Judy Collins has announced a new album, in collaboration with Norwegian singer-songwriter Jonas Fjeld and bluegrass band Chatham County Line.
Winter Stories will be released by Wildflower/Cleopatra on November 15.
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The album is ...
Judy Collins has announced a new album, in collaboration with Norwegian singer-songwriter Jonas Fjeld and bluegrass band Chatham County Line.
Winter Stories will be released by Wildflower/Cleopatra on November 15.
The album is a collection of new tunes and classics, including Judy Collins evergreens “The Blizzard” (now extended to seven minutes) and “Mountain Girl”, plus a re-recording of Fjeld’s “Angels In The Snow” and a rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “The River.”
“I knew Jonas and Chatham County Line would be a great fit with me,” says Collins. “The language of music overarches everything, including geography. When we came together in the studio, we found we could speak to each other in a way that was compatible and nuanced.” Adds Fjeld: “What bonded us was a shared love of great songs.”
Judy Collins has also announced a UK tour for early 2020, supported by Jonas Fjeld. Peruse the dates below:
Sat January 11th 2020 — LIVERPOOL Grand Central Hall
Mon January 13th 2020 — MANCHESTER Royal Northern College Of Music
Tues January 14th 2020 — GATESHEAD The Sage
Weds January 15th 2020 — NOTTINGHAM Playhouse
Sat January 18th 2020 — BIRMINGHAM Birmingham Town Hall
Sun January 19th 2020 — WIMBORNE Tivoli Theatre
Mon January 20th 2020 — LONDON Union Chapel
Weds January 22nd 2020 — GUILDFORD G Live
Mon February 3rd 2020 — EDINBURGH Queen’s Hall
Currently out of print, Lou Reed's I'll Be Your Mirror: Collected Lyrics will be republished by Faber on November 7.
This new edition has been updated to include Reed's lyrics to Metallica collaboration album Lulu, plus new introductions by Laurie Anderson, Martin Scorsese and James Atlas.
Order t...
Currently out of print, Lou Reed’s I’ll Be Your Mirror: Collected Lyrics will be republished by Faber on November 7.
This new edition has been updated to include Reed’s lyrics to Metallica collaboration album Lulu, plus new introductions by Laurie Anderson, Martin Scorsese and James Atlas.
I’ll Be Your Mirror will be published in hardback trade edition, ebook and limited edition. The £100 limited edition includes reversed colour design printed on high gloss, reflective silver mirror paper, black cloth slipcase and a facsimile pamphlet of previously unpublished handwritten lyrics from 1974’s Sally Can’t Dance. There will be only 250 copies authenticated with the official Lou Reed estate stamp.
Hot on the heels of May's The Peyote Dance, experimental duo Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith have revealed details of the second album in their Perfect Vision trilogy.
Mummer Love, which focuses on poet Arthur Rimbaud's travels in Ethopia, will be released on November 8 by Bella Union. It feat...
Hot on the heels of May’s The Peyote Dance, experimental duo Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith have revealed details of the second album in their Perfect Vision trilogy.
Mummer Love, which focuses on poet Arthur Rimbaud’s travels in Ethopia, will be released on November 8 by Bella Union. It features guest contributions from Phillip Glass and Mulatu Astatke.
Retracing Rimbaud’s steps to the holy city of Harar, The Soundwalk Collective spent time with the Sufi group of Sheikh Ibrahim to record their music and chants. “You obtain connections to other levels of yourself and consciousness,” says the duo’s Stephan Crasneanscki, of the musical process. “This connection, like poetry, is a universal language. A language of the soul, for the soul.”
Patti Smith is the cover star of the current issue of Uncut, in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here.
This year's BFI London Film Festival has come rolling round and, as ever, there's a slew of Uncut-friendly music docs in the programme. Springsteen fans will enjoy the companion piece to the Boss's Western Stars album; Ron Wood's fascinating life in and out of the Stones is the focus of a Mike Figgi...
This year’s BFI London Film Festival has come rolling round and, as ever, there’s a slew of Uncut-friendly music docs in the programme. Springsteen fans will enjoy the companion piece to the Boss’s Western Stars album; Ron Wood‘s fascinating life in and out of the Stones is the focus of a Mike Figgis film; there’s also new docs on the endlessly fascinating stories of Fela Kuti and Miles Davis. And among the more leftfield inclusions, there’s a dive in the Mexico City punk/New Wave underground of the mid-80s while Eldon Wayne Hoke – aka El Duce – and his punk band The Mentors also feature. Trailers for most of ’em below. Meanwhile, here’s a link to the full festival line up, how to buy tickets and all that.
Should quickly remind you that we have a marvellous new issue out – Patti Smith on the cover – which you can buy in the shops or direct from our friends here. Free UK P&P, I should mention, too.
It seems strange that it’s taken Rodney Crowell until now to make a record like this: a concept album devoted to his home state, recorded in cahoots with the compadres he has acquired along the way, among them Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett and others. At the risk of giving away the ending, Crowell sums ...
It seems strange that it’s taken Rodney Crowell until now to make a record like this: a concept album devoted to his home state, recorded in cahoots with the compadres he has acquired along the way, among them Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett and others. At the risk of giving away the ending, Crowell sums up Texas – and indeed Texas – impeccably with the last line of the concluding track. “Texas Drought Part 1”, a stately trundle that sounds like something misplaced by The Traveling Wilburys, leaves the listener with “The sidewalks are blazing hot/Like white-fire from a pistol shot/The sun at its zenith is proudly displayed”. So far, so received-wisdoms-of-Texas: sun, guns and pride. As always where Crowell is concerned, however, there’s more than meets the eye.
A lot of what’s going on here is big-hearted fun: though Texas is not lacking for piquant commentary on the current state of the state, this is no pious manifesto of dissent, at least not exclusively. “56 Fury” is an exultant tribute to the titular twin-finned Plymouth coupe, and the people who drove it – the leather-jacketed tough with the “spit-curl down his forehead” and his paramour in the passenger seat with “hair stacked up and twisted/Like some beehive made in France”. It might as well have been a ZZ Top song even before Billy Gibbons was asked to play guitar on it.
“Treetop Slim & Billy Lowgrass” is a similarly good-humoured homage to Texan tradition, acknowledging the swing of Texan country music and the hefty canon of tall stories about tearaway outlaws in Texan folk mythology. “You’re Only Happy When You’re Miserable” is – the title notwithstanding – a joy, Crowell relishing the chance to deliver an unabashedly spiteful farewell to some soul-sucker. Ringo Starr (not, of course, a Texan) keeps the beat behind an appropriately snarling boogie.
Crowell could always have made a living cranking out uptempo country hits, kin to such well-loved earlier cuts as “She’s Crazy For Leavin’” and “I Couldn’t Leave You If I Tried”, but he’s also always been too curious a writer to resort to such an easy option: when he duetted with his former father-in-law Johnny Cash on 2001’s “I Walk The Line (Revisited)”, he cast Cash as a ghost in his father’s car radio. Throughout Texas, the guests are serving the record, rather than the other way around. So it would be safe enough to ask Willie Nelson, Lee Ann Womack and Ronnie Dunn, late of Brooks & Dunn, to sing on something hokey, perhaps in 3/4 time. “Deep In The Heart Of Uncertain Texas” features that trio, and is a waltz, but – as the insertion of “Uncertain” into the familiar title suggests – it’s not altogether at ease with itself. What might be mistaken for a portrait of a down-home idyll, all crickets and fireflies and catfish and beer, is betrayed by one killer line (“I’ve tried hard to leave here, but never did could”) as something that might be more clammy and claustrophobic. You can check out any time you like, as someone once sang of another place, but you can never leave.
