The Beatles‘ American albums originally compiled for US release between January 1964 and March 1965 are reissued on November 22 by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe as The Beatles: 1964 U.S. Albums In Mono.
All seven albums – Meet The Beatles!, The Beatles’ Second Album, A Hard Day’s Night (Original Motion Picture Sound Track), Something New, The Beatles’ Story (2LP), Beatles ’65 andThe Early Beatles– have been analog cut for 180-gram audiophile vinyl from their original mono master tapes and feature replicated artwork and new four-panel inserts with essays.
The albums’ new vinyl lacquers were cut by Kevin Reeves at Nashville’s East Iris Studios. Out of print on vinyl since 1995, the seven mono albums are available now for preorder in a new eight-LP box set, with six of the titles also available individually.
“We’re really more of a cult than a band,” grins drummer Caius Stockley-Young from underneath an unseasonal woolly hat as he tries to explain the chemistry that defines King Nun. The five-piece formed when they were at school in south-west London and meet Uncut in nearby Kingston, scene of some of their earliest successes. It turns out that King Nun are a fairly self-contained unit. Caius produced their 2023 album LAMBat the Marshall Studio, brother Ethan (bass, percussion) painted the cover art, guitarist James Upton drives the tour van with Caius, while bassist Nathan Gane – “the human calendar” – is tour manager. That leaves singer Theo Polyzoides free to write lyrics, which are plucked from a pile of notebooks that he fills with ideas while the band are writing songs.
It’s an admirably DIY approach, as you’d expect from a band that first bonded over a love of CGBG bands, particularly Marquee Moon, which became an early point of unity when they formed as teenagers in 2013. Their tastes have changed and diversified as they have got older, but LAMBstill resounds with the punkish energy that saw them named Best Rock Newcomers at Bonnarroo festival. There’s galloping opening number “Golden Age”, the grungy crunch of “Escapism” and “OCD”, which fizzles with New Wave tension. It’s powerful, visceral music. “We wanted to set fire to stuff and this was the next best thing,” says Ethan. “Maybe it’s that teenage boy thing, a need to be a bit destructive to see what happens when you set fire to the deodorant can. With music you can do that in a constructive way.”
Ethan, Caius and James Upton have gathered in Kingston to induct Uncutinto the cult of King Nun and point out some of the key venues and locations that helped nurture the band through those important early days. They released their debut single, “Tulip”, in 2016 – a hyperactive piece of power-punk that lasts just over two minutes. By the time they came to record cathartic second album LAMB, the quintet had more experience under their belt having released Massin 2019 and played shows with bands like Foo Fighters.
They also had the support of a label that was happy to let Caius produce their second album at the Marshall Studio in Buckinghamshire. He records most of their demos, so seemed an obvious pick when they were searching for producers. “We have worked with great producers previously but keeping it within the five of us made it a lot easier,” he says. “It’s much easier to discuss things with each other then with somebody you have just met and I knew what the songs needed to sound like.”
“That’s what we appreciate about Marshall,” chips in James. “They give us the freedom and the resources to do what we want to do and then support us when we do it.” That’s reassuring for a band, as is having Marshall equipment to work with. “A Marshall amp is built for rock – they are very loud and they are very reliable,” says Ethan. Caius agrees. “They make great gear and you can’t name a guitar player who doesn’t use a Marshall amp,” he says. “It’s great to have that quality behind you on the stage. It means something to everybody who knows music. With equipment, you want things to sound great, to work properly and not get in the way of creating. That’s what we get from Marshall.”
King Nun’s method of creating is, they explain, democratic and collaborative. Any band member can bring in an idea, which will then evolve in rehearsal as each musician introduces their own musical influences. James feels their best songs are the ones that capture everybody’s input. “Because we do have quite different tastes and that all comes out in the friction,” he says.
King Nun wrote around 100 songs before honing them down to the 11 that appeared on LAMB. The group are now deep in the writing process for LAMB’s successor, which they promise will be a different sort of animal. “We don’t want to do the same thing,” says Caius. “We did a fairly straight-up rock album with LAMB so now we are going to take some risks. But at the moment we don’t know what those risks are going to be, and we don’t want to force it.” James nods in agreement. “As soon as you put a label on it,” he muses. “That’s when it stops becoming true.”
Kingston, London
King Nun take you on a whistle-stop tour of their favourite local haunts
When choosing where to meet in Kingston, King Nun immediately suggest Banquet Records. The record shop is a focal point for Kingston’s strong music scene. Found on Eden Street, Banquet Records was originally part of Beggers Banquets, but in 2002 was taken over by employee Jon Tolley. It’s been named independent retailer of the year four times since 2011 and is central to King Nun’s early days as a place for the band members to buy – and sell – records but also as a gig promoter. Banquet Records regularly put on shows in local venues, and these gave King Nun some of their first live experience.
“Jon was such a big supporter and anytime there was a band playing at one of the venues, he’d invite us down to play with them,” says James. “There usually wasn’t supposed to be an opening act but he would let us play and many of our early gigs were at a place called the Hippodrome, that no longer exists. We supported bands like Wolf Alice, Slaves, Palma Violets.”
Banquet Records was the first record shop to stock copies of King Nun’s early releases – something that was particularly special to band members who had saved their paper round money to buy records and fanzines from the shop on a Saturday afternoon. “Having a place like Banquet is so important for young bands,” says Caius. “They don’t discriminate, they sell Ed Sheeran as well as bands like us, so you get fans of rock and pop in one place. They do shows, they encourage and support young bands and that creates a community. It’s all well and good having social media and streaming but that isn’t the same as being in the same room as people who share your interests.”
Although King Nun meet Uncutin Kingston, they actually come from nearby Richmond and Twickenham. This is a corner of London that was once described as the Thames Delta because of the number of bands that hailed from the area or, in the case of the Rolling Stones, played early shows at places like the Crawdaddy Club, Richmond Athletic Ground and Eel Pie Island. Growing up, King Nun knew of this legacy and appreciated having so much musical history on their doorstep – but despaired at the lack of venues for current bands. The best they could find was a pub called The George in Twickenham, where a young King Nun would play five-minute grunge metal sets at the blues open mic night. “We were wildly out of place,” says James. “But some of the regulars saw we were kids and gave us support.”
Richmond does at least boast Richmond Park, one of London’s largest open spaces and a popular spot for King Nun when they needed some fresh air and a place to jam. “We’d trek out there with our acoustic guitars and sit around coming up with stuff,” says Caius. “We’ll often take our little portable [Willen II Marshall Bluetooth] speaker, which is a banging piece of equipment. If we are on tour we’ll take the bigger [Middleton II] speaker us.”
Through Banquet Records, King Nun played shows at Kingston’s many nightspots such as McLusky’s on Thames Street, location of their first “proper” gig but no longer in existence. McLusky’s might be gone but other venues have taken its place – one of the advantages of being a student town thanks to Kingston University is the number of clubs. There are also local art schools, including Richmond College where bassist Nathan was in the same class as BRIT award-winning rapper Dave. Other local acts included Goat Girl, Mac Wetha and Lava LaRue. “We did one gig at The Fighting Cocks with Mac Wetha, Lava LaRue and Shame,” says James. “It was a whole bunch of artists that seemed to be on the brink of making it.”
