Page 15 – UNCUT

Sheer Mag – Playing Favorites

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19th March 2024

For a while there Sheer Mag were the last great American indie band, releasing singles, EPs, compilations and at least two classic albums on their own shoestring Wilsun RC imprint based out of Fishtown, Philadelphia. But it’s only fitting that they finally signed on the dotted line with Jack White’s Third Man Records.

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Though they’re not quite ready for the label’s hand-crafted, lathe-cut, heavyweight vinyl treatment – the quintessential Sheer Mag format you feel might still be a busted-up, unspooled old cassette you find at the side of the road outside a gas station somewhere on I-10 – you could say that Sheer Mag are the true spiritual heirs of The White Stripes.

If the Stripes’ artfully homespun, high-concept primitivism was the perfect expression of the USA’s garage band soul at the turn of the century, then the Philly quartet are the modern equivalent. Both the Mag and the Stripes are bands that have thrived on limitations. In fact, what mono was for Jack and Meg, you might say compression is for Sheer Mag. Look at the wave form for “Eat It Or Beat It”, the second track on Playing Favorites, and it’s as solidly brickwalled as the Eastern State Penitentary – none of the rich dynamic range that’s come into favour since the end of the CD-era loudness wars. It’s the sound of late-night AM radio sometime in the late 1970s/early ’80s, where hard rock, power pop, country, new wave, disco and even a little prog have been impacted together into diamond-hard nuggets consisting of pop hooks, gutbucket rock’n’roll and demented, defiant joy.

It’s part of Sheer Mag’s irresistible charm that they continue to find thrilling new ways of traversing the same dirt track chicanes of verse, chorus, bridge and solo. In fact Hart and Kyle Seely, the engine room and writers of Sheer Mag’s tunes might be the most smartest pop formalists this side of Jack Antonoff. Playing Favorites kicks off with the title track, another timeless anthem to chasing the domestic blues away, packing up the van and searching for kicks on the road. For all Tina Halladay’s shredded vocals – she’s Janis Joplin, straining to make herself heard over an XF-84H Thunderscreech – it’s an immaculate confection, rivalling New Zealand’s power-pop supremos The Beths in the elegant ingenuity of its construction.

The album supposedly began life as an attempt at a disco EP – albeit the kind of dancehall where the floor comes alive with shots of jack rather than poppers – and though Sheer Mag aren’t quite ready for their string section, you can hear some of the Philly roots of disco on “All Lined Up”, which makes a metaphysical conceit worthy of Marvell out of the ricochet of pool balls across a desolate poolhall. “This world’s cold, and we’re alone/But we’re not just drifting through outer space,” croons Halliday hopefully. “We got shot at an angle/To the deepest pocket yet made”. At times Sheer Mag are miraculous pop hustlers, still pulling off the most absurd trick shots on the scuffed three yards of stained green baize.

Which isn’t to say that they’re not above a little experiment. In the past Sheer Mag may have viewed the four-minute mark with the same wariness as the Ramones or Roger Bannister, but here we have “Mechanical Garden”, clocking in at an epic 5:55, comprising a ZZ Top boogie prelude, an orchestral interlude and some arpeggios that might have found a home on Rush’s Moving Pictures, before resolving into a disco strut worthy of Hall & Oates. What’s more it features guest shredding from Tuareg guitar master Mdou Moctar.

But the most intriguing departure on Playing Favourites might be the moments when they turn down the dial from 11 for a moment. “Tea On The Kettle” was apparently inspired by the band’s love of Essex post-psych mavericks the Cleaners From Venus. “Someday when we can find more than pennies and dimes, we’ll go somewhere gentle,” sings Tina with beguiling tenderness, like she’s dusting herself down after battling through another force 10 hurricane. “Baby, with you by my side it’s a whole new ball game.” At times like this it feels like Sheer Mag are only just getting started.

I’m New Here – Arushi Jain

Interviews

Piers Martin

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19th March 2024

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Three years ago, the Delhi-born, US-based composer Arushi Jain quit her comfortable tech job in San Francisco and headed to New York to become an artist full-time. Since then, it’s not gone too badly. Jain, who styles herself the ‘Modular Princess’ after her musical practice, released Under The Lilac Sky in 2021, a beautiful meditation rooted in the Indian classical tradition that also veers into seriously mind-expanding psychedelia. The album fell victim to the pandemic but has since come to resonate with a growing audience who appreciate transportive synthesiser jams, including James Holden, Arooj Aftab, Floating Points and Suzanne Ciani.

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“I think I’m finally over ‘San Francisco Arushi’ and entering a different version of me that’s craving human connection a bit more,” says Jain, 30, from her Brooklyn apartment. “In San Francisco you had to make things happen because there wasn’t much going on. In New York I want to meet more artists and write with them.”

Jain was taught classical music at a number of prestigious schools in India before she moved to the Bay Area at 18 to study computer science at Stanford University (“the only reason I was in the US was to become a software person,” she says). While there, she discovered computer synthesis at the Center For Computer Research In Music And Acoustics. “I took a few classes and was like, this is so empowering – you can just build a thing that you think of. And I carried that energy of making it happen for yourself into other aspects of my life.”

A major part of Jain’s New York chapter has been the realisation of her second album, Delight. It’s another sublime collection of richly textured electronics, this time laced with saxophone, flute and her voice – “I wanted a new sound palette that was a little more organic and acoustic, not just generated” – and based entirely on the Bageshri raag. A raag is a melodic framework used in Indian classical music, and Bageshri – essentially about love – is one Jain felt impelled to explore. “I was listening to it a lot and playing it on the piano and it really spoke to me. It’s a beautiful raag, very captivating. It’s about being in love, but it doesn’t have to be a person. It could be an experience, a meditation, a ritual, a foundation you build for yourself. It’s like something that you want to be around all the time, someone or something who replenishes and nourishes you.”

On Delight, Jain uses the raag to search for the “state of flow” she feels while writing – a process somewhat hampered by a repetitive strain injury that restricts playing. “There are certain parts of the creative process that I have briefly experienced that I adore, and I’m committed to finding that again,” she says. “I use a lot of my logic brain and rational brain in the act of composing, but the goal is to eventually go from the logic to the feeling, because that’s when you realise what’s working.”

Jain also hosts a monthly show on NTS radio and runs a label, both called Ghrunghru, which focus on new experimental electronic music emanating from the South Asian diaspora. “The reason I started writing this music is because I was feeling a lot of dissonance within myself around what I was doing so far from home,” she says. “That experience of taking multiple worlds of yours and putting them together is something that all immigrants have to do. Under The Lilac Sky helped me glue the different parts of me together.”

J Mascis – My Life In Music

Interviews

Sam Richards

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19th March 2024

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The Dinosaur Jr mainman shares his formative freak-outs: “Nick Cave was my fashion icon in college”

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THE ROLLING STONES

Exile On Main Street

ROLLING STONES RECORDS, 1972

I remember my mom giving me money to go grocery shopping and I stopped at the record store first and bought <Exile…> – took that off the top and then spent the rest of the money on food. And, yeah, I still listen to it. There’s so many songs on it that you’re always discovering a different song. I like that it’s kinda murky-sounding, there’s something magical about it. I didn’t really know anything about [the legend of its making] as a kid. It was just the record itself, the sound. They seemed to be taking off, from surviving the ’60s and then suddenly jumping into something that I really liked. Their guitar-playing inspired me, Mick Taylor and Keith Richards together.

THE STOOGES

The Stooges

ELEKTRA, 1969

When I was maybe 11 or 12, I got the Rolling Stone Record Guide, and I would try to collect all the albums that had five stars. I definitely discovered a lot of stuff through that, like The Velvet Underground. I dunno if The Stooges got five stars, but somehow I got onto their first album. Something about it really spoke to me, especially the guitar sound. That inspired me, as a direction, to try to emulate it. I played with Ron Asheton a lot, and it was cool to learn how to play The Stooges’ songs the right way. I see people play ’em the wrong way and it just doesn’t sound right. There’s a lot of subtlety that people bulldoze over, usually.

