana Del Rey. Alongside, we’ve told the story of her journey from philosophy student and trailer home resident, the aspiring singer-songwriter Lizzy Grant, to globally influential artist. We’ll be unpacking the songs, and creating the definitive timeline as we go. 

But that’s not all. Our people have been on the ground to report back on the most recent dates of her sell-out 2023-4 tour. We’ve got deep inside Lana’s cultural references compiling the definitive A-Z from Slim Aarons to Frank Zappa. We’ve also located the key Lana interviews, which chart her path from young singer facing down incorrect assumptions to a brilliant and self-assured artist, who has proved her doubters wrong. 

Enjoy the magazine. You can get your here.

John Robinson, Editor 

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