Robert Plant has announced details of a new studio album, Carry Fire.
The album will be released October 13 on Nonesuch/Warner Bros. Records.
As with Plant’s previous album, 2014’s lullaby and…The Ceaseless Roar, his is accompanied The Sensational Space Shifters: John Baggott on keyboards, moog, loops, percussion, drums, brass arrangement, t’bal, snare drum, slide guitar, piano, electric piano, bendir; Justin Adams on guitar, acoustic guitar, oud, E-bow quartet, percussion, snare drum, tambourine; Dave Smith on bendir, tambourine, djembe, drum kit; and Liam “Skin” Tyson on dobro, guitar, acoustic guitar, pedal steel, twelve-string.
The tracklisting for Carry Fire is: The May Queen
New World…
Season’s Song
Dance With You Tonight
Carving Up The World Again… a wall and not a fence
A Way With Words
Carry Fire
Bones Of Saints
Keep It Hid
Bluebirds Over The Mountain
Heaven Sent
The album, produced by Plant, includes guest appearances from Chrissie Hynde on “Bluebirds Over The Mountain”, while Albanian cellist Redi Hasa performs on three tracks, as does Seth Lakeman on viola and fiddle.
Robert Plant and the Space Shifters (which now includes Lakeman) will play the following UK and Irish dates:
NOVEMBER
Thurs 16: Plymouth, Plymouth Pavilions
Fri 17: Bristol, Bristol Colston Hall
Mon 20: Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton Civic
Wed 22: Wales, Llandudno Venue Cymru
Fri 24: Newcastle, Newcastle City Hall
Sat 25: Liverpool, Liverpool Olympia
Mon 27: Glasgow, Glasgow SEC Armadillo
Tues 28: Scotland, Perth Concert Hall
Thurs 30: Manchester, Manchester O2 Apollo
DECEMBER
Sat 2: Northern Ireland, Belfast Ulster Hall
Sun 3: Dublin, Dublin Bord Gais Energy Theatre
Weds 6: Sheffield, Sheffield City Hall
Fri 8: London, London Royal Albert Hall
Mon 11: Portsmouth, Portsmouth Guildhall
Tues 12: Birmingham, Birmingham Symphony Hall
The War On Drugs have shared another new song from their upcoming new album, A Deeper Understanding.
“Up All Night” follows the previously shared tracks “Pain”, “Holding On”, “Strangest Thing” and “Thinking Of Place”.
A Deeper Understanding is the Philadelphia band’s fourth album and will be released on August 25, via Atlantic.
Earlier this year, the Adam Granduciel-led band announced a European tour that starts in November and includes UK stops in Glasgow, Manchester and London. See the full tour schedule and ticket details at the band’s website. Their UK dates are below.
Thursday November 9 – GLASGOW – Barrowlands
Friday November 10 – GLASGOW – Barrowlands
Sunday November 12 – MANCHESTER – O2 Apollo
Tuesday November 14 – LONDON – Alexandra Palace
Jack White, The National, Steve Winwood and Van Morrison all appear in the new issue of Uncut, dated October 2017 and in shops from August 17.
White is on the cover, and inside we chart his 33 best songs, from The White Stripes to The Raconteurs, solo and more. Plus, we take a look inside his extraordinary Third Man empire.
The issue comes with two collectable covers: one featuring Jack and Meg in the White Stripes heyday and another featuring Jack as a solo artist.
After various side projects, The National have returned with Sleep Well Beast, and Uncut heads to Paris to discover just how the band – now scattered across the world – managed to put together their seventh album. “There’s always a sense in the band where we’re not sure we’re going to make a record or even if we should continue,” says Bryce Dessner. “I said to my brother, ‘I don’t want to do this if we’re not doing something different.’”