The Fighting Cocks, a five-minute walk from Banquet Records on Old London Road, is one of King Nun’s favourite Kingston venues. This is a rock pub that is knee-deep in live music. It has all the rock pub classics – sticky floor, leopard print walls, musty smell, jukebox packed with air guitar classics and a constant roster of young, hungry bands on stage almost every night of the week. King Nun have played their numerous times and often pop in to see who else is performing. “I think my favourite thing about it is the pool table,” says Caius. “Because it is positioned in the most annoying place possible – blocking the toilets and the exit at the same time, so you are always bumping into people. That creates interaction.”
The next level up from The Fighting Cocks is PRYZM on Clarence Street. This is another Kingston nightclub that has been adopted by Banquet for showcases and has hosted some big artists including Fontaines DC, The Hives and Foo Fighters. “It’s a nightclub but Banquet turned it into a venue, and it has an amazing sound system and gets some really big names,” says Caius. “It’s much bigger than the Fucking Cocks, so you kind of go from one to the other as your audience grows.”
King Nun have since played at some of London’s biggest venues, and in 2023 even played at Wembley Arena. “You can’t see a thing but when you hear that many people cheering, it is a pretty crazy feeling,” says Ethan. That access to London makes Kingston a particularly great location for King Nun, and their heart remains in this corner of south-west London. “Because Kingston is that little bit out of the way, it’s still like an underground culture that is pushing through the cracks,” says James. “People still have to fight a little bit for their space, and that can make it seem a bit more sincere.”
David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young are releasing a newly-discovered live set recorded during the band’s September 20, 1969, concert at the Fillmore East in New York.
Live At The Fillmore East, 1969 will be available on 2xLP and CD. Pre-order here.
You can hear a previously unreleased live version of “Helplessly Hoping” below.
Stephen Stills and Neil Young compiled and mixed the original eight-track concert recordings with John Hanlon at Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles. The audio is AAA lacquer cut for the vinyl release to provide the highest audio fidelity.
Said Young recently: “We mixed at Sunset Sound – the analog echo chamber, no digital echo. We’re staying all analog throughout the production…Pure. Analog. No digital – an Analog Original.”
The Mood Ring EP is released by No Quarter on October 4 and can be pre-ordered here. It marks Shelley’s first new music since The Spur album in 2022.
Tracklisting for the EP is:
Mood Ring
Singing To You
Fire of the Morning
Seven Steps
I Look After You
Shelley says the title track was inspired by: “the idea that heat and time are interlinked. That they tug and warp each other in space. I had read about block universe theory and it bothered me—if it were true, how do we really change anything? The song wove its own little message in response: this sense that all of us, our web of connections and the friction of our relationships, are the fuel that propels us through time… and that inevitably we are consumed by it. But what a spectacular thing to get a chance to ignite this vast, incomprehensible space with our lives. To have gotten an invitation to be here at all.”
For anyone currently suffering from seasonal disaffection, back to school blues or general doom-scrolling dismay, The Jesus And Mary Chain have a message for you. “Don’t let those grey skies pin you down,” they drawl on sweetly autobiographical new single “Pop Seeds”, detailing how as teenage misfits they found solace in “dusty grooves” and “punk rock magazines”.
“We’d never make the world OK,” Reid concludes, “but we would make our world OK.” Hence why we present to you this gift-wrapped bundle of uplifting, inspiring, exhilarating, consoling new music from the likes of Songhoy Blues, Joan Shelley, Christopher Owens, Naima Bock, Gazelle Twin (remixed by Beak>), The Hard Quartet, Manu Chao, Field Music, Goat, Flock, Yasmin Williams and more.
As White Denim’s James Petralli advises on their own life-affirming new single “Light On” (also featured below), “Keep loving in spite of the darkness / Laughing in the faces of the heartless”. And don’t let those grey skies pin you down…
THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN “Pop Seeds” (Fuzz Club)
WHITE DENIM “Light On” (Bella Union)
JOAN SHELLEY “Mood Ring” (No Quarter)
THE HARD QUARTET “Our Hometown Boy” (Matador)
SONGHOY BLUES “Issa” (Transgressive)
MANU CHAO “Tu Te Vas” featuring Laeti (Because Music)
GOAT “Goatbrain” (Rocket Recordings)
FIELD MUSIC “The Waitress of St Louis’” (Memphis Industries)
ANNA BUTTERSS “Pokemans” (International Anthem)
EBO TAYLOR “Obra Akyedzi” (Jazz Is Dead)
THEE SACRED SOULS “Waiting On The Right Time” (Daptone)
CHRISTOPHER OWENS “This Is My Guitar” (live acoustic) (True Panther)
NAIMA BOCK “Feed My Release” (Sub Pop)
YASMIN WILLIAMS “Hummingbird” (featuring Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves)(Nonesuch)
MEROPE “Namopi” (featuring Laraaji and Shahzad Imsaily) (Stroom)
Herbie Flowers, the veteran bassist who played with David Bowie, Lou Reed and Paul McCartney among many others, has died aged 86.
Flowers, who was thought to have contributed to more than 500 hit albums by the end of the 1970s (according to the BBC), passed away on September 5. His death was announced by the family on Facebook.
Flowers was born in Isleworth in 1938. He was conscripted into military service – which, he told Uncut, gave him ample preparation for a career as a musician. “It’s my working-class background and the nine years I spent in the RAF living in billets and sleeping in bunks, that I was quite well-geared to being on the factory floor.”
As a session musician, working for producers including Shel Tamly, Mickie Most and Gus Dudgeon, “My job was just to run in, never be late,” he told us. “They’d play us the song or the musical director would give you a bit of paper with little dots on it – that’s called ‘music’ – and you play it, you go home with £6 or £9 or £12 or £24 and that was the end of your involvement in it.
“It was scrambling in at midnight after doing a concert with Eartha Kitt at the Cambridge Theatre, getting up at 6 o’clock the next morning and leaving a note on the table saying ‘Can you take the kids to school? I’ve got to be at EMI.’
“So I might have done a session for David Bowie in the morning, and then rushed to Lime Grove to be in the Top Of The Pops orchestra to lay a backing track for Cilla Black or The Four Tops or whoever it was. And then the next day go off to South Korea and Japan and wherever to be in the Royal Philharmonic Pops orchestra doing a tour with Henry Mancini conducting it. I mean, what a wonderful life!
“The era that we all stumbled into the music profession there was a lot of naivety and too many people diving in like the A&R men and the record companies and the publishers. It was a bit too big, it was a funny-shaped balloon, and at the bottom of the pile were these wonderful beautiful messes, a lot of people who just wanted to do music.”
Flowers played on Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, staying within his orbit to play bass on Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” and with T.Rex for Dandy In The Underworld.
Of that time, Flowers remembered: “We worked fast, nothing took long to do – and also – when we did the recording, there might have only been David with his acoustic guitar, and a rough screwed-up piece of paper with rough lyrics on and a drummer and a bass player. We’d put down the rough track, and then go home. But David would go onto step two and get the right musical director to overscore strings or get Ronnie Ross the great baritone sax player, who was actually David’s saxophone teacher, to come in and play the saxophone solo at the end of ‘Walk On The Wild Side’.”
Flowers reconnected with Bowie and played on Diamond Dogs and the ensuring world tour. “When we did Madison Square Gardens in New York, Sly Stone got married in the afternoon. Doris Day was invited to play the organ and she sang ‘Que Sera, Sera’, because she had a hit with it and so did Sly And The Family Stone. Then, straight after the wedding, in rolled the Diamond Dogs lot, and it was kind of… completely, beautifully absurd. People of all nationalities, all styles. I felt very proud, very safe, just looking around thinking – ‘I can’t believe my luck.’”
