It kicks off with a show at Cardiff Principality Stadium on May 5, with further dates in Belfast, Kilkenny, Cork, Dublin and Sunderland before concluding at London’s Wembley stadium on July 25.
See the full list of dates and ticket on-sale times below. Tickets for the UK dates can be found here.
May 5 – Cardiff, Wales @ Principality Stadium (On-sale: Friday, Nov. 3 at 10am*)
May 9 – Belfast, Northern Ireland @ Boucher Road (On-sale: Monday, Nov. 6 at 8am*)
May 12 – Kilkenny, Ireland @ Nowlan Park (On-sale: Monday, Nov. 6 at 8am*)
May 16 – Cork, Ireland @ Páirc Uí Chaoimh (On-sale: Monday, Nov. 6 at 8am*)
May 19 – Dublin, Ireland @ Croke Park (On-sale: Monday, Nov. 6 at 8am*)
May 22 – Sunderland, England @ Stadium of Light (On-sale Friday, Nov. 3 at 10am*)
May 25 – Marseille, France @ Orange Vélodrome (On-sale Tuesday, Nov. 7 at 10am*)
May 28 – Prague, Czech Republic @ Airport Letnany (On-sale Friday, Nov. 3 at 10am*)
June 1 – Milan, Italy @ San Siro Stadium (On-sale Monday, Nov. 6 at 12pm*)
June 3 – Milan, Italy @ San Siro Stadium (On-sale Monday, Nov. 6 at 12pm*)
June 12 – Madrid, Spain @ Cívitas Metropolitano (On-sale Tuesday, Nov. 7 at 10am*)
June 14 – Madrid, Spain @ Cívitas Metropolitano (On-sale Tuesday, Nov. 7 at 10am*)
June 20 – Barcelona, Spain @ Estadi Olímpic (On-sale Tuesday, Nov. 14 at 10am*)
June 27 – Nijmegen, Netherlands @ Goffertpark (On-sale Friday, Nov. 3 at 9am*)
July 2 – Werchter, Belgium @ Werchter Park (On-sale Friday, Nov. 3 at 10am*)
July 5 – Hannover, Germany @ Heinz von Heiden Arena (On-sale Wednesday, Nov. 8 at 10am*)
July 9 – Odense, Denmark @ Dyrskuepladsen (On-sale Thursday, Nov. 2 at 10am*)
July 12 – Helsinki, Finland @ Olympic Stadium (On-sale Monday, Nov. 6 at 11am*)
July 15 – Stockholm, Sweden @ Friends Arena (On-sale Friday, Nov. 3 at 10am*)
July 18 – Stockholm, Sweden @ Friends Arena (On-sale Friday, Nov. 3 at 10am*)
July 21 – Bergen, Norway @ Dokken (On-sale Monday, Nov. 6 at 10am*)
July 25 – London, England @ Wembley Stadium connected by EE (On-sale Friday, Nov. 3 at 10am*)
*All on-sale times are local time
The track appears on the Prime Cuts bonus LP that’s included in the Los Angeles band’s new career-spanning boxset, I’m Still Waiting, out on November 17.
The group’s guitarist Mark Lightcap has shed light on the track’s origins and explained why it’s not been heard until now: “For better and for worse, the producer on York Blvd was extremely averse to wasting studio time. Thus, the final track selection for the album was made before mixing, and no ‘bonus tracks’ were mixed.
“In retrospect, it’s hard to imagine how this one didn’t make the cut; it’s one of the best songs we ever wrote. We were all excited by the horn part, but a little freaked out, like maybe it was a step too far into Steely Dan territory? I guess there’s worse things to be afraid of.”
On the current North American leg of his Rough & Rowdy Ways tour, Bob Dylan has been surprising his audiences with never-before-played covers of songs by some of his most respected influences and peers, often with a connection to the city he’s in.
In St Louis, he played Chuck Berry’s “Nadine” and “Johnny B Goode”; in Indianapolis he covered John Mellencamp’s “Longest Days”. He’s also been covering numerous Grateful Dead songs.
Last night (October 29) in Montreal, he honoured the city’s most famous musical son by covering Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me To The End Of Love” – from the 1984 album Various Positions – for the very first time. Listen to the audio below:
Dylan’s tour continues down the East Coast of the USA throughout November.
“So there’s this guy from The Cure and this guy from the Banshees. What kind of record are they gonna make? Well, it doesn’t sound like that.” Lol Tolhurst is talking to Uncut about Los Angeles, the album that the former Cure drummer and keyboardist has made with fellow percussionist Budgie, producer Jacknife Lee and a host of guest stars, resulting in one of the most curious, eclectic and frequently fascinating records of 2023.
Lol Tolhurst x Budgie x Jacknife Lee has its origins in a symposium of post-punk sticksmen in December 2018. Budgie was in LA playing with John Grant when Tolhurst met him for lunch, along with Bauhaus drummer Kevin Haskins, and the trio resolved to write together. “We have this maxim: all drummers are friends,” says Tolhurst. However, after a few recording sessions, Haskins departed the project as “Bauhaus were calling”, and they felt momentum stall.
“It kind of sounded like we used to sound,” Budgie explains, joining a Zoom call from his home in Berlin, “and that wasn’t what we wanted. We needed to find somebody else that understood, to help us make some progress.”
Tolhurst knew producer Jacknife Lee, and when the pair visited the Irishman’s Topanga Canyon home studio they found “a really extensive library of vinyl,” enthuses Tolhurst. “We’d go out there every day, and we’d sit and listen to records. Then we said, ‘OK, we’re gonna make music like we did when we were teenagers, sit in a room together, what you got?’”
“We’d be like, ‘What happens when we put this alongside that loop we had?’ explains Budgie. “I can only liken it to fun times in the Banshees when we’d have a weekend to run with germs of ideas to see where they took us. [At first] we thought we were making an instrumental album, but then Covid happened.”
The trio were left with time on their hands. “We were like, ‘What else can we do?’” Tolhurst recalls. “OK, let’s try some vocalists.” Budgie had met LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy on the festival circuit with Grant (“he always had the best coffee machine”) and also mentioned their plans to Bobby Gillespie, “in one of the few sober conversations we’ve had!” As a result, the latter’s unmistakable tripped-out tones can be heard on three tracks, including the psychedelic, gospel choir-enhanced “This Is What It Is (To Be Free)”, while Murphy adds considerable laconic character to “Los Angeles”, which would turn out to be the title track. Lee persuaded fellow Dubliner The Edge to contribute some guitar, which is sprayed across the urgent techno aerobatics of “Noche Oscura” and the soundtrack atmospherics of “Train With No Station”.
However, the less starry turns on Los Angeles are among the most arresting: the combination of Mary Lattimore’s haunting harp and Lonnie Holley’s gutsy growl turn “Bodies” into a captivating affair, and Pan Amsterdam’s Leron Thomas lends a Gil Scott-Heron feel to the brooding soundscapes of “Travel Channel”.
It remains to be seen how easy it will be to get all these people involved if mooted plans for live shows continue to take shape. “It’s going to take an act of God to get a lot of these people on stage at the same time,” admits Tolhurst, though Lee has reminded his bandmates that they will need to be front-and-centre. As Budgie explains, “Jacknife said to us, ‘It’s about you guys reclaiming your part in the story.’”
