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Jenny Hval – The Practice Of Love

Stephen Dalton
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Jenny Hval – The Practice Of Love

On her six albums to date, Norway’s Jenny Hval has ranted and ruminated across a broad spectrum of gender politics, religion, patriarchy, menstruation, sexualised female bodies, “capitalist clit” and “soft dick rock”. Her sonic explorations have been similarly promiscuous, expanding her indie electro-folk palette with wild swerves into avant-metal, noise-punk, free jazz and more. Like a post-laptop Patti Smith, her stream-of-consciousness lyrics are often raw and rude and bristling with carnal energy. And her wild interdisciplinary live shows are something else again, occupying a performance-art space somewhere between Peaches and Cindy Sherman.

But Hval dials down the art-punk attitude on her latest album, stepping back from visceral lust and disgust to map out a more contemplative midlife overview of intimacy, empathy, social connection and female creativity. Blending her vocals with spoken-word contributions from various friends and fellow artists – Vivian Wang, Félicia Atkinson and Laura Jean Englert – she creates a communal chorus of narrators, a sly shift away from the egocentric focus that drives most singer-songwriter music.

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Most strikingly, The Practice Of Love relocates Hval’s febrile stylistic wanderlust firmly within a more soothing envelope of rippling soft synths and pulsing trance-pop rhythms. This mellifluous makeover is partly a self-conscious retro-rave homage to the Eurodance sound that Hval only experienced tangentially in her youth, but also partly a fruitful repurposing of that underrated, oft-derided genre’s warm-blooded emotional charms. The distant echoes of Robyn and the Pet Shop Boys here are as delicious as they are deliberate.

A collaboration with Wang, opening number “Lions” sets the widescreen tone with its soaring overview of a majestically lovely natural landscape. Over surging electro throbs and squelchy percussive chatter, a coolly detached Laurie Anderson-style narrator calmly catalogues the divine beauty of the trees and rivers. “Where is God?” she muses. “This place doesn’t know, this place doesn’t care…” Is celestial Humanist gospel trance techno a genre yet? If not, Hval just invented it anyway.

Set to a gauzy, gorgeous, gliding machine pulse that recalls The Orb or The Beloved in their early ’90s prime, “High Alice” muses wryly on the reputations of female artists across history. “She reaches back through centuries of old,” Hval coos over warm, brassy instrumental textures. The musical hinterland here is so Balearic, you can practically hear waves crashing softly on the beach as it fades.

The shimmering gallop of “Six Red Cannas” and the breezy tumbles of “Ashes To Ashes” sound like lost classics from St Etienne’s imperial phase, escapist dance-pop that cannot quite conceal its brainy adult anxieties. And “Accident” must surely be the most sublime song ever written about the bittersweet trade-off between childlessness and motherhood, its conversational musings washed along by swooshing synth arpeggios and rolling beats, all building towards a radiant climax of crystalline folky harmonies.

Although this synth-driven, trance-adjacent formula dominates The Practice Of Love, not every track is shoehorned into its sleek, syncopated parameters. Hval’s arty, punky, spiky side is smoothed and submerged a little, but never suppressed. Even at its most unapologetically lovely, this is dance-pop with a sharp eye and a keen mind.

“Thumbsucker”, which features Atkinson and Englert, has more of a jazzy, lullaby feel, its folksy dream narrative delivered in a breathy whisper. And the title track, with Englert and Wang on board, folds warm electronic drones around a multi-voice patchwork of meditations on love and its problematic links with religious puritanism, social heirarchy and more. As the vocal builds from a single poetic monologue to a polyphonic swirl of competing voices, the dissonant effect is oddly harmonious, like a rogue flock of podcasts flapping around each other in mid-air.

Just eight tracks long, The Practice Of Love risks being dismissed as a minor entry in Hval’s canon, especially by scholarly critics who equate dissonance and dissent with high artistic seriousness. But for anyone who enjoys a dash of shimmering disco hedonism with their feminist theory, or who simply harbours a lingering respect for the sun-drenched joy of ’90s trance techno, this album offers a richly rewarding dialogue with mainstream pop. Crucially, Hval understands well the strange, seductive, subversive potency of “cheap” music.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Tinariwen – Amadjar

Louis Pattison
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Tinariwen – Amadjar

The stories that are told about Tinariwen elevate the group virtually to the status of myth. Founded in the late ’70s by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, the son of a Tuareg rebel executed by the Malian government, the group spent their early existence as refugees before returning from exile in the early ’90s to engage in armed struggle against their oppressors. Following the ceasefire they returned to music, and today they live a nomadic lifestyle, playing their music – a soulful and ruminative campfire guitar style widely known as “desert blues” – under the stars. Much contemporary music strikes a rebellious pose, but few deserve the epithet quite as much as Tinariwen.

This kind of myth-making, though, can somewhat obscure the fact that Tinariwen are a living, breathing band. They play festivals across the world, their records chart in multiple European countries, and their music has been hailed as an inspiration by everyone from Robert Plant and Brian Eno to a wave of young Tuareg guitar groups like Tamikrest and Imharhan, whose music builds on Tinariwen’s distinctive template.

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This isn’t to suggest that in any way Tinariwen have become the establishment. In 2012, the group’s guitarist Abdallah Ag Lamida was abducted by radical Islamists, a symbol of how the very existence of their music continues to challenge a conservative ideology. Still, it demonstrates something of the position Tinariwen hold. Here is a group that is both pioneering, yet somehow rooted in deep tradition; concerned with matters hyper-local, even as their music resonates around the globe.

All of this is reflected in the group’s ninth album, Amadjar. While the group’s two preceding records, 2014’s Emmaar and 2017’s Elwan, were recorded in Joshua National Park in California, Amadjar finds the group back on African soil. It was written and recorded in the West African country of Mauritania, which borders the group’s homeland of Mali. Tinariwen travelled by day and wrote songs around the campfire at night, trailed by a French production team who captured the group’s music live, operating a mobile studio out of a camper van. There is zero sense on Amadjar that this is a band in any way playing to an international audience; on the contrary, this music feels hermetic in its focus, guitars picking out bluesy motifs, voices rising together in mournful chorus, all tethered by a simple drum rhythm that approximates the lollop of a camel making its way across the dunes.

Part of this, of course, is down to Tinariwen’s skill at making their music sound free-flowing and natural, even 
as they experiment with their formula. Past albums have featured vocal turns from American alt.rock stalwarts like Mark Lanegan and TV On The Radio’s 
Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe. 
There’s nothing quite so bold here, although several tracks feature Noura Mint Seymali, a Mauritian griot who brings a welcome female presence; sometimes she’s integrated into the broader chorus, other times left to 
ululate freely, as on “Amalouma”, 
a song that offers thanks to the Prophet, even as it threatens Tinariwen’s enemies with oblivion.