As to what Texas might have to be uncertain about, the album offers a few suggestions. “Brown & Root, Brown & Root” is cued by a terse monologue from Steve Earle explaining that Brown & Root are the Texas construction company eventually bought out by Halliburton, supplier to military misadventures in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere. Crowell and Earle’s baleful duet is the lament of the poor man who finds himself toiling to make rich men richer. “The Border”, one of the best things Crowell has written, is a Springsteen-esque study of a good man upholding order amid moral chaos. It is laced with reminders that the divide between Texas and Mexico is more fluid than some US presidents prefer to believe, with flamenco guitar and accordion.
As always with Crowell, the essence is in the characters, drawn vividly with a few drawled lines. Crowell’s influence on subsequent generations of wry troubadours – Hayes Carll, Todd Snider, Rhett Miller et al – is considerable, but surely only Crowell could inhabit the delusional barfly of “I’ll Show Me” sufficiently convincingly to land, “I kind of see myself as a young Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas to some Welsh coquette.” If Texas is a deliberately ambiguous assessment of Crowell’s home state, it’s also a resounding endorsement of the enduring powers of its composer.
Five years ago, when The Hold Steady toured in support of their last album, Teeth Dreams, there was something small but significantly different about the band. Craig Finn, for the first time, didn’t have his battered black Gibson Melody Maker with the Minnesota Twins sticker hanging from his neck....
Five years ago, when The Hold Steady toured in support of their last album, Teeth Dreams, there was something small but significantly different about the band. Craig Finn, for the first time, didn’t have his battered black Gibson Melody Maker with the Minnesota Twins sticker hanging from his neck. It didn’t make much difference to the way the band sounded, but it seemed symptomatic of a band who had slightly lost their way, like Kiss without makeup, or Thin Lizzy with Midge Ure in the lineup.
When keyboard player Franz Nicolay – who left in 2010, before fifth album Heaven Is Whenever – rejoined in 2016, and the band changed from a hard-touring group to one who’d play occasional residencies in big cities, it seemed as if The Hold Steady had resigned themselves to being a nostalgia act. Instead Nicolay’s return rejuvenated the group. Before their four-night run at the Brooklyn Bowl in December 2017 they gave a surprise online release to two new songs, and more kept popping up with every new set of shows. The Hold Steady were suddenly more productive than they had been in years.
Thrashing Thru The Passion brings together five of those previously released songs and five that have been played live but not been put online, recorded in a series of sessions over the past 18 months or so (four more that have been released haven’t made the cut). It’s not an album that was conceived as an entire collection, but that doesn’t stop it working: if Separation Sunday was The Hold Steady’s The Queen Is Dead, this is their Hatful Of Hollow. They sound like a band at ease with themselves and having fun, and for the first time since their debut became an unexpected critical cause célèbre, they sound free of the pressure that at first inspired them, then seemed to weigh on them.
This isn’t an album of surprises. Some of the musical references are more brazen than ever: the one-two guitar punches used by Jimmy Page from the opening notes of “Good Times, Bad Times” on “Epaulets”; the combination of riff and sax that opens “Traditional Village”, which sounds very much like The Hold Steady have wholly embraced the commonest point of comparison and gone shopping on E Street; the Malcolm Young crunch of “Confusion In The Marketplace”. Finn’s lyrics, as ever, are packed with pop culture references, some of them so brisk they fly past, some of them jokes that still raise a smile on the umpteenth play: “Sorry I’m late, I got caught in a mosh/With this dude who said he used to play with Peter Tosh.”
But where, on Heaven Is Whenever and Teeth Dreams – and, arguably, on Stay Positive – you could hear the effort, the grinding of gears, there’s no sign of that here. For one thing, the nature of the record means there’s no epic closer. The “big” track here comes at the end of Side One, and even then it’s not a giant of a song. “Blackout Sam” is a piece of understatement, gently soulful, a little like The Band, perhaps. And the figure at the heart of it isn’t spinning out of control, just a little pitiful, viewed with empathy: “Blackout Sam don’t have the answer/He keeps waking up in parking ramps/He can never find his keys.” With no overarching narrative theme, Thrashing Thru The Passion plays out like a series of miniatures, impressionistic portraits, with only “The Stove And The Toaster” telling a clear story, a drugs heist gone wrong.
It’s worth remembering, though, that for all the attention lavished on Finn, behind him is a fantastic, supple rock band. The melodies on Thrashing Thru The Passion are indelible, returning more to the bastardised classic rock of their early records, rather than the slightly generic alternarock of Teeth Dreams. It’s not just the return of Nicolay that adds colour: there are horns all over the album, giving depth and texture. And there’s space again, with not every moment of every song filled with noise. It might not be the best Hold Steady album, but it might be their most purely enjoyable.
The opening track, “Denver Haircut”, ends with lines that might sum up this era of a band who’ve fought through to find a purpose: “It doesn’t have to be pure/It doesn’t have to be perfect/Just sort of has to be worth it.” Thrashing Thru The Passion isn’t perfect. But damn right it’s worth it.
Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it sent to your home!
I reviewed the excellent, exhaustive Tangerine Dream boxset, In Search Of Hades: The Virgin Recordings 1973–1979, in a recent Uncut, and also spoke to synthesist and keyboard player Peter Baumann about those years. Here's a ...
What was Edgar Froese like as a person?
Hahahaha! What was Edgar like?! He was a very very interesting person. He had a lot of charisma, a very strong personality. Sometimes he was, I would say, living in a parallel universe. His philosophies, his interests and his mistrust of the music business, it made him unpredictable in a good way. Even for improvisation, it was unpredictable what he would put on the table. He was a heavyweight in terms of personality, in terms of how he viewed what we were doing. He was uncompromising, basically. He was always interested in metaphysics, whatever was out there that was the furthest expanse of the human mind – he would be interested in conversations with scientists that were not run of the mill. The titles reflect a little bit of Edgar’s flavour.
You were so young too!
I joined the band when I was 18. How did I stumble into that situation?! But it was very cool.
Did the working practices change for Rubycon and Stratosfear?
Everything influences everything else, and with the success of Phaedra and the live show, there was a little bit of pressure with how we followed it up. We didn’t want to be too commercial, so there was a little bit more of a thought process behind what we were doing. We also realised we had to allow it to be what it is in the studio and not try to do a Top 10 record. There was certainly more consideration, but at the end of the day that’s what it was. Rubycon, Stratosfear and Ricochet were all records that belonged to that time.
Why did you leave in 1977?
We spent a lot of time together. Success always has a particular way of putting pressure on a group. It seemed like it wasn’t as fresh as it had been in the beginning. The juice wasn’t as fresh, the excitement and the electricity wasn’t quite there. It became a job, and we weren’t as satisfied as we would have liked to be. That’s why there was a change.