Steve Winwood meets Uncut to take us through his storied history, from his new live album to his days with Traffic, the Spencer Davis Group and Blind Faith, not to mention jamming with Jimi Hendrix: “I think Hendrix came up through music in some ways a similar route to me,” he explains. “He learnt a lot of the old skills. He had to learn all that stuff, it wasn’t like he just got up one morning and thought, ‘I climbed on the back of a giant dragonfly’, he’d done all that stuff and played all those songs and understood all that music.”
Uncut also sits down with Van Morrison for an extensive, candid and not-altogether even-tempered chat about his new album, Astral Weeks and “fake news”. “I don’t enjoy making albums any more,” he tells us.
As they ready their first album in nearly 30 years, we catch up with The Dream Syndicate, while Sparks take us through the making of their best nine albums, from Halfnelson to the new Hippopotamus.
The The‘s Matt Johnson answers your questions in our An Audience With… feature, while the surviving Doors recall how they made “Light My Fire”.
Elsewhere, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo reveals the records that shaped his life, from The Beatles to Talking Heads and Ornette Coleman, while Tony Visconti details his new mix of David Bowie‘s Lodger, we meet Peter Buck and Corin Tucker‘s new band Filthy Friends, and get the lowdown on Alan Vega‘s new, posthumous album.
In our extensive Reviews section, we look at new albums from LCD Soundsystem, Hiss Golden Messenger, Zara McFarlane, Chris Hillman, Ian Felice, Wand and more, and archival releases from The Style Council, Frank Zappa, Bark Psychosis and Acetone.
This issue’s free CD, Hello Operator, features the best of this month’s music, with songs from Mogwai, Hiss Golden Messenger, Lee Ranaldo, The Dream Syndicate, Wand, The Clientele and more.
On July 14, 1997, a then-unknown two-piece called TheWhite Stripes made their first ever performance, playing three songs at an open-mic night hosted by a local venue, the Gold Dollar. Exactly one month later, they were back on the same stage, playing their first full-length gig; after which point, you could argue, Jack White has never looked back.
In this month’s new issue of Uncut, out on Thursday in the UK, we celebrate 20 years of White’s mercurial brilliance – in the White Stripes, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather and as a solo artist. Our cover story is a survey of White’s 33 greatest songs, as chosen by his closest collaborators and associates – including his oldest friends in Detroit, assorted bandmates from White’s various projects and artists from Third Man’s illustrious roster. Meanwhile, White’s Third Man operation open their doors to us – where we encounter curiosities include a 3-D Stereoptic-Eye, learn how to send vinyl into outer space and discover the secrets of White’s recording practices. “Jack had a vision from the earliest onset,” we learn. “And that’s carried through into everything he’s ever done.”
Here’s that Top 33 in full..
Our celebration of White is not just restricted to the inside of the magazine. You’ll find this month’s Uncut comes as a choice of two collectable covers: one featuring Jack and Meg in the White Stripes heyday and another featuring Jack as a solo artist.
Elsewhere in the issue, we bring you a swathe of exclusive new interviews. First, David Cavanagh finds Van Morrison in unusually forthcoming form, eager to discuss topics ranging from Them to Astral Weeks, Veedon Fleece and the myriad agonies of life in the music business. Tony Visconti gives us a sneak preview of his Lodger remix in the forthcoming David Bowie retrospective box set: “I found some little gems on the tapes,” he reveals, telling us about Arabic raps, the original Lodger sessions and Bowie’s later attitude to re-releases.
Meanwhile, I met The National in Paris to hear all about their fraternal bonds that exist between this outstanding band. Tom Pinnock enjoys a mid-morning meeting with Steve Winwood, who surveys his storied 60-year career – including his time with Traffic and jamming with Jimi Hendrix.
Stephen Deusner speaks to the reformed The Dream Syndicate as the long-lost outriders of the Paisley Underground prepare to release their first album in 30 years. Excitingly, Stephen also caught up with the reclusive Kendra Smith, who tells us what she’s been to since she effectively retreated from music nearly two decades ago.