Throughout, the sense of live performance is palpable – you even, for instance, hear the quiet conversation of players discussing the take at the end of “Iklam Dglour”. Still, some subtle overdubbing brings a few guest musicians into the fold. The Bad Seeds’ Warren 
Ellis is present on five of this record’s 
13 tracks, echoing the group’s melodies with ramshackle, sawing fiddle. 
Cass McCombs, Rodolphe Burger 
and Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley all contribute guitar parts. And Micah Nelson adds mandolin and charango to “Taqkal Tarha”, a playful, lopsided canter with an absurd lyric to match: “Money has become a commodity/The worm has become a bird/And the monkey has a mirror/With which he gazes at himself every evening.”

This is a running theme throughout Amadjar: the sense of a world that has somehow been thrown out of balance. “Why are men so divided?” asks “Takount”, while “Kel Tinawen” and “Itous Ohar” are heavy of spirit, dwelling heavily on disloyalty and treachery. Perhaps the album’s key song is “Zawal”, a track written by Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni that divides into two rough halves. The first half is a terrifying vignette that sees prayer time interrupted by a terrible dark shape that blots out the sky, sending turbaned youth fleeing in its wake; in fact, it’s a lyrical dramatisation of the first solar eclipse, which flows seamlessly into a rumination on the end times. “Some affirm that God has already put an end to this world,” sings Ag Alhousseyni. But the song closes with him sitting stoically on his mount, venturing on into the desert, bound for who knows where.

Amadjar translates as “the unknown visitor” in Tamashek. The phrase communicates the feeling of being a stranger in a strange land and, as Tinariwen use it, it should probably be understood both literally and as metaphor. Just as American blues music should be understood through the prism of slavery and faint reminiscence of the African motherland, the desert blues of Amadjar draws its soul from a similar sense of rupture; of a homeland rendered unreachable by human conflict, an earthly paradise placed just out of reach.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Angel Olsen: “I wanted to come out of the gates swinging”

Sam Richards
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Angel Olsen: “I wanted to come out of the gates swinging”

The latest issue of Uncut, in UK shops now or available to buy online by clicking here, features a candid interview with North Carolina-based singer-songwriter Angel Olsen about the bold pop reinvention of her new album, All Mirrors.

In it, Olsen describes the sense of liberation she felt when writing songs such as “Spring”. “It started off as an adult lullaby, and then it turned into this weird druggy playground,” she explains to Uncut’s Erin Osmon.

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When searching for a way to open the song, for the first time ever, Olsen sat at the piano and quickly wrote a sunny little riff. “I was like, ‘Whoa, how did that happen?’ I’ve never written anything on the spot in the studio before,” she says. That simple four-count bar has become one of her favourite moments on the album. “It’s an example of how free I felt with these people [co-writer/arranger Ben Babbitt and producer John Congleton] and how open it was to be with them.”

Congleton’s decisive voice, and quick way of working, pushed Olsen beyond the realm of what she thought was possible. “The way that he made them [the synths and strings] merge, I never would have thought to put them together,” she says. “To mix something like that, like Serge Gainsbourg mixed with Brian Eno, it’s like, wow.”

Babbitt adds that Congleton’s mix played a significant role in the tone and style of the album: “He really got his hands dirty in terms of shaping the flow and really exaggerating the differences between songs, or different sections or parts of songs.”

Perhaps bracing herself for the commentary that inevitably accompanies each evolution in her sound, Olsen’s quick to clarify that even if she’s trusted an arrangement or mix to a collaborator, it’s never the case that she was talked into something she didn’t believe in. Everything she presents goes through a rigorous artistic vetting. 
“I try to control everything as much as possible,” she says. “And so someone who says that my sound changed, and it wasn’t me? It’s insulting that someone would think I write all these things, then allow someone to just do them for me. Like really? I don’t think so.”

In the end, Olsen loved the drama and innovation of the produced album so much she shelved her original idea for releasing All Mirrors as a double LP with a stripped-down first half: “I wanted to come out of the gates swinging.”

You can read much more from Angel Olsen in the current issue of Uncut, in shops now with Jimmy Page on the cover – and a free CD of Wilco covers!

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Tom Petty: “He was committed to being great”

Graeme Thomson
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Tom Petty: “He was committed to being great”

This feature originally appeared in the November 2018 issue of Uncut (Take 258).

MIKE CAMPBELL: “In the hospital, lying in the bed, I talked to him a little bit. He couldn’t communicate but maybe he heard me, I don’t know. It’s hard to put into words, but I had an opportunity on the plane a couple of times towards the end of the last tour to connect, to say all the things I really wanted to say to him. We were able to touch base, to identify our bond and our friendship in a very powerful way. I feel fortunate to have had those moments with him, not knowing what was going to unfold.

“There was something special about the last show we did, a week before he passed, at the Hollywood Bowl. It was our homecoming. It had been a long tour, everything had been sold out, we were at the top of our game. There was one particular moment that stays with me. Near the end I looked over at Tom and his face was beaming; just so much happiness. I remember thinking, ‘This guy loves what he’s doing, and he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than where he is right now, playing with the band in front of these people.’ His love of the craft and of the band and the music was contagious, and I felt it in that moment very strongly.

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“I’m not a retrospective person, but since he passed away I’ve been forced to look back. I was very hands-on with the American Treasure boxset. It was bittersweet. As kids, we shared a dream together. I have a vivid memory of the first time we met. I was living in Gainesville, where Tom had a band called Mudcrutch. They were kind of a country-rock band, and Tom was the bass player. I had a little blues jam band and our drummer, Randall Marsh, auditioned for Mudcrutch. When they came out to this farm on the edge of town to audition Randall, it turned out their guitar player had just left, so Randall brought me out, too. They took one look at me and wanted to leave. I had short hair and cut-off jeans and I weighed 110lb. I had this cheap Japanese guitar which was all I could afford. I could see this look in Tom’s eye: ‘This ain’t gonna work!’ Then I ripped into a Chuck Berry song and all their faces changed. It was like, ‘OK, you’re in the band!’ That’s how it went. We’ve been playing together ever since.

“When we moved to Los Angeles, we were fish out of water. We were overwhelmed by the culture shock at the beginning, but we stuck it out, even when Mudcrutch fell apart in the studio. Some other guys from Gainesville, Stan Lynch and Ron Blair, happened to be out there. They became the rhythm section, and we became the Heartbreakers. Ron played bass and Tom became the singer. He switched over to guitar because he was writing songs on guitar. His songwriting improved tremendously around that time. He came up with ‘American Girl’, ‘Fooled Again’, ‘Strangers In The Night’, all this great stuff.

“When we cut ‘American Girl’, we were still struggling, making 100 bucks a week, but I just knew that song had something about it. It all came together. It had that chiming, droning sound, Byrdsy chords, a nice tough beat, and those powerful words. It was adrenalin from the first note. I still get a fucking thrill every time I hear it, and the words hold up: ‘If she had to die tryin’, she had one little promise she was gonna keep…’ Tom’s genius was he could write so much in just a few words. He was brilliant at that, it came naturally to him. He didn’t have to write a book to get his point across, he could put together three or four words in the right juxtaposition that could mean anything to anybody.