EATER

The Album

THE LABEL, 1977

The record store that sold punk and new wave stuff, the owner would go to England and buy cut-outs, so there’d be 50 copies of the Eater album when I was getting into punk. I would just buy anything that was punk and I somehow really latched on to that. I’d heard that the drummer was 14, and I was 14 or 15 when I heard it, so I related to that immediately. I also liked the fact they would speed up covers, which became a big thing in punk. They did “I’m Eighteen” by Alice Cooper, but made it “Fifteen” and sped it up a lot. I thought that was cool. I just liked the sound of it – it was like the music punk Velvet Underground fans would make, who are young.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Junkyard

4AD, 1982

The Birthday Party was a big band for me, coming out of hardcore. It seemed like the hardcore scene had kinda died, and we’re all looking for some new kind of music that has the same energy. That’s where The Birthday Party came in, and Junkyard was the album that I had. I remember my roommate at college really hated it, which I thought was good. He liked The Doors and he would go mental when I played The Birthday Party. So of course that appealed to me – any music that I liked that would annoy other people, I would play more. I was really into [Nick Cave] back then. I even would try to copy his dress sense and hair and stuff. He was like my fashion icon in college.

WIPERS

Over The Edge

TRAP, 1983

I decided that I was going to switch [from drums] to guitar to form a band, because I didn’t like any guitar players around. The sound I heard for guitar, nobody around my town was playing like that, so I decided I had to try it. Gerard Cosloy, who runs Matador, went to school with me – he was the manager of my hardcore band at the time, Deep Wound. And he told me about The Wipers. I hadn’t heard of it until I was in college and started playing guitar, and that soon became one of my main things I was trying to copy when I was learning guitar, so it was a big influence on my guitar playing. Not that I could copy it, but I tried.

TASTE

On The Boards

POLYDOR, 1970

I got into that way later, probably around [Dinosaur Jr’s 1994 album] <Without A Sound>. My bass player at the time Mike Johnson turned me on to Taste and Rory Gallagher, and that album I thought was really amazing. It really spoke to me and re-inspired me. He [Gallagher] just played differently than other people. His leads went weird places, so it caught my ear because it didn’t sound like something I would play, or anyone would play. Where he was going on the guitar was cool – it was just different-sounding and very intense and immediate. There’s some great songs on the first Taste album, but the second one is good all the way through.

GUIDED BY VOICES

Bee Thousand

SCAT, 1994

That was something my brother actually turned me on to. He had seen Guided By Voices and I was feeling very kinda jaded on the whole music scene at the time. Knowing that this band’s older than me and they seem more enthusiastic and the whole album is so awesome, it definitely gave me a kick. Even when they’re in the basement, it was as if they were in a big studio. Everything about it, they were really going for it. We just played with them in Dayton – they did a 40th anniversary or something. That was pretty cool, to play with them in their hometown. They’ve always had a lot of friends hanging around, so it was cool seeing all their drinking buddies, the local crew.

RON WOOD

I’ve Got My Own Album To Do

WARNER MUSIC, 1974

It’s always been a favourite of mine. I had all these Stones albums, and I was looking for more Stones, anything, and I found out about this Ron Wood album. Mick and Keith are on there, and it’s great to hear Ron and Keith singing together – I wish they would do that more often. When I was on Warners, my A&R man asked me if I wanted to re-release anything. I said, “Oh yeah, it’d be cool if you guys would put out the Ron Wood album on CD.” And when they did, they sent it to Jay Farrar, who ended up covering one of the songs on the first Son Volt album. At one point, I got to tell Ron Wood that, so that was exciting.

Steve Harley dies at 73

News

Michael Bonner

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18th March 2024

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Steve Harley has died aged 73.

The news was confirmed by his family in a statement, who said: “We are devastated to announce that our wonderful husband and father has passed away peacefully at home, with his family by his side.”

Harley, who had been receiving cancer treatment, had cancelled a run of shows last year, writing on his website that it was a “heartbreaking” decision.

“It’s tiresome, and tiring. But the fight is on… And thankfully the cursed intruder is not affecting the voice. I sing and play most evenings.”

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His family said Harley had “passed away peacefully at home”, adding: “We know he will be desperately missed by people all over the world.”

“Whoever you know him as, his heart exuded only core elements. Passion, kindness, generosity. And much more, in abundance,” his wife Dorothy and children Kerr and Greta wrote in a statement.

“The birdsong from his woodland that he loved so much was singing for him. His home has been filled with the sounds and laughter of his four grandchildren.”

Born Stephen Nice in south London in 1951, he worked as a journalist on the regional newspapers during the early 1970s.

He formed Cockney Rebel in 1972 with Jean-Paul Crocker, Stuart Elliott, Paul Jeffreys and Milton Reame-James. Their debut album The Human Menagerie was followed by two hit singles, “Judy Teen” and “Mr. Soft”, but the band split.

Harley reformed the band with a new line-up, including Elliott, Jim Cregan, Duncan Mackay and George Ford, and renamed them Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel.

Their first single “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)“, was a UK Number One in 1975; it was followed by their Best Years of Our Lives album that same year.

The band enjoyed one final Top 10 hit – a cover of The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” – before Harley set off on a solo career, including two albums in the late 1970s,Hobo With A Grin and The Candidate.

During the ’80s, he had a Top 10 duet with Sarah Brightman on the title song of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom Of The Opera“.

He continued as a solo artist and also with a revived line-up of Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. Harley also presented the BBC Radio 2 show Sounds Of The 70s from 1999 to 2008.

Hear Brian Eno’s new song, “All I Remember”

News

Michael Bonner

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15th March 2024

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Hear Brian Eno’s new song, “All I Remember”

Brian Eno has released a new song, All I Remember“.

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Taken from the soundtrack to Gary Hustwit‘s upcoming documentary, Eno, this contemplative piece finds Eno in rare, reflective mood, referencing early influences like Ketty Lester, Dee Clark and Bobby Vee and recalling childhood experiences.

Eno – the official soundtrack to the film will be released by UMR on April 19. The film receives its UK premier at London’s Barbican the following day.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds announce The Wild God Tour

News

Michael Bonner

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15th March 2024

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Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds announce The Wild God Tour

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds will tour in support of their upcoming studio album, The Wild God.

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The band will play 27 shows across 17 countries, beginning on September 24 in Oberhausen, Germany and ending in Paris, France on November 17.

They will play 6 shows across the UK.

Support will come from one of 3 special guests across the dates – Dry Cleaning, The Murder Capital and Black Country, New Road.

The tour follows hot on the heels of their 18th studio album, Wild God, which is released on August 30.

The live line-up for the band is Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, Jim Sclavunos, George Vjestica, Larry Mullins and Carly Paradis.

Tickets on sale Friday March 22, 10am local time here.

The tour dates are:

September 2024

24 Oberhausen, Germany – Rudolf Weber-ARENA (with Dry Cleaning)

26 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Ziggo Dome (Dry Cleaning)

29 Berlin, Germany – Uber Arena (Dry Cleaning)

October 2024

2 Oslo, Norway – Oslo Spektrum (Dry Cleaning)

3 Stockholm, Sweden – Hovet (Dry Cleaning)

5 Copenhagen, Denmark – Royal Arena (Dry Cleaning)

8 Hamburg, Germany – Barclays Arena (Dry Cleaning)

10 Lodz, Poland – Atlas Arena (Dry Cleaning)

11 Krakow, Poland – TAURON Arena (Dry Cleaning)

13 Budapest, Hungary – Papp László Sportaréna (with The Murder Capital)

15 Zagreb, Croatia – Arena Zagreb (The Murder Capital)

17 Prague, Czechia – O2 arena (The Murder Capital)

18 Munich, Germany – Olympiahalle (The Murder Capital)

20 Milan, Italy – Milan Forum (The Murder Capital)

22 Zurich, Switzerland – Hallenstadion (The Murder Capital)

24 Barcelona, Spain – Palau Sant Jordi (The Murder Capital)

25 Madrid, Spain – WiZinkCenter (The Murder Capital)

27 Lisbon, Portugal – MEO Arena (The Murder Capital)

30 Antwerp, Belgium – Sportpaleis (The Murder Capital)

November 2024

2 Leeds, UK – first direct arena (with Black Country, New Road)

3 Glasgow, UK – OVO Hydro (Black Country, New Road)

5 Manchester, UK – AO Arena (Black Country, New Road)

6 Cardiff, UK – Utilita Arena (Black Country, New Road)

8 London, UK – The O2 (Black Country, New Road)

12 Dublin, Ireland – 3Arena (Black Country, New Road)

15 Birmingham, UK – Resorts World Arena (Black Country, New Road)

17 Paris, France – Accor Arena (Black Country, New Road)

Hear Mark Knopfler’s new version of “Going Home (Theme From Local Hero)”

News

Sam Richards

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15th March 2024

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Hear Mark Knopfler’s new version of “Going Home (Theme From Local Hero)”

Mark Knopfler has released an all-star version of “Going Home (Theme From Local Hero” under the name Mark Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes, in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America.