The US tour in early 1977 must have been insane – you were very well-received.
There were no computers, no Instagram, none of that, so we didn’t know what to expect in America. It was a very cool tour – I don’t remember so much of it, we were just rushing around from town to town, there were parties all over the place, the typical music business chaos. But the concerts themselves were really fun.
Listening to the music, one might imagine a lot of hedonism – but you were actually very focused, right?
Compared to some heavy-duty rock’n’roll bands, we were quite tame, that’s for sure. I wasn’t drinking at all, but we were all smoking some has – at the time it was much more mellow than what you get today. Christopher and Edgar were drinking but not heavily, just with dinner. It wasn’t anything out of bounds. But we were always a little bit in a fog from smoking pot – and the music itself gets you out of being too square.
Oedipus Tyrannus is a real find in the box. What do you remember of that?
We did this for a play, and I think we recorded it at Edgar’s home studio on a small, four-track machine. I know it was a play in England, but that’s about it.
Favourite piece?
They’re all pretty close, but I’d say the first sides of Phaedra and Ricochet are maybe the top. The first piece of Rubycon too.
Ronnie Wood is the subject of a major new documentary, Somebody Up There Likes Me.
The film, directed by Mike Figgis, will premiere on October 12 at this year's London Film Festival. It covers both Wood's music career, from his upbringing in West London, through The Birds, The Jeff Beck Band and up...
Ronnie Wood is the subject of a major new documentary, Somebody Up There Likes Me.
The film, directed by Mike Figgis, will premiere on October 12 at this year’s London Film Festival. It covers both Wood’s music career, from his upbringing in West London, through The Birds, The Jeff Beck Band and up to the Stones – as well as his work as an artist.
“Who would have thought that a lad from Hillingdon would be able to combine all his hobbies and convert them into such diverse careers,” says Wood. “It’s such an incredible feeling to look back on my life and discuss key moments along the way that I remember vividly as if they were yesterday. I am flattered that so many talented people took the time to say such nice things about me!”
The film features interviews Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Rod Stewart.
“I was intrigued by Ronnie,” says Figgis. “The combination of his eclectic musical range and his love of painting seemed like a promising start to a documentary. I decided to jump in and we began talking, the first of a really interesting series of conversations. We covered so much ground in these talks and that led to interesting encounters with the likes of Damien Hirst and then a lovely music session in a studio. The remaining Stones chimed in with interesting stories and the result is the film. Ronnie Wood is a very interesting guy, so many personas.”
Neil Young & Crazy Horse have released a track for their new album, Colorado.
You can hear "Milky Way" below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_-9qcbuLcA
Colorado is Young's first album with the Horse since 2012's Psychedelic Pill and will be released by Reprise Records on October 25.
Colorado w...
Neil Young & Crazy Horse have released a track for their new album, Colorado.
You can hear “Milky Way” below.
Colorado is Young’s first album with the Horse since 2012’s Psychedelic Pill and will be released by Reprise Records on October 25.
Colorado was recorded mostly live in the studio in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and was produced by Young and John Hanlon with additional mixing at Shangri-La Studios in Malibu.
The album will be available on high resolution digital audio through Neil Young Archives, and on a three-sided, double vinyl album packaged with a bonus 7” vinyl single. The bonus single contains two non-album tracks: “Rainbow Of Colors”, which was recorded live by Neil Young solo; and “Truth Kills”, a studio track by Young with Crazy Horse.
Colorado will also be available on CD and digitally at all streaming and digital outlets. It’s now available to pre-order by clicking here, with “Milky Way” provided as an instant download.
Pink Floyd have announced details of The Later Years box set.
A 16-disc collection of materials from 1987 onwards, it includes over six hours of previously unheard audio and over seven hours of previously unseen audiovisuals alongside other late Floydian goodies.
The key elements are:
* A Momenta...
Pink Floyd have announced details of The Later Years box set.
A 16-disc collection of materials from 1987 onwards, it includes over six hours of previously unheard audio and over seven hours of previously unseen audiovisuals alongside other late Floydian goodies.
The key elements are:
* A Momentary Lapse Of Reason updated and re-mixed by David Gilmour and Andy Jackson
* Over six hours of previously unheard audio and over seven hours of previously unseen audiovisuals from A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, The Division Bell and The Endless River albums
* Full unreleased audio and remastered films from 1989’s Venice concert and 1990’s special Knebworth concert: unseen for decades
Unearthed footage of Pulse rehearsals and full-length Ian Emes film of The Endless River
* First ever release of Pink Floyd’s last live performance with David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright together at the 2007 Syd Barrett Tribute Concert included on Blu-ray, DVD and 7” vinyl
* New 5.1 mixes, first ever Blu-ray releases and unique 7” singles included
* Memorabilia including replica tour programmes, a lyric book and a 60-page photo book
*2-LP / 1CD highlights package also to be released
CD 1
A Momentary Lapse Of Reason updated & remixed
CD 2 & 3
Delicate Sound Of Thunder remixed
CD 4
Live Recordings, 1987 & 1994 unreleased studio recordings
CD 5
Knebworth Concert 1990
Blu-ray 1
Surround & Hi-res audio mixes
Blu-ray 2
Delicate Sound Of Thunder restored & remixed
Blu-ray 3
Pulse restored & re-edited
Blu-ray 4
Venice concert 1989 & Knebworth concert 1990
Blu-ray 5
Unreleased live films music videos & concert screen films
Blu-ray 6
Documentaries & unreleased material
2 x 7” vinyl singles in brand-new picture sleeves, featuring “Arnold Layne” performed live by Pink Floyd at the Syd Barrett Tribute concert, 2007 and “Lost For Words” from the Pulse tour rehearsals at Earl’s Court
60-page hard backed book of photos designed by Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis and Peter Curzon of StormStudios, including many previously unseen images.
A newly-created set of reproduction tour programmes (Pink Floyd World Tour 1987/1988, Pink Floyd Live 1989, Pink Floyd European Tour 1994), plus a brand new Lyrics Book, designed by Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis and Peter Curzon of StormStudios.
A collection of reproduction memorabilia including tour passes, stickers and posters, all printed to replicate the originals, and contained in a prestige card envelope.
Neal Casal has died aged 50.
News that the guitarist – who recorded and performed with acts including Ryan Adams And The Cardinals, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, and Circles Around The Sun – had passed away was shared (August 27) via the musician’s Twitter account.
“It’s with great sadness...
Neal Casal has died aged 50.
News that the guitarist – who recorded and performed with acts including Ryan Adams And The Cardinals, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, and Circles Around The Sun – had passed away was shared (August 27) via the musician’s Twitter account.
“It’s with great sadness that we tell you Neal Casal has passed. As so many know, Neal was a gentle, soulful human who lived life through artistry & kindness. His family, friends & fans will always remember the light that he brought to the world. Rest easy Neal, we love you,” the statement reads.
It’s with great sadness that we tell you Neal Casal has passed. As so many know, Neal was a gentle, soulful human who lived life through artistry & kindness. His family, friends & fans will always remember the light that he brought to the world. Rest easy Neal, we love you. pic.twitter.com/Q0ap7jrkUC
Casal began his career in the late 1980s playing in Florida rock band, Blackfoot. After his debut solo album, 1995’s Fade Away Diamond Time, Casal embarked on a wide-ranging career including several more solo LPs.
