Subscribe
Home Blog Page 162

Watch Neil Young’s Polar Vortex version of “Southern Man”

Sam Richards
-
0
Watch Neil Young’s Polar Vortex version of “Southern Man”

In response to recent events in the USA, Neil Young has posted a 2019 live acoustic version of “Southern Man” along with a call for “real change”.

Watch it here, but remember that you need to sign up to Neil Young Archives or have the app downloaded first.

“Here’s me as an old guy singin’ his 50-year-old song that was written after countless years of racism in the USA,” Young writes. “And look at us today! This has been going on for way too long. It’s not just Southern Man now… it’s everywhere across the USA. It’s time for real change… new laws… new rules for policing… ‘Change gonna come at last…'”

This particular version of “Southern Man” is taken from a concert film called Polar Vortex, recorded during Young’s solo tour of Wisconsin and Minnesota in January 2019, which Young states is “forthcoming” on NYA.

Watch Michael Chapman’s lockdown session for Uncut

Sam Richards
-
0
Watch Michael Chapman’s lockdown session for Uncut

Over the last four weeks, we’ve been hosting some terrific at-home sessions from artists signed to the discerning Paradise Of Bachelors label.

In case you’ve missed them, catch up with these unique performances by James Elkington, Itasca and Jake Xerxes Fussell by clicking the links on their respective names.

Today, we bring the series to a stirring conclusion with a session from Michael Chapman, captured live at his picturesque home at the top of the Pennines, three fields from Hadrian’s Wall!

Michael’s wife Andru even gives us a guided tour of the property, after he’s played “One Time Thing”, “Memphis In Winter” and “Sensimilia”. Watch below:

Michael Chapman’s “True North” is out now on Paradise Of Bachelors, buy or stream it here.

Hear Bob Mould’s new single, “American Crisis”

Sam Richards
-
0
Hear Bob Mould’s new single, “American Crisis”

Bob Mould has announced that his new solo album Blue Hearts will be released by Merge on September 25.

Described by Mould as “the catchiest batch of protest songs I’ve ever written in one sitting”, it was self-produced at Chicago’s Electrical Audio with engineer Beau Sorenson, and features the rhythm section of drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy.

Hear the lead single “American Crisis” below:

“‘American Crisis’ is a tale of two times,” says Mould. “The parallels between 1984 and 2020 are a bit scary for me: telegenic, charismatic leaders, praised and propped up by extreme evangelicals, either ignoring an epidemic (HIV/Aids) or being outright deceitful about a pandemic (Covid-19).”

From today until June 7, all of the proceeds from “American Crisis” will benefit OutFront Minnesota and Black Visions Collective.

Pre-order Blue Hearts here and check out the tracklisting below:

1. Heart on My Sleeve
2. Next Generation
3. American Crisis
4. Fireball
5. Forecast of Rain
6. When You Left
7. Siberian Butterfly
8. Everyth!ng to You
9. Racing to the End
10. Baby Needs a Cookie
11. Little Pieces
12. Leather Dreams
13. Password to My Soul
14. The Ocean

Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete to be reissued with bonus tracks

Sam Richards
-
0
Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete to be reissued with bonus tracks

Bobbie Gentry’s 1968 Americana classic The Delta Sweete will be released as a two-disc deluxe edition by UMC on July 31.

It includes a new stereo mix of the album and a variety of bonus tracks including the previously unreleased demo “The Way I Do”, which you can hear below:

To see the full tracklistings and pre-order both the vinyl and CD editions of The Delta Sweete, go here.

Laura Marling – Song For Our Daughter

Sharon O'Connell
-
0
Laura Marling – Song For Our Daughter

In 2013, Laura Marling recorded a full album but binned the entire thing, judging it, with somewhat startling honesty, “just a really boring album” – clear proof, if needed, of her questing talent. There have been other signs: writing music for Robert Icke’s theatre production of Mary Stuart, which involved reworking lyrics at someone else’s request (a first) and her collaboration a couple of years ago with Tunng’s Mike Lindsay, as Lump.

They’re significant markers for a singer-songwriter who has always progressed fast, from the precociously talented teen (she recorded her Mercury-nominated debut, Alas, I Cannot Swim, at 17) whose elegantly constructed, modern folk songs of a Laurel Canyon bent were carried by a pure, airy voice, to the mature auteur now of seven albums’ standing, rated by Graham Nash and Neil Young. But any strong creative identity has a symbiotic relationship with popular perception and it’s easy to imagine how an artist might start to feel trapped in its endlessly reflecting loop.