In our regulars, The The’s Matt Johnson answers your questions in An Audience With…, Robby Krieger, John Densmore plus Doors affiliates recall the making of “Light My Fire” and Sparks talk us through their career highs in Album By Album.
On the subject of records, LCD Soundsystem’s American Dream is our Album Of The Month – James Murphy shares a very good David Bowie story, incidentally – while we also review new releases by Hiss Golden Messenger, Chris Hillman, Ian Felice, Wand and Zara McFarlane. Our reissues include The Style Council, Frank Zappa, Bark Psychosis, Acetone and DAF.
In Film, I’ve reviewed Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit, among others; in DVD, we revisit grunge doc Hype! and Sonny Rollins. Our Books round-up includes memoirs by Uncut’s founding editor Allan Jones, Robert Forster and Jimmy Webb.
In our Instant Karma section, we meet Peter Buck and Corin Tucker’s latest project Filthy Friends, hear about Alan Vega’s posthumous album, introduce Moses Sumney, a new star of cosmic soul, and discover how A Teenage Opera has finally made it to the stage, 5 years late.
Finally, our free 15-track CD showcases the best of the month’s new music, including tracks by The Dream Syndicate, Lee Renaldo, Mogwai, Chris Hillman, Deer Tick, Hiss Golden Messenger and more.
Jack White, The National, Steve Winwood and Van Morrison all appear in the new issue of Uncut, dated October 2017 and in shops from August 17.
White is on the cover, and inside we chart his 33 best songs, from The White Stripes to The Raconteurs, solo and more. Plus, we take a look inside his extraordinary Third Man empire.
The issue comes with two collectable covers: one featuring Jack and Meg in the White Stripes heyday and another featuring Jack as a solo artist.
After various side projects, The National have returned with Sleep Well Beast, and Uncut heads to Paris to discover just how the band – now scattered across the world – managed to put together their seventh album. “There’s always a sense in the band where we’re not sure we’re going to make a record or even if we should continue,” says Bryce Dessner. “I said to my brother, ‘I don’t want to do this if we’re not doing something different.’”
Steve Winwood meets Uncut to take us through his storied history, from his new live album to his days with Traffic, the Spencer Davis Group and Blind Faith, not to mention jamming with Jimi Hendrix: “I think Hendrix came up through music in some ways a similar route to me,” he explains. “He learnt a lot of the old skills. He had to learn all that stuff, it wasn’t like he just got up one morning and thought, ‘I climbed on the back of a giant dragonfly’, he’d done all that stuff and played all those songs and understood all that music.”
Uncut also sits down with Van Morrison for an extensive, candid and not-altogether even-tempered chat about his new album, Astral Weeks and “fake news”. “I don’t enjoy making albums any more,” he tells us.
As they ready their first album in nearly 30 years, we catch up with The Dream Syndicate, while Sparks take us through the making of their best nine albums, from Halfnelson to the new Hippopotamus.
The The‘s Matt Johnson answers your questions in our An Audience With… feature, while the surviving Doors recall how they made “Light My Fire”.
Elsewhere, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo reveals the records that shaped his life, from The Beatles to Talking Heads and Ornette Coleman, while Tony Visconti details his new mix of David Bowie‘s Lodger, we meet Peter Buck and Corin Tucker‘s new band Filthy Friends, and get the lowdown on Alan Vega‘s new, posthumous album.
In our extensive Reviews section, we look at new albums from LCD Soundsystem, Hiss Golden Messenger, Zara McFarlane, Chris Hillman, Ian Felice, Wand and more, and archival releases from The Style Council, Frank Zappa, Bark Psychosis and Acetone.
This issue’s free CD, Hello Operator, features the best of this month’s music, with songs from Mogwai, Hiss Golden Messenger, Lee Ranaldo, The Dream Syndicate, Wand, The Clientele and more.