Flowers also played on Bryan Ferry’s The Bride Stripped Bare, Paul McCartney’s Give My Regards To Broadstreet and Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection and Madman Across The Water, Harry Nilsson’s Nilsson Schmilsson and David Essex‘s Rock On.
Flowers also found success as member of Blue Mink in the late ‘60s and, in the late ‘70s, formed Sky with John Williams.
“It was a great privilege for me to be at that level in the music business,” he told us. “I knew all these people, without the hoohah. I remember, occasionally David would say – ‘We’re leaving at twelve o’clock tomorrow, and the crew have got a day off so they’re all staying in the hotel – do you want to travel with us?’ So half a dozen times we just sat in the back of the limo, hardly said two words, because singers on tour don’t want to talk all day – they want to rest. It was quite comfortable looking out of the window at… those cactus plants, the mountains, this that and the other.”
Sérgio Mendes, a titan of Brazilian music, “passed away peacefully” on September 5 in Los Angeles, aged 83.
According to a statement on his Facebook page, “His wife and musical partner for the past 54 years, Gracinha Leporace Mendes, was by his side, as were his loving children… For the last several months, his health had been challenged by the effects of long term Covid.”
Originally trained as a classical pianist, Mendes was at the forefront of Brazil’s bossa nova boom of the late 1950s alongside his mentor Antônio Carlos Jobim.
After recording with Cannonball Adderley and Herbie Mann, Mendes moved to Los Angeles where he eventually formed the bilingual group Brasil ’66, featuring singers Lani Hall and Bibi Vogel. Their debut album Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 went platinum in the US.
In 1968, the group scored consecutive Top 20 hits with bossa nova covers of “The Look Of Love”, “The Fool On The Hill” and “Scarborough Fair”, turning Mendes into a global ambassador for Brazilian music. He went on to make over 40 studio albums, the most recent being 2020’s In The Key Of Joy.
“Sergio Mendes was my brother from another country,” wrote Herb Albert on Instagram. “He was a true friend and extremely gifted musician who brought Brazilian music in all its iterations to the entire world with elegance and joy.”
The first two discs of Archives III – here at last! – are culled from concerts at the Budokan and Hammersmith Odeon on Neil Young’s 1976 world tour with Crazy Horse that make you wish you’d been witness to at least one of them. Then you remember you were. Hammersmith, March 31, four rows from the front, half-blinded by the grit being blown off the stage by a huge wind machine during an early outing for “Like A Hurricane”.
It comes back to you in a rush. First, Neil solo and acoustic, the setlist a fan’s dream. Crazy Horse joining him for a second set that included “Down By The River”, “Like A Hurricane”, “Southern Man”, “Cortez The Killer”, “Cinnamon Girl”, “Cowgirl In The Sand”. These songs became central to Young’s concert repertoire in the decades ahead, but these recordings are from the days before they became familiar set-pieces. Everything felt newly minted, freshly bottled lightning. “Like A Hurricane” had been played for the first time only months earlier, in December 1975, on the Rolling Zuma Revue tour. The Odeon version is everything you remember, played out in a lunar glow, Neil’s guitar emerging from the maelstrom like something blown by a solar wind, at the time unlike anything you’d heard.
These performances are among the many highlights of this vast set – 198 tracks across 17 discs, linked occasionally by Neil “raps”, usually dryly informative, plus, on the US Deluxe Edition, five Blu-Ray discs with 11 films – that covers Young’s career from 1976-1987. There isn’t a chapter of that career that hasn’t been touched in some way by drama, tragedy, fireworks of one kind or another, but Neil’s ’80s were especially turbulent and ended with him estranged from his own fans and being sued by his own label for making uncommercial records. The synth-pop of 1983’s Trans was especially ridiculed, no-one hip to the circumstances that inspired it, the emotional impact on Young of his children Zeke and Ben, both being born with a rare, non-hereditary form of cerebral palsy, Ben a non-verbal paraplegic. There was suddenly a lot of grief, resentment and anger to deal with. There was also an unfortunate public endorsement of Ronald Reagan and regrettable remarks about Aids that seemed dramatically at odds with his usual hippie utopianism.
There’s much across the anthology you’ve already heard. Most of the tracks on Discs 3, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 16 are lifted from Hawks & Doves, Re-ac-tor, Rust Never Sleeps, Live Rust, Hitchhiker, Songs For Judy and The Last Waltz. The eerily fathomless “Will To Love” appears on both American Stars ’N Bars and Chrome Dreams. Of the unreleased songs on these discs, it’s not hard to see why some of them have never found a home. “Your Love” is a gussied-up blues, “If You Got Love” a blaring lurch. On something called “Hard Luck Stories”, Young seems to be indulging a fortunately short-lived ambition to sound like Freddie Mercury. “Cryin’ Eyes”, on Disc 5, recorded live with The Ducks, meanwhile, has a fantastic bar band urgency. The rough and tumble “Bright Sunny Day”, with Crazy Horse, may have been recorded in a car park, while “California Sunset”, just Neil and a banjo, sounds like it was recorded with Neil sitting on a hay bale, surrounded by domestic fowl and a quacking duck. It’s lovely. As is “My Boy”, which follows it on Disc 13, a wisp of a thing with more banjo, so slight it barely exists, but very affecting. An early version of “Lost In Space” ends with Ronnie Wood of all people wandering into the studio for an inconsequential chat. Elsewhere, “We Never Danced” is a melancholic piano ballad, sung in his highest register. “Road Of Plenty” is an early sketch of Freedom’s “Eldorado”.
One day in early 1977, Neil drove out to Linda Ronstadt’s Malibu digs, with producer David Briggs and a bunch of new songs he wanted to play to Ronstadt and Nicolette Larson. They sat at a kitchen table, Briggs taping the entire session, presented on Disc 4 as “Snapshot In Time (1977)”. Neil starts with “Long May You Run”, already recorded and released in 1976 on the Stills-Young Band album of the same name, but here sung in a lower register than usual. Ronstadt and Larson pick up on it quickly, joining in on the chorus and laughing out loud when Neil gets to the line about The Beach Boys, “Caroline, No” and “getting to the surf on time”. There’s an early take on “Hold Back The Tears”. “This is the fiddle part,” he says and starts humming. “Pocahontas”, recorded at Ronstadt’s kitchen table, may be the best version of the song.
Young turns up at Reprise early that same year with some tracks he’s recorded in Florida, at Triad Studios in Fort Lauderdale, to test the reactions of label bigwigs Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker. They think the songs need a band. Instead of throwing a tantrum and heading off on tour with a balalaika quartet to piss them off, he takes their advice. He’s soon in Crazy Mama Studios in Nashville, with a hardy troupe that includes veteran Nashville fiddle player Rufus Thibodeaux. The 12-track Disc 6 of the anthology, Oceanside Countryside, features 11 previously unreleased tracks from the sessions, which also yielded the version of “Lost In Space” that appeared on Hawks & Doves. “Field Of Opportunity” is undiluted bunkhouse country, the kind you might hear in a hundred roadhouses and honky tonks. A version of “It Might Have Been” makes you think of George Jones. “Dance Dance Dance” is a hoedown. There are unreleased versions of “Comes A Time”, “Peace Of Mind”, with multitracked vocals, a handsome take on “Sail Away”; an unreleased mix of “Pocahontas”, heavy on the tom toms. “Human Highway” is here, too, a song that changes so little from take to take he could have added bagpipes and a kazoo orchestra to the arrangement to no noticeable effect.