Long-term Uncut readers will remember Casal’s “Today I’m Gonna Bleed”, which appeared on our first Sounds Of The New West compilation in 1998.
Casal also performed with the Cardinals from 2005 until 2009, where he played on on releases by Ryan Adams and Willie Nelson.
Adams is among those who paid tribute to Casal, writing that his “heart is broken”.
“Oh man. My heart is broken What an honor to have known you, true believer. I love you,” Adams wrote.
Oh man. My heart is broken What an honor to have known you, true believer. I love you. Go easy “I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain”#RIPNealCasalpic.twitter.com/4vlj3l2EoU
Bob Weir shared a photograph of him and Casal – presumably taken Saturday at Virginia’s Lockn’ Festival, where Weir and his late friend shared the stage – with the caption, “My last memory of Neal will be the smile he left me with.”
“I can’t believe I’m having to say goodbye to my friend and my brother,” Chris Robinson wrote in a statement. “It’s almost too painful. When I think about the songs we’ve written, the shows we’ve played and all the laughs and great times we shared, it’s almost unbearable to know you’re gone.”
Neal Casal was among the very best at what he did and I am very sad to hear that he's gone. Thanks for making the world better for a little while, Neal.
RIP Neal Casal. He was very kind to me by letting me open up circles around the sun gigs. We ate a whole bag of tortilla chips together after one show and talked about Derek Bailey. What a sweet dude and pal.
I am absolutely devastated with the news of the loss of my dear friend and consistent collaborator @nealcasal – he was always my favorite picker in LA and we’d all just finished some beautiful music together. I’m… https://t.co/e3i93mG7oM
A few years ago, some of you will remember, we ran a new series of specials under the A Life In Pictures aegis. This month, we've chosen to revisit Life In Pictures as a means of celebrating the extraordinary, colourful life and career of an artist who appears to have been tailor-made for such a str...
A few years ago, some of you will remember, we ran a new series of specials under the A Life In Pictures aegis. This month, we’ve chosen to revisit Life In Pictures as a means of celebrating the extraordinary, colourful life and career of an artist who appears to have been tailor-made for such a striking visual accompaniment. Behold! The glasses, the costumes, the sheer maximalist splendor of Elton John in all his many, wonderful guises – from Troubador balladeer and beyond. The Elton: A Life In Pictures is in the shops now and you can also buy a copy from our online store. Here’s John Robinson, our one shots editor, to tell you more about it.
I should quickly mention we have a marvellous new issue of Uncut out – Patti Smith on the cover – which you can buy in the shops or direct from our friends here. Free P&P in the UK, I should mention, too.
Elton: A Life In Pictures is a lavish 100 page tribute to pop’s most enduringly outrageous performer, saluting the 50 plus years he has spent as the lord of the keyboard.
What a life – and what pictures! The team behind Uncut’s long-running Ultimate Music Guides have brought their passion and expertise to this deluxe new product, which uses classic and rare photographs to fully chronicle Elton’s extraordinary musical journey.
With rare shots of his first band, to his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road farewell tour, via glam rock, massive ballads (and bigger shoes!), this is a life that can be vividly seen as well as heard. Thanks to the man’s great candour in interviews, we’ve been able to extract entertaining comment from the archives of NME, Melody Maker and Uncut to accompany each one.
With his dues paid, Elton’s rise was rapid, and his enjoyment of his fame enormous. Here you’ll find handsome documents of the many career high points – the Troubadour, 1970; Dodgers Stadium, 1975 – that we’ve since seen dramatized in his biopic Rocketman. You’ll also find a window into Elton’s celebrity life: his pals, the parties, the costumes.
Electric boots and a mohair suit – we’ve got those and all the rest. You can read it in our magazine…
Here's Elvis Costello's Album By Album feature from Take 260 [January 2019], which the man himself wrote for us...
“With stupefying arrogance, we set about showing our contemporaries what could be done with their winning formulas,” Elvis Costello tells Uncut, discussing his 1981 LP Trust. The...
Here’s Elvis Costello’s Album By Album feature from Take 260 [January 2019], which the man himself wrote for us…
“With stupefying arrogance, we set about showing our contemporaries what could be done with their winning formulas,” Elvis Costello tells Uncut, discussing his 1981 LP Trust. The new-wave upstart turned renaissance man could almost be describing any of his albums, though; from the audacious mix of fury and classicism on 1977 debut My Aim Is True, and the extravagant, Beatles-esque Imperial Bedroom (1982), to the sombre torch songs of 2003’s North and his eclectic, impressive latest, Look Now, Costello has aimed high and invariably succeeded.
When Uncut invited the songwriter to discuss nine of his finest albums, Costello suggested that he instead write his own reflections on some of his personal favourites with the Attractions, the Imposters, The Roots and solo – plus a fond look back at the demos he recorded with Paul McCartney, only released in 2017. Here, then, is Costello’s own personal history.On completing his ‘classic’, he says he left the NYC studio at 1am “thinking this was a movie that will probably never get made again”….
ELVIS COSTELLO
MY AIM IS TRUE
STIFF, 1977 Costello’s first recordings were so striking, Stiff signed their songwriter as an artist in his own right
ELVIS COSTELLO: Rehearsed in a rat-infested country house and recorded in a cardboard box in Islington [Pathway Studios] in a total of 24 hours’ studio time, on sick days and holidays from my office job as a computer operator. Having only heard my voice, mumbling under a bare bulb, club stage or on a borrowed reel-to-reel in my bedroom, I never imagined I would be in that studio with a band as good as Clover, a Marin County outfit whose Fantasy albums I’d had to hunt down in secondhand shops. They spoke in code about the songs – “Red Shoes” was “The One That Sounds Like The Byrds”. I didn’t mention that “Waiting For The End Of The World” was supposed to sound like “I’m Waiting For The Man”. I don’t think they had ever heard The Velvet Underground, and perhaps that was for the best. You can listen to a new take on “Mr Moon” from Clover’s recent Homestead Redemption (on which they revisit their ’70s songs and I deputise for vocalist Alex Call on an alternate take) and hear John McFee quote his own guitar part from “Alison”. Time is going backwards. I liked the sound of Pathway so much that I went back there with just me and Pete Thomas to cut “Kinder Murder” for Brutal Youth, and The Gwendolyn Letters, demos of the 12 songs that I wrote for Wendy James over one weekend in the ’90s.
ELVIS COSTELLO
THIS YEAR’S MODEL
RADAR, 1978 His second album, featuring “Pump It Up” and “Night Rally”, remains one of Costello’s best
Before we left Pathway, Nick Lowe had showed me that we could paint pictures with sound on “Watching The Detectives”. Steve Nieve had arrived by then to play the keyboards. I told him I wanted the piano to sound like “Hitchcock”, when I think I meant “Bernard Herrmann”. However, I needed all of the Attractions to work at speed of life for “Lipstick Vogue”. “Pump It Up” was scrawled on a hotel fire-escape in Newcastle, in the last days of the Stiff Tour, and cut at Eden Studios in Acton just before I left for our first American misadventure. You could say “we never looked back”, but having crossed the United States for the first time and been thrown off SNL and had a mince pie, when we returned home, we finished the album in the rest of the 11 days that we could afford. And then we went back to America, again and again… Look Now co-producer Sebastian Krys pushed up the faders on “This Year’s Girl” recently, adding the voice of Natalie Berman (from Wilde Belle) for a remix for the opening titles of the second season of The Deuce. These are very big shoes to fill after Curtis Mayfield’s “If There’s A Hell Below” had opened Season One, but Pete Thomas, Bruce Thomas and Steve Nieve’s playing sounded as mighty as ever and we even uncovered an unused background vocal idea, lifted from our inspiration – The Rolling Stones’ Aftermath.