Los Angeles is released on November 3 via Play It Again Sam
It has always been to The Gaslight Anthem’s credit that they – a bar band from New Jersey who sing about girls, cars etc – have never sought to evade the obvious comparison. They have referred to Bruce Springsteen’s songs in theirs (from “High Lonesome”, from their tremendous 2008 album The ’59 Sound: “At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet/It’s a pretty good song/Baby you know the rest.”) They have invited their hero onto their stages, and been invited onto his. They have understood and acknowledged that the only circumstances in which a review of their work would not mention Bruce Springsteen is if the critic in question is trying to win a bet.
So it is only fair enough that The Gaslight Anthem have Springsteen duet on the title track of their first album in nearly a decade. “History Books” the song – like much of History Books the album – serves as joyous confirmation that The Gaslight Anthem are entirely unburdened by concern that their near decade in the wilderness has made barely any difference to their sound. “History Books” is, very much, a Gaslight Anthem song – an urgent rocker with a soaring, singalong chorus and a fretboard-wringing, foot-on-the-foldback Alex Rosamilia guitar solo all offsetting Brian Fallon’s favoured lyrical undertone of fidgety angst. Springsteen takes the second verse, stoically embracing the role of ghost of Fallon future (“I’m keeping time, one day goes by/I try to live to the next one”).
In picking up around about where they left off, The Gaslight Anthem have the advantage that they were always old before their time. Any impression of them as mono-dimensionally exuberant wild-eyed youthful tearaways living gleefully in the moment never survived a second listen – tracks like “45”, from 2012’s Handwritten, married pugnacious punk rock with lachrymose melancholy like no American band since The Replacements.
One thing that did change during The Gaslight Anthem’s long absence was that the group’s members – Fallon, Rosamilia, bassist Alex Levine and drummer Benny Horowitz – all passed 40. It suits them. If the early Gaslight Anthem albums were roughly equally freighted with a fear of getting older and a fear of not living that long, History Books is where they grapple with the prospect that middle age is at once more and less terrifying than their twenty and thirty-something selves imagined.
The opening lines of the opening track – “Spider Bites” – are “My teeth are crumbling structures/My thoughts are spider bites.” However, any fears that Fallon is about to start griping about this strange pain in his lower back, and the long hair on these young men these days, are swiftly assuaged: “Spider Bites” rocks like one of the sweeter moments of The Stranglers, and locates a deft existential balance between optimism and fatalism (“We circle round the sun until some day we won’t… I’ll love you forever ’til the day that I don’t”).
Not all of History Books rages against the dying of the light in top gear, however. Fallon’s excursion into balladry with The Horrible Crowes’ Elsie predated The Gaslight Anthem’s hiatus, but he shifts into whiskey-stained crooner mode on a few tracks. The sombre, contemplative – and, well, autumnal – “Autumn” returns to the recurring theme of enjoying the moment versus bracing for its passing (“I know someday/It’s gonna be all over”), and contains at least one line you can imagine Springsteen being annoyed he didn’t write first (“I wish I could do my life over/I’d be young better now”). “Empires” is a thing of Tom Waits-ish gravitas. Its key message – plausibly the key message of History Books entire – is whispered to an accompaniment of mournfully intoned closing-time piano, furnished by Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman: “There’s a God up in Heaven with the calendar marked. . . and he’ll show us no mercy.”
But for all the rueful, wistful, middle-aged preoccupations of History Books, its two most emblematic tracks, “Little Fires” and “Positive Charge” catch The Gaslight Anthem at their most glorious and furious. On the former, Fallon offers amends to someone he once knew (“You were young and beautiful/And I was dumb and beautiful”). On the latter, he looks for that balance between what he doesn’t miss (“…like I was dressing up for a coffin to lie down in”) and what he’d like back (“Plug it into my veins and make me love this life again”). Both songs, like History Books as a whole, capture that perspective on youth which is a mixed blessing of having lived that long again: the man reuniting with the boy he once was, and being unsure whether he most wants to hug him or slap him.
“Now And Then” – “The last Beatles song” – will be released worldwide at 2pm GMT / 10am EDT / 7am PDT on Thursday, November 2 by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe.
The double A-side single pairs the last Beatles song with the first: the band’s 1962 debut UK single, “Love Me Do”. Both songs are mixed in stereo and Dolby Atmos®, and the release features original cover art by artist Ed Ruscha. The new music video for “Now And Then” will debut on Friday, November 3.
“Now And Then” is written and sung by John Lennon, then developed and worked on by Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr during the mid Nineties for potential inclusion on Anthology. It was finished by McCartney and Starr over four decades later.
A 12-minute “Now And Then – The Last Beatles Song” documentary film will premiere on November 1. The film’s global online premiere will be hosted on The Beatles’ YouTube channel at 7:30pm GMT / 3:30pm EDT / 12:30pm PDT.
You can watch the trailer below:
The “Now And Then”/ “Love Me Do” double A-side single will be available as a 7-inch black & coloured vinyl (light blue, clear) and 12-inch black vinyl with limited edition Beatles Store-exclusives on cassette and 7-inch blue & white marbled vinyl. It’ll also be available to buy or stream digitally.
On November 10, The Beatles’ 1962-1966 (‘The Red Album’) and 1967-1970 (‘The Blue Album’) collections will be released in 2023 Edition packages by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe. You can pre-order them here.
These will come in the following formats. regular 2CD and 180g 3LP black vinyl as well as a limited edition Beatles Store-exclusives: 3LP coloured vinyl (red for ‘Red’/blue for ‘Blue’), 4CD slipcased set, 180g 6LP black vinyl slipcased set and 6LP red + blue vinyl slipcased set.
In recent years, several 1967-1970 tracks and a few from 1962-1966 have received new stereo and Dolby Atmos mixes for The Beatles’ Special Edition album releases, including Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (2017), The Beatles (‘White Album’) (2018), Abbey Road (2019), Let It Be (2021), and Revolver (2022), as well as new stereo mixes for The Beatles’ 1 (2015). All tracks not also featured on those releases have been newly mixed in stereo and/or Dolby Atmos by Giles Martin and Sam Okell at Abbey Road Studios, aided by WingNut Films’ audio de-mixing technology. Both collections include new essays written by journalist and author John Harris.
Here’s the tracklistings for the Red and Blue editions.