Marling has been gently but determinedly working her way out of that loop since 2015, first with Short Movie, which documented a period of great personal upheaval and soul searching and saw her picking up an electric guitar for the first time, and then two years later with Semper Femina, where she stepped away from the solely personal to explore the broad spectrum of relationships, but especially those between women, in a more philosophically enquiring manner. Now, with Song For Our Daughter, she’s making significant musical changes – adding fullness via a wide range of instruments, and a melodic pop swing, adopting a free-range approach to the possibilities of sound – and extending her conceptual reach.

As the title suggests, motherhood and protection are issues in play, brought into focus by Marling’s turning 30, it seems, as well as institutionalised oppression and the universality of the female experience. But it’s stories rather than direct emotional reactions that do the telling: the title track is a take on the premature loss of (specifically female) innocence and the fight to be heard (“Lately I’ve been thinking ’bout our daughter growing old, all of the bullshit that she might be told/There’s blood on the floor, maybe now you’ll believe her for sure”), while “Strange Girl” is about standing beside a friend when you can do no more. “Fortune” deals with the lack of life choices for women of previous generations, and was inspired by a conversation Marling had with her mother about the money she’d once saved “for running away”.

There’s a different approach on “Alexandra”, which connects to Marling’s interest in Leonard Cohen’s writings about and attitude to women. But her focus is wide enough for more intimate subjects, too: in “The End Of The Affair” empathy and pragmatism collide in heartbreak, “Held Down” is a portrait of abandonment with a casually devastating putdown (“You sent me your book, which I gave half a look/But I just don’t care for and I cannot get through”) and closer “For You”, an unequivocal declaration of true love, tagged with a reminder that “love is not the answer but the line that marks the start”.

That song, which appears here in its original demo form, is an unabashed country-pop number with charming vocal harmonies, and one of two songs where Marling most obviously leaves her comfort zone yet sounds completely at ease. The other is the brief “Blow By Blow”, a piano ballad she’s described as her “little homage to Paul McCartney” but which slowly blooms into something almost grandiose, and if not doomed in its Karen Carpenter-like melancholy, then certainly damaged. Strings swell in sympathy around what appears to be a snapshot of public unravelling, although Marling sensibly doesn’t make it explicit. And “The End Of The Affair” applies topspin to classical guitar and a heavenly chorus by setting a soft electronic thrum underneath.

She credits these shifts in part to her work in Lump, claiming it ushered her into a different artistic space and helped her stop writing songs she’d started to see as being repetitively Laura Marling-like. However, it’s not that she’s erased all traces of late-’60s folk pop – that would be like torching her ancestral home – rather that the echoes of Joni, CSNY et al are no longer defining. It’s been a gradual recalibration and Song For Our Daughter ruffles more of Marling’s characteristic composure: she’s feeling the breeze, focused, pressing keenly forward.

Cosmic Cratedigging – introducing our FREE Light In The Attic CD!

Tom Pinnock
-
0
Cosmic Cratedigging – introducing our FREE Light In The Attic CD!

This month’s issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to order online by clicking here – comes with a free CD entitled Cosmic Cratedigging, featuring 15 mindblowing tracks from the vaults of top reissue label Light In The Attic.

Since emerging in Seattle in 2002, Light In The Attic Records have specialised in spectacular reissues of undervalued records by Lee Hazlewood, Rodriguez, Michael Chapman and more. Yet they’ve also made it their mission to unearth private-press marvels and the finest unreleased tapes, resulting in fascinating releases by the likes of Donnie & Joe Emerson, Lewis and The Supreme Jubilees.

They’re one of our favourite labels, so for this month’s CD they allowed us to raid their archives to assemble these 15 out-there tracks: there’s psychedelic soul, avant-garde pop, weird folk, kosmische electronics and experimental jazz from around the globe, all somewhat lost on original release. We hope you enjoy the journey.

Label founder Matt Sullivan guides us through the treasures that await you…

1 Karl Schaffner & Lothar Grimm
“Caravan”
Drifting, quasi-ambient music from rediscovered Bavarian masters
MATT SULLIVAN: In 2016, Light in the Attic released The Microcosm, a comp showcasing European artists exploring ambient, krautrock and cosmic sounds, including this mesmerising track, recorded at Karl’s studio in Bavaria in 1983. In Douglas McGowan’s liner notes, Lothar describes the group’s sound as “timeless music, which can help anyone to recharge and help the healing process”.

2 Betty Davis
“They Say I’m Different”
The title track of Davis’s stunning second album
MS: Betty’s one of those rare artists aeons ahead of her time. She truly pushed boundaries with her unbending DIY ethic. Her sacrifices paved the way for so many artists to come. Our journey with Betty started when we met John Ballon, a Betty fanatic and lovely human, who located Betty, along with more than $40,000 in unpaid royalties. John didn’t take a penny. He just wanted to make sure Betty was taken care of. Anytime I make a mix, this track’s always included.