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS
TRUST
F-BEAT/COLUMBIA, 1981 Recorded at a troubled time, Costello’s fifth took aim at his pop contemporaries
Every one of the 45rpm records that we issued between late 1977 and mid-1980 made some kind of showing on the UK hit parade. My face was suddenly on the cover of teen magazines, as unlikely as that may sound now. It’s a sad and predictable story that too much attention can turn a young man’s head. I thought myself above all temptations but wrote a lot of songs about the debris that surrounds them and anything else that flew by my window. That’s what filled Armed Forces and Get Happy!!. After some hits, some inexplicable catastrophes and producing The Specials under a laundromat in the Fulham Palace Road, I felt like driving the car into a ditch or at least to Sunderland, so, with stupefying arrogance, we set about showing our contemporaries what could be done with their winning formulas. “Clubland” was supposed to be “Message In A Bottle” with a middle eight, “You’ll Never Be A Man” was “Brass In Pocket” with more chords and some ideas hijacked from The “Detroit” Spinners, while “White Knuckles” was like hearing several XTC songs through a haze of scrumpy, gin and sherbet dabs. I doubt any of them were better songs than their models, but it was a lark. I wish I could say it kept us out of trouble. Somewhere along the way the Attractions managed to cut what I think of as their most original ensemble performance, “New Lace Sleeves”. Around this time, my publisher told me the song I’d just written on a newly purchased piano reminded him of something by Erik Satie, so I went to a music shop to find out what he was talking about and discovered that I could actually play the opening bars of a few of his deceptively simple piano pieces. However, I absolutely needed Steve Nieve’s fingers to make sense and music out of my sketch for “Shot With His Own Gun” and then I straightened up long enough to co-produce Squeeze’s East Side Story.
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS
IMPERIAL BEDROOM
F-BEAT/COLUMBIA, 1982 Eager to embrace a variety of styles, Costello enlisted Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick
It was very sad to read of the recent passing of that incredibly talented, gentle man, Geoff Emerick. He patiently watched us burn off the “nervous energy” that had fuelled all our previous records until we found our way to this album. He’d seen better bands than us come into the studio with crazed notions and fuzzy fragments of song and put them into sonic order. We had set up at the crossroads of Oxford Street and Regent Street, in AIR Studios. If we thought we were being like The Beatles by hiring a harpsichord, then an actual Beatle was down the hallway making Tug Of War with George Martin, just past a mixing suite that hosted both The Jam and Alice Cooper, although, sadly, not at the same time. We gave ourselves an extravagant amount of weeks to make our best mistakes. Geoff Emerick’s recording experience and mixing made absolute sense of the band’s unpredictable but brilliant playing – Pete Thomas’s insane drumming on “Beyond Belief”, to Nieve’s demented piano on “Man Out Of Time” and “The Loved Ones” and Bruce Thomas’s mighty bass coda for “Shabby Doll”. Geoff sat through my endless vocal-group overdubs that were the first thing to get lost when we took the songs on the road as not one of the band could do much more than shout “Hey” on the chorus, so it took until last summer’s Imperial Bedroom & Other Chambers Tour for Davey Faragher, Kitten Kuroi and Briana Lee to make some sense of my, sometimes, nonsensical notions. The record is occasionally called “baroque” – another of those overused French words, like “genre”, that make “critical thinking” seem like thinking – but this could really only be applied to Steve Nieve’s insanely funny and extravagant orchestration for “…And In Every Home” or that damn harpsichord on “You Little Fool”. I don’t think it has anything to do with “Almost Blue”, a song later heartbreakingly performed by Chet Baker, who had inspired me to write it, two years before he brought his beautiful trumpet playing to our rendition of “Shipbuilding”.
THE COSTELLO SHOW FEATURING THE ATTRACTIONS AND CONFEDERATES
KING OF AMERICA
F-BEAT/COLUMBIA, 1986
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS
BLOOD & CHOCOLATE
DEMON/COLUMBIA, 1986 Two very different albums – one produced by T-Bone Burnett, the other by old compadre Nick Lowe
Producer T-Bone Burnett and I originally plotted this to be a half-acoustic and half-electric album. The first Hollywood sessions with players from Elvis Presley’s TCB band, jazz bassist Ray Brown and Earl Palmer – the drummer on both “Tutti Frutti” and “The Theme From The Flintstones” – gave us more than we bargained for, including “Indoor Fireworks”, “Poisoned Rose” and “I’ll Wear It Proudly”. Suspicion and ill-feeling replaced any literal or figurative electricity on the Attractions recording dates, apart from their superb contribution to “Suit Of Lights”. A matter of months later I booked Olympic Studios to finish the amplified half of the job in Barnes, and called Nick Lowe to produce, referee and play the acoustic rhythm guitar that holds together a record on which I frankly only make a noise with a Fender Telecaster. We set up with stage monitors, so everything was a roaring, muddy blur whether we were hammering through “Tokyo Storming Warning” or creeping through “I Want You”. If something was too loud in the mix, we simply turned off that channel and balanced to the bleed – appropriate, given the final title of the album. As to the chocolate, I think we ate it all.
PAUL McCARTNEY
FLOWERS IN THE DIRT DELUXE EDITION
CAPITOL/UME/MPL, 2017 An extra disc with this reissue features the lost demos recorded by the Beatle and Costello
Between 1987 and 1991, I wrote 15 songs with Paul McCartney, nine of which were released over five of our solo albums. We had started out to co-produce our co-written songs for Paul’s album Flowers In The Dirt but disagreed about the scope of the recording. I wanted Paul to have everything stripped to the boards, while I was secretly plotting my own album, Spike, on the scale of a Cecil B DeMille epic. Last year, a lavish reissue saw the official release of our two-man demos, recorded in the joyful moments after each composition was completed, in a room above Paul’s Hog Hill Studios. We got to harmonise and compete over the best lines in “You Want Her Too”, “So Like Candy” and the unreleased “Tommy’s Coming Home Again”. For me the highlight was the demo of “The Lovers That Never Were”, one of the greatest vocal performances of Paul’s solo career.