The Crazy Mama sessions were sidelined when Young became once again interested in Comes A Time, with Nicolette Larson as co-vocalist, backing from The Gone With The Wind Orchestra and a host of studio regulars. In August 1978, after months of dithering over test pressings and the tracklisting, Young finally released Comes A Time – originally called Give To The Wind. It was his first Top 10 hit since Harvest and a tour quickly followed. Disc 7, “Neil Young & Nicolette Larson Union Hall (1977)”, was recorded at a rehearsal before a benefit show in Nashville. It has a behind-the-scenes appeal, but a disc of the concert itself would have been a better document than this boomy tape, voice, guitar and drums dominating a tough sound mix. The disc is almost saved, however, by a Comes A Time outtake, a beautiful duet version of Hank Locklin’s classic tearjerker, “Please Help Me, I’m Falling”.
Armed with another batch of new songs, Neil played them over 10 shows in 1978 at the Boarding House in San Francisco. There are first performances on Discs 8 and 9 of “Shots”, “Hey Hey, My My”, a fantastic “Thrasher”, “Ride My Llama”, “Already One”, a Comes A Time highlight. “Human Highway” makes an inevitable appearance and there’s a stunning solo acoustic version of “Powderfinger”. There’s also a generous serving of songs by now regarded as classics. A version of “Birds” is shiveringly beautiful. As he reminds us in another brief “rap”, on the morning of the second Boarding House show, he went into the studio to cut the torrid, slightly unhinged version of “Hey Hey, My My” with Devo, complete with Booji Boy vocals, that opens Disc 9.
You can only imagine the look on David Geffen’s face when Neil played him his first album for his new label after leaving a longtime home at Reprise. Trans, with its synthesisers and Vocoders, was unlike anything Young had done, an album about “teaching robots to sing”, as he puts it in one of his “raps”. Fans and critics, unaware of the personal circumstances that had inspired the record, were aghast. There are six tracks from it included on Disc 12, which also includes tracks from Johnny’s Island (originally Island In The Sun), an album recorded in Hawaii around the same time and with the same crew as Trans, mostly music with a sunscreen gloss made by people in shorts, Wayfarers and deck shoes that makes most Yacht Rock sound like Big Black. “Island In The Sun” even has bongos on it. “Raining In Paradise” is more weather forecast than song, and “Big Pearl” evokes grass-skirted hula hula girls and coconuts. “Johnny” is a song about urban terrorism saddled with gallumphing synths.
Trans had rattled Geffen, and they were further shocked when Neil as a follow-up offered the original Old Ways, a country album the label, appalled at the idea, rejected. In response to their demands for something “more rock’n’roll”, he knocked off Everybody’s Rockin’, a 25-minute rockabilly pastiche that Geffen released with possibly gritted teeth and much hyperventilation in the accounts department. Reviews were poor, sales worse. Geffen sued Young for $3.3 million for making records that were “not commercial” and “musically uncharacteristic”. Meanwhile, Neil was having the time of his life on a tour of state fairs and rodeos with a country band he called The International Harvesters, featuring Rufus Thibodeaux and pianist Hargus “Pig” Robbins. Disc 14, “Grey Riders: 1984-1986“, features 14 live tracks from the tour, half of them previously released on 2011’s A Treasure. The disc is an appropriately barnstorming ruckus of blazing fiddles, banjo, pedal steel, Neil on fire, too. There’s a tremendous unreleased version of the bleakly sardonic “Nothing Is Perfect”, one of the songs he played with the Harvesters at Live Aid, whose initial hillbilly pieties are brutally undermined by successive verses that evoke an idyllic America ruined by corporate greed. Like Dylan’s “It’s All Good”, the scathing closing track on Together Through Life, “Nothing Is Perfect” turns a cliche into an indictment. “The Old House”, likewise unreleased, is a gorgeous lament that describes similar economic ravages, distressed communities, farm foreclosures, lives destroyed.
In February 1984, Neil and Crazy Horse fetched up at The Catalyst, a club in Santa Cruz, for a four-night stand, apparently to work up songs for a new album that was abandoned when Neil went off to make Old Ways. The eight tracks on Disc 15, “Touch The Night (Crazy Horse 1984)”, include riff-heavy blues rock versions of “Barstool Blues”, “Welfare Mothers”, and “Violent Side” and “I Got A Problem”, the latter pair prototypes that would appear in glossier form on 1986’s Landing On Water. There are three unreleased songs, “Rock”, “Your Love” and something called “So Tired” that sounds worryingly like a Black Sabbath tribute band. A more familiar Crazy Horse emerges on an 11-minute version of “Touch The Night”, another track destined for Landing On Water, its smouldering grandeur a welcome contrast to the fraught belligerence elsewhere.
As a 2021 Christmas gift to fans, Young started streaming an unreleased album on the Neil Young Archives website. The eight-track Summer Songs, the final disc of the collection, was originally recorded at his Broken Arrow Ranch in 1987. There’s a simple, heartfelt “American Dream”, preferable at least to the ghastly, overblown monstrosity that became the title track of CSNY’s regrettable 1988 reunion album. “Someday”, “Hanging On A Dream” and a re-written “Wrecking Ball” were all revisited on Freedom. “For The Love Of Man” wouldn’t resurface until 2012’s Psychedelic Pill, 25 years later. The very last track of the anthology is an official release for “The Last Of His Kind” – “the Farm Aid song” – a celebration of American working-class nobility that could easily be about Young himself.
Available only on the US Deluxe Edition, there are also 11 films on five Blu-Rays, with a total running time of 14 hours, including the 1982 feature, Human Highway, starring Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell and Devo – a film “made up on the spot by punks, potheads and former alcoholics”. There’s footage from the 1978 Boarding House shows, a 1982 Berlin concert and the 1984 Catalyst shows, as murky as the music. Muddy Track is a documentary about an unhappy 1987 European tour. In A Rusted Garage is from a 1986 concert in California, with a guest appearance from comedian Sam Kinison. A Treasure has mostly ropey visuals, but a ferocious version of “Grey Riders” with The International Harvesters. There are two Blu-Rays dedicated to Trans. Best of all is Across The Water, 14 songs from the 1976 Budokan shows and some hilarious clips of Neil busking in Glasgow and a side-splitting encounter with the London hippie known as Jesus famous for dancing naked at the Roundhouse and assorted festivals. “Jesus?” Neil says. “Well, I hope it goes better for you this time.”
It’s the footage of “Like A Hurricane” from Hammersmith 1976, the first time you saw him, that really sticks. Neil looking like he’d just fallen out of a Laurel Canyon treehouse, long bedraggled hair blown askew by the wind machine, turning to the camera wild-eyed, with a Spahn Ranch grin, an air about him already of someone who’d long since stopped playing by anyone’s rules but his own. And thus it continues.
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Lily Fontaine is pleased that her group, English Teacher, are defying expectations on their eclectic debut album – but she’s still a little apprehensive at how fans will take its diverse, sprawling contents. “A lot of people are probably expecting a heavier album, and that is a concern,” she says. “But we’d like to challenge people, surprise people – annoy people, maybe? I just don’t want to lock myself into one thing. Whatever comes out, comes out.”
Indeed, This Could Be Texas sets up the Leeds-based four-piece for a long, adventurous career. Across 13 tracks, it crosses the boundaries of indie-rock and ventures into post-rock, electronica and anthemic balladry, not unlike Radiohead, a big influence for the band alongside Black Country, New Road, Sonic Youth, Television, Fontaines DC and more. Meanwhile, Fontaine’s lyrics show her love of science fiction.
