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Uncut’s 20 best films of 2019

Sam Richards
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Uncut’s 20 best films of 2019

20 THE SISTERS BROTHERS
Director: Jacques Audiard
The first of Joaquin Phoenix’s appearances in our poll, this adaptation of Patrick deWitt’s novel placed Phoenix and John C Reilly as sibling assassins, stalking 1850s Orgeon in pursuit of their quarry. Coming so soon after the Coens’ The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, Audiard’s film suggests a welcome renaissance in picaresque, revisionist westerns.

19 MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
Director: Edward Norton
A labour of love for 
the director, who also stars, this labyrinthine adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s novel explores corruption and murder in 1950s New York; an era of urban development, institutionalised racism and hot jazz. A strong supporting cast – Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Bruce Willis – add texture, while Norton, despite 
the historical setting, finds contemporary resonances.

18 BLINDED BY 
THE LIGHT
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Based on the memoir by one-time Uncut writer Sarfraz Manzoor, Chadha’s film mixed familiar coming-of-age beats – working-class dreamer seeks escape from a small town – with a more specific story 
of a British-Pakistani teenager, trying to survive the cruelties of Thatcher’s Britain in 1987. The Springsteen-endorsed soundtrack underscored the ways in which the Boss has always served as a beacon for the disenfranchised.

17 ROCKETMAN
Director: Dexter Fletcher
After the success of Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman presents a similarly full-blooded account of the spectacular rise of 
Reg Dwight from Pinner as he becomes Elton John, racing through his ’70s imperial phase and, eventually, an equally spectacular crash back to earth. Taron Egerton offers a game take on Elton, while Jamie Bell, as Bernie Taupin, provides low-key counterpart.

16 JOKER
Director: Todd Phillips
A supervillain origin story, Phillips’ take 
on the maladjusted loner Arthur Fleck (Phoenix, again) who eventually becomes Batman’s nemesis passes by on 
a cascade of Scorsese references (Taxi Driver; King Of Comedy) and 
a killer performance from the lead. The film strove to be a statement 
for our times, though was at its best when locked on to the committed intensity of Phoenix’s turn as God’s Lonely Clown.

15 US
Director: Jordan Peele
In its way, just as radical and unsettling as Get Out (Uncut’s Best Film of 2018), Peele’s follow-up pitted a family against their evil doppelgängers. What followed spliced sociopolitical satire with smart, full-blooded shudders as Peele’s protagonist Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) discovers a hidden underclass locked in a parasitic relationship with their terrestrial doubles.

14 SUNSET
Director: László Nemes
Nemes’ 2015 debut, Son Of Saul, was a bold if gruelling depiction of life in the Nazi death camps. For Sunset, the Hungarian director rewinds to an earlier era: a lavishly recreated late-imperial Budapest in 1910, as the shadow of war hangs over Europe. We follow destitute milliner Írisz Leiter (Juli Jakab), as she returns to her hometown from Trieste in an attempt to untangle family secrets. Cue ruthless anarchists, sinster shopgirls and an ostentatious procession of headwear.

13 SORRY WE 
MISSED YOU
Director: Ken Loach
At 83, Loach feels more vital than ever. His follow-up to I, Daniel Blake is yet another scathing survey of Broken Britain, this time exploring the toll of the gig economy on a hard-up Newcastle upon Tyne family. Cruelty, exploitation and economic isolation follow, while leads Kris Hitchen and Debbie Honeywood bring dignity and compassion to this heavy indictment of Britain’s gig economy.

12 HAPPY AS LAZZARO
Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Ostensibly set during the 1980s, where a rural community are tricked by an aristocrat known locally as “the Cigarette Queen” into working on her land in quasi-feudal conditions, this third film from the Italian filmmaker enjoyed an abrupt detour into magic realism and time travel. Such strange pleasures affirmed Rohrwacher as one of the most celebrated current Italian directors.

11 ATLANTIQUE
Director: Mati Diop
This debut from the French-Senegalese filmmaker tackled big contemporary issues – migrants, oppression, economic hardship – set around a construction site in Dakar. But alongside this socio-realism, Diop concocted a romance between young Senegalese lovers that morphed into a supernatural fable where drowned workers return to seek vengeance for their unpaid labour.

10 IN FABRIC
Director: Peter Strickland
As with his previous films, Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke Of Burgundy, In Fabric once again found 
the fastidious yet delightfully subversive British director invest the language of ’60s and ’70s exploitation cinema with his own exuberant ideas. In Fabric concerned a haunted dress and its disturbing effects as it passes among wearers; imagine a giallo set in a provincial House Of Fraser.

9 THE FAVOURITE
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Olivia Coleman can currently be seen playing Elizabeth II in the latest series of The Queen; here she was cast as an earlier regent, Queen Anne, in Lanthimos’ spiky period drama. Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone add further class to 
the story rich with corseted intrigue and double-crossing. Uproarious certainly – but Coleman also brought great pathos as the frail, reluctant monarch.

8 ONCE UPON A TIME 
IN HOLLYWOOD
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Set during the late 
’60s, Tarantino’s latest audacious piece of historical revisionism cast Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as marginalised movie men who 
find themselves embroiled with 
the Manson cult. Tarantino’s 
usual intensity and feverish connoisseurship of pop culture ephemera was foregrounded; but the (barely contained) subtext about the changing cultural landscape gave the film unexpected pathos.

7 KNIVES OUT
Director: Rian Johnson
After his sojourn in a galaxy far, far away, Johnson returned to Earth with this neo-noir mystery, a welcome throwback to the skill and ingenuity of his early films – Brick and Looper. This ingeniously constructed whodunnit found Daniel Craig’s detective investigating the murder of a wealthy patriarch – cue much rug pulling, dramatic mischief and narrative sleight-of-hand that both respected and revised the genre.

6 ASH IS PUREST WHITE
Director: Jia Zhangke
Over the course of 20 years, Jia has morphed from stark, political docudrama to more lavish, though equally authentic, surveys of China’s domestic upheavals. 
This, his ninth film, is set in 2001, offers both gangster swagger and social critique, where the journey of Qiao (Tao Shao) from self-sacrificial moll to avenging criminal mirrors the country’s embrace of westernised capitalism.

5 BIRDS OF PASSAGE
Director: Ciro Guerra
Played out against the striking backdrop of 
the La Guajira region 
of northern Colombia, Guerra’s vivid, distinctive crime 
drama revisited the birth of the country’s drug trade as seen 
through the eyes of an indigenous Wayúu family. Myth, culture 
and tradition became intertwined with more corrosive influences; pitting tradition against greed.

4 MONOS
Director: Alejando Landes
Pitched somewhere between Apocalypse Now and Lord Of The Flies, Landes’ film unfolded in the remote mountains of a Latin American country, where a band of child soldiers guarded an American hostage (Julianne Nicholson). Landes captured the confusion 
and chaos of the children’s anarchic life in this wild terrain, while Mica Levi’s eerie score accentuated the sense of foreboding as this fragile unit disintegrated.

3 MIDSOMMAR
Director: Ari Aster
Alongside Jordan Peele, Aster is making arthouse horror for the multiplexes, with both 2018’s Hereditary and Midsommar heavily indebted to ’60s and ’70s horror, yet given a gripping contemporary urgency. Midsommar channelled The Wicker Man – an American couple attend a mysterious festival in the Swedish countryside – but Aster artfully freighted his folk horror with notions of loss, grief 
and emotional neglect.

2 MARRIAGE STORY
Director: Noah Baumbach
Families at war have been a recurring theme of Baumbach’s since his 2006 debut, The Squid And The Whale. This latest, for Netflix (following The Meyerowitz Stories), finds Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver’s storied theatrical couple discovering that breaking up is hard to do. Their desperately sad situation was enlivened by incidental humour and Baumbach’s sharp, intelligent script – and given warmth and humanity by the leads.

1 THE IRISHMAN
Director: Martin Scorsese
For Scorsese, returning to the milieu in which he made his name, The Irishman had all the hallmarks of a greatest-hits set full of guest spots for old faces – the old gang back together for one last (?) hurrah, perhaps. A mob procedural about violence, loss and guilt, The Irishman enjoyed the decade-spanning sweep and operatic swirl of Goodfellas and Casino, brought to wintry life by a powerful cast – headed by Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel. But it has something else, too. The bitter tang of regret, a sense of spiritual ruin that came into focus as the story unfolded of Philadelphia mob hitman Frank Sheeran and his part in the disappearance of Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa in 1975.

In the context of the year in film, The Irishman reminded us of the sheer power these big beasts could still muster. Younger filmmakers like Jordan Peele and Ari Aster jostled to assert themselves, while established names like Quentin Tarantino and Rian Johnson doubled down on their core specialisms. Beyond Hollywood, meanwhile, filmmakers including Alejandro Landes, Ciro Guerra and Mati Diop told stories that bristled with contemporary urgency, while Jia Zhangke and Alice Rohrwacher used the past as a narrative strategy to comment on the present. Yet The Irishman reminded us that the director remains a world-class player – over 50 years into his career, here reflecting the passage of time, finding 
a sad, mournful tone and a weariness in this extraordinary story.

Weyes Blood: “Bob Seger meets Enya!”

Michael Bonner
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Weyes Blood: “Bob Seger meets Enya!”