It features over 60 big-name musicians, including Jeff Beck (in the final recording he made before he died last year), David Gilmour, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Ringo Starr, Joan Armatrading, Eric Clapton, Ron Wood, Joan Jett, Duane Eddy, Hank Marvin, Nile Rodgers, Brian May, Sting, Tony Iommi, Joe Walsh and many more.

“I really had no idea that it was going to be like this,” says Knopfler. “Before I knew where I was, Pete Townshend had come into my studio armed with a guitar and an amp. And that first Pete power chord… man, I tell you. We were in that territory, and it was just fantastic. And it went on from there. Eric [Clapton] came in, played great, just one tasty lick after another. Then Jeff Beck’s contribution arrived and that was spellbinding. I think what we’ve had is an embarrassment of riches, really.”

You can download the single here. It is also available on CD, 12″ vinyl with etched B-side, and deluxe CD+Blu-Ray, all with artwork by Peter Blake.

Introducing…The 172-page Definitive Edition Ultimate Music Guide to The Smiths

Publications

John Robinson

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14th March 2024

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Introducing…The 172-page Definitive Edition Ultimate Music Guide to The Smiths

Strange to think about it in these terms now that Johnny Marr is a solo artist and Morrissey is doing his best to please only himself; after the lawsuits and the contractual revelations. Still: the driving principle and greatest strength of The Smiths was always unity – the unique quality they had as a band.

Forty years on from the release of their debut album, it’s that which we celebrate with our the 172-page Definitive Edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to The Smiths. As Mike Joyce writes in his introduction to the magazine, the band had a quality which remained mysterious even to those closest to it.

“The music we were playing was so different, and it stayed like that throughout the Smiths’ career,” Mike says. “It wasn’t punk or reggae or vaudeville, or something with big anthemic tunes but at the same time it was all of that. The band was never about the four individuals. You could say the same about the Beatles or the Stones: how did it work? Why did it work? It just happened that way, as a unit. What we were creating was so magical and diverse it drew us all in.”

As you’ll read in the magazine or in the limited edition hardback with an exclusive cover that you can also get from us, this chemistry wasn’t short-lived. Collected here are incisive and in-depth reviews of all the band’s albums, and a selection of the best interviews from the archives. Not only that, we follow the band’s chief instigators into their solo careers, to find Johnny Marr an occasionally mystical maker of stirring electro-rock and Morrissey satiating his constituency with an increasingly robust view of current events. In the new eight-page foldout miscellany timeline, meanwhile, you’ll find stats, maps, and insightful miscellany.

The past year has seen the passing of Andy Rourke, and it’s testimony to him and abiding ties of what The Smiths created together that Johnny Marr and Morrissey have both been of one mind in expressing their sadness and gratitude for his life. Marr knew Rourke as a close friend. Morrissey, as an admiring bandmate: “nothing that he played had been played by someone else,” he wrote.

It’s the same unique quality that Mike Joyce praises in the band’s music as a whole in his introduction to the magazine. “What we did is bigger than us as individuals,” he says. “We changed the perception of what indie bands were supposed to be.”

Enjoy the magazine. You can get yours here.

Hear Myriam Gendron’s new track, “Long Way Home”

News

Michael Bonner

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13th March 2024

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Hear Myriam Gendron’s new track, “Long Way Home”

Myriam Gendron has announced details of her third album.

The follow-up to Not So Deep As A Well (2014) and Ma délire –Songs of love, lost & found (2021), Mayday will be released on May 10 via Thrill Jockey & Feeding Tube.

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In the meantime, Gendron has shared some new music from the album. You can hear “Long Way Home” below:

Mayday finds Gendron accompanied by the guitarist Marisa Anderson and drummer Jim White, as well as Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lavoie, Bill Nace (Body/Head) and saxophonist Zoh Amba.

The tracklisting for Mayday is:

There Is No East Or West

Long Way Home

Terres brûlées

Dorothy’s Blues

La Luz

La belle Françoise (pour Sylvie)

Lully Lullay

Look Down That Lonesome Road

Quand j’étais jeune et belle

Berceuse

Gendron is also touring America this spring:

March 22 – Knoxville, TN – Big Ears Festival
April 2 – Minneapolis, MN – The Cedar
April 4 – Rock Island, IL – Rozz Tox
April 5 – Milwaukee, WI – Wilson Center
April 6 – Chicago, IL – Judson & Moore
April 26 – Williamstown, MA – Clark Art Institute
May 16 – New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge *
May 17 – Keene, NH – Thing in the Spring *
May18 – Montréal, QC – Lion d’Or *
May 20 – Portland, OR – Holocene *
May 22 – Seattle, WA – Rabbit Box *
May 23 – Vancouver, BC – St. James Community Square *
May 24 – San Diego, CA – The Loft *
May 25 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon *
May 26 – Mill Valley, CA – Sweetwater Music Hall *

Jun. 28 – Toronto, ON – Danforth Music Hall ^

* w/ Jim White & Marisa Anderson (duo)

^ w/ Kurt Vile & the Violators

Mike Scott and Peter Gabriel pay tribute to Karl Wallinger

News

Michael Bonner

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12th March 2024

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Mike Scott and Peter Gabriel pay tribute to Karl Wallinger

Karl Wallinger, the World Party frontman and former member of The Waterboys, has died aged 66.

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Described by his publicist as “presciently ahead of his time”, Wallinger was born in Prestatyn, Wales, working in a variety of roles within the music industry – including as the musical director of The Rocky Horror Show – before joining the Waterboys at the end of the sessions for their 1984 album, A Pagan Place.

He remained a Waterboy for their This Is The Sea album, leaving to form World Party late in 1985.

World Party’s first album, Private Revolution, was released in 1987 and included the hit “Ship Of Fools“; the same year, Wallinger also worked on Sinéad O’Connor’s 1987 debut, The Lion And The Cobra.

World Party’s fourth album, Egyptology, featured “She’s the One“, which later became a Number One hit for Robbie Williams.

World Party’s fifth and final studio album, Dumbing Up, was released in 2000; Wallinger suffered a brain aneurysm the following year.

Wallinger is survived by his wife Suzie Zamit, son Louis Wallinger, daughter Nancy Zamit and two grandchildren.

Mike Scott paid tribute on X to Wallinger: “Travel on well my old friend. You are one of the finest musicians I’ve ever known.”

Peter Gabriel wrote on Facebook: “Shocked and saddened to learn we no longer have Karl Wallinger with us.

“I had admired his work from afar but it was when we did a Real World Recording Week together that I had the most creative and fun week I have ever had in the studio. Karl was overflowing with wonderful musical ideas that blew us all away, all delivered with terrible jokes that had us laughing uncontrollably all day and night. He was such a gifted, natural writer and player, it was a tap that he could turn on at will, effortlessly.

“Like many a great comic and many great musicians, melancholy was strong in the mix, but his charm, humility, intelligence and razor-sharp wit made him great company. Karl was an abundant talent and we have been given extraordinary music and memories from this extraordinary man. Thank you, Karl.”

Joanna Newsom announces live dates

News

Michael Bonner

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11th March 2024

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Joanna Newsom has announced a residency at Hollywood Forever’s Masonic Lodge in Los Angeles.

Dubbed ‘the Strings/Keys Reincidence‘, Newsom will play five shows in May.

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The residency includes a matinee show where Newom will “tailor the setlist to be not only suitable for children, but specifically designed with them in mind,” says an accompanying statement.

Newsom last performed on March 22, 2023, as the unbilled support for the Fleet Foxes at the Belasco in Los Angeles, where she played an hour-long set.

Aside from the Masonic Lodge residency, Newsom is also due to perform at the all-ages Kilby Block Party festival in Salt Lake City on May 10.

The dates are:

Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Thursday, May 16, 2024
Friday, May 17, 2024
Saturday, May 18, 2024 *
Sunday, May 19, 2024

matinee show

Heldon – Electronique Guerilla (reissue, 1974)

Sharon O'Connell

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8th March 2024

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Heldon – Electronique Guerilla (reissue, 1974)

His name may not resonate as widely as those of Germany’s kosmische luminaries, but Richard Pinhas is now acknowledged as a significant player on the European electronic-rock scene of the 1970s, through both his solo work and with his band, Heldon. Named after the republic in Norman Spinrad’s bizarre, science fantasy/metafiction work, The Iron Dream, the group have always been essentially a solo project with changing guest lists. Between 1974-79 they released eight albums, before Pinhas was plunged deep into depression in 1983 and all but disappeared for a decade. However, 1992 marked the start of an intensely prolific and ongoing creative streak, featuring many recordings under his own name as well as collaborations with later generations of experimental musicians, including Merzbow, Wolf Eyes, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O’Malley and Ruins’ Yoshida Tatsuya. Now 72, Pinhas is still recording and playing live; just 18 months ago, Heldon released a new album.