3 Roky Erickson And The Aliens
“Bermuda”
A jolt of fuzzy garage-rock from the Texan songwriter’s lost years
MS: In 2013, we were honoured to re-release a handful of Roky’s pinnacle solo LPs, including Gremlins Have Pictures featuring “Bermuda”, which originally appeared as an early 45 on Rhino back in ’77. We’re currently working on a number of Roky-related projects for 2021. We miss you, Roky.

4 Lynn Castle with Last Friday’s Fire
“Rose Colored Corner”
Hallucinatory ’60s pop from Los Angeles’ premier lady barber
MS: Lynn became the first lady barber in LA, just as long hair on men became hip. By day she was styling The Byrds and The Monkees. At night, she’d practise her songs in the closet once her kids fell asleep. She recorded this killer 45 for Lee Hazlewood’s LHI label in 1967. Nearly 50 years later, Hazlewood fanatic Hunter Lea tracked down Lynn at her home in Glendale, where she blew our minds with her unheard 1966 demos. Now 80, she’s still writing phenomenal songs.

5 Greg Mason
“What Does It Take To Know (A Woman Like You)”
A super-rare Memphis synth-soul single
MS: In 2009, my wife and I spent a magical honeymoon in Memphis for the premiere of her documentary Wheedle’s Groove, about the Seattle soul scene. Since then I’ve been back to Memphis half a dozen times, each trip centred around friend, DJ and record collector Daniel Mathiss. Fifteen years ago, Daniel, along with Chad Weekley, started documenting the city’s late-’70s to mid-’80s soul scene, digging up ultra-rare 45s including this spaced-out single.

6 Shin Joong Hyun & The Men
“Beautiful Rivers And Mountains”
This psychedelic epic comes courtesy of the revolutionary Korean guitar hero
MS: Inspired by jazz, soul and traditional Korean music, Shin started his career in the mid-’50s. He would release dozens of records and produce countless artists. In 1972, the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee requested that Shin write a song in praise of the president. In protest, Shin recorded this, about the beauty of the people and the land, not the government. This made Shin enemy No 1 and his career was snuffed out. Decades later, he’s now regarded as the ‘Godfather of Korean Rock’.

7 Gigi Masin
“Clouds”
A sublime ambient work from the Venetian polymath
MS: Recorded in 1989, “Clouds” originally appeared on a split release with Charles Hayward of This Heat. For the release, they were each asked to write about the waterways of their respective cities, Venice and London. Like every other record in Gigi’s catalogue, this track is absolutely stunning, some of the most beautiful, otherworldly music ever recorded. “Clouds” would later be sampled by Björk for “It’s In Our Hands”.

8 Acetone
“Shore Power”
An unreleased highlight from this hushed, eerie group
MS: Writer and friend Sam Sweet spent a decade writing a brilliant book, Hadley Lee Lightcap, about LA’s Acetone. During Sam’s research, the band opened their archive for him, sharing dozens of unheard cassette recordings. One night Sam drove me around LA, retracing the band’s old haunts, while we listened to those cassettes and chatted about LITA possibly releasing a companion soundtrack to Sam’s book. “Shore Power” came on and I said, “I’m in.” For me, Acetone is true soul music: genuine, pure and brutally honest.

9 Jim Sullivan
“UFO”
This title track from Sullivan’s 1969 debut remains a delight
MS: What started as a random find on a blog over a decade ago has turned into an obsession for all of us at LITA. Back in ’69, Jim was the nightly entertainment at The Raft in Malibu and soon after found himself in the studio with some of the Wrecking Crew recording UFO. Six years later, he would vanish in the New Mexico desert, a case that remains unsolved. “UFO” is in my top 2 favourite LITA releases of all time.

10 Donnie & Joe Emerson
“Give Me The Chance”
An earthy, catchy and downright weird track from the ultimate private-press heroes
MS: At LITA, we remain champions of the underdog and no one sums that up better than Donnie & Joe, two farm kids from eastern Washington State. In 1978, their dad took out a second mortgage to build a studio on the farm for his sons, who would, after their chores, end up making a heartfelt LP of bedroom pop, raw funk and yacht rock. They played at the county fair, their classmates laughed, and the family lost most of the farm. Thirty years later, friend and record collector Jack Fleischer stumbled upon the LP at a Spokane thrift store and blew all our minds.

11 Karin Krog
“Lazy Afternoon”
A playful, freeform 1968 track from the Norwegian jazz singer
MS: Friend and writer Pat Thomas first played us Karin’s music a number of years ago, and eventually produced LITA’s Karin Krog anthology. I don’t know if I’d ever heard anything quite like it.
For more than 60 years, Karin has continued to experiment with solo vocals run through electronics, and performs with progressive electronic jazz combos and traditional acoustic groups as well – from John Surman to Dexter Gordon.