As you’ll hopefully have gathered by now, Weyes Blood‘s Titanic Rising is Uncut’s Best Album Of 2019.

Here’s a Q&A I did with Natalie Mering about her album’s spectacular victory in our end of year poll, which ran in our January 2020 issue.

UNCUT: Congratulations! But were you surprised by the initial, positive response to the record?
NATALIE MERING: I was! But when I first gave it to my label, my manager and some close friends, they were so excited that I had a sense that I was sitting on something pretty good. So that, I think, prepared me a little bit.

It’s seven months since Titanic Rising came out. Has your relationship to the album changed much?
It takes me a long while not to listen to a record critically. It’s like I’m still mixing it. All I can think about are the infinite possibilities and paths we didn’t take. It takes a year or more for me to hear it as it is, without ideas or changes or regrets… for my obsessive, perfectionist mind!

Titanic Rising felt like a development from Front Row Seat – both thematically and musically. Do you see them as connected?
Yes, I do. When I came into Titanic Rising, I had one record that I had made with other people and one record I’d made completely on my own. If you like, I had Papa Bear’s porridge, I had Mama Bear’s porridge – now it was time for the porridge that Goldilocks’ chose!

There’s a sense of anxiety on this record – is that a reflection of the times?
There’s been so many paradigm shifts in my lifetime. That’s what “A Lot’s Gonna Change” is about – how I never could have perceived the kind of drastic changes that have happened over the course of my adulthood. That’s a lot to digest. I find that making music about it and trying to ease the passing and give people hope is a great way to deal with it.

What sources fed into the album – culturally and politically?
Starting with the cover, I’ve always considered the bedroom to be a strange initiation into society for a Westernised teenager. In a lot of ways, it’s inadequate; it’s an isolated capsule where you come up with your own concepts of reality based on imagination, movies you’ve seen, records you’ve heard. It’s easy to disassociate from reality. That makes a lot of real issues like climate change hard to wrap your head around – so what can you do to help? Those are the two main themes: this strange initiation into adulthood and massive, huge impersonal problems that still have a personal effect on people.

How about the musical influences?
I love the period when jazz, classical and folk music coalesced into popular song – songs like “Stardust” by Hoagy Carmichael. They have all the ingredients of a modern song but come with lush arrangements and chord changes that are full of tension. I was also a fan of the deconstructionist music that came in the ’60s and later. So it was fun to think about classic styles to talk about these modern issues. We made some funny comparisons – Bob Seger meets Enya!

What were your favourite albums of this year?
Lana’s Normal Fucking Rockwell. Angel Olsen’s All Mirrors. Tyler, The Creator’s Igor and Lizzo’s Cuz I Love You.

Talking of Lana Del Rey – tell us about performing with her and Zella Day at the Hollywood Bowl.
We became friends when I was working on Titanic Rising and she was working on Norman Fucking Rockwell. She said, “My record’s kind of nautical.” I said, “My record’s nautical, too!” We developed a camaraderie. For the Hollywood Bowl, she asked me and Zella to perform. I came home from tour the night before, we met up and rehearsed it a couple of times. The night of the show, we decided to sit and that gave us all a sense of peace so we could relax. It was special and organic.

So what’s next?
Next year, I go to Australia to tour and I’ll start on my next record. I have a couple of songs, but knowing me, there’ll be different iterations before I settle on the final version. I get a lot of inspiration randomly, so there’s lots of voice memos on the phone. It takes me until I get home, and I can cut myself off, before I can piece it all together. At the moment it’s a treasure hunt on the road – noodling at a soundcheck and finding a chord sequence that

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Uncut’s 50 best new albums of 2019

Sam Richards
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Uncut’s 50 best new albums of 2019

50 SHANA CLEVELAND
Night Of The Worm Moon
HARDLY ART
Its title inspired by Sun Ra’s The Night Of The Purple Moon, the second solo LP from the La Luz singer and guitarist moulded the interstellar jazz auteur’s cosmic bent to her own fingerpicked acoustic guitar. As wonky chord sequences echoed Syd Barrett’s solo work, and pedal steel and synths provided an eerie, psychedelic air, Cleveland sang of grief, dreams and nameless terrors in the Californian darkness.

49 STEPHEN MALKMUS
Groove Denied
DOMINO
While last year’s Sparkle Hard was Malkmus’s most accessible effort to date, here the songwriter explored his more outré interests with this basement electronic album. Despite a troubled gestation, Groove Denied turned out to be a laidback triumph: its laptop production was hazily vintage, reminiscent of early Cabaret Voltaire and Human League, while its inspired tracklisting gradually took the listener from machine-tooled abstraction to more traditional, guitar-based songs.

48 LIZZO
Cuz I Love You
NICE LIFE/ATLANTIC
2019 found Minneapolis-based singer/rapper Melissa Viviane Jefferson propelling her whipsmart rhymes, bodypositive message and occasional flute solos into the mainstream, with third album Cuz I Love You reaching the Billboard Top 5. A savvy, boisterous antidote to moody rap nihilism, the album placed Lizzo firmly in the lineage of Outkast and Missy Elliott, with the latter turning up to anoint her successor on the irresistible “Tempo”.

47 NÉRIJA
Blume
DOMINO
The debut album by this Domino-signed ‘supergroup’ exemplified why the new wave of British jazz has been such a breath of fresh air. Despite featuring a number of the scene’s major players – saxophonists Nubya Garcia and Cassie Kinoshi, trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey, trombonist Rosie Turton and more – it never felt like anyone was queuing up for a solo, instead striving to fashion a supremely harmonious blend of ’70s astral jazz and contemporary global flavours.

46 LAMBCHOP
This (is what I wanted to tell you)
CITY SLANG
Under Kurt Wagner’s tutelage, Lambchop are an object lesson in how a band can evolve gracefully. The work begun on 2016’s FLOTUS – exploring the possibilities of electronica – was sustained on the immersive, thought-provoking This (is what I wanted to tell you), which navigated a path through the organic and the electronically adjusted, aided by sometime Bon Iver drummer Matt McCaughan, Calexico trumpeter Jacob Valenzuela and Nashville veteran Charlie McCoy.

45 SLEAFORD MODS
Eton Alive
EXTREME EATING
“It’s getting shitter!” Sleaford Mods – a raw and uncompromising duo – remain a difficult band for horrible times. Unsubtle but penetrating observers of the UK, Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn here presented a bleak, if occasionally tuneful, world informed by our toxic domestic politics, without ever actually being sucked into the mire. Check the promo clips of the singer putting the bins out and walking disdainfully around the neighbourhood of Eton College itself.

44 ROBERT FORSTER
Inferno
TAPETE
When Robert Forster announced the release of a new Go-Betweens boxset last month, he did so safe in the knowledge that his latest album stood shoulder to shoulder with the work of his celebrated former band. Inferno brought his customary wit and elegance to bear on a set of wonderfully pithy songs about ageing, family, climate change and the artist’s place in the world.

43 WH LUNG
Incidental Music
MELODIC
James Murphy has taken a lot from Manchester’s musical heritage, but WH Lung reversed the flow with their strong debut album. With the group originally intended as a studio-only outfit, Joseph E, Tom S and Tom P paid painstaking attention to the eight songs on Incidental Music, carving their sparkling electronic rock with one eye on New Order and the other on Berlin-era Bowie.

42 FAT WHITE FAMILY
Serf’s Up!
DOMINO
A remarkable turnaround for Britain’s scuzziest band, who’d previously lost their way attempting to live up to their dissolute reputation. But relocating to Sheffield, they mainlined some of that city’s synthpop sleaze, adding strings and sax to produce a compelling album of dank disco cabaret, with deliciously murky lyrics to match.

41 BILLIE EILISH
When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?
DARKROOM/INTERSCOPE
The year’s pop phenomenon, courtesy of “Bad Guy” – a record of such creepy delivery and intention it threatened to darken the skies at a radiant Glastonbury – Eilish had no problem extending her vision to a full album. Here, production by her brother Fineas O’Connell gave off a padded-cell ambience, which well suited songs falling somewhere between ’90s R&B, Dr Dre and Nine Inch Nails.

40 VAMPIRE WEEKEND
Father Of The Bride
COLUMBIA
Once, they tapped out bookish Afroindie from the confines of a Columbia University dorm room. But Vampire Weekend’s fourth album was a genuinely cosmopolitan effort. Six years in the making, it gleefully mashed up all manner of musical styles – the glorious “Harmony Hall” alone veered from ’70s folk rock to ’90s gospel house, via Gilbert & Sullivan – but at the heart of it all, singer Ezra Koenig remained charmingly vulnerable.

39 BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY
I Made A Place
DOMINO
Will Oldham has been busy over the last decade, reworking his own catalogue and paying homage to his heroes. I Made A Place, however, is something else: his first collection of new, selfpenned songs since 2011’s Wolfroy Goes To Town. A continuation of his work rather than a reinvention, this is a stately, sophisticated set of country-rock songs, the likes of “This Is Far From Over” certainly a match for those of his songwriting idols.