ELVIS COSTELLO
NORTH
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON, 2003 A stark album of jazzy ballads that contemplated a new relationship – chosen by Costello as his ‘classic’
I know this one divided listeners, who were led to believe that it was something to do with an empty martini glass or a dissolute man in an undone bow-tie, while, at the time, I believed that I had written a cracking folio of lieder, only not in German. Actually, I wrote these songs in the dead of night and cut some of them three times over, screwing up and throwing away the drafts, as befits an intense and mortifying farewell note that turns into a love letter. I began by recording all the songs in one long, flawed demo take, including numbers I would never sing again and some which were almost improvised, at jazz virtuoso Errol Garner’s old Steinway, a beast I could barely wrestle into submission. It’s a thin line between being truthful and burdening your friends with a private sorrow, but then my model for confession had always been a wooden box in church. Even an unassailable record like Joni Mitchell’s Blue admits the brightness of “California” and Bob Dylan’s originally released draft of Blood On The Tracks had all that reverb on the voice to chase away the pain. So I listened to my elders and betters, buried raw songs like “In Another Room” until a daytrip to Clarksdale, Mississippi, five years later and chose to travel from the darkness to the light. The Imposters rhythm section proved to be the wrong hammer for the job and quickly departed, but not before we recorded a gem called “Impatience” with Marc Ribot on a Cuban tres, a flourish of pizzicato strings and a horn section drawn from my pals in The Jazz Passengers. Steve Nieve was eventually joined by acoustic bassist Mike Formanek and drummer Peter Erskine, who played with the hushed and steady flow that the songs demanded. I wrote for a low group of woodwinds and brass around my baritone range and brought in a body of strings here and there, so the room was not entirely in black and white. In the very late ’40s and early ’50s, my mother used to smuggle jazz records into Liverpool via seafaring pals for fanatical customers who had read about the music of Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz but couldn’t afford to hear it due to import duty on American records. Lee added his alto saxophone to the end of “Someone Took The Words Away”, so after the session I had him sign the sheet music to my Mam. Obliging, in his terse style, he wrote, “Lillian, Thanks. Lee”. Returning to Errol’s big machine at Nola Studios, I cut “I’m In The Mood Again”, which I finished at 1am. Then I walked outside onto 57th Street, thinking this was a movie that will probably never get made again.
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ROOTS
WISE UP GHOST
BLUE NOTE, 2013 A strong set of new songs made in collaboration with Jimmy Fallon- soundtracking hip-hop troupe
Having told myself (and anyone else who’d listen) that I was happy to take my songs directly to the stage, I was taken willing hostage to a scheme by Questlove and engineer Steven Mandel to keep me in a Tardis-like cupboard at NBC until we made a record together. At the turn of the century, in what seemed like the last game of musical chairs, I was briefly signed to Deutsche Grammophon and Def Jam-Island at the same time, then to the Nashville quasi-independent Lost Highway, then to Verve Records for our trip to New Orleans to complete The River In Reverse with Allen Toussaint. Now we were working without a label or a budget, building tracks up from Questlove’s beats, Mandel’s samples of “Can You Be True?” from North or “Radio Silence” from When I Was Cruel, and slices from our own rehearsal jams on songs as widely spaced in time as “High Fidelity” and “Stations Of the Cross”. Those broadcast references were fitting, as the words were initially cut-ups of my own lyrics, written in reaction to events on a news-ticker, 25 years long, from “Pills And Soap” and “Invasion Hit Parade” to “Bedlam” and “The River In Reverse”. “Say something once, why say it again?” as David Byrne once proposed, to which I would reply, “Say something twice, maybe you’ll hear it this time.” So “Cinco Minutos Con Vos” viewed the same events as “Shipbuilding”, only from another hemisphere, and among these outward-bound views – in the last days before we delivered the record to Blue Note – Quest went back into that little cupboard with Ray Angry and Pino Palladino to cut the music for “The Puppet Has Cut His Strings”, a deeply upsetting series of images about my father’s last breath, which I could only let myself utter in the company of new friends.
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS
LOOK NOW
CONCORD, 2018 One of Elvis’s finest of this century, a chamber-pop treat featuring Burt Bacharach and Carole King
So here we are, who we are and there you go… This is our latest waxing. All the Imposters parts and the vocal group arrangements for “Mr & Mrs Hush”, “Unwanted Wanted Number”, “Suspect My Tears” and the Carole King co-write, “Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter”, were recorded in the Los Angeles studios where I’d cut King Of America, Spike, Mighty Like A Rose and Painted From Memory. I already had all of the string and horn arrangements in my head when we began the sessions, but put these ideas on the page so they could be added at Electric Lady in New York City. Then we returned to Vancouver to record my vocals. The opening song is “Under Lime”, which tells of the immoral dilemma facing ‘Jimmie’ – a late-’30s musical turn who I left “Standing In The Rain” on National Ransom: “It’s a long way down from the high horse you’re on when you stumble and then you’re thrown…” Burt Bacharach came in to lead the Imposters from the piano on “Don’t Look Now” and “Photographs Can Lie”, just two of the 20 or more songs that we’ve written in the last decade. Another tune for which Burt solved the musical puzzle is “He’s Given Me Things”, which closes with the lines: “He’s given me things you never dreamed of/Where dreams are dashed and trash is praised/He has an awful lot of money/The past can be bought and then erased…”
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Originally published in Uncut's Take 157
It started out as a trenchant political protest song by two white South African folkies, a song that drew parallels between the oppression of black South Africans and...
SHAUN RYDER: As soon as we recorded “Step On”, Tony said, “Fuck it, Elektra can have ‘Tokoloshe Man’. We’ll keep ‘Step On’ as our single.” And he was fucking right. We didn’t even tell Elektra we’d recorded it. We rush-released it a few weeks after we recorded it. It was just dead easy.
GAZ WHELAN: We tended to work out songs in the rehearsal studios. We’d start off with the drums and bass, jamming, playing grooves. And our guitarist, Mark Day – who was always the best musician of all of us – would be playing licks. We’d jam for hours. Then Shaun would come in, sit cross-legged on the floor with his mic, a pen and paper, and he’d just scribble. And he’d ask us to keep playing. In the days before you could just record a loop, we had to physically play these grooves over and over again for Shaun to write over them! We didn’t mind. We only stopped because we’d be in creases of laughter at the lyrics he’d be coming out with!
SHAUN RYDER: Where did “twisting my melon” come from? A Steve McQueen documentary I saw. Apparently he used to walk into his director’s office and argue. And there was this guy doing an impression of him saying, “Oh man, he’s twisting my melon”. So I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just have that.’ It’s a great phrase, innit?
PAUL OAKENFOLD: “Step On” convinced me I could do a whole album with the Mondays. I was shitting myself. It was an incredible risk for the record company, considering I’d never produced a rock band before! Osbourne had engineered before, so we were reliant on his studio nous.
GAZ WHELAN: “Step On” certainly set the tone for the Pills’N’ Thrills… album in LA. Oakey’s way of working, that was how we did every track on Pills’N’ Thrills…
PAUL OAKENFOLD: It was a tricky job. I was given £100,000 to go out to LA and come back with an album. So I had London Records on my case, Tony Wilson on my case, 10 guys running riot around LA, and the buck stopped with me! The Mondays liked to socialise – they ended up dragging a dozen of their mates out to LA to keep them company. So I had to make sure we socialised, and boy, did we party. We all had these convertibles, like in Bullitt! And when we rolled, we fucking rolled! But I had to get the balance right, and we had to be very disciplined in the studio. I remember this bigwig from Elektra coming down to the Capitol studios while we were recording. This is the studio where Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole had recorded, where the Beach Boys did Pet Sounds. And this bigwig was standing there in his linen suit and shades, watching these scallies fucking around, and he looked absolutely horrified. I had to go and placate him and say, “No, just trust me, it’ll all sound great when it’s done, honestly!” It worked with “Step On”, so I knew it would work with the rest of the album.
