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Pearl Jam announce new album, Gigaton

Sam Richards
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Pearl Jam announce new album, Gigaton

Pearl Jam have announced that their eleventh studio album, Gigaton, will be released by Universal on March 27.

The album was produced by Josh Evans and Pearl Jam. The cover features an image by photographer and marine biologist Paul Nicklen, showing Norway’s Nordaustlandet ice cap gushing high volumes of meltwater. Check it out below:

“Making this record was a long journey,” explains Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready. “It was emotionally dark and confusing at times, but also an exciting and experimental road map to musical redemption. Collaborating with my bandmates on Gigaton ultimately gave me greater love, awareness and knowledge of the need for human connection in these times.”

The first single, “Dance Of The Clairvoyants”, will be released in the coming weeks. In the meantime, peruse Pearl Jam’s 2020 tourdates, including the previously announced show in London’s Hyde Park, below:

March
Wed 18th Toronto, ON, Scotiabank Arena
Fri 20th Ottowa, ON, Canadian Tire Centre
Sun 22nd Quebec City, QC, Videotron Centre
Tues 24th Hamilton, ON, FirstOntario Centre
Sat 28th Baltimore, MD, Royal Farms Arena
Mon 30th New York, NY, Madison Square Garden

April
Thurs 2nd Nashville, TN, Bridgestone Arena
Sat 4th St. Louis, MO, Enterprise Centre
Mon 6th Oklahoma City, OK, Chesapeake Energy Arena
Thurs 9th Denver, CO, Pepsi Centre
Sat 11th Phoenix, AZ, Gila River Arena
Mon 13th San Diego, CA, Viejas Arena
Wed 15th Los Angeles, CA, The Forum
Thurs 16th Los Angeles, CA, The Forum
Sat 18th Oakland, CA, Oakland Arena
Sun 19th Oakland, CA, Oakland Arena

June
Tues 23rd Frankfurt, Germany, Festhalle
Thurs 25th Berlin, Germany, Walduhne
Sat 27th Stockholm, Sweden, Lollapalooza Stockholm
Mon 29th Copenhagen, Denmark, Royal Arena

July
Thurs 2nd Werchter, Belgioum, Rock Werchter Festival
Sun 5th Imola, Italy, Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferri
Tue 7th Vienna, Austria, Wiener Stadthalle
Fri 10th London, BST Hyde Park
Mon 13th Krakow, Poland, Tauron Arena
Wed 15th Budapest, Hungary, Budapest Arena
Fri 17th Zurich, Switzerland, Hallenstadion
Sun 19th Paris, France, Lollapalooza Paris
Wed 22nd Amsterdam, Netherlands, Ziggo Dome
Thurs 23rd Amsterdam, Netherlands, Ziggo Dome

Send us your questions for Baxter Dury

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Baxter Dury

It’s fair to say that Baxter Dury’s musical career hasn’t followed a typical trajectory. Despite appearing on the cover of his dad’s classic LP New Boots And Panties!! at the age of five, he didn’t release his own debut album (2002’s Len Parrot’s Memorial Lift) until he was in his thirties. And even then, he didn’t really break through into wider consciousness until the release of his hallucinogenic break-up album Prince Of Tears in 2017.

But since then, it’s been full steam ahead. In 2018 he teamed up with French house producer Étienne De Crécy and London punk singer Delilah Holiday for the BED project, and last year he made a scene-stealing cameo on Fat White Family’s Serf’s Up!, muttering darkly about the “lobster red blood of the apocalypse”.

Now he’s about to follow-up Prince Of Tears with his new album The Night Chancers, due out on March 20. While the orchestration is slinkier, Dury’s sleaze-ridden stories of slum landlords and Instagram influencers, stalkers and revenge fantasists are darker and more compelling than ever. Check out the lead single “Slumlord” here.

Now, Dury has kindly volunteered to be grilled by you, the Uncut readers. So what would you like to ask one of the most elegant and unstinting raconteurs in rock? Send your questions to audiencewith@www.uncut.co.uk by Monday January 20 and Baxter will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

Exclusive! Hear an unreleased live version of Cream’s “Crossroads”

Sam Richards
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Exclusive! Hear an unreleased live version of Cream’s “Crossroads”

On March 6, UMC will release a 4-CD set documenting Cream’s Goodbye tour of 1968.

Goodbye Tour – Live 1968 features four live shows from the tour, including Cream’s final UK date at London’s Royal Albert Hall on November 26. It includes a total of 19 previously unreleased tracks, and a further 10 tracks from the Royal Albert Hall show which have only ever been available on DVD.

Hear one of those previously unreleased tracks, a version of “Crossroads” recorded at the San Diego Sports Arena on October 20, 1968, below:

You can read an extensive review of Cream’s Goodbye Tour – Live 1968 in the new issue of Uncut, due in shops on Thursday (details to follow soon). Pre-order the album here.

Kurt Vile announces European solo tour

Sam Richards
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Kurt Vile announces European solo tour

Kurt Vile has announced a European solo tour for the summer. These dates are billed as “stripped back” and “intimate” shows, minus his usual backing band The Violators.

Peruse the full itinerary below:

29.5 Heimathafen – Berlin, Germany
30.5 Fabrik – Hamburg, Germany
31.5 Heartland festival – Kværndrup, Denmark
2.6 Islington Assembly Hall – London, UK
7.6 Muziekgieterij – Maastricht, Netherlands
8.6 TivoliVredenburg – Utrecht, Netherlands
9.6 Kulturkirche – Köln, Germany
10.6 De Roma – Antwerp, Belgium
12.6 Vicar Street – Dublin, Ireland

Tickets go on sale on Wednesday (January 15) at 9am GMT. Tickets for the London show are available from here.