38 75 DOLLAR BILL
I Was Real
TAK:TIL
In 2016, Rick Brown and Che Chen issued a debut – Wood/ Metal/Plastic/ Pattern – which purported to come from Brooklyn, but which seemed to have emerged from a different continent altogether. Three years on, their second, larger record expands on that initial promise. Alive with Tuareg guitar electricity and longform drone, I Was Real proposes a kosmische of the earth: capable of easeful travel across great distances, while always retaining something solid underfoot.

37 THE MURDER CAPITAL
When I Have Fears
HUMAN SEASON
While they match fellow Dubliners Fontaines DC for fire and fury, The Murder Capital processed their anger through a more angular post-punk sound on their debut album. Rhythms stutter à la Joy Division or early Cure, while vocalist James McGovern sounds, at times, like a young Ian McCulloch; “Don’t Cling To Life” and the lengthy “Green & Blue” are as epic and dramatic as the ‘Big Music’ of the early ’80s, helped along by Flood’s atmospheric production.

36 DAVE
Psychodrama
NEIGHBOURHOOD
Streatham rapper David “Dave” Omoregie may have capped a triumphant year with a starring role in Top Boy 3, but his debut album Psychodrama – the recipient of this year’s coveted Mercury Prize – was no generic gangster chronicle. Sounding preternaturally wise, he tackled racial inequality, mental illness and domestic abuse over brooding strings and needling piano, although the slinky “Location” proved he could still cover the rap bases.

35 STURGILL SIMPSON
Sound & Fury
ELEKTRA
Simpson has never been one to stand still, creatively speaking. His first album, High Top Mountain, was a traditional country effort – but since then he has moved away from heartlandcourting endeavours. Sound & Fury presented another big shift in direction for Simpson – this time with anime visuals, strutting disco-boogie, grunge and pulsing modern blues joining the party. However nuts Sound & Fury became though, Simpson’s commitment to heartfelt songcraft remained reassuringly intact.

34 FONTAINES DC
Dogrel
PARTISAN
“My childhood was small/But I’m gonna be BIG!” The opening declaration of Fontaines DC singer Grian Chatten is alive with the irrepressible momentum of the young band going places. This debut, sure enough, surges onward through post-punk styles big and small, from The Fall to REM, to Prolapse and Idlewild. Always energetic, generally cathartic, occasionally – see “Television Screens” in particular – revelatory, they alight on moments of thundering lyricism quite their own.

33 THE RACONTEURS
Help Us Stranger
THIRD MAN
Back after an 11-year hiatus, Jack White and his co-conspirators picked up where they left off with Consolers Of The Lonely. That’s to say, anyone fearing the kind of indulgences White brought to last year’s solo album Boarding House Reach will have enjoyed the more conventional rock leanings of Help Us Stranger. The vibe was uncluttered and exuberant – including a cover of Donovan’s “Hey Guy (Dig The Slowness)” – while the attendant tour was among the year’s live highlights.

32 KIM GORDON
No Home Record
MATADOR
After the serious noise of her Body/ Head project, we were probably unprepared for the vibrancy and colour (even jokes) of No Home Record. Working with art-pop producer Justin Raisen, Gordon framed her Mark E Smithlike observations (see for details especially: “Air B&B”) within compositions which vaguely alluded to her past as the first lady of US noise, while never leaning on it to help her determine her future.

31 MICHAEL KIWANUKA
Kiwanuka
POLYDOR
This expansive third album from the British-Ugandan singer fulfilled the early promise of his previous efforts. Full of beguiling melodies, affecting lyrics, sharp playing, rich arrangements and sympathetic production, Kiwanuka confidently delivered multiple pleasures. Strings wash, choirs purr, and the balance of analogue and electronic – overseen by Kiwanuka, Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton and hip-hop multiinstrumentalist Inflo – was expertly maintained. Kiwanuka’s references – Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye – are given psychedelic goosing, as on first single “You Ain’t The Problem”.

30 JESSICA PRATT
Quiet Signs
CITY SLANG
The epithet ‘LA-based singersongwriter’ tends to conjure up notions of sun-kissed escapism, but Jessica Pratt’s enchanting third album was more Muswell Hill than Laurel Canyon. Her plucked guitar and strange, waiflike voice was gilded with occasional flute, piano and creaky synths that made it all sound like a tape reel discovered in someone’s loft, untouched since 1967 – or perhaps even 1667.

29 TRASH KIT
Horizon
UPSET THE RHYTHM
Post-punk’s not dead! After a fiveyear rest to pursue other projects – among them the very good Shopping and Bas Jan – Rachel Aggs, Gill Partington and Rachel Horwood reconvened for this fine third album. For sure the trio fluently speak the language of 1980: spare production, articulation of every note, songs called things like “Dislocate”. More impressive, though, is how Aggs’ guitar flourishes and the sparing use of sax and piano make it all more than the sum of its parts.

28 JENNY HVAL
The Practice Of Love
SACRED BONES
Following on from her Blood Bitch album, a high-concept “investigation of blood”, from menstruation to vampire movies, the seventh album by Norwegian artist Hval turned love into a kind of visitor attraction. A work of immersive, textured synthesiser and billowing trance, The Practice Of Love was paced like a DJ set, incorporating stunning drops in tempo – see the spokenword contributions of Vivian Wang on the title track – and thoughtfully ecstatic highs.

27 THE NATIONAL
I Am Easy To Find
4AD
Something of a surprise, coming hot on the heels of 2017’s Sleep Well Beast, the band’s eighth studio album was inspired by a collaboration with filmmaker Mike Mills. As a consequence, I Am Easy To Find saw the band expand to include a cast of female vocalists (including former Bowie bassist Gail Ann Dorsey) guiding and redirecting the songs away from Matt Berninger. It paid off: I Am Easy To Find continued The National’s uninterrupted creative trajectory.

26 ANGEL OLSEN
All Mirrors
JAGJAGUWAR
Though this Asheville-based singer-songwriter has always reinvented her sound, moving from earthy folk to raw post-punk to lusher pastures, her fourth record proved to be her most extreme transition yet. Here, industrial synths and scything avant-garde string arrangements collided to bring a dramatic, gothic grandeur to Olsen’s ruminations on lost love and emotional isolation. Above the turbulent arrangements, her voice provided a mighty and quivering constant.

25 NEIL YOUNG WITH CRAZY HORSE
Colorado
REPRISE
A timely reunion – marking the 50th anniversary of Young’s first record with Crazy Horse – Colorado also found Nils Lofgren, newly promoted to full-time member, adding appropriate musical lift and heft to proceedings. There were customarily heroic jams like “Milky Way” – but also a vein of melancholia, as best heard on “Olden Days”, that helped underscore the losses Young experienced during a difficult 2019, including his former wife Pegi and long-serving manager Elliot Roberts.

24 THE SPECIALS
Encore
UMC/ISLAND
The band’s first new material since they reformed 10 years ago, Encore is at its best when it not only honours The Specials’ past – a mournful trombone solo or a dive into the ska vaults – but pushes in new directions, too. A cover of the Equals’ “Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys”, for instance, offers imposing taut funk. Elsewhere, Terry Hall’s soul-bearing reports of his struggles with mental health add poignancy, while the socio-political barbs reinforce their role as vital cultural commentators.

23 ALDOUS HARDING
Designer
4AD
Three albums in and New Zealander Hannah “Aldous” Harding remains impressively tricky to pin down. Recorded with utilitarian precision in Bristol and Wales, aided by John Parrish and Huw “H Hawkline” Evans, Designer’s brisk, catchy folk-pop initially felt like a startling contrast to the heavy drama of previous album Party – although a sense of unease seeped through into the album’s crespuscular second half.

22 LEONARD COHEN
Thanks For The Dance
COLUMBIA
You want it even darker? How about this from beyond the grave – work put together sensitively by Cohen’s son Adam? Compiled from late-doors studio recordings and then complemented by performances by the likes of Beck, Feist and Cohen’s sometime vocal partner Jennifer Warnes, the tone ranges from deep wisdom and finality (“The Goal”) to the wryly seductive (“Her nipples rose like bread,” Len whispers on “The Night Of Santiago”). A slim but essential volume.

21 RHIANNON GIDDENS feat FRANCESCO TURRISI
There Is No Other
NONESUCH
Of the projects Giddens has been involved in since 2017’s Freedom Highway, There Is No Other might just be the finest. A collaboration with Italian multiinstrumentalist Turrisi, it addressed the ‘other’ of the title through its examination of Islamic influences on Western music: thus the title track mixed banjo with Middle Eastern percussion, Giddens’ impassioned vocals meshed with lute on “Ten Thousand Voices”, and a take on Ola Belle Reed’s “Gonna Write Me A Letter” highlighted the blues’ explicit links to Africa.

20 BRITTANY HOWARD
Jaime
COLUMBIA
This striking solo debut from the Alabama Shakes singer swapped stirring Southern soul for something more intimate and experimental. Marshalling a small group of skilled players, including jazz pianist Robert Glasper, she explored Prince-style purple funk, neo-soul and even electropop as a backdrop for moving ruminations on race and relationships.

19 PETER PERRETT
Humanworld
DOMINO
Perrett’s sudden, miraculous reappearance back in 2017 with his first solo album proper, How The West Was Won, was one of the more surprising returns of recent times. Fortuitously, Humanworld was every bit as good as, and at points even better than, its predecessor. Made with his sons Jamie and Peter Jr joining him on guitar and bass, Humanworld foregrounded Perrett’s gifts for compressing all the drama of life’s ups and downs into simple, unpretentious pop.