JOHN KONGOS: When I heard the Mondays’ version of “He’s Gonna Step On You Again”, I actually did call the cops because Shaun twisted my melon, man, ha! But I soon grew to love his very different version. People come up to me now in Arizona and say: “I didn’t know you did a cover of the Happy Mondays song!” So it’s all cool.
SHAUN RYDER: To be honest, I used to hate singing “Step On” at first. You don’t want to be remembered as a fucking covers band. Then after 10, 12, 15 years of doing it you get pissed off with repeating it. But I’ve started getting over all that bollocks. I’m back where I do like doing it now. The fans like it. It’s a fucking great song, isn’t it? Something to be proud of.
Something of a survivalist drive has sustained Sleater-Kinney over their 25 years as a band. Together, Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss have braved the hardships of their early days in Olympia, Washington, as well as the inevitable stresses of growing fame in the 2000s. They even weat...
Something of a survivalist drive has sustained Sleater-Kinney over their 25 years as a band. Together, Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss have braved the hardships of their early days in Olympia, Washington, as well as the inevitable stresses of growing fame in the 2000s. They even weathered a decade apart, returning triumphantly in 2015 with No Cities To Love, which showed that, despite approaching an age at which it’s often judged unseemly for women to still be making rock music and with multiple successful parallel careers, Sleater-Kinney had lost none of their focus, nor any of their righteous, feminist post-punk energy.
The Center Won’t Hold, however, is far from the comfortable victory lap they might otherwise deserve. “The band is heading in a new direction,” wrote drummer Janet Weiss on Twitter at the start of July, “and it is time for me to move on.” “We are saddened by Janet’s decision to leave Sleater-Kinney,” countered her former bandmates. “It has been an incredible privilege to work with such a talented musician and drummer over the course of so many albums, including The Center Won’t Hold.” So just what is it about the “new direction” of their ninth album that has apparently alienated Weiss?
In its message at least, the new record is furiously, vitally Sleater-Kinney: Corin Tucker has called it “a power grab”, while Carrie Brownstein describes it as “an unabashed expression of existence”, with the band taking a stand at a time when threats to women’s freedoms in the west are, at both micro and macro levels, becoming ever more overt, organised and persistent.
But in its sound, sizeable changes have occurred. Firstly, there was a new MO enforced by simple geography: when Brownstein and Tucker started work on the new songs, the former was living in LA, Tucker in Portland, Oregon, so instead of playing together and talking ideas over in the same room as usual, they each worked at home on demos, writing on synthesiser and keyboard – in itself a change – and exchanging sound files. It was a process Brownstein describes to Uncut as “telling stories and sending the next chapter back. Corin would send something, so I would think, ‘OK, what’s another version of the story?’ So it felt novelistic in that way, or even like a series of short stories. And I think that’s where a lot of the different sounds came from – that allowance of someone else’s vision to hopefully take hold before we’d even finished writing the song.”
Sleater-Kinney then took those demos into the studio in July of last year with producer Annie Clark, aka electro-avant-pop maximalist St Vincent. It’s proved a controversial appointment and The Center Won’t Hold certainly features Clark’s fingerprints across its 33 minutes: there are more major keys, heightened dynamics and newly prominent synths and keyboards that mine novel seams of distortion, notably blown-out low-end frequencies. These are used most strikingly on the panoramic “Ruins”, the boldly overdriven “Bad Dance” and the title track, whose metallic buzz reflects the urgent mood that looms over the whole set. These may be fresh textural settings for S-K, but they’re still very much in step with the band’s take on drama, common to their whole catalogue. And while much has been made of the hiring of St Vincent, she came in as a longtime fan of the band – covering “Modern Girl” early last year, in fact. S-K themselves are hardly allergic to ’80s pop, either, with No Cities To Love’s title track and “Hey Darling” demonstrating that they’ve inherited as much from The B-52s and Pat Benatar as from Patti Smith and Poly Styrene.
As Brownstein tells it, three songs are presented as “poke holes” into the album: the title track, with its restrained first half later submerged by riotous punk fuzz; “Ruins”, where Tucker’s lyrics summon a metaphorical monster of our own making (“You’re a creature of sorrow, you’re the beast we made/You scratch at our sadness until we’re broken and frayed,” she states in her magnificent, throaty contralto); and “Hurry On Home”, a spiky comment on issues around compliance and amenability in relationships in which Brownstein’s declaration – “You know I’m unfuckable, unlovable, unlistenable, unwatchable” – speaks to the internalised fear of Everywoman and is carried by a high-stepping, punk-pop melody, a disco beat and a new digital crispness. “We thought, ‘This is the album’,” she says. “It’s scary, it’s vulnerable, it’s personal but it’s character-based at times, but also unmasked.”
Self-exposure and truth-telling – each as much political act as human connector – have always been central to S-K’s ethos, and The Center Won’t Hold is no different. It emerged from the fallout of the 2016 US presidential election, with the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the rise of our new world (dis)order. Friendship and music provide solace for the trio on “The Future Is Here” (“I need you more than I ever have because the future’s here and we can’t go back”) and “Reach Out”, a triumphantly roaring power ballad that finds Tucker announcing, in what might be interpreted as a prediction of Weiss’ departure, “I can’t fight without you, my friend…” “Broken” is its polar opposite: the album’s final track, written by Brownstein on piano and with a melody sung by Tucker, it applies a melancholic, supper-club lustre to its homage to Christine Blasey Ford and all the other women who’ve spoken out publicly against their sexual aggressors: “She, she, she stood up for us when she testified/Me, me too, my body cried out/When she spoke those lines.” It’s an artfully powerful song, but it’s not inconceivable that one of rock’s most fluid and wild drummers might have been slightly put out by this new style. Similarly, the doo-wop-influenced disco of “Can I Go On” finds little room for Weiss’s freewheeling talents.
It’s the joyously defiant and hopeful “LOVE” and “Bad Dance” that are the album’s existential axis, however. In the former, Brownstein recaps the story of S-K’s genesis in her friendship with Tucker and her own rescue by music as a young girl who “came up in the void” outside Seattle. “Heard you in my headphones, slipped you my address/Call the doctor, dig me out of this mess/ Tuned it down to C, turned the amps to 10/A basement of our own, a mission to begin,” she sings to a cheerful new-wave tempo, referencing S-K’s second and third albums. Brownstein then turns her attention to society’s expectation that women over 40 take up less space – diminishing themselves physically and muting their expression – and surrender the rock music game to a younger gang: “Done with being told that this should be the end/Fighting is the fuel and anger is a friend/There’s nothing more frightening and nothin’ more obscene/Than a well-worn body demanding to be seen.” In the swaggering “Bad Dance”, we’re commanded by Brownstein to “be the weapon, be the love”, and to dance off our rage against the chaotic end, however futile that might be.
Sleater-Kinney may have changed significantly, then, in sound and now in lineup, and if they manage a 10th record those changes will perhaps be even more pronounced; but their inimitable fury and drive is intact. A paean to survivors and those struggling to endure, The Center Won’t Hold shouts affirmation to all those listening, of course, but in particular to women: it’s not you, the songs seem to say – it’s Them.