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Their debut Electronique Guerilla is the latest in their run of ’70s reissues and marks its 50th anniversary in limited-edition, coloured vinyl form. Originally released on Pinhas’s own Disjuncta label, it serves as a great Heldon primer, introducing a delay-heavy style of supremely moody, electronic/cosmic rock that’s undergone minor tweaks down the decades rather than any transformation, while revealing his philosophical, mystical/mythical and futurist interests (he holds a PhD in philosophy from the Sorbonne and studied Kabbalah for years). Pinhas has always seen himself as a rock’n’roll rather than electronic musician, something borne out by his focus on the guitar and his admiration of Hendrix, alongside Eno and the likes of Terry Riley. More importantly, Pinhas’s early influences were ’70s UK blues and R&B guitarists, notably Peter Green, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. Later, he fell under the spell of No Pussyfooting, released the year before Heldon’s debut, and is refreshingly upfront about its – and Robert Fripp’s – importance to him.

Much of this is evident on Electronique Guerilla, a potent and absorbing set on its own terms but also one that helped shift focus from Germany’s enticing experimental scene in the ’70s. It was home-recorded direct to tape on a two-track Revox and produced by Pinhas, who plays a Gibson Les Paul and an AKS synth. Magma cohort Patrick Gauthier (on piano and synth) is among those assisting on some tracks. Intriguing details include the album’s dedication to Robert Wyatt, a William Burroughs namecheck on Side One and a reading from Nietzsche’s The Voyager And His Shadow by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, under whom Pinhas studied.

The set opens with the two-note, sustained drone of “Zind” which, though it bleeds into the start of “Back To Heldon”, is revealed as something of a red herring. In the latter, forlorn and Fripp-ish treated guitar parts undulate over a monotonal and foreboding synth wave, while a single, piercingly relentless note sustains a giallo-style anxiety; alien chatter then guides the track to a calmer place, light years away. “Circulus Vitiosus”, which clocks in at just under nine minutes, suggests a sublime splicing of Fripp/Eno and Tangerine Dream, its bent guitar notes swooning over an orchestra of synth sounds, some of which suggest desperate communications across the void, others stars flaring into existence or flickering before they die. An echo of “Maggot Brain” is hard to deny. In between sit the strikingly contemporary “Ouais, Marchais, Mieux Qu’en 68” (throwing forward to Slint and Godspeed You! Black Emperor), with its Deleuze recitation and the album’s wild card, “Northernland Lady”, which has a blues-drone root and a sweetly hypnotic pull. Here, Pinhas reflects on his two sons about to visit him from Sweden, and their mother. The album closes with the brief “Ballade Pour Puig Antich, Révolutionnaire Assassiné En España”, an elegy for the Catalonian pro-independence militant executed in 1974, which begins with an oceanic gush of synths and adds pulsing synths, over which sit a sombre bass motif and spare, mournful guitar melody.

Half a century on, the “guerilla” of the album’s title may sound like an overheated claim to artistic radicalism, but as Pinhas tells Uncut, as a 22-year-old he wanted to channel “something revolutionary into the sound of the music”, rather than simply be part of the musical vanguard. Heldon’s debut saw him join it on his own terms, speaking to the socio-political disruption of his time while honouring his origins and developing his own signature.

Liam Gallagher John Squire – Liam Gallagher John Squire

Nick Hasted

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8th March 2024

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Liam Gallagher John Squire – Liam Gallagher John Squire

Imagine the Stone Roses with an immeasurably better singer modelled on Ian Brown, or Oasis with a dazzling lead guitarist. Liam Gallagher and John Squire have, and the resulting album plays to their strengths. Though coming almost out of the blue, it’s the most logical team-up among the remnants of Manchester’s old indie-rock imperium, currently awash with severed alliances searching for completion.

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Liam and Noel were a more extreme version of Morrissey and Marr’s sundering of stellar charisma and musical genius, with Liam’s songwriting vestigial when Oasis split in 2009, and Noel’s vocals reserved for sensitive, doubting songs Our Kid couldn’t sing. Innately cautious, Noel’s albums have nudged at the edges of Oasis’s formula, finding on last year’s Council Skies a sweet spot between middle-aged reflection on his Burnage past and canny Oasis-esque bangers. Liam also hinted at maturity on 2022’s C’mon You Know, but he’s generally been laser-focused on claiming Oasis’s essence and audience for himself, replaying Knebworth, and Definitely Maybe on June’s upcoming 30^th-anniversary tour.

Squire was more evenly partnered with Ian Brown in The Stone Roses, but has also proved dependent on his combustible singer for a mass audience the Seahorses couldn’t supply. His time since the Roses’ 2010s reunion has been self-sufficiently private, balancing visual art with family life’s quiet satisfactions. Liam’s invitation to guest on “Champagne Supernova” at Knebworth opportunely coincided with Squire’s renewed interest in guitars and songwriting. Liam followed up by specifically requesting guitar-heavy songs with Squire lyrics for this project.

This is therefore a Squire-centred record, demoed by him at his Macclesfield home studio while Liam emailed broad stokes of musical direction – the Pistols, Hendrix, Faces and Bee Gees. LA sessions were produced by Greg Kurstin (Adele, McCartney’s Egypt Station and much of Liam’s solo debut As You Were), who rounded out the band on bass and piano alongside drummer Joey Waronker. Squire wanted imperfections, “something slightly out of time, a bit sloppy”. Happily out of the star game for so long, his influence on a singer who has to be a star is key to their collaboration.

Opener “Raise Your Hands” suggests Liam is getting his Definitely Maybe tour prep in early, with a bouncy Britpop beat brightened by Squire’s gleaming jangle. Anthemic lyrics secrete a sardonic edge more innate to the Roses than today’s soft-spoken Squire lets on: “If revenge is all that really matters…/Raise your hands.” Liam’s vocal starts as he’ll continue, higher and therefore more vulnerable than usual, relaxed and kind, the cracked grain that usually channels punk gravel now aiding genuine warmth. Squire’s guitar counterpoints West Coast vocal harmonies, with a scratchy blues-rock solo meeting Kurstin’s barrelhouse piano on the fade.

Where Liam’s solo albums provide aspects of his Lennon-worshipping yet sunny worldview, while often sounding written and recorded by committee, this duo debut is unmistakably authored. “Jesus Christ, about last night/I can only apologise,” “Mars To Liverpool” starts, before entering Northern psychedelic realms: “If your travel agent’s cool/Can anybody get me/From Mars to Liverpool?” Liam’s elasticating emphasis of “cool” and “pool” is almost worth the admission. The music, meanwhile, splices The La’s’ “There She Goes” and The Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun”. The Fabs scoreboard elsewhere notches references to Wings’ “Let Me Roll It” and Plastic Ono Band’s heavy primal scream blues on “I’m A Wheel”, “I Feel Fine” on “Love You Forever”, “Getting Better” on “Make It Up As You Go Along”, and the phased guitars, pounding Revolver drums and lysergic effects of “Just Another Rainbow”. The latter’s five-and-a-half minutes has room for windmilling Who clamour too. Its lyric, Squire’s said, deals with “disappointment, and the sentiment that you never get what you really want”, disillusion Liam couldn’t concede on his own.

The Roses helped legitimise looking back in UK rock, rehabilitating The Beatles for Oasis to fully ransack, yet “Fool’s Gold” also offered a tantalising dance-rock way forward. Oasis similarly developed their punk- and rave-inflected Beatlemania into the majesty of “Champagne Supernova”. Squire draws on this old ambition in “One Day At A Time”. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” he has Liam sing, “We’ve got so many people to be.” Suggesting both “I Am The Resurrection”’s skyscraping lift-off from working-class circumstance and Bowie-like possible persona, Squire twists into a vicious kiss-off: “I know you’re happy in your suburban trance/You should have fucked me when you had the chance.”

Though they each had one eye on the past, The Stone Roses put Squire’s guitar in a radical context, while Oasis’ white-noise clamour was a pioneering new sound made from familiar ingredients; by contrast, Liam Gallagher John Squire is an essentially conservative record of relaxed, early-’70s rock. If the tunes and attitude don’t grip as strongly as they did in either man’s era-bending pomp, both still sound better for getting together. With their regular partners perhaps permanently out of creative reach, this unheralded partnership has strong prospects.