18 JENNY LEWIS
On The Line
CAPITOL
Lewis’s fourth solo album evoked the expensive sounds of prime Fleetwood Mac, and featured some of the finest players of that hallowed era, from Ringo Starr and Jim Keltner to Benmont Tench and Don Was. On The Line was resolutely not a period piece, however, its sumptuous production only serving to better highlight the bleeding edge of Lewis’s lovelorn ballads, from the wayward “Taffy” to the deliciously lugubrious “Hollywood Lawn”.

17 MODERN NATURE
How To Live
BELLA UNION
A move from inner London to the fringes of Epping Forest encouraged Jack Cooper to abandon Velvets wannabes Ultimate Painting and focus on this inspired urban-rural hybrid, driven by tight motorik rhythms but rich with the cadences of British folk rock. Effusive sax breaks from Sunwatchers’ Jeff Tobias sealed the deal.

16 SHARON VAN ETTEN
Remind Me Tomorrow
JAGJAGUWAR
It’s been a busy time of late for the New Jersey native – motherhood, acting and a counselling degree – while further changes were in evidence on this, her fifth studio album, which found Van Etten edge away from guitar towards piano and vintage synths. The results were often gloriously catchy – the Springsteen-esque “Seventeen” – though elsewhere songs like “Jupiter 4” evoked the pulsing drones of Suicide and the dissonant hiss of “Memorial Day” shared the corrosive atmospherics of Low’s Double Negative.

15 BON IVER
i,i
JAGJAGUWAR
His Wisconsin wood cabin long since overgrown, Justin Vernon’s fourth Bon Iver album was an experiment in musical crowdsourcing, finding starring roles for everyone from Bruce Hornsby to former Spank Rock rapper Naeem Juwan. Continuing the revelatory ‘exploded view’ songwriting approach of 2016’s 22, A Million, but with real musicians and singers taking the place of samples and effects, it found thrilling new ways to convey moments of soaring, communal joy.

14 RICHARD DAWSON
2020
WEIRD WORLD
For his follow-up to Peasant, Newcastle’s folk auteur turned his keen eye on 21st-century life, singing of racism, soul-sucking jobs, homelessness and mental illness: “It’s lonely up here in Middle England,” he laments on “Jogging”. To match the coarse subject matter, Dawson swapped the harps and strings of Peasant for electric guitar, drums and synths; “Black Triangle”, then, recounts the desperation of a UFO obsessive over wailing metal, while the gruelling “Fulfillment Centre” dissects damaging consumerism over Tuareg rhythms.

13 OH SEES
Face Stabber
CASTLE FACE
As in life, as on record. Manic intensity is the John Dwyer way, his energies for keeping Oh Sees on an unforgiving schedule of writing, playing and recording mirrored in the brisk-tempo garage motorik that is the stuff of Face Stabber. Always different, always the same, here the band occupy some reassuringly familiar space to last year’s Smote Reverser: their thundering double drummers are the propulsion for their turbulent passage into guitar orbit.

12 JULIA JACKLIN
Crushing
POLYVINYL
The slacker thrills of Don’t Let The Kids Win, Jacklin’s 2016 debut, did little to suggest the depths of raw emotion that the Sydney-raised songwriter would plumb for its powerful follow-up. Jacklin’s extraordinary voice, wracked lyrics and the slow, sparse electric pulse suggested early Cat Power or Low, with “Head Alone” a demand for space, both emotionally and physically, and the closing “Comfort” a cautious resurfacing after romantic and touring troubles: “I’ll be OK/I’ll be alright…”

11 CATE LE BON
Reward
MEXICAN SUMMER
For her fifth solo LP, Carmarthenshire’s Cate Le Bon left behind the acidic guitars and tumbling krautrock of 2016’s Crab Day for a softer bed of pianos, marimbas, saxophones and synths. The result, mostly written in isolation in the Lake District while Le Bon was studying furniture-making, was a slow-burning triumph, a grower that took many listens to reveal its enigmatic, intoxicating centre.

10 WILCO
Ode To Joy
dBpm
Throughout their storied 25-year career, Wilco have consistently questioned themselves and their creative purpose. So Ode To Joy – their 11th studio album – found Jeff Tweedy and his co-conspirators once again recalibrating their sound and direction. Ode To Joy stripped everything back to its key components, favouring a hushed, spacious palette on which Tweedy could transmit his songs about mortality, love, the state of the world and more. Also: their Wilcovered CD for Uncut was pretty amazing, we humbly thought.

9 BIG THIEF
UFOF
4AD
The quartet’s second album of the year, Two Hands, also picked up some appreciation from our writers, but their superb first LP of 2019 made the biggest impact. Adrianne Lenker’s songs, from the weightless “Cattails” to the ominous “Jenny”, were never less than stunning, but they were elevated by the sensitive, sinuous arrangements: one moment Big Thief could sound as folky and rootsy as a campfire singalong, the next as expansive and airy as the cosmos high above.

8 BILL CALLAHAN
Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest
DRAG CITY
After Dream River’s spacious meditations on the natural world, six years later we find Bill Callahan keeping things within four walls. Bliss would be overstating it – Callahan is too nuanced a writer for that – but this is a record far more domestic than watery. Now a husband and father, here Callahan admits us further than ever before into his private world. The sound is as intimate as the sentiment, even if the record occasionally hints at strange currents beneath the tranquil surface.

7 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Western Stars
COLUMBIA
A change of pace from the sturm und drang of the E Street Band, the longdelayed Western Stars found Springsteen at his most autumnal and meditative. The songs were bleak narratives and lingering pen-portraits of fading actors, injured stuntmen and jaded lovers ruminating on their unhappy lot. The lush orchestrations and ambitious, sophisticated arrangements felt closer to ’60s West Coast folk-pop than Springsteen’s usual beat. As a consequence, Western Stars was an unexpected and welcome stylistic detour.

6 JOAN SHELLEY
Like The River Loves The Sea
NO QUARTER
The Kentucky singer and guitarist has quietly proved herself to be one of the finest songwriters of recent years, and her sublime fifth album was naturally entrancing. Recorded in Iceland with her adept collaborators Nathan Salsburg and James Elkington, with a little help from Will Oldham and a few local musicians, these 12 acoustic tracks are gossamer-fine, sometimes profound and utterly timeless.

5 LANA DEL REY
Norman Fucking Rockwell
INTERSCOPE
A thematically rich record – crazy love during end times – Norman Fucking Rockwell positioned the singer-songwriter somewhere between Eve Babitz and Carole King. Over baroque piano ballads and dazzling folk, the album’s narrators found themselves adrift in Del Rey’s deeply seductive vision of California, populated by ne’er-do-wells and fly-by-nights. References to Laurel Canyon, Dennis Wilson and CSN cast a retro haze; but Norman Fucking Rockwell is very much Del Rey’s own vision. Witness “Venice Bitch”, the nine-minute epic that crowned this elegant and complex album.

4 THE COMET IS COMING
Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery
IMPULSE!
Having put a rocket up the jazz scene with last year’s incendiary, politically charged Sons Of Kemet album Your Queen Is A Reptile, Shabaka Hutchings channelled that fervour into the return of his cosmic synth’n’sax outfit, The Comet Is Coming. As with the best spiritual jazz records, Trust In The Lifeforce… was equally blissful and raging, both out-there and in-here – the most intoxicating collision of beats, jazz and apocalyptic visions since DJ Shadow discovered David Axelrod.

3 PURPLE MOUNTAINS
Purple Mountains
DRAG CITY
“I spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion,” revealed David Berman in the opening number of what was tragically to prove Purple Mountains’ first and last album. “Day to day, I’m neck and neck with giving in.” We know now that oblivion won. But Berman’s generous final act was to give hope to others by excavating the darkest recesses of his psyche with such eloquence and humour, all set to his unique brand of endearingly louche country-rock.

2 NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
Ghosteen
GHOSTEEN LTD
If Skeleton Tree loosened the moorings, then Ghosteen found Cave boldly cutting the rope, severing all ties with the glowering caricature of old. Instead, this was an epic, dreamlike odyssey through grief and towards hope, accompanied by migrating spirits and galleon ships, sick babies and Jesus freaks, all engulfed in whirls of analogue synths and spectral, multi-tracked voices. As he sang, “It’s a long way to find peace of mind” – but it was a journey that enriched us all.

1 WEYES BLOOD
Titanic Rising
SUB POP
Last year, our Albums Of The Year poll found seasoned veterans like Low and Yo La Tengo discovering new sonic methods to convey their apprehension and sense of displacement during these complex times. Similarly, our 2019 survey shows how many of our other core artists have also grappled with ways to articulate their responses to an increasingly tumultuous world. For Wilco, Lambchop, The Specials and Brittany Howard, for example, their albums during 2019 mixed both personal and political themes with uplifting results.