For an idea of what to expect, check out the (Bottle Back) documentary, which features intimate renderings of songs from Vile’s most recent album Bottle It In:

The Go-Betweens – G Stands For Go-Betweens: 
Volume 2, 1985-9

Wyndham Wallace
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The Go-Betweens – G Stands For Go-Betweens: 
Volume 2, 1985-9

In 1982, like fellow Australians The Birthday Party before them, and A-ha the very same year, Brisbane’s The Go-Betweens relocated to London to seek wider fame and fortune. By 1985, with neither a “Release The Bats” nor a “Take On Me” to their name, both still eluded them. Their third album, 1984’s Spring Hill Fair, had disappointed group and critics alike, and as they formulated their next move, they found themselves instead hunting high and low for their fourth label.

What arrived over the next three years, however, cemented Robert Forster’s and Grant McLennan’s reputations, as this follow-up to 2015’s exhaustive look at the first years of their career demonstrates. With 129 tracks – three increasingly impeccable albums on vinyl, five CDs of demos and radio sessions, not to mention Fountains Of Youth, 
a spirited, hitherto unreleased 2LP live set – it provides detailed evidence of the band’s growing confidence and continuously refined songwriting (plus occasional missteps), culminating in what many consider one of the southern hemisphere’s finest albums, 1988’s 16 Lovers Lane.

Three years earlier, record companies had been wary. Some showed interest, of course, helping fund demos included here on The Devil Is In Your Dress, revealing McLennan’s dramatically vulnerable “In The Core Of A Flame” and Forster’s “Head Full Of Steam” as fully formed, if less glossy. Nonetheless, when they found a home, Elektra UK, the plug was pulled mid-sessions.

Fortunately, by year’s end, lonely romantic Grant McLennan, charismatically foppish Robert Forster, New York bassist Robert Vickers and abiding rhythmic backbone Lindy Morrison had somehow completed their album and signed to Beggars Banquet. Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express exhibited an unexpected willingness to trade their earlier quirks – encapsulated in Vickers’ wife Janie Heath’s liner notes as a “stripped-down, arty bohemian sound” – for something more accessible.

Their approach, however, was inconsistent with the times, with the band hungry for more than a slot on NME’s C86 cassette. True, “The Ghost And The Black Hat”’s strange, accordion-fuelled cadences nodded to 1983’s “Cattle And Cane”, and “Head Full Of Steam” jangled like Felt; but the latter’s yearning was outclassed by “Apology Accepted”’s erudition – in spite of Tracey Thorn’s presence on both – and “Spring Rain” was as deceptively refreshing as its subject. Little wonder that “Reunion Dinner” – an odd, spoken-word slab of musique concrète occasionally reminiscent of The Velvet Underground’s “The Gift” – was dropped. As the pianos on Forster’s “Twin Layers Of Lightning” suggested, the band were chasing a more extravagant, if as yet unrealised sound.

This was unveiled on June 1987’s Tallulah, though Fountains Of Youth, recorded live in London a month before, suggests their new approach had been honed on the road. McLennan and Forster were now so in tune it was hard to distinguish between them, and they’d also added a fifth member, a 20-year-old multi-instrumentalist discovered in a Sydney bar. Amanda Brown expanded their approach, her violin eagerly leading McLennan’s “Right Here” and offsetting trenchant observations of jealousy with playful pizzicatos on “Someone Else’s Wife”. Additionally, she provided a poignant counterpoint to his wit – “Apart from that albatross around your neck”, a doctor assures him, “the tests are negative” – amid “Hope Then Strife”’s flamenco flourishes, while her trilling oboe provided the sombre nucleus to “Bye Bye Pride”, McLennan’s fine fable of betrayal.

Forster was not to be outdone, 
with “You Tell Me” pairing nagging guitar riffs with swooning vocals, while “Spirit Of A Vampyre” boasted a tangle of REM-like, chiming guitars. Admittedly, “Cut It Out” was, at best, a gauche pastiche of Prince’s “Kiss” – a breathless, less angular live take shows how it should have been – but it improved on the lo-fi blooper included here within Run From Him’s demos. “The Clarke Sisters” compensated, however, its portrait of three steel-grey-haired sisters who “sleep in the back 
of a feminist bookstore” like a tremulous take on Grey Gardens, 
its spookiness emphasised by Forster’s wilting vocal.

16 Lovers Lane, recorded in Sydney after Vickers retired to America, lacked such eccentricities, and if Liberty Belle… had represented 
a cerebral black-and-white Go-Betweens, and Tallulah a sepia-tinted version, this found them in full colour, lit by glorious sunshine, though storms rumbled in the distance.

In fact, the accompanying 14 demos highlight how Forster and McLennan had developed their aesthetic so thoroughly that producer Mark Wallis needed do little more than add discreet glitter to their acoustic flavours. Admittedly, an embryonic “Was There Anything I Could Do?” lacked the album version’s drive, its lyrics still gestating, and “You Can’t Say No Forever” demanded further development; but McLennan’s waltzing “You Won’t Find It Again” and “Casanova’s Last Words” – demoed in fragile acoustic form, then re-recorded with Brown’s violin as lively as Steve Wickham’s work 
for The Waterboys – confirm a surfeit of impressive material.

Whatever polish Wallis provided failed to mask their masterpiece’s penetrating barbs, epitomised in “Love Goes On!”’s emotional complexity: “There’s a cat in my alleyway/Dreaming of birds that are blue/Sometimes, girl, when I’m lonely/This is how I think about you.” That single “Streets Of Your Town” fell short of the charts can only be attributed to its images of battered wives and butchers shining knives, while the seam of volatile regret running through follow-up single “Was There Anything I Could Do?” can’t have helped its cause commercially either.

Ultimately, despite its 
warm heart – not to mention McLennan’s reverb-drenched “The Devil’s Eye” and Forster’s parting shot, “Dive For Your Memory” – their sixth album’s dominant mood was one of melancholy. Forster’s “Love Is A Sign” was awash in wishful thinking, and he and Brown combined in bittersweet fashion on “Clouds”, while 
her oboe poked fun at “I’m Allright”, McLennan’s succinct ode to unrequited love.