“We started to write a little bit together. He was so prolific, I was lucky to get one in now and then. In the early days it was simple. I never wrote words. I was kind of intimidated, because his lyrics were so impressive to me. I would write a chord sequence and a rhythm, and if I was lucky he would hear something and be inspired by it. He’d come back the next day and have written this great song to my music. That was how we wrote ‘Refugee’, ‘Here Comes My Girl’, ‘Woman In Love’, ‘Rocking Around With You’, ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’. All those early songs. It’s thrilling to have that relationship with somebody. It’s a deep connection, to sit and write a song with someone, to share your music and have them add to it and make it better. The next thing you know you’re on stage together playing it, and 20,000 people are singing the words back at you. It’s a powerful thing. It’s probably what I miss the most.

“The high point early on was when Damn The Torpedoes hit through the mainstream. We were a great live band, but in the studio sometimes we would get insecure, and we had to do the tracks over and 
over again until we got one take that was good. Our producer Jimmy Iovine suffered through that with us. When Jimmy heard ‘Refugee’ and ‘Here Comes My Girl’ he said, ‘That’s all I need to hear. I don’t care what the rest of the record is. If we get those songs right, we’ll be OK.’ ‘Refugee’ is so timeless. Those lyrics are as real today as when he wrote them.

“Things had changed by then. When we started in Florida it was all for one and one for all. We didn’t make much money, so we split everything equally. When we got out west, it became obvious to everyone that Tom was the leader of the band, and he was also making a lot of management decisions. He was on the phone, making deals, writing the songs, singing 
the songs, directing the band. So we came to an understanding that we should split the pie differently, because this guy is doing 10 times as much work as we are. At first there was a bit of grumbling, but then we thought, ‘No, this is working.’ We let it go and we never brought it up again. Tom was very graceful about it. We all loved the band so much, we never let our personal egos get in the way of ruining that. That’s why we stayed together so long. It wasn’t about the money; it was about the music. Also, we loved each other.

“Tom was a great leader in every sense of the word. He was definitely in control; we were following his lead every step of the way. Fortunately, he was almost always right! Every band needs somebody like that, with that drive, yet it was also a democracy in lots of ways. He would bring in a new song and 
be very free: ‘Just play what you feel.’ What we argued about most was when he felt that the feel wasn’t right. He’d say, ‘It’s not grooving the way 
I want it to groove. OK, everybody stop playing, and let’s just listen to me and my guitar. Listen again, real close, because there’s a rhythm that we’re missing. There’s a sway that I really want.’

“Sometimes there would be tension, but that kind of tension can be very creative. We didn’t shout much. We never got into fistfights or said, ‘Fuck you!’ It was all very constructive criticism. Tom would fight to the death to get it right, but he was a joy to work with. His instincts were so strong, we knew if we did our best to follow his lead it was going to be good. We believed in him, and he believed in us, too. He believed we could get him there.

“Tom would not be pushed around. He was a very powerful personality. With Hard Promises, the record company wanted to raise the ticket price on albums, and our record was going to be the first one out with the new high price. Tom simply said no. ‘I’m not going to be the one jacking the people around for more money. That’s not what we’re about.’ So we refused to record. We went out on what we called the Bankruptcy Tour, and we didn’t record until we sorted out the business. They eventually put the record out at the price we wanted. That was Tom. The reason he maintained his integrity all those years is that he stood up for what he thought was right. Always.

“The Heartbreakers tour in 1986 with Bob Dylan came along at the point after Southern Accents where we were kind of bored with each other. It revitalised us, made us interested again. Bob said that talking to the band was like talking to one guy. The whole band was a single persona. As a group, we were of one mind. He liked that. It was great for Tom, because we would do a short Heartbreakers set, and then Tom would assume the role of guitar player and harmony singer in the band with Bob. He was able to step back and be in the band without having to front it. I think that was really good for him. It gave him a new perspective and it gave us new blood. We came off that tour and made Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), which is a very raw, live record.

“When it came to Tom making Full Moon Fever as a solo album, it was very organic. He didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘I want to be a solo artist.’ Tom bumped into Jeff Lynne, and they wrote ‘Free Fallin’’. Tom said, ‘Let’s go over to Mike’s house, he has a studio.’ Jeff is a fucking genius, and by the end of the afternoon we had a finished record. Tom and I were looking at each other, like, ‘Wow, that was fun! Let’s do another one.’ Four days went by and we had four finished tracks. We explained to the Heartbreakers that this had become a little side project, but we weren’t breaking up the band. I’m sure the guys felt a little left out, but they got over it. That’s how it happened. No big deal.

“We finished Full Moon Fever in three weeks, and when we turned it in, the record company refused it. They didn’t hear any hits. What the fuck? We thought this was pretty good! Tom said, ‘OK, if they want a hit, let’s go and do a Byrds song.’ So he covered ‘Feel A Whole Lot Better’. That was Tom being kind of passive-aggressive. In the interim, the whole A&R department revolved, and 
a new group of people came in. We played them the same record and they jumped up and down and said, ‘There’s four hits on here!’ Go figure.

“Roy Orbison and George Harrison were on that record. Jeff produced. We all knew Bob. So, it evolved into the Traveling Wilburys. It was very comfortable for Tom; I don’t believe he ever felt intimidated. The cool thing about the other Wilburys, and Johnny Cash, and Del Shannon, and all these other amazing people he was fortunate enough to work with, is that it was just about making music. You only think, ‘Man, there’s a Beatle in my house,’ for a little while. That veneer wears off pretty quick. Then it’s just another guy that you’re working with. Musicians have a certain unspoken affinity to one another… They understood each other, and they were having fun. It was a beautiful project, and it was healthy for Tom to be part of a group and not feel the pressure that all the songs and vocals were on him. I think that pressure sometimes got to him. If it failed, it was all on him, ultimately. With the Wilburys, he didn’t have that.

“Of course, after all that he came back to the Heartbreakers with fire! ‘I’m tired of being part of a committee, I want to be in charge again.’ When I hear the band on the first couple of records, 
there is youthful exuberance and just total excitement. Later on, we had the confidence to explore and add nuance. It got a little more adult, a bit more finessed, but basically we kept doing the same thing. He felt the band made him more who he wanted to be than being a solo artist could. That was his choice. He chose the band all the way down the line. It was a brotherhood.

“He was committed to being great. We’d work on stuff sometimes that sounded pretty good, and he’d say, ‘Let’s throw that one out, I can do better.’ He saw through bullshit instantly; he knew what was good and what wasn’t. He knew what was phoney and he knew what was real. He had that in spades. I’d look at him sometimes and think, ‘This guy is on his game. He knows who he is, and he knows how to get it across.’ He was a great songwriter, good rhythm-guitar player, great bass player. Great record maker. He was all those things. Perhaps his defining characteristic as a player was his confidence. Plus, he was really fucking smart.