The same is true, too, of Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering – whose fourth album Titanic Rising, released in April, confronted the problems facing us all head on. Her 2016 LP, A Front Row Seat To Earth, had begun to consider our planet’s fate; but the themes that recur in Titanic Rising proved to be weighty: climate emergency, the decline of natural resources and the struggle to find emotional connection in an increasingly technological world. For the front cover of Titanic Rising, Mering submerged an entire bedroom, complete with teddy bear and laptop. “Show me where it hurts,” she whispered at the end of opener “A Lot’s Gonna Change”; you could be forgiven for thinking she was addressing Earth itself.

Weyes Blood ushered in 2019 with “Andromeda” – a swooning update of early-’70s West Coast pop, filled with sci-fi wonderment, where Mering transformed her earthy quest for love into a celestial concern. The rest of Titanic Rising, meanwhile, is an exercise in baroque post-modernism, full of lavishly orchestrated and structured compositions. Titanic Rising also showcases Mering’s remarkable alto – part Judy Sill, part Nico – that lies between folk and torch singing. There is a dignity and otherness at work here: her voice sweeps robustly over swelling crescendo of “Something To Believe”, while “A Lot’s Gonna Change” finds her delivery softer and more intimate. By the end of the year, Mering was sharing the stage of the Hollywood Bowl with Lana Del Rey and Zella Day, singing three-part harmonies on a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “For Free”. An indication, if you need one, of Mering’s breakthrough with this remarkable, transcendent album.

Grace Slick: “I enjoyed every trip I had!”

Sam Richards
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Grace Slick: “I enjoyed every trip I had!”

The latest issue of Uncut – in UK shops now and available to order online by clicking here – features a rare and candid interview with San Francisco’s psychedelic siren Grace Slick, taking in Jefferson Airplane’s heyday, the Starship’s downfall, Janis, Jim and plenty more besides.

Talking to Uncut’s Jaan Uhelszki, Slick ponders the fact the she’s now outlived most of her contemporaries from the underground rock scene. “Sometimes I wonder why, especially since my idea of heaven was to get really drunk and drive a car real fast,” she says. “I took lots of drugs. I’ve never eaten right. I’ve never exercised 
a day in my life. My idea of exercise was fucking. But 
I don’t do that any more, so I don’t do any exercise. I’ve got about four deadly diseases but I’m still walking around. My doctor looked at me the other day and he said, ‘God, you’re a tough broad.'”

Do you think some of those losses – Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Cass Elliot, Brian Jones – could have been avoided? “Well, nobody back then wanted to die. Back in the ’60s, you didn’t go to rehab. That was for people who broke their legs skiing. We didn’t even consider going. The trouble was, there was such a radical shift from the ’50s to the ’60s, we hadn’t figured out how to live in this new world. If you were in a rock’n’ roll band in the ’60s, the only thing you couldn’t do was kill people. Everything else was acceptable. You’re being paid to travel around the world and people admire you because you’re a rock’n’roll star. You’re young, you’re relatively healthy. Trust me, you’re not trying to kill yourself – you’re just having fun. I don’t remember anyone being miserable. Sure, Janis had issues, but nobody was suicidal. You could screw anybody and take any drugs you wanted. The only downside was we didn’t measure the drugs we took. 
A lot of us died because we weren’t good with the chemistry. When Janis died, Marty [Balin] stopped using drugs. I’m stupid, I always thought when these people died, it wasn’t going to be me. But that turned out to be true.

“Fortunately, I enjoyed every trip I had. It could’ve gone the other way, because sometimes it does. I would not take acid now… At the time I took acid I had a job, my parents were healthy, everything was fine. 
I didn’t flip out. But it can get gnarly. So it is a blessing if you’re able to take it in the right framework.”

Talking of Janis Joplin, Slick says: “People who write books really get Janis wrong. The woman I knew would cackle, she’d laugh so hard, and was fun to be with. Very vocal, very outspoken, very funny. Texas women tend to be like that. They called us fire and ice. I was the ice and she was the fire. But I think she is more of a symbol of those times than I. She had more style. My voice is OK, but she really pushed the envelope.”

You can read much from Grace Slick in the latest issue of Uncut, in shops now!

Leonard Cohen – Thanks For The Dance

Richard Williams
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Leonard Cohen – Thanks For The Dance

Unlike most people, or so it seemed from the film’s reviews, I emerged from a cinema showing Nick Broomfield’s Marianne & Leonard: Words Of Love earlier this year feeling rather less fond of Leonard Cohen than when I’d gone in. It was hard to ignore the fate of Marianne Ihlen’s son by a first husband, the novelist Axel Jensen, who had left her by the time she met Cohen on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. Axel Jr, still just a baby when their affair began, was promptly sent back to Norway to be looked after by his grandmother. Later she brought him back to the community of artists on Hydra, and then took him with her when she pursued the Canadian poet to New York even as their relationship petered out towards the end of the decade. Axel Jr has spent much of his life as collateral damage, in and out of institutions, coping with psychiatric problems. Apparently Cohen often sent Marianne money to help them keep going until she met her second husband, an oil-rig engineer. As someone in the film says about children raised on Hydra, often it did not turn out well for them.

So the unexpected arrival of a new album under the name of Cohen, who died in November 2016 aged 82, might help to dispel the fumes lingering from Broomfield’s portrait of elegant but heedless self-indulgence. It restores the memory of an artist who, throughout his long career, made music that reconciled the gratified desires of the flesh with the austerity 
of a spiritual odyssey.

Cohen’s death occurred a couple of weeks after the release of his 14th studio album, You Want It Darker, which promptly flew up the charts around the world. Produced with scrupulous intelligence and the lightest of touches by his son Adam, it offered a 
fitting last word. On the epic title track, amid the sounds of funeral rites, he seemed to be saying goodbye to the world.

Thanks For The Dance is a postscript, pieced together by Adam Cohen from poems and lyrics recorded by his father at his home in Los Angeles and left behind after their work on You Want It Darker was done. Two tracks – “The Goal” and “Listen To The Hummingbird” – are based on poems initially recorded without music; the remaining seven were taped with skeletal accompaniment.

On hardly any of the nine tracks, amounting to just under half an hour of playing time, does Cohen actually sing. Exceptions are the title track, which just about manages to suggest a woozy melody, and the chorus of “Happens To The Heart”. Practically everything else is recited in that gently ruminative baritone, the voice of a man who’s seen too much but can’t stop looking.

As it turns out, this is absolutely fine. There may be nothing here that a Judy Collins would be racing to cover, no “So Long, Marianne” or “Bird On A Wire”, never mind a potential X Factor favourite like “Hallelujah”. But it reminds us that Cohen started life as a poet, winning prizes during his time as a student at McGill University, where he graduated in 1955, and publishing his first collection, Let Us Compare Mythologies, the following year. If this is also how he chose to finish, at least nobody read his poems as well as he did.

To flesh out the settings for these words, Adam Cohen called on a large company of collaborators, including some who had worked with his father, such as the virtuoso Spanish guitarist and laúd player Javier Más; the singers Jennifer Warnes and Sharon Robinson; Patrick Leonard, who created much of the music for Popular Problems, released in 2014; and Michael Chaves, who mixed and played on You Want It Darker. The tracks were worked on in Los Angeles, Montreal and Berlin, enabling members of André de Ridder’s s t a r g a z e orchestra and the Shaar Hashomayim male-voice choir to give their contributions. If this makes it seem like a large-scale project, that is not how the result sounds. Thanks For The Dance has the intimacy that characterised Songs Of Leonard Cohen and Songs From A Room half a century ago, only rarely making the listener conscious of the resources at Adam Cohen’s command.

“Happens To The Heart” is the opening track, the album’s longest and most fully realised piece, with one strong deadpan verse following another: “I was always working steady/But I never called it art/It was just some old convention/Like the horse before the cart/I had no trouble betting/On the Flood against the Ark/You see I knew about the ending/What happens to the heart.” Más weaves in and out, his nimble picking on the laúd (a lute-like instrument) making him sound like a Moorish Mark Knopfler, while Daniel Lanois selects precisely the right minimalist piano notes to underscore the song’s deliberate cadence. When the sound swells, it still seems weightless.

“It’s Torn” uses a subdued Morricone-like guitar twang for a lyric of unsettling sensuality: “You kick off your sandals and shake off your hair/It’s torn where you’re dancing, it’s torn everywhere/…It’s torn where there’s beauty, it’s torn where there’s death/It’s torn where there’s mercy but torn somewhat less/It’s torn in the highest from kingdom to crown/The messages fly but the network is down.” Even more powerful is “Puppets”, which opens with an evocation of fascism – “Germans puppets burned the Jews/Jewish puppets did not choose” – before bringing the picture closer to home and up to date: “Puppet presidents command/Puppet troops to burn the land…”

This is doggerel, but it packs a punch, particularly when counterpointed by a sombre choral arrangement and the sound of a distant tolling. “The Hills”, co-produced with Adam Cohen by Patrick Watson, is the most lavish piece, building at a stately pace to a dramatic climax, a little reminiscent of a vintage Roy Orbison 45. “The Nights Of Santiago” gets right down to business, with flamenco guitar and handclapping: “Behind a fine embroidery/Her nipples rose like bread/Then I took off my necktie/And she took off her dress/My belt and pistol set aside/We tore away the rest.” When Lennie says that nipples rise like bread, we must take his word for it.