1962-1966 (2023 Edition) (2CD: stereo / Digital + Streaming: stereo & Dolby Atmos)
* = newly added track CD1
1: Love Me Do (2023 Mix)
2: Please Please Me (2023 Mix)
3: I Saw Her Standing There (2023 Mix) *
4: Twist And Shout (2023 Mix) *
5: From Me To You (2023 Mix)
6: She Loves You (2023 Mix)
7: I Want To Hold Your Hand (2023 Mix)
8: This Boy (2023 Mix) *
9: All My Loving (2023 Mix)
10: Roll Over Beethoven (2023 Mix) *
11: You Really Got A Hold On Me (2023 Mix) *
12: Can’t Buy Me Love (2023 Mix)
13: You Can’t Do That (2023 Mix) *
14: A Hard Day’s Night (2023 Mix)
15: And I Love Her (2023 Mix)
16: Eight Days A Week (2023 Mix)
17: I Feel Fine (2023 Mix)
18: Ticket To Ride (2023 Mix)
19: Yesterday (2023 Mix)
CD2
1: Help! (2023 Mix)
2: You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away (2023 Mix)
3: We Can Work It Out (2023 Mix)
4: Day Tripper (2023 Mix)
5: Drive My Car (2023 Mix)
6 Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (2023 Mix)
7: Nowhere Man (2023 Mix)
8: Michelle (2023 Mix)
9: In My Life (2023 Mix)
10: If I Needed Someone (2023 Mix) *
11: Girl (2023 Mix)
12: Paperback Writer (2022 Mix)
13: Eleanor Rigby (2022 Mix)
14: Yellow Submarine (2022 Mix)
15: Taxman (2022 Mix) *
16: Got To Get You Into My Life (2022 Mix) *
17: I’m Only Sleeping (2022 Mix) *
18: Here, There And Everywhere (2022 Mix) *
19: Tomorrow Never Knows (2022 Mix) *
1967-1970 (2023 Edition) (2CD: stereo / Digital + Streaming: stereo & Dolby Atmos)
* = newly added track CD1
1: Strawberry Fields Forever (2015 Stereo Mix / 2023 Dolby Atmos Mix)
2: Penny Lane (2017 Mix)
3: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (2017 Mix)
4: With A Little Help From My Friends (2017 Mix)
5: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (2017 Mix)
6: Within You Without You (2017 Mix) *
7: A Day In The Life (2017 Mix)
8: All You Need Is Love (2015 Stereo Mix / 2023 Dolby Atmos Mix)
9: I Am The Walrus (2023 Mix)
10: Hello, Goodbye (2015 Stereo Mix / 2023 Dolby Atmos Mix)
11: The Fool On The Hill (2023 Mix)
12: Magical Mystery Tour (2023 Mix)
13: Lady Madonna (2015 Stereo Mix / 2023 Dolby Atmos Mix)
14: Hey Jude (2015 Stereo Mix / 2023 Dolby Atmos Mix)
15: Revolution (2023 Mix)
CD2
1: Back In The U.S.S.R. (2018 Mix)
2: Dear Prudence (2018 Mix) *
3: While My Guitar Gently Weeps (2018 Mix)
4: Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (2018 Mix)
5: Glass Onion (2018 Mix) *
6: Blackbird (2018 Mix) *
7: Hey Bulldog (2023 Mix) *
8: Get Back (2015 Stereo Mix / 2023 Dolby Atmos Mix)
9: Don’t Let Me Down (2021 Mix)
10: The Ballad Of John And Yoko (2015 Stereo Mix / 2023 Dolby Atmos Mix)
11: Old Brown Shoe (2023 Mix)
12: Here Comes The Sun (2019 Mix)
13: Come Together (2019 Mix)
14: Something (2019 Mix)
15: Octopus’s Garden (2019 Mix)
16: Oh! Darling (2019 Mix) *
17: I Want You (She’s So Heavy) (2019 Mix) *
18: Let It Be (2021 Mix)
19: Across The Universe (2021 Mix)
20: I Me Mine (2021 Mix) *
21: The Long And Winding Road (2021 Mix)
22: Now And Then *
1962-1966 & 1967-1970 (2023 Editions) 4CD SLIPCASED SET
(‘Red’: CDs 1 & 2 / ‘Blue’: CDs 3 & 4)
(stereo / all 75 tracks as listed above)
1962-1966 + 1967-1970 (2023 EDITIONS) 6LP VINYL SLIPCASED SET
(1962-1966: LPs 1-3 / 1967-1970: LPs 4-6)
(stereo / 1962-1966 3LP Vinyl & 1967-1970 3LP Vinyl = same track sequencing for each as listed below) LP1 (‘Red’) Side A:
1: Love Me Do (2023 Mix)
2: Please Please Me (2023 Mix)
3: From Me To You (2023 Mix)
4: She Loves You (2023 Mix)
5: I Want To Hold Your Hand (2023 Mix)
6: All My Loving (2023 Mix)
7: Can’t Buy Me Love (2023 Mix)
Side B:
1: A Hard Day’s Night (2023 Mix)
2: And I Love Her (2023 Mix)
3: Eight Days A Week (2023 Mix)
4: I Feel Fine (2023 Mix)
5: Ticket To Ride (2023 Mix)
6: Yesterday (2023 Mix)
LP2 (‘Red’)
Side A:
1: Help! (2023 Mix)
2: You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away (2023 Mix)
3: We Can Work It Out (2023 Mix)
4: Day Tripper (2023 Mix)
5: Drive My Car (2023 Mix)
6: Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (2023 Mix)
Side B:
1: Nowhere Man (2023 Mix)
2: Michelle (2023 Mix)
3: In My Life (2023 Mix)
4: Girl (2023 Mix)
5: Paperback Writer (2022 Mix)
6: Eleanor Rigby (2022 Mix)
7: Yellow Submarine (2022 Mix)
LP3 (Bonus ‘Red’ LP)
Side A:
1: I Saw Her Standing There (2023 Mix)
2: Twist And Shout (2023 Mix)
3: This Boy (2023 Mix)
4: Roll Over Beethoven (2023 Mix)
5: You Really Got A Hold On Me (2023 Mix)
6: You Can’t Do That (2023 Mix)
Side B:
1: If I Needed Someone (2023 Mix)
2: Got To Get You Into My Life (2022 Mix)
3: I’m Only Sleeping (2022 Mix)
4: Taxman (2022 Mix)
5: Here, There And Everywhere (2022 Mix)
6: Tomorrow Never Knows (2022 Mix)
LP4 (‘Blue’)
Side A:
1: Strawberry Fields Forever (2015 mix)
2: Penny Lane (2017 mix)
3: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (2017 Mix)
4: With A Little Help From My Friends (2017 Mix)
5: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (2017 Mix)
6: A Day In The Life (2017 Mix)
7: All You Need Is Love (2015 Mix)
Side B:
1: I Am The Walrus (2023 Mix)
2: Hello, Goodbye (2015 Mix)
3: The Fool On The Hill (2023 Mix)
4: Magical Mystery Tour (2023 Mix)
5: Lady Madonna (2015 Mix)
6: Hey Jude (2015 Mix)
7: Revolution (2023 Mix)
LP5 (‘Blue’)
Side A:
1: Back In The U.S.S.R. (2018 Mix)
2: While My Guitar Gently Weeps (2018 Mix)
3: Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (2018 Mix)
4: Get Back (2015 Mix)
5: Don’t Let Me Down (2021 Mix)
6: The Ballad Of John And Yoko (2015 Mix)
7: Old Brown Shoe (2023 Mix)
Side B:
1: Here Comes The Sun (2019 Mix)
2: Come Together (2019 Mix)
3: Something (2019 Mix)
4: Octopus’s Garden (2019 Mix)
5: Let It Be (2021 Mix)
6: Across The Universe (2021 Mix)
7: The Long And Winding Road (2021 Mix)
LP6 (Bonus ‘Blue’ LP)
Side A:
1: Now And Then
2: Blackbird (2018 Mix)
3: Dear Prudence (2018 Mix)
4: Glass Onion (2018 Mix)
5: Within You Without You (2017 Mix)
Side B:
1: Hey Bulldog (2023 Mix)
2: Oh! Darling (2019 Mix)
3: I Me Mine (2021 Mix)
4: I Want You (She’s So Heavy) (2019 Mix)
When Judee Sill died in 1979 at the age of 35, she left behind a slim catalogue of songs that went underappreciated during her lifetime but now seem as sublime as anything else by her fabled generation of LA singer/songwriters. What Sill didn’t leave behind was much of a visual record. Given that scant supply of surviving material – for example, grainy black-and-white footage of an outdoor concert in 1973, a performance for The Old Grey Whistle Test – a documentary portrait of Sill was always going to be a tough proposition. Yet in making Lost Angel: The Genius Of Judee Sill, directors Andy Brown and Brian Lindstrom find ways to overcome those limitations and create something that attains the same grace and beauty heard in Sill’s music.