Furthermore, if his soothing “Quiet Heart” displayed none of the inarticulacy it portrayed, McLennan determined wistfully that it “doesn’t matter how far you come/You’ve always got further to go”. A KCRW session included on Trying To Be A Strong Person offers, they marvel afterwards, “one of the best versions we’ve ever done”, and the same is true of that November night’s “Clouds” and “Dive For Your Memory”.

“We stood that chance,” Forster concluded on the latter, but it wasn’t to be. Though 28 demos were recorded for their next album – many unearthed for the first time on this set’s final 2CD comp, Loving Shocks, some, including McLennan’s fine “Easy Come, Easy Go” and Forster’s reflective “I’ve Been Looking For Somebody”, later re-recorded for solo LPs – the band had split by the decade’s end. McLennan and Forster reunited in 2000, but widespread success continued to evade them. Nevertheless, this anthology perfectly encapsulates The Go-Betweens’ irresistible, evergreen and still expanding appeal.

Morrissey unveils new album, I Am Not A Dog On A Chain

Sam Richards
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Morrissey unveils new album, I Am Not A Dog On A Chain

Morrissey has announced details of his 13th solo album. I Am Not A Dog On A Chain will be released by Étienne/BMG on March 20.

Hear the lead single “Bobby, Don’t You Think They Know?”, featuring soul singer Thelma Houston, below:

I Am Not A Dog On A Chain was produced by Joe Chicharelli at Studio La Fabrique, France, and Hollywood’s Sunset Sound.

“I have now produced four studio albums for Morrissey,” said Chicarelli. “This is his boldest and most adventurous album yet. He has pushed the boundaries yet again – both musically and lyrically. And once again proving that as a songwriter and singer, he is in his own category. In truth, no one can be Morrissey but… Morrissey!”

Check out the tracklisting for I Am Not A Dog On A Chain below:

‘Jim Jim Falls’
‘Love Is On Its Way Out’
‘Bobby, Don’t You Think They Know?’
‘I Am Not A Dog On A Chain’
‘What Kind of People Live in These Houses?’
‘Knockabout World’
‘Darling, I Hug A Pillow’
‘Once I Saw the River Clean’
‘The Truth About Ruth’
‘The Secret of Music’
‘My Hurling Days Are Done’

Uncut Gems

Damon Wise
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Uncut Gems

Josh and Benny Safdie have spent a decade making scrappy, low-budget movies on the streets of New York; freewheeling, urban stories, in other words, that hark back to an earlier era of filmmaking. In their last film, Good Time, Robert Pattinson played Connie Nikas – a bright, resourceful petty crook who falls into a night-long churn of violence and exploitation, redeemed only by the unshakeable love he holds for his brother Nick. A good reference point might have been Scorsese’s underrated and arguably more commercial work from the ’80s – After Hours, in particular.

Uncut Gems, the Safdie brothers’ latest, is a kinetic, midtown Manhattan tale, a jewellery-district drama that features a towering performance from Adam Sandler – continuing the run of good work that includes Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories.

Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a brash jewellery salesman whose life is constantly on the edge. Always in debt, Ratner is one of life’s schemers, and he comes to believe that the answer to his prayers is a valuable stone, illegally imported from Ethiopia. When a famous basketball player, Kevin Garnett (playing himself), becomes obsessed with it, Ratner figures his ship is finally coming in – but fate has other plans for him.

For those turned off by Sandler’s usual comedy shtick, the good news is that there’s very little of it here. His company might get a little wearing, but that’s partly the point, and the Safdies offset his abrasive nature with some sympathetic supporting turns, notably from Julia Fox as Ratner’s mistress. We are rocketed through Ratner’s world – a place of permanently raised voices, propulsive camera work and blaring noise – accompanied by a pulsing score from Daniel Lopatin, AKA Oneohtrix Point Never. Aside from Scorsese, the Safdies channel other masters of New York’s discomfort zone, including Paul Schrader, Abel Ferrara and James Toback. The Safdies more than deserve to sit at the same table.

Hear Ozzy Osbourne duet with Elton John

Sam Richards
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Hear Ozzy Osbourne duet with Elton John

Ozzy Osbourne is poised to release a new solo album, Ordinary Man, on February 21 via Epic.

The latest single to be taken from it is the title track – a duet with Elton John. Listen below:

Said Ozzy in a press release: “When I was writing ‘Ordinary Man’ it reminded me of an old Elton song and I said to Sharon, ‘I wonder if he would sing on it?’ We asked and lo and behold, he agreed and sings and play piano on the song.”

Other guests on Ordinary Man include Slash, Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello and rapper Post Malone. It was recorded with a band featuring Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan on bass and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith on drums.

Oh Sees announce spring tour of UK and Ireland

Sam Richards
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Oh Sees announce spring tour of UK and Ireland

Psychedelic garage rockers Oh Sees have announced a new tour of UK and Ireland for May.

They’ll continue to blast out tunes from their excellent 2019 album Face Stabber – as well as some gnarly new material, no doubt – at the following venues:

15/05 – Birmingham – The Crossing
16/05 – Manchester – Albert Hall
17/05 – Glasgow – Barrowlands
18/05 – Dublin – Button Factory
19/05 – Dublin – Button Factory
21/05 – Bristol – SWX
22/05 – London – Electric Ballroom – Late Show
23/05 – London – Electric Ballroom – Early Show

Click the links for each show for ticket details. Tickets go on sale on Friday (January 10) at 10am.

Rare and unreleased David Bowie tracks set for new EPs

Sam Richards
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Rare and unreleased David Bowie tracks set for new EPs

To mark what would have been David Bowie’s 73rd birthday (today, January 8), two new releases have been announced featuring rare and unreleased Bowie tracks.

Is It Any Wonder? is a streaming EP of rare and unreleased material to be made available one track per week over the next six weeks. You can hear the first instalment, a stripped-down 1996 version of “The Man Who Sold The World”, below:

This version of “The Man Who Sold The World” will also appear on ChangesNowBowie, a nine-track mini-LP comprising a session that Bowie recorded in November 1996 during rehearsals for his 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden. Gail Ann Dorsey (bass, vocals), Reeves Gabrels (guitars) and Mark Plati (keyboards and programming) accompanied David on the recording.