Sometimes the ageing poet is so gloomy that you just have to laugh, in the fairly certain knowledge that he would have been chuckling along with you. “I sit in my chair, I look at the street/The neighbour returns my smile of defeat,” he says in “The Goal”, a 72-second haiku which amounts to a final reckoning but ends on a note of twisted optimism: “No-one to follow/And nothing to teach/Except that the goal/Falls short of the reach.” And the short overall playing time is immaterial: brevity can be the soul of poetry, too. There is no lack of substance here, brought to us with care by a devoted son.

Lana Del Rey announces spoken word album

Sam Richards
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Lana Del Rey announces spoken word album

Lana Del Rey has announced that, as a result of a delay to her upcoming poetry book Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, she’ll released a new spoken word album on January 4.

In an Instagram video, she describes the as-yet-untitled album as “kind of freestyle poetry… It’s not particularly polished, it’s a bit more gritty.”

The album will cost “around a dollar, because thoughts are meant to be shared and are priceless in some way.” Half of the proceeds will go to benefit Native American organisations.

“In doing my own work in connecting to my own family lineage I was encouraged to also try to connect to the country’s lineage,” says Del Rey. “This was a while ago, and it kind of informed the next album that I’d been working on. And I just really wanted to sort of pay homage to the country that I love so much by doing my own reparation, I guess I would say, my own reparative act. And so I know it’s a bit of an unusual choice and I have no reasoning for it other than it just feels right to me. And so for as long as my album, my spoken word album is distributed, half of it will be going to Native American organisations across America.”

Hear Karen Dalton’s version of Billie Holiday’s “God Bless The Child”

Sam Richards
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Hear Karen Dalton’s version of Billie Holiday’s “God Bless The Child”

A new 3xLP + 3xCD box set, The Karen Dalton Archives, will be released in March 2020 on Megaphone.

It features three hours of the folk singer’s recordings from the early 1960s, including the 1962 live album Cotton Eyed Joe and the 1963 home-recorded album Green Rocky Road for the first time on vinyl.

The package also includes a 56-page 12” book featuring the testimonies of friends and reproductions of Dalton’s own archives of music, photos and words.

Hear Karen Dalton’s version of Billie Holiday’s “God Bless The Child” below:

Beck – Hyperspace

Jason Anderson
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Beck – Hyperspace

Hyperspace is the 13th studio album by a man soon to enter his fourth decade as a recording artist and his sixth as a human being on this planet. Given those formidable numbers, Beck may understandably be a little weary of the business of being Beck. Perhaps that’s why he assigned some of the burden to Tessa Thompson in the video for “Uneventful Days”, which features the Thor and Westworld actress on the streets of LA sporting the same ensemble of leather jacket, cowboy hat and boombox that added up to Beck’s iconic look in “Devil’s Haircut” nearly a quarter-century ago.

While the genuine article does appear elsewhere in the Dev Hynes-directed clip singing plaintively in dark sunglasses, having a celebrity friend play an earlier self seems entirely on-brand for the artist who introduced the pleasures of postmodern pastiche to the largely earnest era of grunge and has since spent his career trading in one identity for the next. After hopscotching from anti-folkie to slacker MC to Prince wannabe to voyager into the slipstreams of psychedelia and Tropicália and back again, surely there comes a time to take yourself out of the picture entirely.

Yet as so often has been the case, any overt display of ironic detachment is more likely a red herring, a means of obscuring the more discomfiting feelings of pain and confusion that fill so much of Beck’s songwriting. For all of its shimmer and shine as a piece of high-gloss contemporary pop, “Uneventful Days” depicts an experience of abandonment and isolation, of “living in that dark, waiting for the light”. Amid the lamentation there are also some words for anyone who believes they know Beck’s next move: “You may know my name/You don’t know my mind”. And just as he does on all of his best albums, Beck finds fresh ways throughout Hyperspace to confound the question of who exactly he ought to be, all while making music that feels instantly familiar and sneakily unpredictable.

If there’s a new identity that takes precedence here, it’s the sad-eyed electro-soul softie. That too may surprise anyone who expected Beck’s teaming with Pharrell Williams for seven of Hyperspace’s 11 tracks – a collaboration that he’s pursued for over a decade – to yield an equally exuberant successor to 2017’s Colors. Of course, there are traces of the melodic and rhythmic sensibility of Williams’ hits for the likes of Britney Spears, Daft Punk and Rihanna, plus the big-hatted one’s still-ubiquitous “Happy”. Hyperspace’s most aggressive and Odelay-like track, “Saw Lightning”, combines some hectic slide-guitar and harmonica playing with the clipped, flat drum sound that’s been a trademark of Williams’ productions with Neptunes partner Chad Hugo since early masterstrokes like Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass”.

Yet the biggest influence Williams may have had is to curb his client’s maximalist tendencies and encourage greater clarity of purpose and feeling. So for all the unabashedly synthetic trappings of the title track and “Dark Places”, the songs boast a quality of open-hearted sincerity, something that had been previously more prevalent in straighter, more strictly singer-songwriter-oriented outings than the more experimental (and usually more interesting) regions of his back catalogue, which is where Hyperspace happily belongs.

The spacious feel of Williams coproductions such as the gauzy “Chemical” extends to Beck’s tracks with other collaborators, too. Co-produced by Cole MGN, “Die Waiting” is an effervescent statement of romantic devotion that rides a spidery guitar line and a rubbery rhythm. Made with producer Paul Epworth, “Star” is a spectral, spiky R&B track full of eerie burbles and squelches. On “Stratosphere”, the voices of Beck and guest Chris Martin float on clouds of washed-out keys and softly strummed guitar.

Matters are more anxious on “See Through” as Beck and longtime keyboardist and co-producer Greg Kurstin put their spin on Drake’s emo hip-hop while retaining the requisite expressions of hurt and confusion – “I feel so ugly when you see through me”, Beck murmurs. While any such references to emotional turmoil are suggestive of the recent end of Beck’s 14-year marriage to Marissa Ribisi, the new album is far more varied in tone and tenor than Sea Change, one of the 21st century’s more desolate break-up albums, or the similarly melancholy Morning Phase.

Maybe it’s because of all those airy, pillowy synth sounds – or the heavenly choir on “Everlasting Nothing”, the album’s gloriously if incongruously U2-scaled space-gospel closer – but there’s a warmth and lightness here that counters Hyperspace’s bleaker edge. It also ameliorates the sense of cool reserve that can sometimes make Beck seem less present in his own music than he ought to be. As layered and textured as songs like “Chemical” and “Stratosphere” may be, Hyperspace never feels over-calculated or over-dressed. Instead, it’s the work of an artist who sounds fully re-engaged. As such, it’s a useful reminder of how new partnerships can bring out one’s best self; no small thing for someone who’s got so many selves to choose from.

Hear Sparks’ new seasonal protest song

Sam Richards
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Hear Sparks’ new seasonal protest song

Sparks have today released a new song. Befitting the time of year, it features a children’s choir and a plaintive message of hope, expressed in Sparks’ own, inimitable way.

Listen to “Please Don’t Fuck Up My World” below:

Sparks are poised for a busy 2020. A new studio album is slated for release – expect “exciting, uncompromising pop” – with tourdates to be announced in the new year.

This will coincide with a new documentary about the band by Shaun Of The Dead and Baby Driver director Edgar Wright, who has been filming them since May 2018. Sparks have also written the story and songs for the upcoming musical film Annette, directed by Leos Carax and starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard.

Jimi Hendrix – Songs For Groovy Children: 
The Fillmore East Concerts

Peter Watts
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Jimi Hendrix – Songs For Groovy Children: 
The Fillmore East Concerts

Given the importance of live shows to the Jimi Hendrix story, it seems fitting that he should have spent the last night of the 1960s on stage blowing a hole through the Fillmore East, before returning the next day to finish the job. Hendrix’s entire two-day, four-show stint over New Year at the Fillmore with the Band Of Gypsys was recorded by Wally Heider and now, for the first time, all four shows are in one place. Co-produced by Eddie Kramer, the set comes on CD and vinyl with unseen photos and liner notes by Nelson George and Billy Cox.

Six tracks from Fillmore East first appeared on Band Of Gypsys – the last album released in Hendrix’s lifetime – while three more appeared on ’80s follow-up Band Of Gypsys 2. The 1999 Live At The Fillmore East had 16 more in haphazard order. There were three on the West Coast Seattle Boy anthology, while New Year’s Eve’s entire first set came out in 2016 as Machine Gun: The Fillmore East First Show. Despite this piecemeal history, this box debuts eight previously unreleased tracks. Another three are appearing on CD/LP for the first time and several others can be heard for the first time in their unedited form. Most importantly, the box gives us four distinct but related sets to enjoy pretty much in their entirety, showing the way bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles were finessing songs live as Jimi improvised a post-Experience direction. You can hear why the Band Of Gypsys were created, but also why they split within months.