Their most effective means turns out to be Sill’s own writings and drawings. Occasionally peppered with colorful language (“FUCK FORMULAS”) and read aloud by a Sill sound-alike, her journal entries, lyrics and notes for arrangements become a compelling visual representation of her inner life as well as a route into her increasingly complex music. Likewise, her illustrations become the basis for animations that variously evoke the old-west mythos of Sill explored in “Ridge Rider” and the free-flowing fusion of the spiritual and the sexual in “The Kiss”.
Rich with the most intimate and transcendent qualities of Sill’s music, these passages also provide a respite from the film’s more rudimentary aspects — and from the hardship that clearly filled Sill’s time in the world. The early death of her beloved father led to a more abusive situation in her childhood, prompting the teenaged Sill to dabble in drugs and even armed robbery before a spell in reform school. Immersing herself in church music while in the care of the state, she discovered another form that she’d eventually merge with her interests in jazz bass and Bach.
By the time Sill started earning notice for her songs by the late ‘60s, she’d already been through two marriages and several stints of heroin addiction. But there were plenty of people in LA’s music community who recognized how special she was. The film’s roster of friends and collaborators sharing their memories includes Graham Nash, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Asylum boss David Geffen and her on-and-off-again beau J.D. Souther. Amusingly, the last is one of several former flames who believed they inspired Sill to write “The Ridge Rider”. Geffen takes this opportunity to counter the charge that Asylum’s lack of support doomed Sill’s two albums for the label, 1971’s Judee Sill and 1973’s astonishing Heart Food. He also does his best to quash the rumours that Sill disparaged him with a homophobic insult while onstage and then camped out on his lawn in an act of contrition. (“I didn’t even have a lawn,” he says.)
The litany of Sill’s misfortunes continued with the neck and back injuries – initially caused by a car wreck though there’s talk of the boyfriend who pushed her down the stairs – that left her in near-constant pain. Her condition exacerbated her drug problems, the effects of which discernible in her increasingly ragged handwriting as she nears her final journal entry.
Brown and Lindstrom find another vivid means of conveying Sill’s artistry and impact via the participation of a younger generation of musicians who sought to occupy – in the words of Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering — “a more cosmic space”. The documentary’s also bracketed by different and equally captivating performances of “The Kiss” by Fleet Foxes and Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker. “It seemed like a bottomless well,” says Lenker, “a life-giving song.” The description applies equally well to so much of what Sill was able to create and what the film presents so vividly, all without depriving her music of its mysteries.
After making one uniquely influential album in 1965, Jackson Carey Frank lived for another third of a century without ever releasing another record. In this compassionate and often deeply moving documentary, the French filmmaker Damien Aime Dupont sets out to explain what made that solitary album so special – and what went so tragically wrong that we never heard from Frank again.
Recorded in London and produced by his American compatriot Paul Simon, Frank’s album was a gem of finger-picking folk guitar full of striking songs, including the enduring “Blues Run The Game”, since covered by everyone from Bert Jansch to Laura Marling.
Yet in the annals of doomed folk troubadours of the 1960s/70s, his fate was arguably the cruellest of them all. Frank’s tragedy was not that he was cut down in his prime but that he endured a protracted physical and mental agony as he lived on as a paranoid schizophrenic into his late fifties in a twilight world of turmoil and pain, a broken, unrecognisable figure shuffling between living on the streets and time in mental institutions.
The thesis of Dupont’s film – supported by interviews with early girlfriend Katherine Wright and others – is that Frank never recovered emotionally from a fire at his school in Buffalo when he was 11. He escaped out of a window with terrible burns but 15 of his classmates died and he suffered survivor’s guilt for the rest of his life.
One of his songs, “Marlene”, was about a girl who perished in the fire. Jim Abbott, a friend who in later years helped him claim his unpaid royalties, can barely keep his emotion in check as he recites its final verse: “The fire it burned her life out, it left me little more/ I am a crippled singer, and it evens up the score”.
Dupont’s problem is the paucity of archive material. The celluloid legacy consists mostly of black and white stills and where there is a tiny fragment of him performing live – probably at Les Cousins in London in 1965 – the audio has been lost and the film is instead superimposed with a spooked soundtrack of avant-garde noise; presumably intended to convey catharsis, it is used liberally throughout the film.
This means Dupont’s relies heavily on talking heads. There are insightful reminiscences from those who knew him at different stages of his life, including John Renbourn, Wizz Jones and Al Stewart, comrades on the London folk scene in the 1960s. Presumably Paul Simon, who was as close to Frank as anyone, declined to be interviewed.
The poverty in which he died in a homeless mission in 1998 was made more poignant by learning that when he turned 21 he received a 100,000 dollars insurance pay-out from the fire. Equivalent to a million today, within a couple of years it had all been squandered. While living in London, he was infamous for turning up to folk club gigs in an Aston Martin or a Bentley.
The film ends with Renbourn performing “Blues Run The Game” but there is simply not enough primary material to make for a great film. Had Dupont chosen instead to make a radio documentary– as Uncut’s Laura Barton did for BBC Radio 4 a dozen years ago – it could have been a contender for a Sony award.
It’s released on November 17 by Verve and you can hear “Another good year for the roses” below.
Back To Moon Beach collects new songs, one-offs, covers and newly reworked versions of beloved tracks. It is released a standard vinyl release with 6 tracks, a digital/CD format with 9 tracks, and a deluxe “direct-to-consumer” double-LP with 10 tracks. You can pre-order them by clicking here.
Full track listings are:
CD/digital edition:
1. Another good year for the roses
2. Touched somethin (caught a virus)
3. Back to Moon Beach
4. Like a wounded bird trying to fly
5. Blues come for some
6. Tom Petty’s gone (but tell him i asked for him)
7. Must Be Santa
8. Passenger side
9. Cool Water (Single Mix)
Standard vinyl edition:
SIDE A
1. Another good year for the roses
2. Touched somethin (caught a virus)
3. Back to Moon Beach
SIDE B
1. Like a wounded bird trying to fly
2. Blues come for some
3. Tom Petty’s gone (but tell him i asked for him)
Deluxe direct to consumer edition:
SIDE A
1. Another good year for the roses
2. Touched somethin (caught a virus)
3. Back to Moon Beach
SIDE B
1. Like a wounded bird trying to fly
2. Blues come for some
3. Tom Petty’s gone (but tell him i asked for him)
SIDE C
1. Must Be Santa
2. Passenger side
SIDE D
1. Cool Water (Single Mix)
2. Constant Repeat
The story of The Replacements, particularly the Minneapolis-based quartet’s early days as self-sabotaging punk-cum-power pop scamps, will always be marked by their collective Jekyll and Hyde personality.