12 The Supreme Jubilees
“It’ll All Be Over”
A gorgeous and rare gospel-soul cut
MS: Formed in Fresno, California, in the late ’70s, The Supreme Jubilees comprised two families who recorded the private-press masterpiece It’ll All Be Over, an apocalyptic gospel LP with a sound that could only be made from sibling harmonies. In our current world quarantine, you do have to hope that one day, “It’ll all be over/And we won’t have to cry no more.”

13 Lee Hazlewood
“Souls Island”
An overlooked masterpiece from one of the late great’s soundtracks
MS: In the early ’70s, Lee Hazlewood moved to Sweden and struck up a life-long friendship with filmmaker Torbjörn Axelman. Together they made a number of films, including A House Safe For Tigers, a semi-documentary. In it, Lee runs a marathon, tells anecdotes about a bum who cured his stutter, and convinces a group of Swedish children to take sides against Nixon.

14 Tim Buckley
“I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain”
A powerful and sparse demo of the Goodbye And Hello highlight
MS: Tim Buckley’s lyricist, Larry Beckett, and Jerry Yester, the producer of Goodbye And Hello, held pre-album acoustic demos from 1967 that LITA uncovered for the first time. Larry told reissue producer Pat Thomas, “Tim did every kind of music. He could sing a country song or blues or folk-rock, it didn’t matter. He loved everything and he could have sung opera had he tried.”

15 Daniel Kobialka
“Blue Spirals”
A beautiful collision between new age, ambient and modern classical
MS: There are few genres as misunderstood as new age. At its purest phase, it is great American folk art. At its most painful phase: elevator music. Around 2011, record collector and reissue producer Douglas McGowan put together I Am The Center for LITA, which became the first proper anthology of the new age sound, focused on artists that shaped the genre before it became big business. One of the 20 featured was renowned classical violinist and composer Daniel Kobialka and this gorgeous track, originally self-released in 1983. These are much-needed sounds for today’s trying times.

Grab your copy of Cosmic Cratedigging, free with the July 2020 issue of Uncut.

Watch a video for The Flaming Lips’ new song, “Flowers Of Neptune 6”

Sam Richards
-
0
Watch a video for The Flaming Lips’ new song, “Flowers Of Neptune 6”

The Flaming Lips have today released their first new recording of 2020, a single called “Flowers Of Neptune 6”.

It was produced by Dave Fridmann and The Flaming Lips, and features Kacey Musgraves – who covered “Do You Realize??” at last year’s Bonnaroo festival – on harmony vocals.

Watch the video below:

Says Wayne Coyne: “’Flowers Of Neptune 6’ track started off as a very evocative series of melodies that Steven [Drozd] had woven together. The first time he played it for me I was stunned by its emotional flow. The three sections (well they seem like sections to me) seemed to hint at an older, mature mind reflecting back into a journey from younger innocence then starting to learn and understand and keeps going into the panic of becoming one with the world.

“The opening lyric ‘Yellow sun is going down so slow… Doing acid and watching the light-bugs glow like tiny spaceships in a row…’ is the coolest thing I’ll ever know… and is a combination of blissful, innocent, psychedelic experiences that Steven and Kacey Musgraves (she sings harmony with me on the track) and myself all discussed.”

Sparks – A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip

Jason Anderson
-
0
Sparks – A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip

After spending half a century pursuing and executing some of the most outlandish and original ideas ever concocted in the history of American popular music, Sparks ought to have run out of inspiration or energy by now. Surely a following as fervent and loyal as theirs would forgive Ron and Russell Mael if they decided to phone it in. As two distinguished septuagenarians who’ve already given us pleasures as distinct and indelible as “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us”, “Amateur Hour” and “The No 1 Song In Heaven”, they earned the right to coast long before the arrival of latter-day masterworks like Hello Young Lovers, their delectably wry 2006 concept album about modern romance, and The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman, the genre-hopping musical fantasia they crafted in 2009 for Swedish radio.

Yet here are Sparks with another new album, the 24th since 1971’s Halfnelson. What’s more, the 14 new songs on A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip are filled to the brim with the usual abundance of trademark lyrical zingers, tenacious earworm melodies and stylistic zigzags. It’s enough to make most of us feel irredeemably lazy and dull-witted even without the news that the new album will soon be followed by the big-screen musical Annette, a long-in-the-works collaboration with French director Leos Carax. The film stars Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard singing songs the Maels originally wrote for a Sparks album before Carax hatched a more ambitious plan. (Edgar Wright, another filmmaker fan, is also finishing his Sparks documentary, full of interviews and concert footage shot over the last two years.)