This mostly acoustic session was produced by Bowie himself, Reeves Gabrels and Mark Plati. It was originally broadcast by the BBC on Bowie’s 50th birthday on January 8, 1997.

ChangesNowBowie will be released in limited quantities on LP and CD for Record Store Day on April 18. The cover art for the album will feature a black and white portrait of Bowie by photographer Albert Watson, taken in New York in 1996 (see below).

Timothée Chalamet lined up to play Bob Dylan in new biopic

Sam Richards
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Timothée Chalamet lined up to play Bob Dylan in new biopic

Timothée Chalamet has been lined up to play Bob Dylan in a new film by James Mangold, who wrote and directed the acclaimed 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line.

As Deadline reports, the film is currently titled Going Electric, and focuses on Dylan’s mid-’60s transition from folk figurehead to plugged-in rocker.

The film has rights to Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric, as well as Dylan’s music rights. Bob Dylan himself is listed as an executive producer, while Dylan’s manager Jeff Rosen is among the film’s producers.

Chalamet, who recently starred in Little Women and was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Call Me By Your Name, is reportedly taking guitar lessons to prepare himself for the role.

Simon & Garfunkel – The Ultimate Music Guide

Sam Richards
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Simon & Garfunkel – The Ultimate Music Guide

Bridge Over Troubled Water is 50! To celebrate this, and to commemorate over 60 years of their music-making – both separately, and as a duo – we present the latest Ultimate Music Guide: Simon & Garfunkel. As ever the mag is a close harmony of insightful new writing and entertaining archive reads. Every album is reviewed in depth, and there’s the lowdown on the singles, the collaborations and the films too.

Order your copy here.

Drive-By Truckers: “Now was not the time to retreat”

Stephen Deusner
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Drive-By Truckers: “Now was not the time to retreat”

The latest issue of Uncut – in shops now and available to buy online by clicking here – features an interview with Drive-By Truckers, who have returned after four years with a fiery new album, The Unraveling.

Talking to Uncut’s Stephen Deusner, the band’s co-founder Patterson Hood reveals how, in the intervening period, he was writing plenty of solo material but having trouble coming up with songs that would suit the Truckers’ rollicking ethos. “The record I wanted to make with them needed to be big and loud,” he says. “The Truckers know how to not be big and loud, but that’s not as much fun as when we’re big and loud.”

Hood’s breakthrough came in an unlikely place: the outskirts of Gillette, Wyoming, population 30,000. The Truckers had stopped there between gigs, and as the band hoofed it from their hotel to a nearby Mexican restaurant – “three stars on Yelp, everything slathered in queso, really bad for you and delicious” – Hood noticed the preponderance of big box stores and chain restaurants. He felt he could be anywhere in America, any town. At dinner he jotted down some lines on a napkin, wolfed down his tacos, and ran back to the hotel to write “21st Century USA”. It’s a quiet, loping exurban blues, but the ideas are big and loud. It’s less about all the franchises he mentions and more about how that sameness affects the people who live there. “I could hear it all in my head, and in the moment I was just elated because it felt like I had broken through.”

Part of what made songwriting so difficult for Hood – and part of what made “21st Century USA” such a eureka moment – was the state of the country in the late 2010s. “How do you write about this shit that’s going on right now in a way that you’d want to listen to as a record?” he says. “One option is not to write about it at all, but considering the stand we took on American Band and the fact that we toured behind it and called ourselves the Dance Band Of The Resistance, it seemed cowardly not to follow through. It seemed like now was not the time to retreat.”

What he wanted to avoid was a very different kind of echo chamber: one that only exposes you to people who already agree with you, who reinforce opinions no matter how misguided or misbegotten they might be. “To me,” says Hood, “one of the problems we’re having as a people is this lack of empathy to other people’s points of view. So the way we’ve written about politics is to write about personal things, whether it’s one of us or somebody we know or somebody we just made up. These two most recent records might on the surface be a little more direct than previous records, but it’s still what we’ve done all along.”

You can read much more from Drive-By Truckers in the latest issue of Uncut, out now with Nick Cave on the cover.

Hear Michael Stipe’s new single, “Drive To The Ocean”

Sam Richards
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Hear Michael Stipe’s new single, “Drive To The Ocean”

Following last year’s debut solo effort “Your Capricious Soul”, Michael Stipe has now released a second solo single, “Drive To The Ocean”.

Listen below:

Proceeds from sales of “Drive to the Ocean”, which is available to download exclusively from Stipe’s website, go to benefit climate-focused campaign Pathway To Paris.

Stipe, who turned 60 on January 4, also released an accompanying video message which you can watch below:

Watch Nirvana reunite, with Beck and St Vincent on vocals

Sam Richards
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Watch Nirvana reunite, with Beck and St Vincent on vocals

On Saturday night (January 4), the surviving members of Nirvana – Dave Grohl, Krist Noveselic and guitarist Pat Smear – reunited once more for the Heaven 2020 Charity Gala at the Hollywood Palladium, in support of the The Art Of Elysium, which funds art-based community projects.

Nirvana were joined on vocals and guitar by Beck and St Vincent. Dave Grohl’s 13-year-old daughter Violet also stepped up to take the Kurt Cobain role on “Heart-Shaped Box”. The band played:

Lithium (St. Vincent)
In Bloom (Beck)
Been A Son (Beck)
Heart-Shaped Box (Violet Grohl)
The Man Who Sold The World (Beck)

Watch the entire set below:

The gala also featured performances from L7, Marilyn Manson and Cheap Trick.

Jojo Rabbit

Damon Wise
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Jojo Rabbit

Playing Adolf Hitler in a comedy requires nerve. In his latest film as writer, director and actor, Taika Waititi stars as the dictator, portrayed here as the buffoonish imaginary best friend of 10-year-old Hitler Youth member Johannes “Jojo” Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis).