Their breakthrough album, 1984’s Let It Be, featured the blinding brilliance of “Answering Machine” and the jangly “I Will Dare” alongside tossed-off silliness like “Gary’s Got A Boner” and “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”. When the ’Mats arrived in New York City riding a wave of critical attention for that record, they played a not-so-secret showcase for major-label reps at CBGB’s (billed as Gary & the Boners, natch) that was, by all accounts, a drunken trainwreck of half-assed covers and even worse renditions of their originals. A few nights later, the group stormed the stage of Irving Plaza “playing what almost everyone judged to be one of the best shows of their career”, writes Bob Mehr in the liner notes for Tim (Let It Bleed Edition), an expanded reissue of The Replacements’ fourth studio album that features a remixed version of the LP, a wealth of studio outtakes, and a scorching live recording from the era.
That performance on December 14, 1984 proved to be an inflection point for the quartet. It brought The Replacements to the attention of Seymour Stein, the late impresario who ran Sire Records, who was so blown away by the set that he successfully pursued them for his label. The financial support and creative freedom this afforded them came at the perfect moment. According to bassist Tommy Stinson, the group’s principal songwriter and leader Paul Westerberg was ready to “step up our overall game. To do the thing that makes other people sound like they do to make great records that sell.” But this beefed-up version of Tim reveals that the ’Mats still had some growing pains to go through to get to that level.
After inking a contract with Sire, the group began the sessions for Tim with an unlikely supporter at the helm: Alex Chilton. The ex-Big Star leader was at the ’Mats’s ramshackle CBGB’s gig and was so intrigued by what he saw that he offered up his services as producer. Westerberg and manager Peter Jesperson, avowed fans of Chilton’s former band, leapt at the chance and booked time at Minneapolis’ Nicollet Studios for a demo session.
The experience, by all accounts, was an awkward one, with Chilton not given much chance to offer up any feedback or assistance outside of some occasional vocal harmonies. The demos that came out of these early, all of which are included in this set, evince that unsteadiness.
Take the band’s many attempts to come away with a workable version of future classic “Can’t Hardly Wait”. The second disc of this set has four different takes of the song, including a lovely rendition that features Westerberg, playing acoustic guitar, joined by cellist Michelle Kinney, a Twin Cities musician who was working as the studio’s receptionist at the time. Fascinating as it is to hear them try to knock the song into shape, the band’s shaggy attempts undercut the obvious greatness that Westerberg had achieved. Leaving it for the follow-up, 1987’s Pleased To Meet Me, also gave the songwriter time to polish the lyrics, leaving behind a forgettable opening couplet (“I’ll be there in an hour/Take at least two weeks there on foot”) and other throwaway lines.
When it came time to record the album properly, Chilton was left out of the running of potential producers with the band and their team opting for Tommy Erdelyi, aka original Ramones drummer Tommy Ramone. A fine fit for the project, he strained at times to rein the band in here and there. The original take of “Kiss Me On The Bus” is bog standard pub-punk, but with some yanking by the producer, it became a jangle pop wonder. The real struggles arrived when it came time to mix the music for release. Bassist Tommy Stinson insists that Erdelyi did most of the work using headphones rather than listening through monitor speakers, which may explain the somewhat pinched and hazy feel of the original release of Tim (Erdelyi denies those claims). A remastered version of the album included in this set does clear things up, but the new mix by much-respected studio wizard Ed Stasium elevates the music considerably. The muddiness has been completely wiped away, bringing a remarkable clarity of the playing of Westerberg and Bob Stinson. The slide guitar melody on the blistering “Lay It Down Clown” is nicely foregrounded, as are the nasty solos that Stinson laid down for the glitter stomp of “Dose Of Thunder”. Chris Mars is also pulled out of the murk with his drums brought sonically in line with the muscular tromp of his work on Let It Be and Hootenanny.
The sessions for Tim were also notable for the ways in which Bob Stinson was becoming dissociated with the band that he helped start in the late ’70s. His addictions to drugs and alcohol were only becoming more debilitating and, at the same time, he was becoming less inspired by the songs he heard Westerberg writing. His absence for much of the recording of this album, according to his younger brother Tommy, meant that there are several tracks on the finished LP that don’t include Bob at all. He would eventually be forced out of the band or quit, depending on whom you ask, but he was there as The Replacements began the work of promoting Tim following its release in the fall of 1985. He was on camera with the boys during their now-legendary appearance of Saturday Night Live and he was onstage with the group a few weeks earlier when the band played at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago – a performance captured on tape by the ‘Mats’s sound engineer Monty Lee Wilkes. This previously unreleased recording finds The Replacements at their best. Though it begins in media res as Wilkes was late to start the tape after the band had already kicked off the evening with “Gary’s Got A Boner”. But from there the train doesn’t stop, with the quartet running through song after song from their already sizable catalogue with almost no breaks to tune or catch their breath. Even the covers they threw into the setlist – The Beatles’ “Nowhere Man”, Sham 69’s “Borstal Breakout”, Billy Bremner’s “Trouble Boys” – are presented with reverence and fire.
Heard in the context of The Replacements’ full history, this live recording is also further evidence of where the band was headed and the sacrifice they made to get there. The beginning of the set is marked by the more controlled, pop-centric material that was already part of their collective vocabulary but soon became their focus. The spikier, punkier stuff is mostly reserved for the adrenalised rush of the second half. Bob Stinson soars through it all, giving a Ron Wood/Wilko Johnson-esque spark to even the mid-tempo “Little Mascara”. The ’Mats had to cut the guitarist loose in order for the band to survive and continue to flourish across three more albums; but this deluxe set showcases the vital rush and wildness that Stinson brought to the band for the last time.
Given that Robert Finley was well into his sixties before he got the chance to make his debut album, it’s been no surprise to find that on the three long-players he has released so far, this veteran Louisiana singer-songwriter has painted a fairly full picture of his life up to this point, particularly on 2021’s autobiographically focused Sharecropper’s Son. But this time around, he feels able to cast his net wider for inspiration, lyrically at least.
His own back story sounds fascinating enough to keep mining for creative fuel. One thing he has referred to relatively rarely on record – perhaps ironically given its status as a quintessentially bluesy affliction – is his increasing blindness, caused by glaucoma, which forced him to prematurely retire from his day job as a carpenter and take up music full-time, since which time he has been declared “the greatest living soul singer” by producer and songwriting foil, The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, and even had his profile raised in the US by reaching the semi-finals of America’s Got Talent (“Watch this blind singer wow the judges with an original song” the attendant social media implored us).
On Black Bayou, he seems to have let a little more light into his world view, as if, having made what seemed such a defining statement on Sharecropper’s Son – it sounded like a debut album despite its two more soul-oriented predecessors – he can enjoy life a little more now. So Black Bayou is a showcase for Finley the storyteller, an artist who can convincingly inhabit narratives that may not be entirely based on his own experiences, lifestyle or even beliefs. That’s perhaps just as well, judging by the tale on the final track: in the acoustic blues of “Alligator Bait” (key rhyme, “I coulda got ate”) the protagonist accuses his grandfather of using him, in his youth “down on the Bayou”, to rouse the titular creatures in the swamp so he could shoot them, by allowing him to step on them, mistaking them for logs. So he tells his father, who admits that he was used in the same way when he was young. Ouch.