Given the brothers’ own ability to remain so productive in their eighth decade on Earth, you’d think they’d have a little more respect for Igor Stravinsky, who sustained his career until he was almost 90. Instead, the Russian composer and conductor serves as one of the album’s many targets of mockery in “Stravinsky’s Only Hit”, a semi-affectionate pisstake that presents the classical music giant as a hard-partying yet increasingly embittered celebrity. As is often the case for a Sparks song, the comedic conceit is about eight layers thick (it has something to do with the orchestral hit in The Firebird that’s now perpetually reused in pop and hip-hop). But getting the whole of the joke is not essential to one’s enjoyment of the cod-grandeur of Ron Mael’s arrangement or Russell’s delivery of couplets like “All he misses is a midnight massage/Platinum record, probably in his garage”.

Another highlight of A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip expresses a kinder take on the subject of how best to spend one’s twilight years. Opening track “All That” is a sweet and stately tribute to a lifelong love that has weathered “all the smiles and all the frowns and all the ups and all the downs/And all the fears that you would soon be gone”. There’s a similar quality of effervescence in “Onomato Pia”, a delightful mini-operetta about an Italian diva with “a real communication flair”.

But on the whole, the songs here express a darker view of the ambitions, desires and self-delusions that so often comprise human existence. The Maels are especially merciless when it comes to the subjects of their character studies in “Lawnmower”, which skewers a myopic suburbanite who cares about nothing but his lawn, and “One For The Ages”, a vignette about a “real quiet guy from accountancy” who labours every night on a novel that’s doomed to fail. Feelings of dread and panic permeate “I’m Toast” and “The Existential Threat”, a song whose high state of agitation is further intensified by its quasi-klezmer trappings. Meanwhile, irritation is the operative mode in “iPhone”, a cri de coeur about the infuriating effects of modern tech that includes an imagined scene of Abraham Lincoln interrupting the Gettysburg Address to tell his audience to “put your fucking iPhone down and listen to me!”. True to form, Russell sings the line with all the mellifluousness it probably doesn’t deserve.

As if they’d left any remaining doubts about how rubbish modern life can be, Sparks close A Steady Drip… with “Please Don’t Fuck Up My World”, a defence on behalf of our polluted planet that’s comes complete with gently strummed guitars and the celestial sound of a children’s choir. “So much now needs addressing,” Russell laments. “So much now is depressing.”

What with the historical moment into which A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip inadvertently enters, lyrics that may have been written with the Maels’ customary degree of cheek may cut unexpectedly deep. Yet the warmth, wit and bravado with which they deliver even the harshest sentiments are enduring qualities that remain keenly appreciated, especially by those of us who suspect this world did little to deserve Sparks in the first place.

You can read a full, career-spanning interview with Sparks in the July 2020 of Uncut, in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here.

Watch Jake Xerxes Fussell play an exclusive Uncut session

Sam Richards
-
0
Watch Jake Xerxes Fussell play an exclusive Uncut session

Hopefully you’ve already caught the two previous sessions hosted by Uncut in conjunction with Paradise Of Bachelors.

If not, you can watch wonderful and unique performances by James Elkington and Itasca by clicking the links on their respective names.

Today, we bring you you third session in the series, recorded live at his home in Durham, North Carolina, by Jake Xerxes Fussell.

He plays elegant updates of two traditional folk songs, “Wild Mountain Thyme” and “The River St. Johns”, either side of his take on Allen Toussaint’s “Freedom For The Stallion”, recorded by Lee Dorsey, Hues Corporation, Boz Scaggs and Elvis Costello, among others. Watch below:

Jake Xerxes Fussell’s Out Of Sight album is out now on Paradise Of Bachelors, buy or stream it here.

Next in the series is Michael Chapman, so please bookmark the Uncut homepage and check back from 6pm on June 4 to view his session.

Yusuf / Cat Stevens has re-recorded Tea For The Tillerman

Sam Richards
-
0
Yusuf / Cat Stevens has re-recorded Tea For The Tillerman

Yusuf / Cat Stevens has announced that a “reimagined and rerecorded” version of his classic 1970 album Tea For The Tillerman will be released by UMC on September 18.

Guitarist Alun Davies and producer Paul Samwell-Smith have reprised their roles from the original album, joined this time by Bruce Lynch on bass, guitarist Eric Appapoulay, multi-instrumentalist Kwame Yeboah, Jim Cregan on guitar and Peter Vettese on keyboards.

Listen to the rerecorded version of “Where Do The Children Play?” below:

“Though my songwriting adventures were never limited to Tillerman, the songs on that album certainly defined me and pointed the way for my mysterious life’s journey,” says Stevens. “Since those originative sessions in Morgan Studios, Willesden, in 1970, Tillerman has grown and developed its own gravitas and influence on music history and as the soundtrack to so many people’s lives. Like it was destiny waiting to happen, T4TT² feels like the timing of its message has arrived again.”

Pre-order Tea For The Tillerman 2 here.