“‘You Blister My Paint’ is named after a song playing in the Korova Milkbar in A Clockwork Orange. I love Isaac Asimov. It’s not classic sci-fi but one of my favourite short stories is Stephen King’s ‘The Langoliers’. There’s a film referenced on the album, [2009’s] Mr Nobody, that’s got a time travel, parallel universe kind of vibe. I’ve got a thing about Star Wars too, I watched it for the first time in lockdown!”
ENGLISH TEACHER THIS COULD BE TEXAS
ISLAND
8/10
Lancashire/Leeds quartet take many roads on their debut
Pay fleeting attention to English Teacher, and you might lump them in with the angular, spoken-word indie of Dry Cleaning, Wet Leg or Yard Act; delve deeper into this 50-minute opus, however, and there are surprises everywhere. While “R&B” and “Nearly Daffodils” are sprightly, irreverent post-punk, the influence of Black Country, New Road and Radiohead are evident on the complex, proggy title track and the diverse, hushed final third of the album. Lily Fontaine’s lyrics, too, are deep and funny, from the Clockwork Orange references to “Albert Road”’s line about “Steve’s mate’s son used to play in The Fall…”
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One phrase which kept returning to mind while working on this new magazine was “Quiet is the new loud”. Back in 2001 it was the name of an excellent album by the lovely Norwegian group Kings Of Convenience (included, of course, in the collection of fine music we’ve democratically assembled for you here). But it was also a kind of ethos.
As Fleet Fox Robin Pecknold explains in his excellent introductory interview to the magazine, from his point of view the 2000s were a simpler time. So dominant was the aggressive and neurotic nu metal which was the big commercial force in rock music as the 1990s turned into the next century that the choice was clear cut: it became a key mission to find an escape in other – better – sounds.
For Robin, this meant drinking in the weekly dramas of the Libertines, and following the explosion of the Strokes and White Stripes as they were chronicled in the British music press. As his own musical mission developed it became obvious that retreating into quieter, folkier sounds, more like the Joni Mitchell records he grew up listening to in his parents’ record collection could hold the answer.
He wasn’t the only one. After a series of personal and romantic disappointments, Justin Vernon took himself off to a remote Wisconsin cabin to develop one of the most influential sounds of the next ten years. A minimal, tender and eerie album, there’s a feeling in Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago album of an attempt to strip away inessential elements and reconnect with the essence of music making.
You’ll find something like it in the bare bones of “Love And Theft”, part of our cover star Bob Dylan’s vital career reset in the period. This tendency didn’t mean you needed to be a luddite to look for it, though: you’ll also find it in the electronics of Radiohead albums like Kid A and In Rainbows or the icy synths of Portishead‘s Third. The band’s song “Machine Gun”, Uncut wrote at the time was “a folk song from a Britain broken so much more intimately and profoundly than anyone had guessed.”
Back on our call, Robin Pecknold is characteristically humble about his role in defining the aesthetic of the latter part of the decade. “All it took was playing a few tasteful references,” he tells Mark Beaumont. “There wasn’t any streaming, so it was a little bit easier to have obscure influences because there wasn’t that access to everything. It seemed easier compared to now, because now what’s happening in the mainstream isn’t quite as weird and bad. It was a more innocent time.”
Enjoy the (relative) peace and quiet, and the magazine. You can get yours in shops tomorrow and here now.
This version was recorded at Young’s Broken Arrow Ranch in early January 1984. It features Young on LinnDrum, Simmons drums, Synclavier and vocals. It was produced by Young and Tim Mulligan.
While Young went on to debut the song live during the International Harvesters tour that same year, he didn’t release a studio version until 2000, when a re-recorded version appeared on his Silver & Gold album.
This previously unreleased original version appears on Disc 13: Evolution (1983-1984) of Neil Young’s Archives Vol III: (1976-1987), which is released on September 6 via Reprise Records.
The 17-CD limited edition boxed set of Archives Vol III features a total of 198 musical tracks, including 121 previously unreleased versions of live, studio, mixes, or edits, plus 15 previously unreleased songs.
The music covers live performances with Crazy Horse, solo, with Nicolette Larson and with Devo and with The International Harvesters, along with unreleased studio recordings and outtakes.
In addition, a double vinyl LP-only set titled Takes, will also be available on September 6. Takes is a 16-track compilation featuring one track from each of the 16 out of the 17 CDs in the Archives Vol III box set. This collection will include 3 unreleased songs and 12 previously unreleased versions and will be the only vinyl edition to feature these songs.
A US-only limited edition 22-disc Deluxe Edition box set will also be available via the Greedy Hand Store. It features all 17 CDs, and 5 Blu-Rays which compile 11 films, 4 of which are previously unreleased. The Blu-Rays include 128 tracks, over 14 hours of film. The Deluxe Edition box also includes a 176-page book and a poster.
11. Lost In Space (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
12. Goin’ Back (previously unreleased mix)
Disc 7: Neil Young & Nicolette Larson Union Hall (1977):
1. Comes A Time (previously released on Comes A Time)
2. Love/Art Blues (previously unreleased version)
3. Rap
4. Are You Ready For the Country? (previously unreleased version)
5. Dance Dance Dance/Love is a Rose (previously unreleased version)
6. Old Man (previously unreleased version)
7. The Losing End (When You’re On) (previously unreleased version)
8. Heart Of Gold (previously unreleased version)
9. Already One (previously unreleased version)
10. Lady Wingshot (previously unreleased song)
11. Four Strong Winds (previously unreleased version)
12. Down By The River (previously unreleased version)
13. Alabama (previously unreleased version)
14. Are You Ready For the Country? (reprise) (previously unreleased version)
15. Rap
16. We’re Having Some Fun Now (previously unreleased song)
17. Rap
18. Please Help Me, I’m Falling (previously unreleased version)
19. Motorcycle Mama (previously released on Comes A Time)
Disc 8: Boarding House I (1978): Neil Young
1. Rap
2. Shots (previously unreleased live version)
3. Thrasher (previously unreleased live version)
4. The Ways of Love (previously unreleased live version)
5. Ride My Llama (previously unreleased live version)
6. Sail Away (previously unreleased live version)
7. Pocahontas (previously unreleased live version)
8. Human Highway (previously unreleased live version)
9. Already One (previously unreleased live version)
10. Birds (previously unreleased live version)
11. Cowgirl in the Sand (previously unreleased live version)
12. Sugar Mountain (previously unreleased live version)
13. Powderfinger (previously unreleased live version)
14. Comes a Time (previously unreleased live version)
Disc 9: Devo & Boarding House II (1978): Neil Young and Devo
1. Rap
2. Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) (previously unreleased version)
3. Back to the Boarding House
4. My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) (previously unreleased live version)
5. Homegrown (previously unreleased live version)
6. Down by the River (previously unreleased live version)
7. After the Gold Rush (previously unreleased live version)
8. Out Of My Mind (previously unreleased live version)
9. Dressing Room
Disc 10: Sedan Delivery (1978): Neil Young with Crazy Horse
1. Bright Sunny Day (previously unreleased song)
2. The Loner (previously released on Live Rust)
3. Welfare Mothers (previously released on Rust Never Sleeps)
4. Lotta Love (previously released on Live Rust)
5. Sedan Delivery (previously released on Rust Never Sleeps)
6. Cortez the Killer (previously released on Live Rust)
7. Tonight’s the Night (previously released on Live Rust)
8. Powderfinger (previously released on Rust Never Sleeps)
9. When You Dance, I Can Really Love (previously released on Live Rust)
10. Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) (previously released on Rust Never Sleeps)
Disc 11: Coastline (1980-1981): Neil Young
1. Coastline (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
2. Stayin’ Power (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
3. Hawks And Doves (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
4. Comin’ Apart at Every Nail (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
5. Union Man (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
6. Winter Winds (previously unreleased song)
7. Southern Pacific (previously released on RE-AC-TOR.)
8. Opera Star (previously released on RE-AC-TOR.)
9. Rapid Transit (previously released on RE-AC-TOR.)
10. Sunny Inside (previously unreleased original)
11. Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze (previously released on RE-AC-TOR.)