“As time went on he would find less and less new music to get inspired by. We would check out new things. We liked Nirvana, we thought that was a great thing for the music business, but a lot of the time Tom went back to the stuff that he really loved, from the ’50s and ’60s.

“I was surprised in 2007 when he said, ‘Let’s do a Mudcrutch record.’ Just before that he had been complaining that he never had any free time! Reuniting Mudcrutch obviously wasn’t about the money. He got Randall and Tom Leadon, brought them in, and one thing led to another. I thought that was very kind and generous of him, to bring them into the spotlight and give them something bigger to do with their music than what they had been doing.

“Tom was a great friend. If any one of us needed him, he was there. We didn’t socialise a lot off the tour, especially as we got older, because we’d need a break and we had other interests. A month or two might go by and I wouldn’t even speak to him, then he’d get on the phone and we’d talk for two hours. Even though he was a leader, in a lot of ways, I was a big brother for him. Sometimes I could tell that he’d be a little lost on something; I’d sit down and talk to him and give him perspective. He always seemed to appreciate that. When he was having trouble with his marriage, or his kids, we’d talk about it. We were just connected. We loved each other, and I considered him my best friend.

“The last Heartbreakers tour was phenomenal. We played as well as we’d ever played. We were never going through the motions. Tom loved the band. He was always really proud of the group, and on a good night he believed we were one of the best bands in the world.

“I can’t even conceive of playing those songs without Tom. It would just be too painful right now. He was a powerful force. You just don’t replace him. At his memorial I gave a little speech. The main thing I said is that my intention from this point forward is to honour his integrity and his legacy. I won’t do anything that would compromise that.

“I’m still grieving. I’ll probably be grieving for a long time, but I feel blessed that we had our time, and we wrote a lot of great songs which I think are going to hold up long after I’m gone. Everything is in the songs. The guy who wrote those songs, that’s who Tom is, that’s what he was like. He had a deep love of humanity. He had a deep belief in hope and the power of rock’n’roll, and he was compassionate towards people in pain. And sometimes he was a stinker! I don’t want to paint a rosy-red picture of a perfect person. We all have our flaws, but deep down he had a good heart. I’m very grateful and proud of what we did together. I miss my friend, but we have to go on.”

As told to Graeme Thomson

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Watch a trailer for Johnny Cash documentary, The Gift

Sam Richards
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Watch a trailer for Johnny Cash documentary, The Gift

A new feature-length documentary about the life and work of Johnny Cash will air on Youtube on November 11.

The Gift: The Journey Of Johnny Cash has been directed by Thom Zimny, who collaborated with Bruce Springsteen on Springsteen On Broadway and his new Western Stars film. Watch a trailer below:

Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it sent to your home!

Springsteen contributes to the film, alongside Rosanne Cash, Robert Duvall, Emmylou Harris and Dwight Yoakam. The original score comes from Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Happy Mondays to release The Early EPs box set

Sam Richards
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Happy Mondays to release The Early EPs box set

Happy Mondays have announced the release of a 4×12″ coloured vinyl box set called The Early EPs on October 25.

It contains reproductions of the band’s first four EPs: Forty Five (1985), Freaky Dancin/The Egg (1986), Tart Tart (1987) and 24 Hour Party People (1987). Watch a new animated video by Pete Fowler for “The Egg” below:

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Pre-order The Early EPs here and check out the Happy Mondays’ tour schedule for the rest of 2019 below:

OCT 24 Aberdeen, Music Hall
OCT 25 Dunfermline, Alhambra Theatre
OCT 26 Glasgow, O2 Academy
OCT 31 London, Roundhouse
NOV 1 Southend On Sea, Cliffs Pavilion
NOV 2 Cambridge, Corn Exchange
NOV 7 Brighton, Brighton Dome
NOV 8 Folkestone, Leas Cliff Hall
NOV 9 Portsmouth, Pyramids Centre
NOV 15 Newcastle Upon Tyne, O2 Academy
NOV 16 Scunthorpe, Baths Hall
NOV 21 Manchester, Manchester Academy
NOV 22 Sheffield, O2 Academy
NOV 23 Bristol, O2 Academy
NOV 28 Oxford, O2 Academy
NOV 29 Cardiff, Great Uni Hall
NOV 30 Nottingham, Rock City
DEC 3 Cork, Cyprus Avenue
DEC 4 Belfast, Limelight
DEC 5 Dublin, Vicar Street
DEC 6 Liverpool, Liverpool University Guild Of Students
DEC 7 Leeds, O2 Academy
DEC 12 Norwich, Waterfront
DEC 13 Northampton, Roadmender
DEC 14 Birmingham, O2 Institute
DEC 18 Frome, Cheese & Grain
DEC 19 Bournemouth, O2 Academy
DEC 20 Guildford, G Live

Vinyl reissues of the first four Happy Mondays albums – Squirrel And G-man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out), Bummed, Pills ’N’ Thrills And Bellyaches and Yes Please! – will follow later this year.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Jimi Hendrix’s Band Of Gypsys expanded to 8xLP set

Sam Richards
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Jimi Hendrix’s Band Of Gypsys expanded to 8xLP set

Songs For Groovy Children is a new 5xCD or 8xLP Jimi Hendrix box set that compiles his four legendary shows at New York’s Fillmore East on December 31, 1969 and January 1, 1970.

These recordings formed the basis for Hendrix’s 1970 Band Of Gypsys album (as well as 1999’s Live At The Fillmore East), but this is the first time the shows have been released in their entirety. The songs have been restored to their original sequence and newly mixed by Eddie Kramer.

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Watch a trailer for Songs For Groovy Children and check out the LP tracklisting below:

12/31/69 1st Set:
DISC ONE/SIDE ONE
1) Power Of Soul
2) Lover Man
3) Hear My Train A Comin’
DISC ONE/SIDE TWO
1) Changes
2) Izabella
3) Machine Gun
DISC TWO/SIDE ONE
1) Stop
2) Ezy Ryder
3) Bleeding Heart
DISC TWO/SIDE TWO
1) Earth Blues
2) Burning Desire
12/31/69 2nd Set:
DISC THREE/SIDE ONE
1) Auld Lang Syne%
2) Who Knows %
3) Fire
DISC THREE/SIDE TWO
1) Ezy Ryder*
2) Machine Gun%
DISC FOUR/SIDE ONE
1) Stone Free
2) Changes*
DISC FOUR/SIDE TWO
1) Message To Love*
2) Stop*
3) Foxy Lady
1/1/70 1st Set:
DISC FIVE/SIDE ONE
1) Who Knows +
2) Machine Gun+
DISC FIVE/SIDE TWO
1) Changes+
2) Power Of Soul%
3) Stepping Stone%
4) Foxy Lady+
DISC SIX/SIDE ONE
1) Stop %
2) Earth Blues+
3) Burning Desire%
1/1/70 2nd Set:
DISC SIX/SIDE TWO
1) Stone Free%
2) Power Of Soul#
DISC SEVEN/SIDE ONE
1) Changes#
2) Message To Love#
DISC SEVEN/SIDE TWO
1) Machine Gun%
2) Lover Man*
3) Steal Away*
DISC EIGHT/SIDE ONE
1) Earth Blues%
2) Voodoo Child (Slight Return)%
3) We Gotta Live Together#
DISC EIGHT/SIDE TWO
1) Wild Thing%
2) Hey Joe*
3) Purple Haze*
*previously unreleased
+first time on CD/LP/streaming (previously only available as part of concert film)
#longer, unedited versions of previously released material, and newly remixed
%back in print on CD/LP for the first time in a decade, and newly remixed