The concerts were arranged because Hendrix needed to satisfy an old contract and didn’t want to spend any studio time on it. Cox and Miles were recruited to form an all-black power trio, a little funkier and freer than the Experience, and they started rehearsing in New York in December 1969. Cox, an old friend of Hendrix’s since their time together in the Army, was a supportive bassist, but Miles, late of Electric Flag, was more of a challenge, largely due to his over-enthusiastic supporting vocals. When he suddenly starts scatting midway through an emotional early version of “Machine Gun”, you can almost sense Hendrix’s surprise. Part of the fun of Songs For Groovy Children is hearing Hendrix adjust in real time to changing circumstances. “Machine Gun” appears in four subtly different guises, with the spectral 13-minute second take dedicated to “everybody who has died or is going to die… happy new year.” The third version was used on Band Of Gypsys, but any could have made the cut.

The four sets are sufficiently different to reward a listener prepared to sit through all of them, with Hendrix adapting and refining his solos once the body of a song has been established. The fascinating first, which took place on New Year’s Eve 1969, consisted entirely of unreleased material, and the band are openly feeling their way through new songs like “Earth Blues”, “Power Of Soul” and “Burning Desire” as well as others written but not recorded with the Experience like “Lover Man”, “Izabella” and “Machine Gun”. It’s laidback but there’s a clear desire to nail things quickly.

Before “Ezy Rider”, Hendrix grins “Let’s make the words up as we go along because we got something like 20 verses of it.” There’s a bluesy feel with Band Of Gypsys and one early highlight is a sweaty “Hear My Train A Coming”, one of the best songs from both New Year’s Eve shows, while “Earth Blues” increasingly grows in its various forms over the two nights. The second set took place just after midnight and is more raucous, starting with a cheeky “Auld Lang Syne” and including a shrieking “Foxey Lady” and wild 17-minute “Stone Free” that references Tchaikovsky and Cream while finding time for a drum solo. A handful of tracks have been cut from this set for unspecified reasons, possibly as the band didn’t complete them or they weren’t caught on tape.

Band Of Gypsys drew entirely from the new material performed at the two New Year’s Day shows. The third set (the first on New Year’s Day 1970) contains the definitive “Machine Gun”, slinkier “Burning Desire” and a fuller, more considered take on “Earth Blues”, while the fourth set has a poppy “Message To Love” and “Power Of Soul”, featuring here with three restored minutes of manic freestyling. The focus on new songs meant it overlooked Hendrix’s unfussy fourth-set encore of Experience hits – “Voodoo Child”, “Wild Thing”, “Hey Joe” and “Purple Haze”, and the latter two are released here for the first time in punchy but not massively transformed form. Also previously unreleased from the fourth set is a good take of “Lover Man” and a surprising cover of “Steal Away”, with Miles on lead vocals.

Many of the tracks that appeared on the original Band Of Gypsys were edited by Hendrix and Kramer, for length but also to eradicate Miles’s extraneous vocals. These now appear in their original form. As well as backing Hendrix, Miles takes lead on several tracks – the box has four versions of his pleasing pop-soul number “Changes”/“Them Changes”, as well as three covers of “Stop” and a full version of the fourth set’s “We Gotta Live Together”, including its segue from “Voodoo Child”. His fine but bland singing style highlights Hendrix’s own underrated voice, which retains its power over what must have been a punishing two nights and has a texture and timbre as unique as his guitar playing. The latter, of course, is out of this world.

Read more about Uncut’s essential 2020 preview!

Sam Richards
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Read more about Uncut’s essential 2020 preview!

The new issue of Uncut is in shops now – and available to buy online here. As well as looking back at the making of Nick Cave’s Ghosteen and The Temptations’ “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone”, we look forward to some of the most anticipated albums of 2020.

Paul Weller tells us that his new record, due in June, is “fucking classic. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. The first track is called ‘Mirrorball’ – we started that last year some time. It was originally going to be a bonus track or something, then we finished it and it was about seven minutes long with all these different changes. That really got us going.”

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever also have a follow-up to 2018’s acclaimed Hope Downs due in the summer. “We’ve got one day left in the studio, so it’s an exciting time,” says singer/guitarist Fran Keaney. “I feel like the new songs are slightly weirder, but more fun. I suppose the whole album is a bit more gnarly, a bit of country twang, a bit more disco – which on paper sounds horrible, but it feels exciting. Yeah, outback disco!”

The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman discusses how she wrote all her new songs on a piano or keyboard: “Every time I picked up the guitar, I felt like I had written that song before… I wrote about how it feels to be a young person in a world, considering climate change and the reality of what we face.”

David Crosby reveals that “My son [James] Raymond and I are about halfway into the new record. We’re working almost every day. I sent him words last night, he sent me music today. That’s how it’s going. James is on fire right now, absolutely blazing.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Malkmus has recorded a “folkie” album with Chris Funk of The Decemberists, Matt Sweeney, Spooner Oldham and “these dudes who play free-flowing Afghan stoner improvs… it’s definitely in Uncut’s wheelhouse.”

As well as much more on those albums, there’s also news of upcoming releases from The National, AC/DC, Jess Williamson, Gruff Rhys, Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith, Michael Head & The Red Elastic band, Tame Impala, Khruangbin, Lee Ranaldo, Frazey Ford, Jonathan Wilson, Oh Sees, Herbie Hancock, Nadia Reid and more. Only in the new issue of Uncut, in shops now!

Hear Phoebe Bridgers’ version of “Silent Night”

Sam Richards
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Hear Phoebe Bridgers’ version of “Silent Night”

Phoebe Bridgers’ has today released a pointedly political Christmas single.

“7 O’Clock News / Silent Night” features co-lead vocals from Fiona Apple, with The National’s Matt Berninger in the role of newscaster. Listen below:

“7 O’Clock News / Silent Night” was recorded at Sound City Studios in the San Fernando Valley. 100% of the profits re being donated to Planned Parenthood. Berninger has been closely involved with the 7-inches For Planned Parenthood project, which you can read more about and listen to here.

Bridgers adds: “Happy Holidays to everyone whose family has been literally or figuratively torn apart by Donald Trump. And to my racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, hypocritical family members, fuck you. Thanks Fiona, Matt, Simon, and Garfunkel.”

Nick Cave: the mysteries of Ghosteen revealed in the new Uncut!

Sam Richards
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Nick Cave: the mysteries of Ghosteen revealed in the new Uncut!

The new issue of Uncut – in UK shops now or available to order online by clicking here – features an access-all-areas investigation into the making of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ recent masterpiece, Ghosteen.

Peter Watts speaks to band members, collaborators and associates about Cave’s latest voyage into uncharted waters, gaining an exclusive insight into the ideas, conversations and freeform studio sessions that led to one of finest albums of 2019 – and of Nick Cave’s long career.

“It‘s a strange and wonderful thing and very different from what has gone before,” Cave told fans in September 2018 on The Red Hand Files when trying to explain the chemistry between him and fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis. “I can’t really define it but something happens; something that has to do with intuition and trust and jeopardy – the willingness to risk and, of course, to fail.”

Cave told The Guardian in May 2017 that he was working on new songs, “Not to answer Skeleton Tree… but to artistically complete the trilogy of albums we began with Push The Sky Away.” Work formally began on Ghosteen at Retreat Studios in Brighton during late spring 2018. Over the course of a week or so, Cave and Ellis sketched out pieces of music, with Cave at the piano and Ellis at his Yamaha Reface DX synth. Ellis then selected 20 pieces that they took to Malibu’s Woodshed Recording Studio a few months later.

Andrew Dominik has known Cave since the 1980s when he started dating one of Cave’s ex-girlfriends. Despite this, the pair got on – “I didn’t want to like him but I really did,” jokes the director. In 2007, Dominik asked Cave to score his western The Assassination Of Jesse James, although they only became close after Cave invited Dominik to film the final stages of the Skeleton Tree sessions for another documentary, One More Time With Feeling. By 2018, Dominik found himself with nowhere to live. “I broke up with my girlfriend and Nick fed me like a baby bird,” he says. For several weeks in September, Ellis, Cave and Dominik lived together in Malibu.

Joining them in Woodshed, Dominik observed as the material Cave and Ellis began in Brighton gradually evolved. He also witnessed the uncanny creative partnership between the two men in motion. “Nick and Warren sat in the room together playing music,” recalls Dominik. “Warren has an enormous influence on Nick. Nick is more into formal ideas of structure and whether or not a piece of music sounds good. Warren doesn’t give a fuck about anything except how a piece of music feels. Nick doesn’t really let his control go, but working with somebody like Warren allows him to move. He couldn’t do that with any other person. They react to each other. Warren makes sounds that provoke a feeling that Nick writes lyrics for – then Warren reacts to them musically. It’s something chemical between them.”

Up until Push The Sky Away, Cave went to work in his office – a flat connected to his home in Hove – and put in an honest day’s work. Dominik, however, suggests a different approach to songwriting on Ghosteen, whereby Cave would assemble songs from a variety of sources including notebooks, his own memory and on-the-spot inspiration.

“Nick would sing lyrics from this song or that song, bits from all over the place,” explains Dominik. “The songs became a lot less structured. He is approaching the songs in the moment, rather than sitting down and writing more structured material. He talks about the unconscious life of the song – he is most interested when he is doing something but doesn’t know what it is yet. He likes the unknown.”

You can read much more about Nick Cave and Ghosteen in the new issue of Uncut, in shops now.

Ride to headline new Liverpool festival

Sam Richards
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Ride to headline new Liverpool festival

Ride have been unveiled as headliners of the inaugural Melon Yellow festival, taking place at Liverpool’s Invisible Wind Factory venue on Saturday March 14, 2020.