Oren Ambarchi: album by album

Sam Richards

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7th March 2024

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Oren Ambarchi’s future path was defined by a serendipitous mix-up in his grandfather’s Sydney junkshop. Taking home what he thought was a copy of Iron Maiden’s Number Of The Beast, the record inside turned out to be Miles Davis’s even more nefarious Live-Evil. “I was really confused,” recalls Ambarchi. “The music was just bizarre. To my ears it sounded completely chaotic and didn’t make any sense. But I stuck with it, and became really obsessed with [Davis’s] music from that point onwards. It opened the door to a lot of things.” Not only did his grandad’s shop inculcate an early love of freaky sounds, it provided the tools for Ambarchi’s first sonic investigations: “I was bringing home effect pedals and reel-to-reel machines, so I started fooling around with that stuff at home.” He spent his teenage years drumming in free-jazz and noise-rock bands, but was always intrigued by the possibilities of pure sound. When a bandmate abandoned an old guitar in their rehearsal studio, he couldn’t resist picking it up, incorporating its buzzes and clangs into his vivid sound collages. “I always loved guitar, I always loved rock music, but I think I came at it from a different route.”

And so began a remarkably prolific and unconventional recording career, making abstract electronica with guitars or propulsive kraut-jazz freakouts with a “virtual band” that has at times included everyone from Arto Lindsay to BJ Cole. “I love making records,” he enthuses. “It can be tormenting, but it’s really addictive when it works. Just pushing myself to do something different each time really fires me up.”

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OREN AMBARCHI

INSULATION

TOUCH, 1999

For his international debut, Ambarchi challenges himself to emulate glitchy European electronica using just a guitar

I’d been in a lot of noise-rock bands – I’d already been to Japan twice and worked with people like Masonna and members of The Boredoms. Then around ’98, I started listening to a lot of the electronic music that was happening in Europe at the time. The Mego label was absolutely huge for me, and also groups like Pan Sonic. I found myself with an old electric guitar, this instrument that was not associated with those worlds at all. But I was really determined to explore those inspirations – and also the older electronic music I was discovering, like musique concrète – and just see what I could do with the guitar. I was quite extreme in the sense that I was not going to use anything else; I was going to limit it to just these primitive effects pedals and see how far I could push it. Most of that record was recorded to cassette, I was just fooling around at home. I loved the Touch label at the time – I sent a demo to them and they got back to me. I couldn’t believe it. I think they wrote: “We really hate the guitar, but we really like this.”

OREN AMBARCHI

GRAPES FROM THE ESTATE

TOUCH, 2004

A hazy, hypnotic pleasure, employing warm organic textures for the first time

Around the time of [2001’s] Suspension, I found something that was a bit more personal. I remember consciously being like, ‘Wow, I’m letting melody into these abstract guitar pieces.’ I felt a little uncomfortable about that, but it just felt real. So I slowly started tapping into that more, because I grew up listening to a lot of pop music, and I love melody too. I’m not religious about being experimental or anything. There was a studio in Sydney called Big Jesus Burger, run by a very close friend of mine. He had a whole bunch of stuff in his studio that I could play, it was really fun. I thought, ‘Wait a second – why am I being so hardcore, just playing the guitar?’ It was liberating to have other colours going on. He had tuned bells in the studio, and I loved using that. I bought an acoustic guitar for “Remedios The Beauty”, because I didn’t have one. I think the only time I ever used it was to make that track. It sounds like a very relaxed record, but in those days I didn’t have a lot of money to go into the studio, so it was done really quickly and quite stressfully.

OREN AMBARCHI & JIM O’ROURKE

INDEED

EDITIONS MEGO, 2011

The first of three great records created as a duo with O’Rourke

I met Jim in New York in the ’90s. I had a Merzbow T-shirt on from his old label, Dexter’s Cigar. I was walking down the street and someone across the road yelled, “We only sold two of those, you know!” – and it was him. And then we just kept bumping into each other and clicking about stuff. We’re the same age and we love a lot of the same things. The Indeed thing was weird because I was in Japan doing a gig with Mika Vainio and Thomas Brinkmann. Jim wrote to me and said, “Oh, you should come to my house in Tokyo to record.” The night before, I was singing karaoke ’til about four in the morning and I’d drunk way, way too much. I remember emailing Jim: “I’m not in a good way, maybe we shouldn’t do this.” And he was like, “I’ve got coffee, just come over.”

He had a crazy modular synth set-up, and they’re all flickering. Pro Tools was ready to record, and then he hands me Kim Gordon’s guitar! I’m left-handed, it was right-handed, and I’m feeling horrible. I was like, ‘What is going on here?!’ I felt really self-conscious, so I said, “Can you make me sound like David Behrman on Leapday Night?” He jumped up and started patching all these cables into the modular in 30 seconds, it was insane. I remember as I was playing, he was pumping his fist in the air really excitedly. I recorded about 25 minutes’ worth of stuff. And then we literally made the album over the next hour or two in a frenzy of overdubs. He grabbed a banjo, there was marimba, a woodblock – it was just really fun and quick and it made sense.

OREN AMBARCHI

AUDIENCE OF ONE

TOUCH, 2012

Ambarchi expands his horizons in all directions: from ‘proper songs’ to 30-minute kraut-jazz jams to… Kiss covers!

I’d made so many records where it all began with me playing the guitar, and I started to lose inspiration. The big centrepiece of this record is called “Knots”, which came from when I was jogging and listening to a Terje Rypdal record that he made with Miroslav Vitouš and Jack DeJohnette. The drums were jazzy, but very propulsive – almost krautrock. As I was jogging, I thought, ‘I’m going to ask Joe Talia to play in that style for as long as he can, as intensely as he can, and build it over 30 minutes if possible.’ And he did, and then he sent it to me, and I reacted to it on the guitar at home. It was a really liberating thing to have me reacting to someone else’s playing for the first time, and then shaping it into a composition. And then the last piece is a cover of a track [“Fractured Mirror”] by Ace Frehley from Kiss. The Ace Frehley solo album was really big for me when I was eight or nine, and I still love it. In my head, I thought it could sound like an American minimalist piece. An installation artist asked me to do this thing where a guitar was tied to a rope in a huge aircraft hangar building. They wanted me to basically destroy this guitar by violently smashing it against a wall. I tuned all the strings to the same note and it sounded incredible. So the clangy guitar stuff on that Ace Frehley cover comes from me smashing a guitar against the wall.

OREN AMBARCHI

SAGITTARIAN DOMAIN

EDITIONS MEGO, 2012

Oren rocks out over an extended motorik groove, partly inspired by “Purple Rain”

A different installation artist wanted me to make sound for some films, and there was a budget that allowed me to go into probably the best studio in Melbourne for a day. It’s always a luxury for me to work in a studio, I feel like a kid in a candy store. He was very vague about what he wanted, so I went, “OK, well, I’m gonna go into this amazing studio and try to make an album in a day.” I had this recurring backbeat in my head, so I just played drums for about half an hour, and then built it from there. I didn’t even know if it would turn into a record – I was just having fun in the studio.

I remember falling asleep on a long-haul flight from Australia while listening to Prince’s “Purple Rain”. At the very end of it, there’s these strings that come in. It’s so beautiful, but it’s so short. I thought, ‘Imagine doing this extended “Purple Rain” string thing, like Prince meets Gavin Bryars or something.’ It’s also totally inspired by my adolescent Mahavishnu Orchestra fixation.

KEIJO HAINO/JIM O’ROURKE/OREN AMBARCHI

Only Wanting To Melt Beautifully Away Is It A Lack Of Contentment That Stirs Affection Or Those Things Said To Be As Of Yet Unseen

BLACK TRUFFLE/MEDAMA, 2014

The best of many live recordings Ambarchi and O’Rourke have made with legendary Japanese maverick Keijo Haino

The fun thing with that trio is, you never know what Haino is going to show up to the gig with. He has a crazy instrument collection and he grabs something different every time. Haino is always tripping you up – he’s always doing something to change what’s going on, or make things uncomfortable for himself and for us, which pushes you into another area. At that show, I remember thinking, ‘This is so beautiful’: the harp, the 12-string guitar, this very kind of folky otherworldly thing. I just had brushes, I was playing very quietly, and then Haino went over to his electronics and completely obliterated it. I remember feeling really pissed off, so I thought to myself, ‘I’m just gonna keep doing what I’m doing.’ It was kind of absurd, because there’s a guy playing with brushes while this madman is making torrential noise. Jim was still playing the acoustic guitar as well, so I was sure no-one could hear anything. But later I was able to mix the multitrack so I could hear what we were all doing, and it was incredible. It’s inspiring to play with someone who’s constantly creating something unpredictable.