It’s not the first time filmmakers have wanted us to laugh at the Führer – from Chaplin and the Three Stooges to Mel Brooks. But Waititi’s version is breathtakingly risky, portraying Hitler and other (fictional) Nazis in the broadest possible terms. But critical to appreciating how this “anti-hate satire” works is the understanding that this is all filmed from the perspective of Jojo himself. The intentionally immature setup dominates Jojo Rabbit, though Waititi – whose previous films include Thor: Ragnarok – finds weirdly sentimental pauses along the way.

Jojo recently lost his sister to influenza and his father to the war. He lives with his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) and is, he admits, “massively into swastikas”. Jojo, though, isn’t exactly soldier material and after suffering a serious injury he is sent home. There he encounters Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), a Jewish girl hiding in his attic crawlspace. His instinct is to tell the authorities, but instead they become unlikely friends.

Like Waititi’s earlier The Hunt For The Wilderpeople, Jojo Rabbit could be described as a kids’ film for adults, since it deals in naivety, in a world that’s childlike as opposed to childish. The two talented young leads are the main reason this all pays off in the end, but the film’s shrewdly cast supporting players – notably Sam Rockwell’s shabby Captain Klenzendorf – add substance and depth in the meantime. Wes Anderson is a good reference point; Waititi’s film is saturated in a similar aesthetic and tone.

Neil Innes dies aged 75

Michael Bonner
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Neil Innes dies aged 75

Neil Innes has died aged 75, according to BBC News.

The comedian and songwriter passed away unexpectedly on Sunday night (December 29), according to a spokesman for the family.

In a statement, his family said: “It is with deep sorrow and great sadness that we have to announce the death of Neil James Innes on 29th December 2019.

“We have lost a beautiful kind, gentle soul whose music and songs touched the heart of everyone and whose intellect and search for truth inspired us all.

“He died of natural causes quickly without warning and, I think, without pain.

“His wife Yvonne and their three sons Miles, Luke and Barney and three grandchildren Max Issy and Zac give thanks for his life, for his music and for the joy he gave us all.”

Innes was born in Danbury, Essex – although he spent his childhood in West Germany, where his father was deployed with the British Army. While a student at Goldsmiths College, he met Vivian Stanshall, with whom he wrote most of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band‘s songs, including “I’m The Urban Spaceman“, produced by Apollo C. Vermouth (Paul McCartney), and “Death Cab For Cutie“, which the band performed in The Beatles’ film, Magical Mystery Tour.

During the 1970s, Innes became closely associated with Monty Python, contributing songs and sketches to the final series in 1974, as well as appearing Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python’s Life of Brian. He was one of only two non-Pythons to be credited as a writer, alongside The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams.

After Python finished, Innes joined Eric Idle‘s new series, Rutland Weekend Television. On the back of that show, Innes and Idle created The Rutles.

Innes was later given a writing credit on Oasis‘s song, “Whatever”, after it was found Noel Gallagher had borrowed portions of his song “How Sweet To Be An Idiot“.

Innes also composed the music for children’s television programmes including Puddle Lane, The Raggy Dolls, The Riddlers and Tumbledown Farm.

More recently, Innes was involved in a legal dispute after the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band name was trademarked without the consent of the surviving band members. A line-up featuring Innes alongside Roger Ruskin Spear, ‘Legs’ Larry Smith, Rodney Slater and Vernon Dudley Bowhay-Nowell were due to appear under the title ‘Still Barking’ as Bonzo Dog Banned for “one final grand HOORAH as a thank you to fans” at London’s O2 Shepherds Bush Empire on May 29.

4AD designer Vaughan Oliver has died, aged 62

Michael Bonner
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4AD designer Vaughan Oliver has died, aged 62

Vaughan Oliver, the in-house designer for 4AD who created iconic album artwork for Pixies, Cocteau Twins, The Breeders and more, has died aged 62.

Adrian Shaughnessy, a graphic designer, writer and publisher who co-edited the 2018 collection Vaughan Oliver: Archive, broke the news on Twitter on December 29, adding that his death was a “great loss of friend and design hero.”

4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell said, “Vaughan Oliver taught me to appreciate quality. He taught me how to look at the physical world. He was a force of nature.”

Oliver began working for 4AD in the early ’80s, where he established the visual identity of 4AD as a record label.

Oliver’s design studios, 23 Envelope, consisted of Oliver and his original photographer Nigel Grierson, who together created the artwork for almost every 4AD release up to 1987. After Grierson left 23 Envelope in 1988, Oliver continued to work for the label under the studio name v23, where he collaborated with Simon Larbalestier, Marc Atkins and many others.

He also designed album sleeves for David Sylvian, Scott Walker and David Lynch.

Outside of music, Oliver also designed for commercial clients including L’Oréal and the 2012 London Olympics Games, and directed TV adverts for Microsoft, Sony and Harrods.

He was also Visiting Professor Graphic Design at the University for the Creative Arts in Epsom, Surrey.

Here are some of the tributes paid to Oliver by Pixies:

Breeders:

Cocteau Twins bassist Simon Raymonde:

Lush’s Emma Anderson:

Ivo Watts-Russell:

Uncut’s 30 best reissues of 2019

Sam Richards
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Uncut’s 30 best reissues of 2019

30 REM
Monster: 25th Anniversary
CRAFT
Perhaps REM’s most divisive album got a full remix this year courtesy of producer Scott Litt. Once a heavy, glammy return to rock after the lighter textures of Automatic For The People, the new Monster was now a little more in keeping with its predecessors, for better and for worse. Those keen to discover more about this period could also delve into a world of demos.

29 PETER LAUGHNER
Peter Laughner
SMOG VEIL RECORDS
This vital, 56-track retrospective assembled home and rehearsal recordings, live cuts and radio appearances by Laughner, an important American catalyst, best known for his work with Rocket From The Tombs and Pere Ubu. The mix of covers (Dylan, Reed, Television) and originals illustrate his development and his fixations. A final disc had 13 solo recordings made on the night Laughner died in his sleep – June 22, 1977.