Described as “a celebration of shoegaze, punk, arts and sustainability” Melon Yellow also features American indie-rockers Turnover and The Regrettes, plus Lauren Hibberd, St Martiins and Newmoon, with more acts to be announced.

For more information and tickets, visit the official Melon Yellow site here.

The Who announce intimate show at Kingston Pryzm

Sam Richards
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The Who announce intimate show at Kingston Pryzm

Having just released their acclaimed comeback album Who – read Uncut’s review here – The Who have announced one of their smallest shows in years, at Kingston’s 2000-capacity Pryzm on February 14, 2020.

The gig will take place 50 years to the day since The Who played the University Of Leeds Refectory, the show that was captured on their legendary Live At Leeds album.

Tickets for what is billed as a “never-to-be-repeated intimate acoustic show” are available exclusively from the online store of Kingston’s Banquet Records, from 11am today (December 11). Standard tickets cost £13, while ticket and LP bundles are available for £25.

The Who play a series of bigger shows across the UK in March and April, with an orchestra in tow. Dates for those are below, with tickets available here.

March 16 – Manchester Arena
March 18 – Dublin 3 Arena
March 21 – Newcastle Metro Radio Arena
March 23 – Glasgow SSE Hydro Arena
March 25 – Leeds First Direct Arena
March 30 – Cardiff Motorpoint Arena
April 1 – Birmingham Resorts World Arena
April 3 – Nottingham Motorpoint Arena
April 6 – Liverpool M&S Bank Arena
April 8 – SSE Wembley Arena

Jonathan Wilson announces new album, Dixie Blur

Sam Richards
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Jonathan Wilson announces new album, Dixie Blur

Jonathan Wilson has announced that his new album Dixie Blur will be released by Bella Union on March 6.

Dixie Blur was recorded at Cowboy Jack Clement’s Sound Emporium Studio in Nashville and mixed at Jackson Browne’s Groovemasters Studio. Unlike Wilson’s previous three albums on which he played most of the instruments himself, this one was recorded primarily live by musicians including Mark O’Connor (fiddle), Kenny Vaughan (guitar) Dennis Crouch (bass), Russ Pahl (pedal steel) and Jim Hoke (harmonica, woodwinds), Jon Radford (drums), and Drew Erickson (keyboards).

Listen to a new track from it, “Korean Tea”, below:

You can pre-order Dixie Blur here, and check out Jonathan Wilson’s European tourdates below:

Friday 27th March – Amsterdam – Het Zonnehuis
Saturday 28th March – Maastricht, NL – Muziekgieterij
Sunday 29th March – Paris, FR – Trabendo
Tuesday 31st March – Copenhagen, DE – Lille Vega
Wednesday 1st April – Oslo, NO – Centrum Scene
Thursday 2nd April – Stockholm, SE – Slaktkyrkan
Friday 3rd April – Gothenberg, SE – Pustervik
Sunday 5th April – Berlin, DE – Silent Green
Monday 6th April – Brussels, BE – Botanique / Rotonde
Wednesday 8th April – London, UK – Lafayette

The Beatles – Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide

Sam Richards
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The Beatles – Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide

I want you so bad it’s driving me mad! Presenting the deluxe 148-page edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to The Beatles. Featuring a blend of entertaining archive features (see: George on Abbey Road) and insightful 21st century writing on the band (Giles Martin’s remixes are reviewed in depth), it’s the definitive guide to the band. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Order your copy online here.

Nick Cave, Massive 2020 Preview, Grace Slick, Fontaines D.C. and more in the new Uncut

Michael Bonner
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Nick Cave, Massive 2020 Preview, Grace Slick, Fontaines D.C. and more in the new Uncut

For all the righteous fury of his early years, Nick Cave has learned that songwriting can be a delicate business. How to articulate the most personal and internal thoughts in a way that successfully conveys their sentiment but doesn’t diminish their mystery? Cave’s current album Ghosteen successfully navigates such concerns, of course. Despite arriving on a flotilla of mythic creatures and peppered with haunting, magical visions, Cave’s contemplative maturity, wisdom and humanity are never other than fully present on Ghosteen. There might be horses, flamingos and lions on the cover; but the music itself is inspiring and uplifting.

This month’s cover story is a deep dive into Ghosteen – telling the story of its genesis and mapping Cave’s evolving creative processes over his last three albums. Key collaborators and friends including Andrew Dominik, Marianne Faithfull and Bobby Gillespie offer their insights, while a trove of unpublished photographs and sketches help bring this “gospel record of love songs” vividly to life. We hear, also, from Cave himself and Warren Ellis.

If Ghosteen was one of our albums of 2019, you might find some early favourites for 2020 among this year’s Preview – our biggest ever survey of forthcoming albums. We’ve news and revelations on 21 releases, including those by Paul Weller, The Weather Station, Rolling Blackouts CF, Patti Smith, Shabaka Hutchings, Khruangbin, Stephen Malkmus, David Crosby, The National and more. So far, we’ve heard some or all of about half these records – and I’m pleased to report that 2020 looks set to be a robust year for new music.

I guess about now I should wish you all the best for the season. Thanks, on behalf of the entire team, for the support you’ve shown Uncut, the Ultimate Music Guides and deluxe bookazines over the past 12 months. We’ve been very pleased with all the magazines we’ve published in 2019 – and we’ve got a lot of very exciting plans already cooking for the year ahead.

See you in the New Year.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

UK readers! This issue of Uncut is available to buy by clicking here.

Overseas readers! This issue of Uncut is available to buy by clicking here.

Uncut – February 2020

Tom Pinnock
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Uncut – February 2020

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, our 2020 Preview, Drive-By Truckers, Fontaines DC and Grace Slick all feature in the new Uncut, dated February 2020 and available to buy in UK shops from December 12.

NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS: The full story of Ghosteen, Cave and co’s latest masterpiece, as told by those on the inside, from collaborator Marianne Faithfull and director Andrew Dominik to Bobby Gillespie.

BEST NEW MUSIC CD: 15 tracks of the month’s finest new music, from Bill Fay, Terry Allen, Aoife Nessa Frances, Wire, Field Music, Yorkston/Thorne/Khan, OOIOO, Keeley Forsyth, Mr Elevator, Squirrel Flower and more.

UK readers! This issue of Uncut is available to buy by clicking here.

Overseas readers! This issue of Uncut is available to buy by clicking here.

Plus! Inside the issue, you’ll find:

2020 PREVIEW: A look ahead to some of the key releases due over the coming year, including Paul Weller, David Crosby, Patti Smith, Stephen Malkmus, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, AC/DC and more

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS: As the quintet return to action, we join them in Memphis to hear all about their stunning new album

FONTAINES DC: Dublin’s “punk Beatles” look back on a breakthrough year that included riotously received gigs and a Mercury nomination for their debut LP

GRACE SLICK: 30 years after hanging up her mic, the Airplane survivor discusses Janis, Jimi, drugs and Woodstock

GRAHAM COXON: The guitarist and now soundtrack composer takes us through his own work to date, and explains how his move to Los Angeles is working out for him

THE TEMPTATIONS: The making of “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone”

DAVE VANIAN: An audience with the Damned man

LAMBCHOP: Kurt Wagner takes us through some of the albums that are most important to his life and work, from Bob Dylan to Bon Iver

In our expansive reviews section, we take a look at new records from Bill Fay, Field Music, Aoife Nessa Frances, Terry Allen, Nicolas Godin, Keeley Forsyth, Sam Lee, Max Richter, Wire, Wolf Parade and more, and archival releases from Frank Zappa, Supergrass, Grateful Dead, The Staple Singers, The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Burial, King Crimson, Opal and others. We catch Björk and Iggy Pop live, and also review films including Uncut Gems and The Kingmaker, PJ Harvey’s A Dog Called Money DVD, and Ian Hunter and Prince books.

Our front section, meanwhile, features the return of The Black Crowes, Sampa The Great, Gibby Haynes, Cleaners From Venus and crucial punk document Live At The Roxy.

International readers can pick up a copy at the following stores:

The Netherlands: Bruna and AKO (Schiphol)

Sweden: Pressbyrån

Norway: Narvesen

U.S.A. (out in November): Barnes & Noble

Canada (out December): Indigo

Australia (out December): Independent newsagents

And also online at:

Denmark: IPresso Shop

Germany: Blad Portal

 

 

Hear Brian Eno’s sarcastic election song

Sam Richards
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Hear Brian Eno’s sarcastic election song

As the UK prepares to go the polls on Thursday, Brian Eno has been moved to abandon his usual ambient milieu and release a Monty Python-style singalong attacking the Conservative Party.

“Everything’s On The Up With The Tories” is a sarcastically jaunty number, ‘celebrating’ the Tories’ record on poverty, Brexit and the NHS: “Everything’s up the creek with the blue boys / They’re selling off the NHS to cowboys / They’re cutting back on nurses but investing it in hearses”. Listen below:

Eno was among 40 cultural figures who last week signed an open letter to the Guardian backing Jeremy Corbyn and Labour. All profits from “Everything’s On The Up With The Tories” will go to homeless charities.

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