12. Get Up (previously unreleased song)
Disc 12: Trans (1981) & Johnny’s Island (1982): Neil Young
1. Rap
2. Sample and Hold (previously released on Trans)
3. Mr. Soul (previously released on Trans)
4. Computer Cowboy (previously released on Trans)
5. We R In Control (previously released on Trans)
6. Computer Age (previously released on Trans)
7. Transformer Man (previously released on Trans)
8. Rap
9. Johnny (previously unreleased song)
10. Island In The Sun (previously unreleased song)
11. Rap
12. Silver & Gold (previously unreleased version)
13. If You Got Love (previously unreleased version)
14. Raining in Paradise (previously unreleased song)
15. Big Pearl (previously unreleased song)
16. Hold On To Your Love (previously released on Trans)
17. Soul Of A Woman (previously unreleased original)
18. Rap
19. Love Hotel (previously unreleased song)
Disc 13: Evolution (1983-1984): Neil Young
1. California Sunset (previously unreleased original)
2. My Boy (previously unreleased original)
3. Old Ways (previously unreleased version)
4. Depression Blues (previously released on Lucky 13)
5. Cry, Cry, Cry (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
6. Mystery Train (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
7. Payola Blues (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
8. Betty Lou’s Got A New Pair Of Shoes (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
9. Bright Lights, Big City (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
10. Rainin’ In My Heart (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
11. Get Gone (previously unreleased original)
12. I Got A Problem (previously unreleased original)
13. Hard Luck Stories (previously unreleased original)
14. Your Love (previously unreleased version)
15. If You Got Love (previously unreleased version)
16. Razor Love (previously unreleased original)
Disc 14: Grey Riders (1984-1986): Neil Young with The International Harvesters
1. Amber Jean (previously unreleased original)
2. Get Back To The Country (previously unreleased original)
3. Are You Ready For The Country? (previously released on A Treasure)
4. It Might Have Been (previously released on A Treasure)
5. Bound For Glory (previously released on A Treasure)
6. Let Your Fingers Do the Walking (previously released on A Treasure)
7. Soul of a Woman (previously released on A Treasure)
8. Misfits (Dakota) (previously unreleased live version)
9. Nothing is Perfect (previously unreleased version)
10. Time Off For Good Behavior (previously unreleased song)
11. This Old House (previously unreleased original)
12. Southern Pacific (previously released on A Treasure)
13. Interstate (previously unreleased live version)
14. Grey Riders (previously released on A Treasure)
Disc 15: Touch The Night (1984): Neil Young with Crazy Horse
1. Rock (previously unreleased song)
2. So Tired (previously unreleased song)
3. Violent Side (previously unreleased live version)
4. I Got A Problem (previously unreleased live version)
5. Your Love (previously unreleased song)
6. Barstool Blues (previously unreleased live version)
7. Welfare Mothers (previously unreleased live version)
8. Touch The Night (previously unreleased live version)
Disc 16: Road Of Plenty (1984-1986): Neil Young
1. Drifter (previously released on Landing On Water)
2. Hippie Dream (previously released on Landing On Water)
3. Bad News Beat (previously released on Landing On Water)
4. People On The Street (previously released on Landing On Water)
5. Weight of the World (previously released on Landing On Water)
6. Pressure (previously released on Landing On Water)
7. Road of Plenty (previously unreleased song)
8. We Never Danced (previously unreleased original)
9. When Your Lonely Heart Breaks (previously unreleased original)
Disc 17: Summer Songs (1987): Neil Young
1. Rap
2. American Dream (previously unreleased original)
3. Someday (previously unreleased original)
4. For The Love Of Man (previously unreleased original)
5. One Of These Days (previously unreleased original)
6. Wrecking Ball (previously unreleased original)
7. Hangin On A Limb (previously unreleased original)
8. Name Of Love (previously unreleased original)
9. Last Of His Kind (previously unreleased original)
10. Rap
Blu-Ray 1:
Across The Water
Blu-Ray 2:
Boarding House
Rust Never Sleeps
Blu-Ray 3:
Human Highway
Trans
Berlin
Blu-Ray 4:
Solo Trans
Catalyst
A Treasure
Blu-Ray 5:
In A Rusted Out Garage
Muddy Track
Takes (vinyl only)Tracklisting:
Side A: 1.Hey Babe (previously unreleased version) (From: Snapshot In Time: Neil Young with Nicolette Larson & Linda Ronstadt)
2.Drive Back (previously unreleased live version) (From: Across The Water II: Neil Young & Crazy Horse)
3.Hitchhikin’ Judy (From: Hitchhikin’ Judy: Neil Young) 4.Let It Shine (previously unreleased live version) (From: Across The Water I: Neil Young & Crazy Horse)
Side B:
1. Sail Away (previously unreleased original)(From: Windward Passage: The Ducks)
2. Comes A Time (previously unreleased version) (From: Oceanside Countryside: Neil Young)
3. Lady Wingshot (previously unreleased song) (From: Union Hall: Neil Young & Nicolette Larson)
4. Thrasher (previously unreleased live version) (From: Boarding House I: Neil Young)
Side C:
1. Hey Hey, My My, (Into The Black) (From: Boarding House II: Neil Young)
2. Bright Sunny Day (previously unreleased song) (From: Sedan Delivery: Neil Young with Crazy Horse)
3. Winter Winds (previously unreleased song) (From: Coastline: Neil Young)
4. If You Got Love (previously unreleased version) (From: Trans/Johnny’s Island: Neil Young)
Side D:
1. Razor Love (From: Evolution: Neil Young)
2. This Old House (previously unreleased original) (From: Grey Riders: Neil Young and The International Harvesters)
3. Barstool Blues (previously unreleased live version) (From: Touch The Night: Neil Young with Crazy Horse)
4. Last Of His Kind (previously unreleased original) (From: Summer Songs: Neil Young)
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“We haven’t mellowed,” proclaims Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow, with more than a hint of pride. “My wife makes fun at how dark and menacing it is, but I don’t see it that way. We write what we write because that’s what we write.” Although the band reunited in 2009 to play live, forthcoming album Rack will be their first for 26 years. “We pick up right where the last record left off,” says guitarist Duane Denison. “Some of the songs are even based on ideas we had from that era.”
Rack sees The Jesus Lizard maintain an approach – riffs, dissonance, freaky lyrics – that made them one of the most acclaimed cult bands of the 1990s. They formed in Austin in 1987, but really got going when they relocated to the fertile Chicago scene a few years later. Brooding, intense and threatening, they toured with the Blues Explosion and Sonic Youth, released a split single with Nirvana and recorded several LPs with Steve Albini, including classics Goat and Liar.
Their live shows were legendary. Yow fondly recalls a 1993 gig at The Garage in London where the crowd bent a steel crush barrier, broke the monitors and punched holes in the ceiling. “That was all kinds of wonderful,” he grins. The band are just as powerful today, but Denison insists that a Jesus Lizard show isn’t simply about aggression. “We are serious about our delivery, and we like to be abrasive and dissonant, but that’s balanced by humour,” he says. “Humour brings personality, and we want people to have fun. When we started out, we wanted women at our shows, we wanted people to dance. It wasn’t just for the local muscle men to clobber each other.”