True story? Maybe, but not in Finley’s own life. And elsewhere, the narrators also sound less than trustworthy. Does the boozy but God-fearing protagonist of “Gospel Blues” really deserve to reach the kingdom of heaven? Does Finley, or the character he is playing, believe the words he sings in “You Got It (And I Need It)”, delivered in a falsetto that verges on a parody of seductive soul as he tries to seduce a not-quite-single woman. “Your man is gone, he ain’t never comin’ home,” he insists. “Don’t worry about what people say, girl, we gotta be strong.” Is he promoting self-improvement here, or simpler, more instinctive transaction, as the title neatly summarises? And he’s already assured his intended, “Don’t worry about being short-changed, baby, cos Daddy’s packing a lot”.
Not that he doesn’t know how to woo a lady, of course. “Can’t Blame Me For Trying” is another lustful lament in the grand tradition of the horny bluesman – one of increasingly few male demographics who can sound anything but repugnant admitting their lascivious intentions so bluntly. “Bought you a brand new bicycle/So you could ride around,” he tells a love interest who is taking a dim view of his economic prospects, “and I got something else I wanna give you if you come and get it now”. Perhaps wisely, she rejects his offer.
Backed by Auerbach and a band including Patrick Carney on drums, there’s a beautifully greasy Southern fried feel to funkier tracks such as “Miss Kitty” and “Sneakin’ Around”, the latter a tale of cheating, suspicion and possibly unfounded accusations that would fit snugly into the Robert Cray songbook.
Yet more heartfelt material here hits the spot just as effectively, as he draws on what must have been woefully frustrating decades spent clinging on to his musical dreams. On the bitter but brassy “Waste Of Time”, and the agonised “Nobody Wants To Be Lonely”, we are reminded that it’s Finley’s supremely charismatic voice that will always be his trump card. Approaching his eighth decade, then, and with no shortage of tall tales to impart, Robert Finley’s work here is clearly just getting started.
If you’re a collector of used records, you will have noticed spiralling prices in the past few years. This can’t be blamed entirely on inflation – there’s a supply/demand scenario where you have more punters after the same standard items. Vinyl records that were bargain-bin staples not so long ago have moved towards the £20 mark. We’re looking at you Kate Bush, Blondie, Blue Oyster Cult… and that’s just the Bs.
That said, there are still some cheapo gems languishing unloved across the nation. They deserve your attention a) not just because they’re inexpensive, but b) because they’re really great records. To accompany Uncut’s 500 Greatest Albums Of The 1970s…Ranked!, we’ve chosen 10 such releases below.
Ground rules: these are records whose typical provable market values in decent condition are still £10 and under. So we’re not counting lucky charity shop finds, or dealer errors, or indeed battered copies of more expensive items. They’re original UK-pressed records that you’ll see in the wild, and stand a sporting chance of finding at record fairs, shops and online.
(Bargainous releases from many major artists are omitted, as we’re working on the principle that you probably know what to expect from a ‘70s Paul Simon, Elton John or Roxy Music LP.)
However, you might flick past these 10 beauties in the racks, based on reputation, cover art or indeed some deep-held musical snobbery. We say: for the price of a chai latte, give them a home…
Bob Downes – Deep Down Heavy
Music For Pleasure, 1970
The sonic adventures of a respected avant-garde flautist/saxophonist, on a budget label more commonly associated with Geoff Love and His Orchestra? Believe: this skronky, noisy piece of psych-rock filthiness could be yours for next to nothing, and has Chris Spedding shredding guitar throughout. Custom made for Doors/Zappa heads, but sound quality sucks. Ergo: not for audiophiles.
Osibisa – Osibisa
MCA, 1971
The album that invented afro-rock? This is an undisputed masterpiece of funky, joyous, soulful music, fusing highlife with rock, pop, prog and all points between. The pioneering Ghanaian-West Indian band’s criss-crossing debut was produced by Tony Visconti, engineered by new wave legend Martin Rushent, and sounds sonically superb. One of those LPs that creates its own universe, and all for a fiver.
Daryl Hall & John Oates – Abandoned Luncheonette
Atlantic, 1973
This sensational sounding record – produced by Mr Atlantic, Arif Mardin – features the future pop-soul titans in reflective, folky-yet-funky mood. Look beyond sleeper hit “She’s Gone” to “Lady Rain” and “The Stewardess Song” for entry into an underappreciated catalogue. Like Steely Dan, CSNY and mid ‘70s Van? Then you’ll like this.
Carmen – Fandangos in Space
Regal Zonophone 1973
High camp, high-drama flamenco prog? Claro, señor! Another Visconti-helmed release, this underrated Anglo-American band’s debut is as plush, technically ambitious and la-la loco as the title suggests. From the handclaps, to the spoken-world interludes, it’s unimpeachably of its time: think Sparks, Queen II, and the funkier ends of Jethro Tull, whose legendary bassist John Glascock features.
Earth Wind and Fire – That’s The Way Of The World
CBS 1975
You’ll see this in £5 boxes everywhere, but what a belter of a funk-jazz record, one of the cornerstones of ‘70s r’n’b, from a unique and brilliant band. Legendary arranger Charles Stepney is on board – and a UK original will sound awesome on vinyl. From the crisp hit of ”Shining Star” to the cop-show funk of “”Africano”, it’s unilaterally great.
Joan Armatrading – Joan Armatrading
A&M 1976
Another sonically sparkling record, produced by Glyn Johns, and featuring the cream of the UK’s sessioneers – this is so much more than the “Love And Affection” album. Play loud, and enjoy a unique singer-songwriter, in a most elegant setting, with the loping, grooving “Like Fire” or chillingly desperate ballad “Save Me” highlights. All for a couple of quid? Criminal, really.
Various – The Front Line
Island, 1976
Label samplers are still a great way to get precious music on a budget. Think Bumpers, This Is Soul, Fill You Head With Rock, or even German label Sky Records’ Picture Music Instrumental series, which hold the cream of kosmische within. The Front Line retailed at 69p. It was, and remains, a ridiculous bargain: righteous, mind-expanding roots reggae from U-Roy, The Mighty Diamonds, and more.
Ram Jam – Ram Jam
Epic, 1977
You’ll know rocked-up radio favourite (and Leadbelly cover) “Black Betty”, but the rest of this bubble-gum metal album has delights aplenty. Produced by the Kasenetz-Katz axis, these guys had roots in ‘60s pop acts The Lemon Pipers. But they could play, man. In “Keep Your Hands On The Wheel” and “404” you have some kinda Allman Brothers/Stones crossover. Don’t leave in the racks.
Heart – Little Queen
Portrait, 1977
A proper lost classic, and probably the priciest record on this list at £10 or so. Yes it has the rip-tide riffage of “Barracuda”. But it somehow rows in the Sandy Denny bits on Zep IV (“Dream Of The Archer”), Aerosmith (the title cut) and improbably, Dark Side Of The Moon-style ambience on “Go On Cry”. If you only know Heart from “Alone”, prepare to have thy presumptions quashed.
The Cars – The Cars
Atlantic, 1978
I mean, come on. One of the greatest debuts ever, stuffed with peerlessly played-and-produced power-pop gold (“My Best Friend’s Girl”, “Good Times Roll”). It’s an essential album for anyone with a passing interest in rock. Blending ‘50s guitar licks with squashy synths and a new-wave spirit of exploration, it’s still showroom fresh. “Moving In Stereo” alone is worth your fiver.