28 SUPER FURRY ANIMALS
Guerrilla: 20th Anniversary
BMG
The sampladelic third album by Cardiff’s most forward-thinking band celebrated its 20th birthday this year, its Beach- Boys-meets-Aphex-Twin lunacy still sounding as revolutionary in 2019. Plus, a plethora of B-sides, demos and unheard tracks – including early versions of this century’s “Lazer Beam” and “Frequency” – shed light on the record’s strange (and costly) gestation.

27 VARIOUS ARTISTS
World Spirituality Classics 2: The Time For Peace Is Now
LUAKA BOP
The second album in Luaka Bop’s ‘World Spirituality Classics’ series following Alice Coltrane’s ashram excursions, The Time For Peace Is Now was a revelatory compilation of obscure 1970s gospel. And rather than the massed choirs and roaring affirmations of gospel cliché, we discovered church groups moving with the times, responding to the likes of Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron with moody guitars, funky beats and quasi-political messages.

26 TUBBY HAYES QUARTET
Grits, Beans And Greens: The Lost Fontana Studio Session 1969
FONTANA JAZZ/DECCA
Tubby Hayes was the closest thing Britain had to John Coltrane; after the unearthing last year of Coltrane’s brilliant Both Directions At Once, it was fitting that this year’s most essential jazz archive release was a lost Hayes LP, recorded in mid-1969 but shelved following the failure of his kitsch Tubby Hayes Orchestra album. This, though, was the real Tubby: rakish, fluent, eternally cool.

25 DAVID SYLVIAN
Secrets Of The Beehive
VIRGIN/UMC
A host of remastered vinyl reissues from Sylvian’s post-Japan years – Brilliant Trees, Alchemy – An Index Of Possibilities, Gone To Earth and Secrets Of The Beehive – reminded us of his gifts for noir balladry, instrumental abstraction and austere atmospherics. Key was 1987’s …Beehive, whose sparse, elegant and intense qualities set the template for Sylvian’s future career.

24 ANNE BRIGGS
Anne Briggs
TOPIC
Reissued as part of the Topic Records 80th birthday celebrations, there were, however, no extra tracks on this magnificent debut album. In keeping with the frill-free nature of the original, we got readings of traditional songs (Briggs’ “Willie O’ Winsbury” will still be staggering when all record reviewing is done by an app), and two of her original songs. Essential.

23 BOB DYLAN (FEATURING JOHNNY CASH)
Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol 15
COLUMBIA/LEGACY RECORDINGS
Unlike recent, hefty instalments in the Bootleg Series, Vol 15 was a relatively modest set focusing on previously unavailable recordings made with Johnny Cash and unreleased tracks from the John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait sessions. The Cash sessions provided the heart, though – highlights included a mash-up of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Understand Your Man” among much good-natured studio banter.

22 CARAVAN
The Decca/Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970–1975
UNIVERSAL
Despite the absence of their hazy debut, this CD boxset collected the greatest work by the Canterbury Scene’s warmest, silliest bunch. 1970’s pastoral If I Could Do It All Over Again was the peak here, but there were feather-soft jazz-rock gems sprinkled throughout, from the sweet’n’sour balladry of 1973’s “The Dog, The Dog, He’s It At Again” to the 19-minute “For Richard” on ’74’s Live At The Fairfield Halls.

21 THE FALL
1982
CHERRY RED
Not a great year for the UK – high Thatcherism, high unemployment, Falklands War – but a spectacular one for The Fall, and most of it is found here. The quality of the band in this iteration (check the frozen wastes of the Hex Enduction Hour album), is self-evident. This set also includes the hinterland: live shows, radio sessions, and the Room To Live LP.

20 PRINCE
1999
WARNERS
Prince’s 1982 album of liberating funk-rock jams found him entering an intense purple patch. Hence this expanded edition was rich in top-quality unreleased tracks from his legendary vault: the taut, fiery riffage of “Rearrange”, the rousing “Bold Generation” and the semi-legendary “Moonbeam Levels”. And, of course, a song called “Vagina”.

19 VARIOUS ARTISTS
Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976–1986
LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
Japanese electronic music has provided a rich seam for reissuers over the last couple of years. The flipside to the genteel ambience celebrated on Kankyõ Ongaku (see below) is the kind of beachy, new wavey, occasionally kitschy stuff compiled here by Vetiver’s Andy Cabic, among others. Naturally, various members of Yellow Magic Orchestra featured prominently on this neon-hued cocktail of delightfully off-centre pop.

18 MICHAEL ROTHER
Solo
GRONLAND
As one of Kraftwerk, Neu! and Harmonia, the ever-youthful Rother was a huge figure in 1970s European music – but what followed in the man’s career may be even more impressive. His solo works streamlined his long-line practice, the quartet of albums from 1977’s Flammende Herzen to 1982’s Fenwärme offering pastoral variations on his motorik themes, like ripples in a sunlit pond.

17 DAVID BOWIE
Conversation Piece
PARLOPHONE
After a series of smaller, vinyl-only boxsets helped document Bowie’s formative steps during 1968/’69, Conversation Piece was the motherlode – a 5CD set of home demos, radio sessions and ephemera including 12 previously unreleased tracks and a new mix of the Space Oddity album by Tony Visconti. The album remains more than its title track: social observation, heavy inner trips and tender love songs prevail.

16 VARIOUS ARTISTS
Strain, Crack & Break: Music From The Nurse With Wound List Volume One
FINDERS KEEPERS
Nurse With Wound’s legendary list of outsider music influences, included with their 1979 debut, has become a guide for intrepid record collectors. Now you too could experience the unsettling sound collages of Philippe Besombes, the vivid prog nightmares of Horrific Child and the glorious, full-on wibble of Etron Fou Leloublan. And that’s just the French contingent!