OREN AMBARCHI

HUBRIS

EDITIONS MEGO, 2016

Two relentless rhythmic cavalcades – separated by a serene guitar interlude – with a who’s who of leftfield luminaries adding layer upon layer of freaky noise

I was determined not to make a complicated record, because I just made Quixotism [2014]. There’s a lot of people on that and it was really hard to make, and I was really burnt out. I thought, ‘OK, the next one is going to be really basic.’ And of course it ended up having, like, 98 guitar tracks. But in a way it’s very straightforward. I was listening to a lot of Italo-disco, and there’s a really great track by Tullio De Piscopo called “Stop Bajon”. There’s an instrumental version of it on the 12-inch with two guitars that are panned left and right doing this repetitive, out-of-sync, rhythmic thing, and I loved that. So Hubris was about honing in on these small details, but expanding upon it with various things. It was a reflection of my lifestyle where I didn’t really have a normal home situation, travelling from gig to gig. That record started because I was playing a show in London, and Mark Fell was in Rotherham. I said, “I’ve got this idea for a new record – maybe I could come over and do some stuff?” Then my next stop was Berlin to work with Konrad Sprenger, and it built from there. I think the last person I worked with was Jim, when I was in Tokyo. So the album slowly expanded during my tour – that’s why there’s so many different people from all over the world on that record.

I played with Arto Lindsay when I was 23, with John Zorn in New York, but I didn’t think he’d even remember who I was. I heard this Arto Lindsay guitar thing on “Hubris Part 3”, so I started to do it myself at home. And then I was like, ‘Why am I imitating it? Maybe he would do it?’ So I got in touch with him, and a day or two later I had 30 minutes of Arto Lindsey playing over this piece. Amazing! It kind of sounds like a band, but it’s actually me making a virtual band.

OREN AMBARCHI/JOHAN BERTHLING/ANDREAS WERLIIN

GHOSTED

DRAG CITY, 2022

Ambarchi plays live guitar and various effects in this groovy avant-jazz trio

That was the three of us in a room together, the absolute opposite of a lot of my solo records. I’d worked with Andreas and Johan in Fire! – we made a record and we toured, it was a lot of fun. So they said, “Why don’t we record for a day in Stockholm when you’re around?” It was really relaxed, just three people in a room playing together. I don’t think we even spoke about what we were going to do at all. But I’ve always loved jazz and I grew up listening to a lot of ECM records, and those guys as well. And maybe that side of us came out a little bit. It might have been because we’d worked in Fire!, which was much more aggressive, that we went the other way. I think because there were no preconceptions, it was kind of fresh – it wasn’t this thing where we were going back to what we always do. I’m a little nervous, ’cause we’re recording again in a week. I don’t want to do the same thing again, but there’s something nice about what we do together as well. I’m probably overthinking it!

OREN AMBARCHI

SHEBANG

DRAG CITY, 2022

Intricate yet playful four-part opus, with starring roles for Julia Reidy’s 12-string guitar and BJ Cole’s pedal steel

This record was inspired by me seeing Julia Reidy play for the first time in Melbourne about five or six years ago. She was playing 12-string guitar solo and she blew my mind. In my head, I could hear Joe Talia playing a ride cymbal over what she was doing. So I contacted her and said, “Hey, would you be up for recording some stuff? Can you play at this tempo in this tuning for this long?” And I made all this music related to what Julia was doing.

Again, that record was done in a way where none of us were in the same room – a lot of the time I wasn’t even in the room with the musician, because it was during a lockdown. So I would send people stuff, but I would never send the same thing to more than one person. I didn’t want people to hear the big picture. I had this really long timeline with all these different people reacting to different events. I knew that they would all relate to one another but not in a clichéd, conversational way.

Records to me are like a puzzle, and you’re putting the pieces together. There was a period of about two weeks where I was a mess, I couldn’t even speak to people and focus on the conversation because I was so preoccupied with the stupid thing that I was trying to solve. Eventually I was in the shower and I had this idea. I ran to Konrad Sprenger’s studio and said, “Can you just try this? Move this over here and move that over there?” And that was it.

The making of Love’s “She Comes In Colors”

Dave Simpson

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7th March 2024

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The making of Love’s “She Comes In Colors”

Love’s reputation rests on their dazzling third album, 1967’s Forever Changes. But the journey there involved several different stops. Not least among these is “She Comes In Colors” – a jazzier, flute and harpsichord-peppered Arthur Lee composition from 1966’s Da Capo. The Los Angeles band’s second album – named after a musical term meaning “back to the beginning” – took a pivotal step on the odyssey from their eponymous debut’s garage rock towards an ornate, psychedelic form of rock’n’roll.

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“The first album was more minimalist, with everything recorded live,” recalls guitarist Johnny Echols, sipping ginger beer on a tour bus in Leeds, shortly before performing the hallowed catalogue with The Love Band. “But Da Capo was a more grown-up album. We wanted to push the envelope. I’m very proud of ‘She Comes In Colors’, because we’d been known as a garage rock band but suddenly jazz musicians would come up to us and ask, ‘How on earth did you guys come up with that..?’”

The seeds of this adventure had been sown shortly before the main album sessions, when Love entered Sunset Sound Recorders’ Studio One with producer Jac Holzman and engineer Bruce Botnick to lay down “7 And 7 Is”, a hurtling proto-punk number that would become their first – and only – American Top 40 single (reaching No 33).

“That single was very different from the song Arthur had written,” says Echols, explaining that it had started out as “a kind of Dylanesque folk song about Arthur, very autobiographical”. As he explains it, an endorsement deal with Vox meant they could try out pioneering new effects, such as a tremolo box for a guitar and distortion pedal for the bass. “Which no-one had then. Arthur was listening in the booth and went, ‘That’s pretty cool.’” The results gave them the confidence to experiment even more, changing producers, studios and engineers for Da Capo and blossoming with “She Comes In Colors”. Receiving little airplay outside the LA area on release in 1966, the song wasn’t a hit but has had quite an afterlife. The Rolling Stones quoted it – “She comes in colours everywhere” – uncredited, in 1967 single “She’s A Rainbow”. The Hoosiers covered it and Janet Jackson sampled it. Even Madonna borrowed from it – unwittingly – on 1999 hit “Beautiful Stranger”, with producer William Orbit later admitting borrowing from the melody. “Arthur got a credit for that,” smiles Echols. “The whole group should have been credited really, but the acknowledgement was nice.”

JOHNNY ECHOLS: “My Little Book” had done quite well as a single [reaching US 52 in March 1966], so we wanted to keep pushing with “7 And 7 Is”.

BRUCE BOTNICK: It was just really, really unusual for me. I had never heard anything like that before. But I loved the energy. The drummer [Alban “Snoopy” Pfisterer, who’d trained as a pianist, not a percussionist] struggled with the tempo. After about 30 takes Arthur said, “Sit down, I’ll play.” I guess Snoopy must have then figured out how to do it.

ECHOLS: By that time everyone was cursing at the poor man. We played it so much that by the end my fingers were bleeding, but after that we felt we could do anything. We realised we needed a real drummer, so finally got Michael Stuart [now Stuart-Ware] from the Sons Of Adam.

MICHAEL STUART-WARE: Arthur had heard the Sons play a few times. One day, he came by our pad in Laurel Canyon and said, “You guys can have this tune if you want it”, and banged out “7 And 7 Is” on his black Gibson acoustic. Our lead guitarist Randy Holden said, “That’s not really us”, so Arthur played us “Feathered Fish”. Randy went, “We’ll take that!” and we covered it. Love’s original drummer, Don Conca, was fabulous, but the drugs took over and he stopped showing up for gigs. One night Arthur asked, “Is there a drummer in the house?” So Snoopy had filled in, but was more comfortable once he switched to harpsichord. Arthur was always asking me to join and after the Sons stopped getting along, I finally said OK. When I bumped into Don Conca he said, “That’s cool, man. You’re the only drummer in Hollywood who can handle it.”