The CD and digital edition of Songs For Groovy Children will be released on November 22, with the vinyl release to follow on December 13. Pre-order here.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Watch Kurt Vile play “Baby’s Arms” with The Sadies

Sam Richards
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Watch Kurt Vile play “Baby’s Arms” with The Sadies

On Thursday (October 3), Kurt Vile will release a new documentary called Bottle Back, filmed during rehearsals for his 2018 tour.

Below you can watch a “backyard rendition” of his 2011 song “Baby’s Arms” with Toronto rockers The Sadies, taken from the film:

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Bottle Back will be available to watch on Youtube from Thursday.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Robert Plant unveils new box set, Digging Deep

Sam Richards
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Robert Plant unveils new box set, Digging Deep

To coincide with his current podcast series Digging Deep, Robert Plant has unveiled a new 7″ box set of the same name.

Released on December 13, it comprises eight 7″ singles featuring remastered versions of songs from his eight solo albums, some of which have been discussed in the podcast.

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Check out the tracklisting for Digging Deep below and pre-order the box set here.

Vinyl 1:
Side A: Burning Down One Side
Side B: Like I’ve Never Been Gone

Vinyl 2:
Side A: Big Log
Side B: In The Mood

Vinyl 3:
Side A: Too Loud
Side B: Little By Little

Vinyl 4:
Side A: Ship of Fools
Side B: Tall Cool One

Vinyl 5:
Side A: Hurting Kind
Side B: Tie Dye on the Highway

Vinyl 6:
Side A: Calling To You
Side B: 29 Palms

Vinyl 7:
Side A: Song To The Siren
Side B: Morning Dew

Vinyl 8:
Side A: Shine It All Around
Side B: Tin Pan Valley

You can listen to Robert Plant’s Digging Deep podcast here.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Kim Gordon: “There was no blueprint”

Sam Richards
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Kim Gordon: “There was no blueprint”

The new issue of Uncut – in UK shops now or available to buy online by clicking here – features an interview with Kim Gordon about her long-awaited debut solo album, No Home Record.

It finds Gordon reconnecting with her love for hip-hop, as well as combining no wave noise with brash electronic beats while reflecting “the madness of the times and the strangeness and the sadness,” according to fellow traveller Steve Gunn.

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“I never professed to be a musician,” says Gordon. “I got into it being inspired by no wave bands, so it’s the only kind of record I could make. My friend, the poet Elaine Kahn, wrote my bio, and she said my music isn’t something you listen to, as much as experience.”

“When you make a solo album it’s a different mindset,” says Gordon’s friend J Mascis. “The limitations of a band are not occurring. Kim was never technical or anything – she’s a feel-oriented player.”

“Kim has this incredible use of language and 
a playfulness to what she does,” adds 
Steve Gunn. “I think she really utilised that 
with this record. She’s developed her own syntax 
and style. And it’s really her.”

“I’m pretty much a minimalist,” confirms Gordon. 
“I always liked hip-hop, but I didn’t wanna do a 
hip-hop record. I was really inspired by Cardi B – 
I remember when I first heard that song, ‘Bodak Yellow’, I was like ‘This is so punk.’ I loved the 
spirit of it.

“I just intuitively felt my way through writing and recording,” she explains of No Home Record. “In the back of my head I always wanted to make a weird 
jazz record, but I didn’t really know how to go about that, and it didn’t go that way! There was no blueprint – it was like, ‘I’m just gonna do this, who cares?’ It 
just happened.”

You can read much more from Kim Gordon in the new issue of Uncut, out now with Jimmy Page on the cover.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Send us your questions for Booker T

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Booker T

Twiddle your radio dial and it won’t be long before you alight on a song driven by the trusty Hammond B-3 organ of Booker T Jones – especially if you’re listening to the cricket.

As part of the de facto in-house band at Stax Records, Jones was one of the key architects of ’60s soul, playing on indelible sides by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Carla Thomas, Sam & Dave, Albert King, Bill Withers and many more.

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A genuine prodigy, Jones was still at school when he wrote “Green Onions”, a memorable 1962 hit for Booker T & The MGs. The band continued to mine a profitable sideline in organ-driven instrumentals throughout the 1960s, culminating in 1971’s funk masterclass Melting Pot. But Jones didn’t just play keyboards – he also played sax, bass, guitar, trombone… and supposedly, on some key rousing Stax numbers, even a tuba.

He was lauded by Cream and The Beatles, and when he teamed up with Drive-By Truckers on 2009 solo album Potato Hole, Neil Young turned up to play guitar.

Jones is about to reveal his own thoughts on his long and varied career in a new memoir, Time Is Tight: My Life, Note By Note (published on November 15 by Omnibus Press) before heading back out on tour next year, when he will be 75 years young.

So what do you want to ask a genuine soul music legend? Send your questions to audiencewith@www.uncut.co.uk by Monday September 30 – as the man says, time is tight – and Booker will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Oh Sees – Face Stabber

Jason Anderson
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Oh Sees – Face Stabber

The news that John Dwyer has generously delivered a double album as the 22nd full-length studio recording by some configuration of his band Thee (or The or the or nothing at all) Oh Sees may be the least surprising thing about it. Indeed, Face Stabber’s 81-minute girth seems almost modest given the man’s productivity and the sense that he’s long been heading towards something big – so big, in fact, that the Germans have a fancy word for it.

Richard Wagner’s concept of the gesamtkunstwerk was that of a work that united all of the arts – music, drama, dance, spectacle – in one awe-inspiring creative totality. Surely, at the rate he’s going, Dwyer will soon produce his own equivalent to The Ring Of The Nibelung, consisting of hours upon hours of woolly freakouts, psychedelic sludge, free-jazz meltdowns, garage-punk assaults, unrepentant prog bombast, beatific folk and sun-dazed pop. 
Visual accompaniment to this 
Wagnerian opus would surely consist 
of the most lurid excerpts of the films 
of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jess Franco 
and the three-headed monster King Ghidorah, plus every shot in Mad Max: Fury Road featuring the guy with the flamethrower guitar.