PJ Harvey’s entire catalogue to be reissued on vinyl

Sam Richards
-
0
PJ Harvey’s entire catalogue to be reissued on vinyl

PJ Harvey’s entire catalogue is to be reissued on vinyl over the course of the next year by UMC/Island and Beggars Archive/Too Pure.

The reissue programme includes the two albums she made in collaboration with John Parish, as well as standalone versions of her album demos.

First up is the reissue of her landmark 1992 debut Dry, released on July 24 along with Dry – Demos – a collection of demos that was released with limited early copies of the album but hasn’t been available since. It features brand new artwork with previously unseen photos by Maria Mochnacz.

Pre-order here and listen to the demo of “Sheela-Na-Gig” below:

Led Zeppelin’s Celebration Day to stream on YouTube this weekend

Sam Richards
-
0
Led Zeppelin’s Celebration Day to stream on YouTube this weekend

Led Zeppelin have announced that Celebration Day – the film of their triumphant reunion show at London’s O2 in December 2007 – will stream for free on YouTube for a limited period this weekend.

Originally released on DVD in 2012, Celebration Day will premiere on Led Zeppelin’s official YouTube channel on Saturday, May 30 at 8PM BST, remaining up for three days.

You can watch it via the portal below:

In the meantime, check out the trailer here:

David Bowie’s Glastonbury 2000 show coming to BBC in June

Sam Richards
-
0
David Bowie’s Glastonbury 2000 show coming to BBC in June

The BBC have announced a full line-up of Glastonbury programming over the weekend that the festival would have run this year, June 26-29.

It will include David Bowie’s famous pyramid stage headline set from 2000, never broadcast in full at the time, but released on DVD, LP and CD in 2018.

BBC2 will also show classic performances from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, REM, PJ Harvey, Baaba Maal, Amy Winehouse, Blur, Lady Gaga, Dizzee Rascal, Toots & The Maytals, Arctic Monkeys and The Rolling Stones.

In total, 60 full performances will be available via the iPlayer, including Radiohead’s epochal 1997 headline appearance, plus acoustic sets by Patti Smith, Richie Havens and Youssou N’Dour.

Julien Temple’s film Glastonbury, celebrating the history of the festival, will get another airing on June 25 on BBC4.

Shirley Collins announces new album, Heart’s Ease

Sam Richards
-
0
Shirley Collins announces new album, Heart’s Ease

Shirley Collins has announced that her new album, Heart’s Ease, will be released by Domino on July 24.

It’s the follow-up to 2016’s remarkable Lodestar, which signalled her return to music after nearly four decades away.

Watch a video for the first single from Heart’s Ease, “Wondrous Love”, below:

The tune comes from an 18th Century English ballad about the infamous sea captain William Kidd, who was hanged for piracy in 1701. Collins first heard the hymn at a Sacred Harp Convention in Alabama (Collins and Alan Lomax recorded it on their field recording trip in 1959). She has decided to sing it now “because songs are stored in my memory for a great many years, and suddenly it seems the right time to bring them out again.”

Recorded at Metway in Brighton, Heart’s Ease features traditional songs from England and the USA, but there are also four new songs and even a burst of experimentation. Says Collins: “Lodestar wasn’t too bad, was it? But when I listen to it, it does sometimes sound rather tentative. I had to record it at home because I was just too nervous to sing in front of somebody I didn’t know. This time I was far more relaxed – even though I went into a studio.”

Peruse the artwork and tracklisting below:

1. The Merry Golden Tree
2. Rolling In The Dew
3. The Christmas Song
4. Locked In Ice
5. Wondrous Love
6. Barbara Allen
7. Canadee-i-o
8. Sweet Greens And Blues
9. Tell Me True
10. Whitsun Dance
11. Orange In Bloom
12. Crowlink

Steve Earle & The Dukes – Ghosts Of West Virginia

Andrew Mueller
-
0
Steve Earle & The Dukes – Ghosts Of West Virginia

On April 5, 2010, 300 metres beneath Raleigh County, West Virginia, methane seeping from the coal seams of Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine ignited and exploded. Fire roared through two miles of subterranean tunnel and killed 29 miners. Investigations blamed dereliction of safety procedures; Massey’s CEO, Don Blankenship, was convicted in 2015 of conspiring to violate safety standards, and jailed for a year.

This is the background that informs Ghosts Of West Virginia, arguably Steve Earle’s best album since 2002’s Jerusalem. Earle wrote seven of these 10 songs to accompany a drama by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen – Coal Country, drawn from interviews with miners who survived the Upper Big Branch disaster, and families of the miners who didn’t. When the play is staged, Earle serves, as he puts it, as “a Greek chorus with a guitar”. But the songs hold up handsomely on their own merits, well served by the poise and pugnacity of the Dukes – joined here by Chris Robinson Brotherhood bassist Jeff Hill, stepping in for long-serving Earle sideman Kelley Looney, who died last November, aged 61.