15 THE KINKS
Arthur Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire
BMG
Fifty years on, The Kinks’ seventh LP – with its discourses on empire, migration and Englishness – seemed strangely current. Bringing the record further into focus was this deluxe boxset, its most voluminous version featuring Arthur in stereo and mono, a ‘lost’ Dave Davies solo album plus rarities, a book, a badge and four 7”s. Britain may be declining, but Arthur was rejuvenated.

14 NEIL YOUNG
Tuscaloosa
REPRISE
Another tantalising dip into Young’s capacious archives, this time for a live show with the Stray Gators from 1973, recorded early on during the Time Fades Away tour. It’s a fan-friendly set, with faithful renditions of “Heart Of Gold”, “After The Gold Rush” and “Out On The Weekend” alongside fresher material. Rusties will note the presence of drummer Kenny Buttrey – replaced by the harder-hitting Johnny Barbata later in the tour.

13 GENE CLARK
No Other
4AD
Ex-Byrd, countryrocker, songwriter’s songwriter… Gene Clark was a confusing proposition by the time he pitched up on Asylum records in 1974. If the public heard about this excellent, introspective country-rock album, they certainly didn’t buy it. Now 4AD – historically a mine of singersongwriter expertise – give it the love it deserves: two additional discs of sessions, and (for the deluxe edition) a 7” and heavy booklet.

12 STEREOLAB
Emperor Tomato Ketchup
DUOPHONIC
Stereolab’s 2019 return to duty was matched by a welcome batch of reissues. None was quite as timely as Emperor…, a work that held their experimental guitar surge, vocal harmony and elegant electronic pulses in an exquisite balance. Recorded by Tortoise’s John McEntire in Chicago, the album represented a transatlantic meeting of post-rock minds, cemented further when the band took on Slint’s David Pajo as touring bassist.

11 JOHN COLTRANE
Blue World
IMPULSE
‘Lost albums’ are the latest trend in jazz catalogue, and this – following on from last year’s Both Directions At Once – is an honourable addition to the Coltrane canon. Recorded between Crescent and A Love Supreme, in an under-thecounter fashion for Canadian filmmaker Gilles Groulx, the album contains lovely takes of familiar tunes like “Naima” and the moody title track, an original composition.

10 PREFAB SPROUT
I Trawl The Megahertz
SONY MUSIC
Previously issued in 2003 as a Paddy McAloon solo affair, I Trawl The Megahertz has been recast as a ‘lost’ Sprout album – although in truth, it’s unlike anything else in his catalogue. Conceived while McAloon suffered detached retinas that left him almost blind, it’s an elegant study in isolation configured around orch-pop melodies and McAloon’s dreamlike lyrics – inspired by the shortwave radio broadcasts he listened to for solace.

9 VARIOUS ARTISTS
All The Young Droogs
CHERRY RED
Lovingly curated by (full disclosure!) Uncut’s very own Phil King, this three-CD collection made a convincing case for junkshop glam as much more than a novelty concern. The Stooges, Mott The Hoople and Woody Woodmansey’s U-Boat provided the gateway into a whole subculture of thuggish glitter-rock stomps, proto-punk transgression and dubious lyrics.

8 VARIOUS ARTISTS
Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990
LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
Since 2017, the Seattle label’s Japan Archival Series has been an invaluable resource for curious ears. This 3LP or 2CD anthology was the peak, collecting 25 pieces of blissfully relaxing, otherworldly tones from a host of musicians inspired by Eno’s ambient work and Erik Satie’s idea of “furniture music”.

7 GONG
Love From The Planet Gong: The Virgin Years 1973-75
UMC/VIRGIN
In just three short years, Daevid Allen’s cosmic collective crafted their Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, fell apart and reinvented themselves as more serious jazzrockers. Across 12 CDs, a DVD and a substantial book, their journey was catalogued here with excellent remasters, studio outtakes and – best of all – a whole flying teapot full of previously unheard live sets.

6 POPUL VUH
The Essential Album Collection Vol 1
BMG
A chance to obtain for a reasonable price some of the finest LPs from the most rapturous of all the krautrock bands. Florian Fricke’s outfit are best known for the synthheavy soundtracks they cooked up for Werner Herzog’s films Aguirre and Nosferatu, but the revelation here was 1974’s Einsjäger & Siebenjäger, with Daniel Fichelscher’s questing guitar inspiring the band to rarefied heights.

5 NEW ORDER
Movement: The Definitive Edition
RHINO
Nobody was making a case for Movement as New Order’s peak, but by rounding up all the demos and live tracks dating back to September 1980 – less than four months after Ian Curtis’s death – this boxset told a fascinating story: of a band confronted with a terrible event and finding an ingenious way forward.

4 BRIAN ENO
Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks – Extended Edition
UMC
Many may not have required a reminder of the qualities of Apollo, Eno’s most beautiful, yearning exploration of ambient music. This reissue celebrating 50 years since the Apollo 11 moon landings gave us something new, however: a fulllength thematic follow-up reuniting Eno, his brother Roger and Daniel Lanois, who showcased his lovely lap-steel skills on “Capsule”.

3 THE REPLACEMENTS
Dead Man’s Pop
RHINO
1989’s Don’t Tell A Soul was meant to be The Replacements’ pop breakthrough; the songs were glorious, but its glossy mix divided fans. Finally, here was the album sounding closer to how it did in Paul Westerberg’s head, along with a slew of demos, outtakes and live versions – not to mention a heroically sloshed session with Tom Waits.

2 THE BEATLES
Abbey Road
EMI
As remixed by Giles Martin, the last Beatles album produced “in the old way” by his father preserved the perfectly sequenced original while remaining mindful of sonic innovations since. Among the additional extras were demo takes of the troublesome “Maxwell” and “the long one” – the triumphant eight-song medley that takes up Side Two.