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In the meantime, there’s plenty here that needs digesting. And that’s just fine for all those who’ve regarded Dwyer as the tip of a modern psych-rock spear ever since his Oh Sees first reached Mach speed around the time of Warm Slime in 2010. Although they’ve since gained worthy peers in Ty Segall’s bands and King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – acts Dwyer helped launch when he released their early albums on his label, Castle Face – the Oh Sees remains the most artistically ambitious and flexible of the lot. Face Stabber sets a new standard when it comes to demonstrating Dwyer’s eagerness to extend, distend, distort and generally overhaul whatever constitutes the Oh Sees template. While he maintains a formidable standard regarding the mayhem and velocity of the Oh Sees live shows (no small thing given the major venues they’re now able to fill), there’s no predicting what will happen on the albums except that it’ll be loud.

Expanding the already wide scope 
of last year’s Smote Reverser and 2017’s Orc, Face Stabber alternates between skronky bursts of primal aggression, medium-sized rockers in various stages of collapse, one more named “Captain Loosely” that seems to have totally liquefied, and two longer pieces. The occupants of this last category demonstrate the foremost imperatives in Dwyer’s modus operandi: hurtling between ideas and modes at breakneck speeds and drilling down deep into a single one until achieving some brutal yet effective form of transcendence. The album’s 13-minute centrepiece, “Scutum & Scorpious”, is more of a speed demon type. It opens with a burbling stream of Tomita-worthy synths before Dwyer fully indulges his love for the sort of Euro-prog heaviosity rarely attempted since Magma and Kedama first stomped the Earth.

Yet like “The Experimenter” and “Fu Xi” elsewhere on the album, the track also betrays an equally ardent affection for the squelchy sideways funk of jazz-fusion giants like Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters and Mahavishnu Orchestra. Dwyer may already have made his jazz predilections clear in his duelling-saxes side-project Sword + Sandals, but Face Stabber constitutes these elements’ deepest incursion into Oh Sees proper with thrilling results.

They’re certainly front and centre in the swaggering opening stretch of the 21-minute “Henchlock”. While Dwyer’s guitar shredding may ultimately win the battle for supremacy with the Hancock-style keyboard figures, the squalling 
saxes of Dwyer and Brad Caulkins, 
and Tim Hellman’s burly bass lines, the piece as a whole is as sophisticated as anything the Oh Sees have recorded, which is not to suggest it’s any less berserk. And weird, too, especially once Dwyer trots out his best Viv Stanshall around the 15-minute mark and declares, “Where is that cup of tea?/We all want cups of tea while we sit around…”

His cryptic call for a cuppa is all the more jarring given the general scarcity of Dwyer’s vocals on Face Stabber. That apparent reticence may have less to do with the shift towards heavy-duty jazz jams or the Can-meets-the-Trashmen freewheeling of “The Daily Heavy” than with his drive to keep the album’s full-throttle garage-punk stompers – “Gholü”, “Heart Worm” and the Locust-like “Together Tomorrow” – so ruthlessly compact. Then again, flux is the sole constant in Dwyer’s world, and only Face Stabber’s “Poisoned Stones” and “Psy-Ops Dispatch” bears any particularly close resemblance to the burly stoner-rock and classic-minded psych that were the Oh Sees’ forte a mere three years ago.

Whatever comes next for Dwyer and his Oh Sees will very likely be even wilder than Face Stabber. Of course, the wisest thing to do is savour all the strangeness, the power and the glory that fill the present.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale from September 19, and available to order online now – with Jimmy Page on the cover. Meanwhile, our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Manu Chao – Clandestino / Bloody Border

Nigel Williamson
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Manu Chao – Clandestino / Bloody Border

Manu Chao was in a bad way when his band Mano Negra broke up in 1994. Intended as a potent Gallic equivalent of The Clash, after four albums in a turbulent seven years the group had fallen apart in the wake of an insane tour by train across war-torn, bandit-strewn Colombia, dodging bombs and playing impromptu free shows along the way. By the time the train returned to Bogotá six gruelling weeks later, the French-Spanish Chao was the only one left standing. Restless and depressed, he promptly disappeared on a three-year lost weekend, pinballing between Europe, Africa and South America.

He briefly turned up in London, where a musical flirtation with Leftfield promised much but came to nothing, and there were sightings in Paris and Naples. Unable to settle anywhere for more than a few weeks, he next made his way back to Colombia and then to Mexico, where he got out of his gourd on peyote and hung out with the Zapatistas. Then he moved on to Tijuana, where the chaotic energy of the border seemed to suit his mood, before he hit rock bottom in Brazil, where he decided to kill himself.

He claimed that a cow saved his life when it wandered into a desolate beer shack in a run-down Rio favela where he was drinking away his pain. He looked into the cow’s eyes and detected a “tenderness” that made him decide that he wanted to live. He headed back to Europe and landed in Spain, clutching little more than his portable recorder, on which he had been saving the many songs he had written on his travels, intermingled with street sounds, snatches of conversation and other noises of the road. In Madrid and then Galicia he wrote more songs, before making his way to Paris, where he helped former girlfriend Anouk record an album for Virgin. It pushed him into thinking about going back to work and creating his own album from the 50 
songs and snatches haphazardly stored 
on his recorder.

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By the summer of 1997, he had decided which tracks to include but was unsure about the extent to which he wanted to use electronica on the album. In the end the decision was made for him when the software on his computer developed a bug that accidentally stripped out the electronics and the drums. Reportedly, Chao’s only response to this potential catastrophe was to say “le hazard est mon ami”– chance was his friend.

What remained was spare, beautiful, visionary – and more than a little unhinged. If Clandestino sounded unlike anything else one had ever heard on its release in 1998, the closest analogy might to be think of it as a world music equivalent of Skip Spence’s Oar.

Instead of a personal singer-songwriter vibe, Chao created a stoner classic steeped in bouncing global rhythms, full of magical, chiming harmonics and sinuous vocals that weave in and out of the mix in four different languages – Spanish, French, English and Brazilian-Portuguese. The lyrics are full of street slang from the barrios and favelas and oscillate thrillingly between the hilariously surreal (“Bongo Bong”, the album’s best known song, a radical reworking of a Mano Negra track), the bittersweet (“Lagrimas De Oro”), radical politics (“Mentira”) and a beguiling mix of hedonism and despair that drives him to seek redemption in “tequila, sexo, marijuana” (“Buenvenido En Tijuana”).

With Clandestino, Chao created a subversive, multi-lingual global party manifesto that gave voice to the dispossessed and soundtracked a brief but tangible moment of premillennial hope in which it seemed the world was progressively becoming a more tolerant place as we hurtled towards the year 2000. Sadly, times have instead grown darker. Yet if Clandestino captured a moment in time, Chao’s irresistible rhythms and message of resistance continue to sound fresh and vibrant a generation on.

Three bonus tracks bring the story up to date via a cracking reworking of the title track featuring the veteran Trinidadian singer Calypso Rose, new song “Bloody Bloody Border”, which seeks to blow a giant hole in Trump’s wall, and “Roadies Rules”, a new version of a previously unreleased track from the original Clandestino cache.