Trust me,” Shannon Lay sings on “Sunday Sundown”, a soft yet forceful standout on her new album, August. The Los Angeles singer-songwriter repeats those two simple words one more time, prompting you to lean in and listen closely to what she’s about to tell you: “Love is hard to find, with ...
Trust me,” Shannon Lay sings on “Sunday Sundown”, a soft yet forceful standout on her new album, August. The Los Angeles singer-songwriter repeats those two simple words one more time, prompting you to lean in and listen closely to what she’s about to tell you: “Love is hard to find, with the shadows of your mind tellin’ you otherwise.” That’s a hard sentiment, but it derives so much of its power from that insistent set-up, as though she’s reached through the speaker and put a sympathetic hand on your shoulder. Lay uses similar techniques throughout August, peppering her songs with entreaties meant to make you pay special attention. On “Nowhere”, she turns syllables into sharp staccato jabs and sounds like she’s trying to call from across a crowded room. On the intense “Unconditional”, she cautions you, just on the cusp of outraged: “They’ll take all they want and they’ll give nothin’ back to you.” Then she punctuates it with an exhaled, not-quite-defeated, “It’s true.”
That trick makes Lay’s quiet songs sound loud and disruptive. Her melodies are pretty, her singing often beautiful, but August is never merely pretty and beautiful. Rather than inert or passive, her songs are active and lively, even a little prickly, from her deft finger-picking to her assertive vocal phrasing. The album strives to connect artist with audience, to speak directly to you, the individual listener. If she’s a confessional singer-songwriter, then she’s writing your confessions as well as her own. That makes her music both bracing and enticing, as she invites you into her world but doesn’t let you get too comfortable.
Fittingly, the title comes from an event that made Lay very uncomfortable. In August 2017, Lay quit her day job at a vintage store in Los Angeles called Squaresville and devoted herself fully to music. The experience was both fretful (would she be able to pay rent?) and freeing. Almost immediately she booked a tour opening for Kevin Morby, who thought so highly of her that he launched a special label imprint to release her album, Living Water, later that year. Since then she’s barely rested, balancing the demands of a solo career with her garage-punk band Feels and a touring gig in Ty Segall’s Freedom Band.
Lay recorded August with Segall at his LA home studio, emphasizing voice and guitar. She’s a precise instrumentalist who favours a finger-picked style that recalls Nick Drake or Paul Simon. You can hear her hands running along on the fretboard on “November”, which reinforces the song’s autumnal intimacy as well as its impression she’s aiming the song right at you. And her voice is gentle but steady, a bit like Sibylle Baier on “Shuffling Stoned”, insinuating the melody more than stating it outright. But there is something insistent in Lay’s phrasing, especially on “Past Time”, and her stoicism only makes her disdain for a self-involved someone so much more withering: “Tell me again about the things your mother made and how no-one did it better and no-one ever will,” she sings, her voice like an eye roll. “How I do love this time.”
To this foundation of voice and guitar she adds judicious flourishes that accentuate the songs without weighing them down. There’s emphatic percussion on “Wild”, droning violin and a locomotive snare on the title track, and a ramshackle indie-rock band on “Nowhere”, complete with keyboard solo and handclap rhythms. Mikal Cronin adds a fluttering sax to the stark opener “Death Up Close”, which adds breath and life to a song about their opposites. Many artists deploy that instrument for its dated associations, but there’s nothing ironic about Lay’s harrowing brush with mortality. Rather, it’s almost celebratory, as though our stories are more dramatic for having endings. When she sings three simple words at the end of the song – “I love you” – they have the weight of radical sincerity.
Perhaps Lay’s riskiest songwriting gambit is “The Dream”, on which she switches from acoustic to electric guitar, its notes sustained instead of short, each flowing into the other to create a cloudy, floating sensation. “It seems to me all a dream,” she sings, then repeats the phrase like a half-remembered mantra. Those are, in fact, the only words to the song, but Lay explores every fluttering facet of those syllables, as though trying to remember something her subconscious dredged up the night before. It’s a remarkable moment that closes an album that takes nothing for granted, that doesn’t consider your attention a gift, that wants to impart something profound to you. Trust her.
Bill Callahan has covered Silver Jews' “I Remember Me” in concert.
Pitchfork reports that the show took place New York’s Webster Hall during Callahan's current Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest tour
Callahan played “I Remember Me” as tribute to his friend and fellow Drag City artist, David Be...
Bill Callahan has covered Silver Jews’ “I Remember Me” in concert.
Pitchfork reports that the show took place New York’s Webster Hall during Callahan’s current Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest tour
Callahan played “I Remember Me” as tribute to his friend and fellow Drag City artist, David Berman, who died earlier this month aged 52.
“The world is and will always be a David Berman lyric,” Callahan wrote on Twitter after Berman’s death was announced. “I miss you so much, David.”
He’s the rocket man!
Elton: A Life In Pictures is a lavish 100 page tribute to pop’s most enduringly outrageous performer.
What a life – and what pictures!
The team behind Uncut’s long-running Ultimate Music Guides have brought their passion and expertise to this deluxe new product, which us...
He’s the rocket man!
Elton: A Life In Pictures is a lavish 100 page tribute to pop’s most enduringly outrageous performer.
What a life – and what pictures!
The team behind Uncut’s long-running Ultimate Music Guides have brought their passion and expertise to this deluxe new product, which uses classic and rare photographs to fully chronicle Elton’s extraordinary musical journey.
Electric boots and a mohair suit – we’ve got those and all the rest.
Bruce Springsteen has released a lyric video for his song, "I'll Stand By You".
The previously unreleased studio recording appears in the new film, Blinded By The Light - based on the memoir by former Uncut writer Saf Manzoor.
Springsteen reportedly originally wrote the song for his oldest son, Ev...
Bruce Springsteen has released a lyric video for his song, “I’ll Stand By You“.
The previously unreleased studio recording appears in the new film, Blinded By The Light – based on the memoir by former Uncut writer Saf Manzoor.
Springsteen reportedly originally wrote the song for his oldest son, Evan, between 1998 and 2001 after reading the Harry Potter books to his children.
According to Springsteen in a 2016 interview with BBC2, “I’ll Stand By You” is “a song that I wrote for my eldest son, it was a big ballad that was very uncharacteristic of something I’d sing myself. But it was something that I thought would have fit lovely.”
Kim Gordon is to release her first ever solo album on October 11 – watch the video for "Sketch Artist" below.
The Matador-released album, No Home Record, was recorded in Los Angeles, and features production work from Justin Raisen, primarily, alongside Shawn Everett and Jake Meginsky.
As well as...
Kim Gordon is to release her first ever solo album on October 11 – watch the video for “Sketch Artist” below.
The Matador-released album, No Home Record, was recorded in Los Angeles, and features production work from Justin Raisen, primarily, alongside Shawn Everett and Jake Meginsky.
As well as “Sketch Artist”, it features “Murdered Out”, originally released by Gordon as a single in 2016.
“‘Why a solo record? And why now?,’” says Gordon in a press release. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have happened without the persistence of Justin Raisen. Living in LA the last few years it feels like home, but the transience of the place makes it feel sometimes like no home.”