Get your copy of The Greatest 500 albums of the 1970s…Ranked! here
Two years after Michael Chapman’s death at the age of 80, fellow guitarist Henry Parker has curated a fitting send-off, inviting artists from Chapman’s home patch of Yorkshire to explore his prolific back catalogue. Parker himself stays relatively faithful to the melodic acoustic folk of 1970’s “In The Valley”, though the cosmically inclined Bobby Lee brings Afro-percussive vibes to the droll “Heat Index” and enigmatic duo Hawthonn deconstruct “Kodak Ghosts” into a misty ambient piece that feels more like a séance. Katie Spencer, who supported Chapman at his final show, excels on the perfectly weighted “You Say”. The maestro would surely approve.
Lou Reed counted plenty of fellow musicians as fans during his long career. But how many of those disciples actually backed Lou up onstage? In 1988, during a Long Island radio station event, The Feelies served as the songwriter’s band for a blistering set. “It started as kind of a joke,” guitarist Bill Million laughs. “We told the station we’d do the show if Lou played some songs with us. And then he said yes! It was a bit terrifying.”
But the performance went swimmingly, and soon, Reed invited The Feelies to hit the road with him as his opening act in 1989. What was Lou like as a tourmate? “The opposite of everything you’ve heard, actually,” Million reveals. “There were dinners with Lou and his crew, and a lot of chances to talk to him. He had a reputation as this curmudgeon, but that wasn’t our experience.” Million even recalls Lou threatening to walk out on a gig if The Feelies didn’t get a proper soundcheck.
Now, the Feelies are paying back the favour with Some Kinda Love, a double LP of expertly rendered Velvet Underground covers taped live in 2018. The Feelies may know this material backwards and forwards (how many other bands actually play that short/sweet Loaded intro on “Sweet Jane”, after all), but the approach here is celebratory rather than slavish, the twin-guitars of Glenn Mercer and Bill Million blazing brightly in a way that Uncle Lou would surely appreciate.“We wanted to showcase the elements of these songs that had the biggest impact on us when we started the band,” Million says. “The guitar interplay, the feedback, the drones, the repetition – the things that made us fans in the first place.”
Produced by Lou Adler and Neil Young and mixed by Young and Niko Bolas, aka The Volume Dealers, the album features solo acoustic re-recordings of songs from throughout his career as one uninterrupted 48-minute piece. The album is available to pre-order here.
“The feeling is captured, not in pieces, but as a whole piece — designed to be listened to that way,” says Young. “This music presentation defies shuffling, digital organisation, separation. Only for listening. That says it all.”
The selection runs from his earliest Buffalo Springfield appearance, “Burned”, to the recent “Don’t Forget Love” (from 2021’s Barn) and including the previously unreleased song, “If You Got Love”.
Here’s the tracklising:
I’m The Ocean
Homefires
Burned
On The Way Home
If You Got Love
A Dream That Can Last
Birds
My Heart
When I Hold You In My Arms
Mother Earth
Mr Soul
Comes A Time
Don’t Forget Love
The tracklisting of i/o includes the 10 tracks released so far this year, as well as two currently unreleased tracks, “And Still” and “Live And Let Live“.
The album was recorded mostly at Real World Studios and Gabriel’s home studio. The album features guitarist David Rhodes, bassist Tony Levin and drummer Manu Katché throughout with contributions from Brian Eno, Richard Russell, pianist Tom Cawley, trumpeters Josh Shpak and Paolo Fresu, cellist Linnea Olsson and keyboard player Don E.
i/o is released on December 1 on the following formats:
2LP, Bright-Side Mix
2LP black vinyl, 33rpm. Gatefold jacket, obi-strip, 32page booklet and hi-res download card.
2LP, Dark-Side Mix
2LP black vinyl, 33rpm. Gatefold jacket, obi-strip, 32page booklet and hi-res download card.
2CD, Bright-Side Mix | Dark-Side Mix
2CDs, one Bright-Side Mix, one Dark-Side Mix. 6panel digi-pack, with obi-strip and 32page booklet.
2CD+Blu-ray, Bright-Side Mix | Dark-Side Mix | In-Side Mix
2CDs one Bright-Side Mix, one Dark-Side Mix. 1Blu-ray with the In-Side Mix (Dolby Atmos) and 24/96 hi-res stereo mixes. 8panel digi-pack, with obi-strip and 32page booklet.
A fifth format is due for release on March 8, 2024:
4LP/2CD/1Blu-ray, Bright-Side Mix | Dark-Side Mix | In-Side Mix
Foil blocked, clamshell box with obi-band. Bright-Side and Dark-Side Mixes across 4 pieces of black vinyl, 33rpm. 2CDs one Bright-Side Mix, one Dark-Side Mix. 1Blu-ray with the In-Side Mix (Dolby Atmos) and 24/96 hi-res stereo mixes. Casebound book with expanded liner notes and a poster.
Here’s the tracklisting:
CD | Digital Panopticom
The Court
Playing for Time
i/o
Four Kinds of Horses
Road to Joy
So Much
Olive Tree
Love Can Heal
This Is Home
And Still
Live And Let Live
Even before he left us for the last time, Tom Verlaine was a difficult person to locate. A couple of years ago, Uncut doorstepped his many friends and admirers in the hope of hearing a little about his present whereabouts, but only really hearing more about his unique talents. Getting on for 15 years before that, in 2006, we asked him face to face where he’d been since the last Television album in 1992.
Back then, he was presenting two new albums. One was song-based. The other was the lovely Around – a collection of noirish post-rock themes which sounded like signature tunes to a show about a guitarist/private eye who cultivates contacts in bookstores. At other times, it sounded like a one-man homage to exotica, all swaying slide guitar and pacific lulling.
Lovely as it all was, Uncut nonetheless wondered if this was really the work that had kept him out of circulation for all this time. Verlaine said no: his coffee pot had been broken, which had held him up for a while. Then there was the matter of a juggler friend who he had been helping with a circulatory issue – specifically, his veins.
Of course, juggler veins! It was a delightful, fittingly left-field, indication that this was still an artist that was following completely his own path. As you’ll read in this latest Ultimate Music Guide covering his work with Television and solo, Verlaine worked in his own way and at his own speed. Having never quite received the co-operation from the music business that he felt was warranted, instead of compromising, Verlaine went the other direction: bowed out, and become the most concentrated version of himself.
That might mean an album like Around where one could find the glacial arpeggios and exquisite sustain of his most famous records. It could be the guest spots with Patti Smith where Verlaine would sit at the back, and have his sound effortlessly elevate the music. But it could also mean serving up horrific puns, or teasing a Television album “about half done”.
The last time I saw Television it was to see them commemorate Marquee Moon in 2014. Rather than simply deliver the album as a foregone conclusion, however, Verlaine’s approach seemed to be to investigate the artistic process that had ultimately led the band to that highpoint. The evening began with the gentle sonorities of Tibetan prayer bowls, and a light modal jam. It included a garage rock cover version (“Psychotic Reaction” by The Count Five) and divergence into Television’s other history.