The album went on to sell more than five million copies around the world, but made little impression in Britain. Perhaps this expanded release will finally redress the balance. In the era of Trump and Brexit, if your faith has been battered by the 21st-century blues, lend Clandestino your ears. It won’t cure anything. But its unique medicine will surely ease the pain.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale from September 19, and available to order online now – with Jimmy Page on the cover. Meanwhile, our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Josh Homme announces two new Desert Sessions albums

Sam Richards
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Josh Homme announces two new Desert Sessions albums

Josh Homme has announced the release of two new instalments in his fabled Desert Sessions series – the first for 16 years.

Vol 11 (Arrivederci Despair) and Vol 12 (Tightwads & Nitwits & Critics & Heels) will both arrive on October 25 via Matador.

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They were recorded mostly in a six-day span in December 2018 at Rancho De La Luna studios in Joshua Tree, CA, with Queens Of The Stone Age founder and Desert Sessions ringleader/producer Joshua Homme enlisting a cast of players including Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint), Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters), Mike Kerr (Royal Blood), Carla Azar (Autolux, Jack White), Les Claypool (Primus), Matt Sweeney, Matt Berry (Toast of London), Libby Grace and Töôrnst Hülpft.

Watch an interview with Homme about the albums below, and pre-order them here.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Jeff Lynne’s ELO unveil new album, From Out Of Nowhere

Sam Richards
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Jeff Lynne’s ELO unveil new album, From Out Of Nowhere

Jeff Lynne’s ELO have announced that their new album From Out Of Nowhere – their second since reactivating the group in 2014 – will be released on November 1.

Listen to the title track below:

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Once again, Lynne plays nearly every note of the music on guitars, bass, piano, drums, keyboards and vibes, as well as singing all of the lead and layered harmony vocals. Steve Jay, who also engineered the album, adds some percussion and there is a piano solo by Richard Tandy on “One More Time”.

Pre-order From Out Of Nowhere here.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter has died, aged 78

Sam Richards
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Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter has died, aged 78

Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter has died, aged 78. According to a statement from his family, he “died peacefully at home in his bed” on Monday night.

“For his fans that have loved and supported him all these years, take comfort in knowing that his words are all around us, and in that way his is never truly gone,” continues the statement. “In this time of grief please celebrate him the way you all know how, by being together and listening to the music. Let there be songs to fill the air.”

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Hunter first met Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia in 1961, when they were both teenagers. While Hunter didn’t join the first line-up of the band, he began to send them lyrics from his retreat in New Mexico. Garcia encouraged Hunter to return to San Francisco, where he penned pivotal Dead song “Dark Star” and eventually became a permanent member of the band.

Later, Hunter teamed up with Bob Dylan, co-writing most of Together Through Life as well as songs on Down In The Groove and Tempest. He also worked with Elvis Costello and Bruce Hornsby, co-writing “Take You There (Misty)” from the latter’s acclaimed 2019 album, Absolute Zero.

A full obituary will be published in the next issue of Uncut.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Iggy Pop – Free

Michael Bonner
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Iggy Pop – Free

Stooge, solo artist, actor, raconteur, collaborator, lecturer, author, artist’s model, radio host, barista… Iggy Pop has enjoyed many guises during his formidable career. Latterly, though, he has taken on a new role – as a semi-retired rock star. While his last studio album, 2016’s Post Pop Depression, gave Pop the highest chart placing of his career, that success took place under the shadow of his longtime champion David Bowie, who died shortly before the album’s release. After the tour to promote the record, Pop now admits he “felt like I wanted to put on shades, turn my back, and walk away”. Fortuitously for us, retirement seems not to have suited him.

Never content to rest on his reputation, Pop collaborated with Oneohtrix Point Never on “The Pure And The Damned”, for the Safdie Brothers’ 2017 film Good Time – then, last year, teamed up with Underworld, delivering a series of avuncular monologues for the Teatime Dub Encounters album. Now, finally, Pop has returned to the studio for Free – his 18th solo record, and one that contains a revealing note to self: “To lay down is to give up,” he chides on “The Dawn”. “You gotta do something.”

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Accordingly, Free begins with a sloughing off of old skin. On the opening track, “Free”, he murmurs “I wanna be free” – it’s the song’s only lyric – and you might assume that for Pop, historically a liberated performer, the freedom to create, to express and to simply be is the ultimate goal here. But also perhaps, now aged 72, he yearns to be ‘free’ of another version of Iggy Pop; his younger, wilder self, kicking and screaming and self-lacerating, externalising some deep internal storm that has by now long since blown itself out.

For Post Pop Depression, Pop enlisted help from members of Queens Of The Stone Age, The Raconteurs and Arctic Monkeys – but for Free, his collaborators are drawn from more eclectic disciplines. Chief among these is Texan jazzer Leron Thomas, whose trumpet brings a mournful quality to much of the record, and Noveller – aka Sarah Lipstate – whose ambient soundscapes define the album’s contemplative, melancholy state.

As Free progresses, Pop meditates in his weathered baritone about car parking (“Sonali”), online porn (“Dirty Sanchez”), celebrity (“Glow In The Dark”) and cultural politics (“James Bond”). In some instances, the treatment is weirdly Zen – “To park the car, we must find parking,” he announces gnomically on “Sonali”.

In others, like “Glow In The Dark”, he writes himself into the song, “I’m not exempt from the whitest of noise, if I forfeit mark me isolated,” underscoring a general condition that pervades this record: of remoteness or loneliness, where characters are confined by cars, landscapes or social isolation and where another kind of “free” is required. The protagonist of “Loves Missing”, for instance, “just needs someone to say I love you before she gets pushed away”, the motorists in “Sonali” risk spending the day trapped on the freeway while the digital society of “Dirty Sanchez” and “Glow In The Dark” finds personal disconnection in a technologically connected world. As Pop sings on “Page” – “We’re only human, no longer human.”

Thomas and Noveller fashion chilly, gothic accompaniments. There is the glistening electronica of “Sonali”, the jazz freakout on “Glow In The Dark”, the infectious strut of “James Bond”, the shimmering ambience of “Page”. Only the dense, guitar-heavy “Loves Missing” sounds like a conventional rock band are in the room. There is very little release here.

Pop has made other dark-alley detours in his time, of course – Avenue B, Préliminaires and Post Pop Depression – but nothing quite matches this album’s final stretch. Featuring three spoken-word pieces, supported by sparse, ambient passages from Thomas and Noveller, these are deep and dark statements on mortality beginning with “We Are The People” – a Lou Reed poem dating from the early ’70s. The resonance of Pop covering Reed is unmistakable – another friend, gone too soon – and Pop’s weatherworn baritone adds acute pathos to lines like, “We are the people who do not know how to die peacefully and at ease.”