The split seven-inch with Nirvana was conceived after the bands shared a bill in New Jersey in April 1990, but wasn’t released until 1993, by which time Nirvana were the biggest band in the world. “Oh, The Guilt” was Nirvana’s first post-Nevermindsingle; paired with The Jesus Lizard’s “Puss”, it reached No 12 in the UK charts despite Geffen insisting on a limited release. The Jesus Lizard then signed for a major label themselves, one of the more unlikely beneficiaries of the grunge boom. “One of the weird things about The Jesus Lizard was that other bands loved us,” says Yow. “We weren’t big but we got a lot of respect. Part of Capitol’s thinking was that by having us on the roster it made the label more attractive, because we were never going to be commercial.”
“Until now, that is!” laughs Denison. “Our new single ‘Hide And Seek’ is going to be the first in a string of hits.” Despite their onstage volatility, the quartet – Yow, Denison, bassist Dave Sims and drummer Mac McNeilly – have remained friends throughout, avoiding the pitfalls of band life, from fistfights to addiction. All the same, they felt no need to return to the studio until Denison and Yow were sharing a hotel room on tour in 2017, and Denison played some riffs. “David thought it was pretty good and asked what I was planning to do,” says Denison. “I said, ‘Let’s do a goddamn Jesus Lizard record for fuck’s sake.’” Yow worked on lyrics, employing an automatic writing style and drawing on his anger at US politics to access some of the rage that is central to the Jesus Lizard experience. That’s despite their real-life calm. “We had zero pressure because we weren’t on a label and had no idea if we’d even release it,” says Yow. “There are a couple of things Duane did that might be my favourite things he has ever done. There’s some weird stuff and some straight rock stuff. It’s got riffs and it’s experimental in places because we are still the same guys we always were.”
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Roger Taylor, from the mighty Queen, will be answering your questions as part of our regular An Audience With… feature.
So is there anything you’d like us to ask?
What’s his favourite memory of Freddie? Would Queen ever consider a Queen virtual concert residency like ABBA Voyage? Will there be a sequel to Bohemian Rhapsody?
Along with the track, Reid has announced details of a March 2025 headline tour of the UK and EU.
General tickets are on sale from Friday, September 6 here. Pre-sale access can be gained by signing up to Nadia’s new mailing list on Thursday, September 5 at 10am here.
So that’s us just about back from another stupendous year at Larmer Tree Gardens. End Of The Road continues to demonstrate exactly why it’s the last great party of the summer – with a staggering array of amazing performances from brilliant artists covering a multitude of genres and styles.
As ever, huge thanks to our crack team comprising Tom Pinnock, Sam Richards and Mark Beaumont, who represented Uncut so strongly down in Larmer Tree Gardens.
Thanks, also, to everyone who attended our Uncut Q&As – perhaps our best sessions yet, featuring packed crowds for Lankum, Sam Morton and Yo La Tengo.
And now, for your edification, here’s a round up of all our EOTR 2024 blogs…
Say what you like about End Of The Road, but it’s surely the only festival where a comedian can venture a bit of ad-hoc new material about The Blue Orchids. This is Stewart Lee, of course, down on the Talking Heads stage, attempting to “establish a liberal consensus that dissolves on contact with the outside world”. It’s strictly one-in-one-out to hear him wring ever more nuanced laughs from some of his greatest hits (“These days, you say you’re English…”), even if he contends that most people are only there to watch him die trying to get back up the steep hill from the stage. Thankfully, a sighting of Lee later at Yo La Tengo’s secret Piano Stage set confirms that he made it out alive.
As the afternoon skies darken, Florence Adooni brings more than a splash of colour to the Garden Stage: she and her co-singer are in sparkling purple dresses while her band – including a mini brass section and a guy providing regular awesome organ wig-outs – are in dazzling orange shirts. Her joyous Afrobeat carnival is totally irresistible, with infectious chants like “The Uh-Ah Song” instantly lodging in your brain. “Before you go to sleep tonight, turn to your partner and say ‘Uh’,” she instructs, “And they will say ‘Ah’”. Job done.
Over in the Uncut Big Top, Thus Love are that lesser-spotted thing days, a straight-up, swaggering indie rock band. Well, not exactly straight. The gender-queerness of frontperson Echo Mars turns what otherwise might resemble typical rock-god posturing into something else entirely. Plus the songs are great and they sound absolutely massive, with nods to the Bunnymen, Suede, Interpol and The Screaming Trees. “They’re not breaking any boundaries,” says the man next to us, handily writing Uncut’s review, “but I really like them.”
Slift are next up, three skinny longhairs from Toulouse who look harmless enough but are soon whipping up an ultra-heavy psych inferno from the very depths of Hades, as the big screen strobes uncontrollably behind them. After 20 minutes of this ceaseless barrage, if feels like you’re being lifted off the ground and sucked into their diabolical wormhole.
Altin Gün are the perfect sunset band, a nifty Anatolian spin on the synthy utopian psych-rock of Tame Impala. If they’ve inevitably lost something with the departure of co-frontperson Merve Dasdemir, they compensate by rocking things up a few notches. And, as always, “Süpürgesi Yoncadan” compels a field of people to dance like they’ve just downed a bottle of raki at a Turkish wedding.
Then, just as it seems like the festival might be preparing to wind down with a rash of acoustic sets, Uncut chances upon an all-ages crowd going absolutely bananas to Snõõper in the Folly tent. A ludicrously haywire cross between Amyl & The Sniffers and Bikini Kill, they blast out snatches of drum’n’bass and Dolly Parton between songs, while their coup de grace is a hardcore punk version of The Beatles’ “Come Together”. At which point perma-pogoing singer Blair Tramel reappears in a giant papier-mâché head, Frank Sidebottom-style. Total bedlam.
Perhaps sensing the mania from across the site, Yo La Tengo immediately wrongfoot their crowd by launching straight into a pair of thundering motorik jams. Can these really be the same people who played a hushed acoustic set on the Piano Stage just a couple of hours ago? But the joy of YLT has always been that they’re several bands in one. Before too long, they’ve left-turned again and are singing Sun Ra doo-wop songs together at the front of the stage.
It eventually settles into something approaching a greatest hits set – “Autumn Sweater”, “Stockholm Syndrome”, “Tom Courtenay” – but Yo La Tengo have one more surprise up their sleeves. At the point where a headline band would normally bring out their special star cameo, Ira Kaplan introduces a guest guitarist that they apparently only met earlier that day: a cute, floppy-haired pre-teen called Arlo. By the end of his impressive tear through “Sugarcube”, the crowd are chanting “Ar-lo! Ar-lo!” as he waves bashfully in acknowledgement. It’s a quintessentially heart-warming End Of The Road moment in a weekend packed full of them.
When Yo La Tengo are having a shocker of a show, they don’t smash up their gear, abuse the audience or storm offstage to trash the dressing room. They simply, and very quietly, keep playing. In extremis.
“We were at loggerheads with this club all night, and they turned the lights on on us with 40 minutes before the bar time,” frontman Ira Kaplan told Uncut reviews editor Tom Pinnock during the final Uncut Q&A ofEnd Of The Road 2024, recalling the first time they ever did their half-hour slowcore revenge set. “We went back onstage anyway and did a song or two and then announced we were doing one more song ‘So when you’ve had enough, go home’. Then we started playing ‘Speedy Motorcycle’… we finished the singing and got to this little guitar solo and it never ended. We were playing really quietly and gently but just wouldn’t stop playing. They cut the power and broke into our van later that night and stole something, so I think we showed them.”