ECHOLS: Don Conca was a loud showman, like Gene Krupa or Buddy Rich. Michael was a finesse drummer. He did these rhythmic counterpoints that sounded marvellous. We all had eclectic tastes. Country, gospel, blues, jazz. Arthur and I went to the same Memphis high school as Charles Lloyd and I’d watch fascinated as he played clarinet. After we moved to Los Angeles, Charles came to see Love at [LA club] Bido Lito’s. We were drawing 10 times more people than him. He was kinda miffed, but light-heartedly. When we wanted to go more jazzy we got Tjay Cantrelli, who we’d played with in the Grass Roots, on woodwind. He was just going to play a session, but the flute changed the sound so much that he became part of the group.

STUART-WARE: I’d listened to the first Love album, but Arthur wanted to cover new ground from a jazz foundation. At the first practice at Arthur and [guitarist] Bryan MacLean’s pad on Brier, we smoked hash and listened to Charles Lloyd, Cat Stevens and Fresh Cream. Then Arthur played his new tunes on the Gibson, including “She Comes In Colors”. On stage at Bido Lito’s, Love were a natural LSD trip with no comedown, but the new songs sounded more sophisticated.

ECHOLS: We also changed producers. Mr Holzman [also Elektra Records boss] came from a folk music background and wanted everything clean and pristine, but our sound was loud, levels driven into the red. When Jac told us about Paul Rothchild, who’d just got out of prison for selling marijuana, we thought that was the coolest thing. We hadn’t heard his stuff. The only reason we hired him was because he’d gotten out of prison. We also got a new engineer, Dave Hassinger, who captured our sound as it was and got a great mix. We went into RCA Studios, because Paul Rothchild was working with The Doors in Sunset. RCA had installed an eight-track machine, so we could overdub on Da Capo. It was a brand new slate. I think Paul Rothchild expected us to do something like the first album. It took him a while to get used to these jazzier songs, but then he got on board and he was perfect.

STUART-WARE: Love ruled the Sunset Strip mysteriously. Because the group didn’t play often, everyone was always, “Where are they?” Our racial diversity enhanced that mystique and was an integral part of our difference.

ECHOLS: We were a racially diverse hard rock group because Arthur and I were racially diverse and grew up in a racially diverse community. We wanted our group to reflect who we were. We didn’t want to be typecast as R&B, or play the Chitlin circuit, where Chuck Berry’s manager had to carry a 45 and say, “Pay me now
or he’s not going on.”

BOTNICK: It was highly unusual to have a black person doing rock’n’roll, before Hendrix, but Arthur never called any race issues. He dealt with you on the level of: “This is my music and this is what I want.”

ECHOLS: Arthur had taken accordion lessons and his parents had also bought him an organ. He only joined the band I had with Billy Preston in school because young ladies flocked to us. He had a musician’s soul but didn’t want to take the time to become one. His genius was to be able to sit down with a group of us and sing songs that he’d written, and as we’d find the chords he’d go, “I like that.” He assembled the music like a collage, in his head from what we played. “She Comes In Colors” was the most difficult song on Da Capo to record. It probably took seven or eight takes, because in a way it’s three songs in one, but it’s hard to hear where the changes are.

STUART-WARE: Playing unusual time signatures didn’t present much of a challenge for anyone in the group. I’d listened to Dave Brubeck in school and played in a high school jazz group. The jazzy groove on “She Comes In Colors” was one I had from the get-go. I just had to play harder because I was up against electronic instruments. The flute and harpsichord duet was groundbreaking, and Arthur’s vocal was diverse and immaculate, as always.

ECHOLS: Arthur was a showboat, an introspective child who’d found his thing by being different. In summer he’d wear a fur coat and one shoe, sweating in that coat so much it smelled. He had this idea that a rock person should be nutty, but he was a fantastic poet. Even in elementary school he was always writing little rhymes. He had the knack of taking the most mundane situation into something interesting, and you’d think, ‘Wow.’ He wrote “She Comes In Colors” about his girlfriend, Annette Bonan. She’s Annette Ferrell now, but always wore colourful clothes, like the flower children did then.

STUART-WARE: I never really knew what the songs were about. Arthur usually left it to the listener to work out the reality. If he was ever asked, self-deprecation was his blade of choice: “It’s just about some chick.” But maybe he did write that song for Annette.

ECHOLS: When Arthur sang “When I was in England town, the rain fell right down” he’d never been to the UK. I explained, “Arthur, it should be ‘London town’.” But he sang it anyway. Maybe he didn’t want to share songwriting credits, but people here think “England town” is kinda cute.

BOTNICK: By then Love should have been hugely successful, but Arthur wouldn’t tour, wouldn’t leave Hollywood. In those days to promote an act properly you had to play somewhere to get radio. I think he felt comfortable and safe in his environment, but not touring harmed their career.

STUART-WARE: Concert promoters would track me down by phone. I’d call Arthur and the answer was always no. Eventually he got mad at me for asking. I often wondered, ‘What’s with the not playing?’

ECHOLS: We played in New York, Vegas, or Massachusetts, but we couldn’t play in the South or middle America, or sometimes we’d have bookings cancelled. The problem was the racial makeup of the group. It hurt us, because The Doors and Buffalo Springfield and all those other groups were able to tour. But we were getting successful, buying houses and had women chasing us, whereas at the start we were just trying to make a living. Also, we did some dumb things. I’ll demonstrate the mindset of a rock’n’roll kid. I bought an E-Type Jaguar, and when it ran out of gas I left it at the side of the street. My father begged me to go back for it. Eventually it was impounded and auctioned. Those cars are worth hundreds of thousands now. Leaving my car was probably the dumbest thing I ever did, along with insisting that Elektra sign The Doors. We got a fantastic offer from MCA Records, who could get us into way more shops, but we knew that having Love on their label was part of Elektra’s cachet. We figured that if they had The Doors, maybe they’d let us go. But instead all the money that was going to promote Love went on The Doors. People went “What did you do that for?” Because we were dumb kids! I was barely 18 then.

STUART-WARE: Then The Rolling Stones stole the line “She comes in colours” for “She’s A Rainbow”. Wasn’t Mick [Jagger] afraid of being sued? I remember we all thought, ‘Wow. How could Mick think it was OK to do that?’

BOTNICK: We all take stuff, but I do remember Arthur being offended.

ECHOLS: When Madonna used the melody from “She Comes In Colors” for “Beautiful Stranger”, Arthur was credited as a writer.

STUART-WARE: It doesn’t bother me that neither Da Capo or Forever Changes were hugely successful. What does bother me is that we didn’t work harder to promote both albums, or play more shows just for the thrill of playing.

ECHOLS: But even though Da Capo didn’t sell a whole lot, we felt we’d arrived as a group. People like The Beach Boys were talking to us as peers. On the next album we felt we had to push it to another higher level. The universe smiled on us, we did Forever Changes, and in the 55 years since it’s never been out of print.

The Love band featuring Johnny Echols tour the UK in July – tickets can be found here

Michael Stuart-Ware’s Love book, Behind The Scenes At The Pegasus Carousel, is now available as a Kindle under the title Pegasus Continuum

Hear Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ new song, “Wild God”

News

Sam Richards

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6th March 2024

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Hear Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ new song, “Wild God”

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have revealed details of their new album, Wild God. Produced by Cave and Warren Ellis, mixed by David Fridmann, the album will be released on August 30 on their own Bad Seed label, in partnership with Play It Again Sam.

PINK FLOYD ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

Listen to the first single and title track below:

Cave began writing the album on New Year’s Day 2023. It was recorded at Miraval in Provence and Soundtree in London, with the regular Bad Seeds line-up of Thomas Wydler, Martyn Casey, Jim Sclavunos, Warren Ellis and George Vjestica, plus additional performances from Colin Greenwood (bass) and Luis Almau (nylon string guitar, acoustic guitar).

“Wild God… there’s no fucking around with this record,” says Cave. “When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it.”

“I hope the album has the effect on listeners that it’s had on me,” he continues says. “It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it. It’s a complicated record, but it’s also deeply and joyously infectious. There is never a masterplan when we make a record. The records rather reflect back the emotional state of the writers and musicians who played them. Listening to this, I don’t know, it seems we’re happy.”

Pre-order Wild God here and check out the tracklisting below:

Song of the Lake
Wild God
Frogs
Joy
Final Rescue Attempt
Conversion
Cinnamon Horses
Long Dark Night
O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)
As the Waters Cover the Sea

Kamasi Washington announces new album, Fearless Movement

News

Sam Richards

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6th March 2024

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Kamasi Washington announces new album, Fearless Movement

LA jazz titan Kamasi Washington has announced that his new album Fearless Movement will be released by Young on May 3.