On one hand, the Upper Big Branch disaster seems obviously congruent territory for Earle – the working man crushed beneath the march of capitalism has been a recurring theme of his work, back to “Good Ol’ Boy (Getting’ Tough)” on Earle’s 1986 debut, Guitar Town. But it is also ground a pinko folk singer needs to tread carefully – West Virginia is one of the states of the Union in which a person of Earle’s leftward-leaning convictions might be likeliest to be upholstered in tar and feathers and chased to the border by a pitchfork-wielding mob. In 2016, 68 per cent of West Virginian voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump: the president’s best result nationwide.

Ghosts Of West Virginia begins with the appropriately spectral fanfare of “Heaven Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, an a cappella gospel piece that casts the Dukes as choristers to Earle’s gruff, chain-rattling conductor, intoning a creed of fatalistic resignation (“Don’t worry about puttin’ nothin’ away/Money’s no good come the Judgement Day”). It sets a tone for what follows: an empathetic narrative of people who understand the horizons they’re bound by, but who take considerable pride in what they’re able to accomplish within them – and their struggles to expand them. The Dukes kick in properly on “Union, God And Country”, an upbeat and neatly observed slice of ordinary life evocative of John Prine’s “Grandpa Was A Carpenter”, spelling out the way things are done round here: “When they’d strike the mine/They’d walk the line/’Cos that’s just what you’d do.”

The literal and thematic centrepiece of “Ghosts Of West Virginia” is “It’s About Blood”. It’s pretty typical of the album’s sonic palette – an electrified bluegrass that might be thought of as Appalachian grunge – and it absolutely nails the political as well as the personal. Earle begins by narrating the view of the world one develops from several fathoms below its surface (“For every man that died for a coal company dollar/A lung full of dust and a heart full of lies”). He ends by reciting the names of the 29 men lost at Upper Big Branch, while behind him the Dukes conjure an appropriately furious crescendo of clattering guitars and keening violin.

Elsewhere are moments of stately beauty. Fiddle player Eleanor Whitmore’s lead vocal turn on “If I Could See Your Face Again” is a blazing highlight. Earle’s gruff grumble suits “Time Is Never On Your Side” just fine, although it prompts a measure of regret that it arrives a few years too late to be sung by Glen Campbell.

For all that Ghosts Of West Virginia is a serious work contemplating a serious subject, there are moments where Earle sounds like he’s having more fun than any time since The Mountain, his 1999 album with the Del McCoury Band. “John Henry Was A Steel Drivin’ Man” is Earle’s contribution to the hefty canon of song commemorating the legendary railway-builder. Earle tells the yarn of America’s Stakhanov to an irresistible country shuffle, leaving it to the end to wryly note that the big man is probably best off out of it (“John Henry could have told ’em what that means/When the company brought in all the big machines”). “Fastest Man Alive” is just hilarious – a Delbert McClinton-ish boogie bearing a gleeful depiction of legendary West Virginia-born test pilot Chuck Yeager as an all-American badass (“I’m a mover, I’m a shaker/Ask your mother if I ain’t”).

It is an uneasy balance, being the ornery redneck that milquetoast liberals listen to, and vice versa. But it is one that has defined Earle’s career, and he has rarely negotiated it more deftly than he does here.

Bob Marley: “He sent messages to the world”

Graeme Thomson
-
0
Bob Marley: “He sent messages to the world”

The new issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here – features a fascinating and comprehensive account of Bob Marley’s 1977, the year he spent in exile in London creating his landmark albums Exodus and Kaya. In it, Graeme Thomson revisits a whirlwind 12 months in Marley’s life with help from Chris Blackwell, Marcia Griffiths, Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett, Don Letts, Junior Marvin and other eyewitnesses.

Marley arrived in London in early January 1977, shortly before turning 32, following the most tumultuous few weeks of his life. On December 3, two days before he had been due to perform at the Smile Jamaica concert, seven gunmen entered his compound at 56 Hope Road in Kingston. Marley was shot in the chest and the arm but escaped without serious injury. His wife, Rita, was shot in the head, though miraculously she made a full recovery, while his manager, Don Taylor, was struck in the legs and body.

“He didn’t talk about the shooting much, but he was very upset that people would come to shoot him,” says Chris Blackwell. “Bob wasn’t at all someone who was boastful or thought he was the greatest thing ever – he was a very natural person – but I think he was shocked that people would want to shoot him, and it took him a while to work through that.”

The reggae superstar had chosen to deal with the fallout from the shooting in London, where his recent brush with mortality infused his life and music with a new sense of purpose. On the one hand, it was business as usual. “Bob set up his Rasta camp here,” says Don Letts, at the time a budding DJ, entrepreneur and “baby dread” who was befriended by Marley. “It was like he had picked up a bit of Kingston and transplanted it to Chelsea.”