1 BOB DYLAN
The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings
COLUMBIA RECORDS/LEGACY RECORDINGS
FOR Bobcats fretting over the absence of any new material from Dylan – it’s been seven long years since Tempest – 2019 at least provided some consolation via a rich bounty of archival releases. At No 24 in this poll, you’ll have encountered Travelin’ Thru – but a deeper archeological dig came with The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, released as a companion piece to Martin Scorsese’s mischievous Netflix documentary. While the film – playing with the real-or-unreal flavour of the tour, inserting mockumentary elements amid the period footage – ostensibly took us behind the scenes on Dylan’s revolutionary charabanc, this expansive boxset takes us deep into the tour itself.

Expanded from 2002’s Bootleg Series Vol 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue, this new set contained three discs of rehearsals, 10 discs of the five shows professionally recorded in their entirety and a final disc of rarities. There are specific highlights that will appeal to fans of Dylan’s fluid relationship with his songs. CD 3, recorded on October 29, 1975 at the Seacrest Motel in Massachusetts, is effectively the Revue’s final dress rehearsal, where several songs are still looking for arrangements, including “Hurricane”, while a version on Disc 13 of “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You”, for instance, has a completely rewritten lyric and a careening new arrangement. Mostly though, this set captures Dylan in motion and clearly enjoying himself.

After a successful but unhappy arena tour with The Band in 1974, the whimsical nature of the Revue’s travelling carnival vibe and the colourful cast of old friends (McGuinn, Baez, Neuwirth) encourages Dylan to engage once more with his songs. There are theatrical performances of “Just Like A Woman”, roadhouse-style versions of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and furious takes on “Isis”. The band – including Mick Ronson – are both loose and tight, adding a kind of drunken lilt to proceedings that’s entirely in keeping with the tour’s chaotic magic. For a year dominated by live archive trawls from Woodstock to the Band Of Gypsys’ Fillmore East shows, Dylan’s The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings feels like a major highlight. As much a vital snapshot of Dylan during his mid-’70s peak, as a sly meditation on quintessentially Dylanesque themes: “what’s real and what is not”.

Uncut’s best music books of 2019

Sam Richards
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0
Uncut’s best music books of 2019

10 It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track: Objects 
And Essays
Ian Penman
Fitzcarraldo
Incapable of dumbing down, Penman had NME readers reaching for their dictionaries in the post-punk years. He retains the 
same daunting intelligence in this essay collection, which featured a fine take on mod, a gloomy assessment of James Brown and a sublime meditation on Frank Sinatra. Challenging, but worth it.

9 Year Of The Monkey
Patti Smith
Bloomsbury
Another metaphysical ramble in the vein 
of her 2015 outing 
M Train, Year Of 
The Monkey was 
a walking tour through the proto-punk poet’s 70th year, punctuated by moody photographs, delicious breakfasts and foreboding visions. One way or another, those horses are still running wild.

8 Cruel To Be Kind: 
The Life & Music Of Nick Lowe
Will Birch
Constable
A pub-rock powerhouse in 
his own right, ex-Kursaal Flyer Birch’s portrait of ‘Basher’ is not as cheery as the Stiff records superstar’s knockabout reputation might suggest. However, his enormous respect for his subject is evident as Birch carefully plots Lowe’s path from Kippington Lodge to third-age master craftsman.

7 Face It
Debbie Harry 

Harper Collins
Blondie made amazing records, but singer Debbie Harry remembered only heroin, exhaustion and 
bad business as 
she recalled the band’s peak years in this tell-all account. Her adventures in pre-gentrification New York are at times joyful and terrifying, though her intelligence and resilience shine through. Fair but hard.

6 I Put A Spell On 
You: The Bizarre 
Life of Screamin’ 
Jay Hawkins
Steve Bergsman
Feral House
A smart sophisticate 
forced to live the
life of a carnival sideshow, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins boiled with rage as Nina Simone and Creedence Clearwater Revival made more from his most famous song than he ever did. Bergsman’s study of the schlock icon was a thrilling portrait of an arch narcissist. Spoiler alert: it ends badly.

5 Afternoons With The Blinds Drawn
Brett Anderson
Little Brown
The sequel to Coal Black Mornings that Anderson said he would never write, this exorcism of 
his Suede years tracked the band’s swift ascent to 
the NME front cover and slow 
decline into back-biting and drugs 
as their Britpop crown fell to 
“bands who waved flags and dropped their aitches”. Bitter, twisted, but very classy.

4 Defying Gravity: Jordan’s Story
Jordan with Cathi Unsworth
Omnibus
The madame guillotine of the punk years, Jordan surveyed the movement’s triumphs and tragedies from behind the counter of Malcolm McLaren’s Sex boutique. The best punk book since England’s Dreaming, her story offered a unique perspective on the Sex Pistols and the PVC-clad nihilism of the time.

3 Me
Elton John
MacMillan
The former Reg Dwight’s garish, stack-heeled autobiography detailed his musical triumphs, suicide attempts and A-list adventures with a delightfully surly twinkle. An eyewitness account of deranged times starring Rod Stewart, John Lennon, Queen, the Queen, 
and one of the worst mothers in showbiz history.

2 Fried & Justified
Mick Houghton

Faber
“The legendary 
Mick Houghton”, according to Julian Cope, was the 
go-to PR man for generations of offbeat talent in 
the indie age. His illuminating memoir was a glorious K-Tel collection of anecdotes concerning the finest leftfield 
talent of his age: The Undertones, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Felt, the KLF and many more.

1 This Searing Light, 
The Sun And Everything Else – Joy Division: The Oral History
Jon Savage
Faber
Bandmates were in stitches when hotel staff admonished Ian Curtis for urinating into an ashtray; the laughter continued after William Burroughs told Joy Division’s troubled singer to “fuck off” when Curtis tried to shake the author down for a free book. Savage’s first-person patchwork honoured the ur-Manchester band’s dour power, but also presented Joy Division as excitable, gawky kids, too unworldly to understand how dark things were getting until Curtis killed himself in 1980. “To have done something for Ian would have taken someone with responsibility,” says guitarist Bernard Sumner. Here are the young men, then – but as this superb account shows, the weight on their shoulders remains.

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