As Ira and bassist James McNew explained to a rapt Talking Heads stage crowd, the shift towards lengthier, noisier works over their 40-year career was often driven by spite. “The first thing we ever did along those lines was captured on the President Yo La Tengo record, the live version of ‘The Evil That Men Do’,” Ira said. “If we were really mad at a club or the way they were treating us, we used to do ‘A House Is Not A Motel’ by Love and that ended with a little guitar solo and it was the same key as ‘The Evil That Men Do’, so we turned it into a medley. And on very special occasions that medley lasted for 35 minutes. But it was gradual.”
Such creative reactionism may have sprung from the band’s roots in the Manhattan no wave scene of the early 1980s. Ira recalled attending plenty of shows by the likes of Lydia Lunch and briefly acted as publicist for Z Records as it released her Queen Of Siam album in 1980. “I accompanied 8 Eyed Spy on a pretty ill-fated tour of San Francisco and Los Angeles,” he said. “It was exciting. Some of [the interviews] would go great and some of them were completely disastrous. Half the radio stations broke the record when she walked out, or before she left.”
Ira and his wife Yo La Tengo drummer Georgia Hubley, though, soon moved to Hoboken in New Jersey, he explained. “[Manhattan] just didn’t seem that nice a place to live for Georgia and my particular drug habits. We thought Hoboken would be more conducive. Like a lot of transplanted New Yorkers living in Hoboken we bristled any time somebody said we were from New Jersey. ‘No, we’re just stopping here for 30 years or so.”
It was at Hoboken venues like Maxwells, he said, that Yo La Tengo were allowed to become the band they are, unbothered by anything as intrusive as a paying audience. “One of the things that was attractive about [Maxwells] was that nobody went there,” Ira said. “I don’t see how our band could’ve ever existed without Maxwells because we were shy and incompetent [but] there’d be eight or ten people at a show, it was fun.”
Add numerous noughts and you’d be in the ballpark for YLT’s headline show at EOTR 2024, a festival they’ve played more than most since their first appearance headlining the second edition in 2007, and which – Pinnock asserted – allegedly inspired organiser Simon Taffe to start the event in the first place. Ira seemed bemused at the news. “And yet we were not here until the second one?”
Semi-famous musicians passing through the Garden Stage area being thoroughly ignored in favour of End Of The Road’s real rockstars – the peacocks…
Blue Lake on the Boat stage managing to tune into the same key as the nearby ferris wheel…
The brilliant Song Gallery: a one-person listening cabin where you could immerse yourself in an uplifting new anthem by The Golden Dregs…
The reality-warping Alice Through The Looking Glass pub game arena, featuring boomerang skittles, a very long pool table and the six way ‘ping-pong thunderdome’…
A woman in an amazing fringed leather jacket watching Brown Horse while drinking from a pewter tankard…
The return to the campsite of the pop quiz photo round tent. But is that Captain Beefheart or Tom Sellick?…
The giant ‘which EOTR band are you’ flowchart prompting some unexpected musical discoveries. “Who the fuck is Mozart Estate?” Oh, you’re in for a treat….
Some typically excellent selections from the Craft Beer Bar DJs – particularly blasting out Roots Manuva’s “Witness (1 Hope)” the very second Lankum finished…
Stewart Lee watching Yo La Tengo’s piano stage set (despite earlier having mined plenty of comic material from the advanced ages of the average EOTR headliner)…
Constantly misreading the Frank Water signs as part of a stealth comeback by Irish indie-popsters The Frank & Walters…
People doing karaoke duets with a weird human-sized teddy bear…
Thinking that the marbles pinging against the toy xylophone at the end of the new improved marble run in the woods are a secret Mermaid Chunky live set…
The heartening elevation of The Roches’ “Hammond Song” to the status of canonical classic, heard everywhere throughout the festival…
The coffee stand next to the press area providing us with a morning pick-me-up in more ways than one – not just a double espresso but a blast of invigorating hardcore punk…
The adorable sight of a bearded dad and his 10 year old son headbanging in tandem to Thus Love…
It’s been a long weekend, full of excitement, so by all means grab yourself forty winks in your camping chair. But surely not right in front of the long-drop toilets…
Saturday starts with a surprise: an unannounced midday solo set from Julia Jacklin on End Of The Road‘s Garden Stage. Her stark confessionals can be almost uncomfortably intimate, especially at this early hour, but Jacklin is a winning presence, especially when ambushed with a birthday cake (she turns 34 today). “So much attention all at once!” she blushes.
It’s Brown Horse’s first time on a big festival stage, but they instantly feel like they belong, their rich accordion-and-pedal-steel-assisted country-rock filling the air. The songs from this year’s Reservoir album already feel like timeworn classics – which is very much the idea – while several newies bode well for the next one. They also deliver a brilliant and timely bonus: a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “All You Fascists Bound To Lose” in the style of “Cortez The Killer”.
Lebanese psych-rockers Sanam are a fantastic new discovery on the Garden Stage. Their addictive concoction of microtonal melodies, bowed electric guitar and bass-synth rumbles acts a raindance, summoning forth the day’s only few drops of the wet stuff.
As Mermaid Chunky take the stage – a late but inspired replacement for Lisa O’Neill – it’s amusing to watch an entire field of people suddenly look quizzically at their pints of craft ale as if they’ve been spiked. The colourful recorder-rave duo are joined by eight neo-pagan dancers in wild ribboned costumes, including one sporting a giant shaggy sheep’s head. The entire experience is like the LSD sequence from a folk horror movie; you half-expect to turn around and see Edward Woodward burning inside a giant wicker man.
Except of course Mermaid Chunky’s intentions are thoroughly benign. As one of them dons an oversized cowboy-hat-cum-lampshade to lead the crowd in a lassoing line dance to a synth-country banger, you have to admire their sizeable chutzpah.
Camera Obscura’s Caledonian indie-soul feels a little polite by comparison. But just as attentions begin to wander, they unleash a volley of cast-iron songwriting brilliance in the form of “The Sweetest Thing”, “Hey Lloyd, Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken” and “French Navy”. The Garden Stage arena swoons in unison.
Whether it’s a result of hip-hop samples, Spotify algorithms or just continuing to make very good music, Slowdive’s triumphant renaissance is richly deserved. If there is a sneaking suspicion that recent hit songs like “Kisses” may have been crafted a little too self-consciously for their unexpected new teenage audience, that is blown away by an intense and enthralling Woods stage headline set.
This is no band of veterans going through the motions, Nick Chaplin’s bass slung ever lower as he pummels out the hefty low notes that anchor the band’s dreamy haze to the here and now. Rachel Goswell is a spellbinding presence in a black cowl, her voice blending with Neil Halstead’s, both still very much in touch with the innocent rapture of their early iteration. The best moments come when Goswell swaps her keyboard for a guitar, adding another layer of fuzz to their enveloping noise; a closing one-two of “Alison” and “When The Sun Hits” is sheer euphoria.
Slowdive return for their traditional encore of “Golden Hair”, its writer Syd Barrett’s face appearing on the big screen behind them, wreathed in swirling psychedelics. And then, as the band exit stage left with their amps still humming, they deliver a moment of pure fuck-you genius to the shoegaze haters: Syd Barrett’s face morphs into that of a grinning Sid James. Slowdive are having the last laugh.