The cultural exchange worked both ways, however. In London, Marley integrated with young punks and Rastas, visited West End nightclubs and dingy shebeens, played football in his local park, recorded with his wife, conceived a son with his girlfriend, and fell prey to the injury that eventually led to his death four years later. “It was an amazing time,” says Marcia Griffiths, a member of his vocal group, The I-Threes. “Everything was happening all at once.”

The duality of Marley’s year in exile is most clearly reflected in the music he created during that time. In London he made two albums, Exodus and Kaya, in a matter of months. They feature some of his deepest and most spiritually resonant music, from the lowering “Natural Mystic” to the declamatory “Exodus”. Yet it was also the year in which Marley recorded the songs that transformed him from a roots reggae star to a pop pin-up. “Three Little Birds”, “One Love”, “Jamming”, “Waiting In Vain” and “Is This Love?” were all released during this remarkably fertile period. “He was sending messages to the world,” says Griffiths. “Those two albums cover everything.”

At the heart of it all is Exodus, perhaps Marley’s most ambitious and universal statement. “It was very advanced, very progressive – almost futuristic,” says his eldest son Ziggy, who remastered the album in 2017. “Exodus took reggae to the next level in terms of instrumentation, beats and musicianship. It made reggae a more international and accessible thing, with elements people could relate to in their world.” Blackwell puts it more succinctly: “Exodus was a huge record for Island – and a revolutionary record for reggae.”

You can read much more about Bob Marley’s year in exile in the July 2020 issue of Uncut, out now.

Watch Itasca’s exclusive Uncut session

Sam Richards
-
0
Watch Itasca’s exclusive Uncut session

Following last week’s terrific performance by James Elkington, we’re proud to present the next in Uncut’s exclusive series of lockdown sessions in conjunction with Paradise Of Bachelors.

It features Kayla Cohen AKA Itasca playing four songs from her recent album Spring – plus a bonus Warren Zevon cover – from a stunning location adjacent to her home near Joshua Tree, California.

Watch below:

Itasca played:

1. Only A Traveler
2. A’s Lament
3. Golden Fields
4. Tule’s Blues (Warren Zevon)
5. Voice Of The Beloved

You can read the Uncut review of Itasca’s Spring here and buy or stream the album by clicking here.

Next is the series is Jake Xerxes Fussell, so please bookmark the Uncut homepage and check back from 6pm on May 28 to view his session. Michael Chapman follows on June 4.

Hear Wilco’s new song, “Tell Your Friends”

Sam Richards
-
0
Hear Wilco’s new song, “Tell Your Friends”

Wilco have released a new song to help everybody through the pandemic. Listen to “Tell Your Friends” below or download from Bandcamp, with all proceeds to World Central Kitchen.

A video of Wilco and their families playing and singing along to “Tell Your Friends” from their respective homes aired on last night’s A Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Watch below:

The show also featured Jeff Tweedy playing a solo acoustic version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s “Jesus, Etc”. Watch that below:

Watch Neil Young play “Homegrown”, “Harvest”, “Old Man” and more

Sam Richards
-
0
Watch Neil Young play “Homegrown”, “Harvest”, “Old Man” and more

Neil Young has released the latest edition of his Fireside Sessions – this time retitled Barnyard Sessions, given that he plays most of the songs surrounded by chickens.

Young plays the title track from his upcoming archive release Homegrown (due June 19), along with “Tumbleweed”, “Harvest”, “Old Man”, “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” and “War Of Man”.

Watch the video here, although you must already be subscribed to Neil Young Archives or have the app downloaded.

Hear previously unreleased Jason Molina song, “Shadow Answers The Wall”

Sam Richards
-
0
Hear previously unreleased Jason Molina song, “Shadow Answers The Wall”

Secretly Canadian will release a new Jason Molina album entitled Eight Gates on August 7.

The nine previously unreleased songs comprise the last collection of solo recordings that the Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co leader made before he passed away from complications related to alcoholism in 2013. Listen to “Shadow Answers The Wall” below:

The songs on Eight Gates were recorded when Molina was living in London around 2008, with the title referring to the seven gates of the City Of London. Some of them are fully-realised, others more unfinished. Check out the artwork and tracklisting below:

1. Whisper Away
2. Shadow Answers the Wall
3. The Mission’s End
4. Old Worry
5. She Says
6. Fire on the Rail
7. Be Told the Truth
8. Thistle Blue
9. The Crossroad and the Emptiness

1...161162163...1,255Page 162 of 1,255

SHOP UNCUT

Advertisement

Subscribe to Uncut today and never miss an issue.

Save up to 26% when you subscribe online

Learn More