Maybe most impressively, the Television of 2014 didn’t just play the songs from //Marquee Moon//. Instead they investigated them, looking for new leads about where to take them next – a gateway to somewhere else. The gig was almost philosophical: to show how things might have gone if they’d made different choices. Thankful as we are for Verlaine’s talent and for the records you’ll read about in-depth in this issue, there’s a huge sadness that, as he puts it in “Prove It”, this case is closed.
Kara Jackson doesn’t do smalltalk. The question at the heart of her debut album Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? is one she has been demanding answers to on public stages since her teens, in verses spoken and sung. “It’s an open-ended question, one that plays into so many aspects of my life and can be asked in so many different ways,” she explains. “It’s about grief, and the frustration of dealing with other people, but it can also be in appreciation for the phenomenon of humanity, and how lucky we are to be among the people we get to meet.”
Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Jackson came to public prominence in 2019 as America’s third National Youth Poet Laureate. But it was with music that she first learned to express herself. Raised by “music lovers and music connoisseurs”, she began piano lessons at the age of five and later taught herself to play guitar – all while immersed in her parents’ Jim Croce, Joni Mitchell and Sarah Vaughan records, and with the sounds of Three 6 Mafia and Wu-Tang Clan coming from her older brother’s bedroom.
If that eclecticism was not immediately present in Jackson’s music – debut EP A Song For Every Chamber of the Heart, self-released in 2019, was a set of four straightforward ruminations on love and desire – this year’s album is a fully-fledged realisation of her vision. The songs that would become Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? began in a similarly sparse fashion to the EP, recorded in demo form in Jackson’s childhood bedroom in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. This time, though, Jackson shared them with her close friends and fellow Chicago innovators Kaina, Sen Morimoto and Nnamdï, who encouraged her to lean into her more experimental ideas.
“I was so excited, I had all these songs, and I think I was just expecting them to come out immediately,” she recalls. “But it ultimately ended up taking a couple of years of listening intuitively to the songs, sitting with them, trying out different ideas as needed and taking out the ones we didn’t like.” The resulting compositions eschew traditional song structures, stretching and twisting in ways seemingly created to best serve the lyrics. Sometimes, as on album opener “Recognize”, that’s a scathing takedown of celebrity and infamy built around four tremulous piano notes; sometimes, as on “Rat”, it’s meandering myth-making in the style of Dylan’s “Desolation Row”, the addition of strings and choral passages splitting the journey into something akin to musical movements.
Jackson remembers being “scared” to experiment at first, having been “so used to hearing just me and my guitar” – but she quickly grew to enjoy the process. The recorded version of “Rat”, which features a field recording of Morimoto revving his car engine, has become a particular favourite: “I was so impressed by how creative you can get with the weirdest sounds”.
The words, of course, came easily: lush lines about love and grief that linger long in the memory. “I love Joanna Newsom’s really long songs, and those old folk songs from the 1700s that are just an extended narrative,” she says. “I think that’s what’s always attracted me to folk music. I grew up around women, gossiping and telling stories, and my dad is from the south, that storytelling tradition.”
It’s an approach that Jackson hopes will continue to serve her well. “The wheels have been turning for sure,” she says of her next project. “I have the skeleton of some songs, some melodies that have been churning in my head for a while, but I’m taking my time.”
It’s just as well that the halcyon days of shoegaze didn’t yield much in the way of arena-filling acts or blockbuster albums. Thus was the fanbase spared the indignity of having to see ageing favourites playing outdoor festivals with names like Monsters Of Reverb or signing sleeves at Dream Pop Fan Expo 2023. It’s nevertheless been oddly heartwarming to see so many signs of vitality among the era’s flagship acts, what with Ride and Slowdive in excellent health and scene elders Elizabeth Fraser and Kevin Shields resurfacing with strong new music, albeit in the form of a fuzz-pedal demo in the latter’s case.
Now another of shoegaze’s original progenitors has returned with an album that boasts a comparable degree of verve amid the requisite supply of shimmer and swirl. A very belated solo debut, Pearlies comprises the first songs to be released under Emma Anderson’s own name since she began her musical career alongside her school pal and future Lush partner Miki Berenyi in mid-’80s London. It’s also her first album since the premature end of Lush’s reunion in 2016, their detente lasting long enough for the band to perform shows in the UK and North America, and to record and release the four-song EP “Blind Spot”.
Like the songs on “Blind Spot”, Pearlies standouts such as the stately single “Bend The Round” and the softer “Willow And Mallow” see Anderson revisit the gauzy sound of Lush’s early years as opposed to their brasher Britpop-era hits like “Single Girl”. But whereas the earlier EP could seem both tantalising and tentative, Pearlies feels more confident, the music here serving as fully realised reminders of the gifts that Anderson displayed not just in Lush but Sing-Sing, her underrated duo with Lisa O’Neill which split in 2007.
Indeed, for all the shoegaze and dream-pop trademarks that can be found inside, Pearlies is quite different than it might’ve been had Anderson developed the ideas and demos she was working on in 2016 into full-fledged Lush songs as she originally intended. In the wake of the split, her next plan was to mould them into pieces for film and TV soundtracks with help from cellist and arranger Audrey Riley and Robin Guthrie, an approach that explains the cinematic quality of the music here. Anderson had planned to foreground a singer other than herself, much as she had with Berenyi in Lush and O’Neill in Sing-Sing. It was only upon Guthrie’s urging that Anderson sing them herself, and he was right to insist.
After the usual pandemic delays, she convened in a Northamptonshire studio with producer James Chapman aka Maps as her principal musical partner. Suede guitarist Richard Oakes also contributes to four songs, including opener “I Was Miles Away”. It’s one of several songs that share the airy melodicism of Anderson’s first great piece for Lush, 1990’s “Sweetness And Light”. Yet Pearlies also sees her push deeper into modes that lie beyond dream-pop’s usual mist-laden realm, beginning with the eerie synthesis of pastoral folk, woozy psychedelia and hauntological pop in “Inter Light”. In a manner reminiscent of Portishead’s “Mysterons” and Broadcast’s “Before We Begin”, it combines the sickly-sweet quality of a love theme in some forgotten ’60s TV drama with intimations of the uncanny. Anderson’s softly sung warnings (“Don’t be afraid/Tread carefully/Springtime is fading away”) highlight the album’s sinister undercurrents, as does “Xanthe”, a beautifully chilling interlude that Anderson augments with the same kind of “la-la-la” lullaby that Mia Farrow performed for Krzystof Komeda’s theme for Rosemary’s Baby.
The bucolic “Willow And Mallow” hints at another iconic horror score, with Anderson citing the music of The Wicker Man as an inspiration along with Goldfrapp’s Seventh Tree. Here again Anderson exposes roots that have long part of her singing and songwriting – namely Vashti Bunyan and Shirley Collins at their most spectral – but were perhaps obscured by shoegaze’s clouds of reverb. There’s a sense throughout that she’s reaching back towards an older music, which befits the album’s many lyrical references to the passing of time and midlife realisations. “And now the summer’s over, the nights are drawing in”, she sings on the closer “Clusters”, another song here whose crystalline prettiness and poppy immediacy exist alongside a deeper unease.
While Pearlies often invites comparisons with music by Lush’s many dream-pop descendants – “The Presence” and “Tonight Is Mine” being just two songs here that Beach House will wish they’d crafted – Anderson continually finds intriguing ways of deviating from those templates. In so doing, she’s able to nudge the guitar pedals aside and demonstrate that her music still has other places to go.