Pop follows this with Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”, exhorting to “rage against the dying of the light”. He closes with “The Dawn”, whose title suggests some kind of happy respite, but Pop is more concerned with the restless, listless hours before sunrise: “If all else fails/It’s good to smile in the dark,” he concludes. “Love and sex/Are gonna occur to you/And neither one will solve the darkness.”

If this is Pop’s final album – who knows? – it is a significantly more effective swansong than Post Pop Depression. The intimate, minimal work done by his accomplices serves to channel Pop at his bleakest and most rueful; the survivor’s survivor, figuring out what, if anything, comes after the darkest night. Will he ever be free?

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale from September 19, and available to order online now – with Jimmy Page on the cover. Meanwhile, our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Ultimate Record Collection – The 1970s Part 2 (1975-1979)

Marc Jones
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Ultimate Record Collection – The 1970s Part 2 (1975-1979)

The latest in our Ultimate Record Collection series covers the years 1975-9.

Never mind the “punk kills dinosaurs” nonsense, this is a time of soft rock, adventurous reggae, and huge sales – as well as fiery new wave.

Here, we detail the work of the major players, and give 500 further album recommendations.

Also: Lee Scratch Perry, Wire and the lowdown on Floyd’s flying pigs!

Buy it online here!

Nick Cave announces new Bad Seeds album, Ghosteen

Sam Richards
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Nick Cave announces new Bad Seeds album, Ghosteen

In response to a fan question on his Red Hand Files site, Nick Cave casually announced that a new Bad Seeds album is due for release next week.

Ghosteen is a double album, with Part 1 comprising eight songs and Part 2 consisting of two long songs, linked by a spoken word piece.

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Check out the tracklisting below:

Part 1
The Spinning Song
Bright Horses
Waiting For You
Night Raid
Sun Forest
Galleon Ship
Ghosteen Speaks
Leviathan

Part 2
Ghosteen
Fireflies
Hollywood

“The songs on the first album are the children,” writes Cave. “The songs on the second album are their parents. Ghosteen is a migrating spirit.”

More details when we have them…

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale now, with Jimmy Page on the cover. Our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

Gruff Rhys – Pang!

Tom Pinnock
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Gruff Rhys – Pang!

Twenty years ago, Super Furry Animals released Guerrilla, a technicolour, hyperactive pop album – or at least the quintet’s twisted idea of a pop album – laced with manic electronic beats, Caribbean textures, Beach Boys harmonies and songs about chewing gum and mobile phones. Viewed from 2019, it seemed to predict the melting pot of global influences that make up mainstream pop today, even if no single artist has created something quite so wonderfully deranged as “The Door To This House Remains Open”.

Since then though, SFA and Gruff Rhys have stepped back from the brink of such colourful experimentation. Rhys’ last three solo albums – 2011’s Hotel Shampoo, 2014’s American Interior and 2018’s Babelsberg – excellent as they were, found Rhys mining a statelier, slower sound inspired by piano ballads, Americana and orchestral chamber pop. Just 15 months after Babelsberg, however, he’s unleashing Pang!, which quickens the tempos and embraces the collaged grandeur of electronic pop music in a way that Rhys hasn’t in years.

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Crucial to the sound of Pang! is South African producer Muzi, who Rhys met while both participated in the most recent instalment of Damon Albarn’s Africa Express project. Muzi remixed “Bae Bae Bae”, included here, and Rhys was so pleased with the result that they agreed to work together on his latest set of ideas.

Babelsberg, of course, was recorded as stripped-down tracks that were later topped with a lavish layer of classical orchestration, and Pang! follows a 
similar process: this time, however, 
the icing on the sparse, mainly acoustic cake comes from Muzi’s synths and 
beats. Songs like the title track and 
“Ara Deg (Ddaw’r Awen)” are driven by a mix of live drums, played by former Flaming Lip Kliph Scurlock (now the Furries’ archivist, among other things), and processed, skipping beats, Rhys’ acoustic guitar, Muzi’s synths and the occasional burst of balafon, an African xylophone-like instrument.

There’s also a lilting Tropicalia feel to much of the record which, Rhys tells Uncut, stems from Super Furry Animals’ Love Kraft mixing session in Brazil in 2005, and bled into his excellent 2007 solo album Candylion. With their rootless bossa nova chords, the title track and “Niwl O Anwiredd” in particular could be lost Caetano Veloso tracks, with Rhys’ spidery nylon-string parts augmented by 
a web of diced drums and jazzy trumpet. As the album progresses, things get stranger, the treatments increasingly adventurous: on “Ôl Bys/Nodau Clust”, Muzi erases practically all the acoustic instruments, leaving Rhys’ Gregorian vocals beautifully adrift in a sea of percussion and reverb. Meanwhile, during the closing “Annedd Im Danedd”, clicking drums and multi-tracked brass are the only instruments backing Rhys’ harmonised vocals.

If it’s not already apparent from the titles, Pang! is entirely in Welsh, for the first time across a whole album since Rhys’ 2005 solo debut, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth. When SFA released Mwng in 2000, the use of Welsh in a charting album was so notable it was mentioned in parliament; today, artists such as BTS and Rosalia sing in their native languages and regularly make it high into English-speaking charts around the world, while closer to home, Gwenno has managed to carve out a successful solo career singing only in Welsh and Cornish. The only drawback here for those of us who can’t speak Welsh, of course, is that we miss Rhys’ witty, Gainsbourg-esque wordplay: “Digidigol”, explains the songwriter, is a nonsense version of the Welsh for “digital”, “digidol”, while “Eli Haul” translates as “sun screen”, the effects of the heat reflected in the lyrics. “I was trying to write lyrics that sound like they’ve been baked by the sun,” Rhys tells Uncut. “They become abstract, like the song’s melting or something.”

The pinnacle of the album’s mix of Rhys and Muzi’s styles occurs on “Niwl O Anwiredd”. The basis of the song is an acoustic folk lament that recalls Super Furry Animals’ “Colonise The Moon”, very droning, very British Isles; but it gathers sheets of other instruments as it progresses, from digital beats and Indian tabla, to massed vocals, balafon and some kind of electronic harp swell. Here, then, is a meeting of continents and hemispheres, of different cultures perfectly complementing each other in three-and-a-half minutes.

While Pang!, totalling just under half an hour, doesn’t have the conceptual strengths of Babelsberg or American Interior, it’s nevertheless a delight to hear Rhys once again embracing the possibilities of technology and 
harnessing modern, global sounds 
to enhance his unique vision.

The November 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale from September 19, and available to order online now – with Jimmy Page on the cover. Meanwhile, our free CD features 17 exclusive cover versions of Wilco songs recorded for us by Low, Courtney Barnett, Cate Le Bon, Kurt Vile and many more. Elsewhere in the issue, there’s Kim Gordon, The Clash live and unseen, Angel Olsen, Tinariwen, Bruce Hornsby, Super Furry Animals, Bob Nastanovich on David Berman and Roger McGuinn.

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