PINK FLOYD ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

Watch a video for the track “Prologue” below:

Fearless Movement features contributions from the likes of André 3000, George Clinton, BJ The Chicago Kid, Thundercat, Terrace Martin, DJ Battlecat and more, including Washington’s own daughter.

Pre-order the album here and peruse the tracklisting below:

Lesanu
Asha The First (featuring Thundercat, Taj Austin, Ras Austin)
Computer Love (featuring Patrice Quinn, DJ Battlecat, Brandon Coleman)
The Visionary (featuring Terrace Martin)
Get Lit (featuring George Clinton, D Smoke)
Dream State (featuring André 3000)
Together (featuring BJ the Chicago Kid)
The Garden Path
Interstellar Peace (The Last Stance)
Road to Self (KO)
Lines in the Sand
Prologue

The Children’s Hour – Going Home

Peter Watts

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6th March 2024

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Before Josephine Foster was an idiosyncratic solo singer, she was a member of short-lived folk duo The Children’s Hour. Here, Foster’s taut, strange voice and occasional harp, piano, ukulele and harmonium player was paired with Andy Bar’s loose and scratchy guitar. The duo recorded an EP and one excellent, underlooked album, SOS JFK, which came out in 2003 on Rough Trade and featured Tim Daisy on drums. But The Children’s Hour recorded a second album not long after, this time as a fully-fledged trio with Dave Pajo. That record, Going Home, is finally getting released on Drag City after being rediscovered in the vaults.

PINK FLOYD ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

The creation story of Going Home is part of the fun. Even though The Children’s Hour were a strictly minority pursuit, way too weird and abstract for the mainstream, the duo were asked to open for Zwan, Billy Corgan’s post-Pumpkins supergroup that would eventually dissolve in bitter recrimination. That tour saw The Children’s Hour (the name comes from Longfellow rather than the BBC) take their unusual music – oddly sacred, sometimes twee, more than a little freaky – to the arenas of North America. But for the music to work in a bigger venue, it needed additional pep, so Zwan’s David Pajo agreed to step in on drums. Pajo, once of Slint of course, admired The Children Hour’s awkward, almost ungainly, spirit and after the tour finished, he took them into a studio in Shelbyville, Kentucky, owned by Will Oldham’s brother Paul. It’s where Pajo had recorded I See A Darkness.

That’s where the three-piece version of The Children’s Hour laid down the eight tracks on Going Home, which were believed lost until Paul Oldham found them last year during a spring clean. Half of these songs – “Anna”, “Wyoming”, “Adoption Day” and “Going Home” – were new versions of tracks that first featured on JFK SOS and appear here little changed, although perhaps Pajo’s drumming is generally more aggressive than Tim Daisy’s on the original album.

But the other four songs are entirely new. “Leader Soldier”, a version of which featured on Foster’s 2013 out-take album Strangers On The Trail, has Foster at her most Nico-like, while Bar and Pajo provide taut and unsettling accompaniment. On the adorable “Dance With Me”, Pajo’s percussion leads a jangly love song, that features a gorgeous duet between Bar and Foster reminiscent of The Moldy Peaches. “Bright Lights” sees Foster ponder mortality and impending death against another strong Pajo-Bar backdrop, with discordant jabs of post-rock guitar and clattering rhythm. Finally comes “Rainbow”, a ballad with a spidery lead guitar from Bar and ominous vocal by Foster, with Pajo supplying a more minimalist backbeat. Cute and creepy in equal measure.

Faye Webster – Underdressed At The Symphony

Stephen Deusner

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6th March 2024

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Faye Webster – Underdressed At The Symphony

Faye Webster is most at home in her own head. Every song on her fifth album puzzles over the way her brain works, how it worries over certain details, how it fixates on certain unpleasant feelings, how it works so often against her. She remembers the smell of her old apartment on “eBay Purchase History”, and she thinks she’s figured out why she’s so self-conscious on “Wanna Quit All The Time”. She tries in vain to evict an ex from her brainpan on, well, pretty much every song. That’s not to say she’s an introvert – Webster is active in the Atlanta arts scene as a photographer and collaborator, and that album title suggests she does get out of the house occasionally – but her songs are all set deep within her own mind. Her primary subject is the tangle of needs and desires, fears and doubts, epiphanies and delusions contained therein.

PINK FLOYD ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

These new songs are all invitations into that headspace, and to her credit Webster doesn’t tidy up for company. The mess is the whole point. It’s a fascinating place to be, largely because she finds so much meaning in everyday observations and mundane ironies, in the small moments many other songwriters might overlook. On “Wanna Quit All The Time” she admits that she’s “overthinking in my head again” and that she’s “good at making shit negative”, but she ends the song with a stray observation: “Right now I hate the colour of my house”. What sounds like a punchline becomes a gut-punch as she realises how little control she has over any aspect of her life.

Webster refined this balance of humour and pathos on her earliest albums in parallel with an idiosyncratic blend of country and R&B, and both became distinguishing signatures on 2021’s I Know I’m Funny Haha. That album enjoyed a long life thanks in some part to TikTok; Webster doesn’t even have an account, but that didn’t stop fans from soundtracking their own clips with snippets of her songs. Months of sold-out tours and a meteoric increase in streaming does take its toll on her psyche, however. “It’s the attention that freaks me out,” she declares, as though she could give up parts, but not all, of the music-making enterprise. Webster sounds like someone who would be mapping her brain even without an audience.

After recording her previous albums in Atlanta and nearby Athens, Georgia, Webster and her trusted backing band decamped to Texas, namely to Sonic Ranch Studios, where Bon Iver and Fiona Apple, among others, have recently recorded. The change of scenery gave her a new perspective on the place she calls home, but it also allowed the band to cut loose a bit. Tightened by long months on the road, they respond sensitively to her vocals, especially on the opening track, “Thinking About You”. At six-and-a-half minutes, it’s the longest song Webster has ever released, and most of it consists of her singing the title over and over again. Her voice remains steady with each repetition, allowing the musicians to elaborate on motifs and ideas: Matt Stoessel and Nick Rosen uncork increasingly jazzy riffs on guitar and piano, respectively, while drummer Charles Garner and bassist Bryan Howard test the elasticity of the song’s breezy groove.

These familiar elements coalesce into something new for Webster: more than country or soul, Underdressed At The Symphony recalls the plushness of ’70s pop and ’60s exotica, but without any nostalgia and therefore without any irony or distance. That allows “Lifetime” (the album’s aching heart) and “But Not Kiss” (its most dramatic heartbreaker) to sound unself-consciously beautiful – which is all the more surprising given that Webster admits to such extreme self-consciousness. By contrast, “My Baby Loves Me Yeah!” and “Lego Ring” (featuring a vestigial verse from Atlanta rapper Lil Yachty) ride simple yet effective grooves, as she yearns for something beyond what she has, even if it’s just a plastic toy.

On Underdressed At The Symphony, less is more. Less is everything. Restraint is crucial to these songs, not just in the band’s careful arrangements but in the way Webster emphasises expressiveness over vocal power. She is, in addition, a minimalist songwriter who uses as few words as possible to conjure emotions too messy or too contradictory or simply too painful to state outright. “I want to sleep in your arms but not kiss,” she confesses on “But Not Kiss”, an unusually uncommitted breakup song about getting close to an ex but not too close. Or, conversely, about pulling yourself away in increments, as though a gradual separation might spare you the pain. Rarely does overthinking a problem sound so inviting or so productive.

Uncut’s New Music Playlist for March 2024

Blogs

Sam Richards

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5th March 2024

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Uncut’s New Music Playlist for March 2024

2024’s torrent of great new music just keeps on coming. This month, we bring you further evidence of Mick Head’s glorious renaissance, Brett Anderson covering Echo & The Bunnymen, Bonny Light Horseman finding inspiration in a remote Irish pub, new singles from Khruangbin and Isobel Campbell, and career-best stuff from Ben Chasny’s Six Organs Of Admittance.

THERE’S PLENTY MORE NEW MUSIC COVERAGE INSIDE THE NEW UNCUT! ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

Plus the return of US indie scufflers Les Savy Fav and Diiv, beautifully bleak new business from Keeley Forsyth and Stars Of The Lid’s Adam Wiltzie, and news of a sequel to 2022’s much-loved Ghosted, by Oren Ambarchi and friends. The pleasure’s all ours…

PARAORCHESTRA WITH BRETT ANDERSON & CHARLES HAZLEWOOD
“The Killing Moon”
(World Circuit)