The Eagles have announced a short run of tour dates for October.
Following their recent Classic shows in Los Angeles and New York, the band will open their An Evening With the Eagles concerts on October 17 in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The band’s line-up has been expanded to include country singer Vince Gill and guitarist Deacon Frey, son of the late Glenn Frey.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Joe Walsh said, “We’ve got some new blood. We all know the songs pretty good, but we just have to run the drill. It’s like being an athlete and doing the reps to get into shape. The new guys [Deacon Frey and Gill] have to get to the point where it’s automatic or it’s transparent.
“I don’t think we’ll ever tour again, but I think we’ll do six shows a year, something like that,” he concluded.
The Eagles will play: October 17 – Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, NC
October 20 – Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA
October 24 – KFC Yum! Center, Louisville, KY
October 27 – Little Caesars Arena, Detroit, MI
Leon Russell‘s final studio album will be posthumously released later this year.
Russell completed On A Distant Shore shortly before his death, last November.
Rolling Stone have shared the album’s lead single “Love This Way”, which you can hear below.
Meanwhile, Jambase reports that the album will be available September 22 via Palmetto.
The tracklisting is:
On A Distant Shore
Love This Way
Here Without You
This Masquerade
Black And Blue
Just Leaves And Grass
On The Waterfront
Easy To Love
Hummingbird
The One I Love Is Wrong
Where Do We Go From Here
A Song For You
Wilco have released a new song, “All Lives, You Say?”.
The songs is available for immediate download from their Bandcamp page with a charitable contribution. Proceeds will go to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in the memory of Jeff Tweedy’s father, Robert L. Tweedy, who died earlier this month.
“My dad was named after a Civil War general, and he voted for Barack Obama twice,” says Tweedy. “He used to say ‘If you know better, you can do better.’ America – we know better. We can do better.”
The track arrives three days after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Neil Young have provided an update on his latest studio album.
Young has reunited with Promise Of The Real for the new album. The band, headed up by Lukas Nelson, have their own record due on August 25 via Fantasy Records.
“Yesterday, when we finished our new album, we were playing it back for the first time. Lukas was on the floor of the studio signing hundreds of these vinyl LUKAS NELSON AND PROMISE OF THE REAL albums for you. A while a go, we heard this on the bus and it sounds amazing!”
As yet, the album has neither a title nor a release date.
Young, though, is soon to release Hitchhiker – a previously unreleased solo album from 1976. You can read about Hitchhiker and Young’s other legendary lost albums in the issue of Uncut dated September 2017.
From the benign chaos of underground London emerged something new and terrifying: part punk, part hippy, and moving very fast indeed. Forty years on, LEMMY, “FAST” EDDIE CLARKE, PHIL CAMPBELL and original member LARRY WALLIS celebrate the magic of MOTÖRHEAD, recalling bad drugs, imperilled sheep, and the enduring power of their mighty “bend not stab” sound. “You’ve got to smack ’em in the mouth,” says Lemmy, “then give yourself time to get away.”Words: John Robinson. Originally published in Uncut’s May 2015 issue (Take 216).
________________________________________
As in guitar, so in conversation. “Fast” Eddie Clarke tells a story about joining Motörhead which covers a great deal of ground, in a very short space of time.
Eddie’s account covers his origins as TV repairman in West London, jam sessions in Ealing with someone called “American Jim”, and stints with soul singer Curtis Knight (“like James Brown – he used to fine you if you did anything wrong”). There is a band, Blue Goose, and the tale continues apace. It covers a job as site foreman on a barge renovation on the Thames at Chelsea, and meeting there a casual labourer on the site, a drummer, named Phil Taylor.
Taylor brings to the site an idiosyncratic routine: the required sandpapering, but also tales of fighting, drumming, and consumption of speed. Eventually, Phil disappears. Time mysteriously passes, but Taylor re-enters the narrative, contacting Clarke to reveal that he has now found an employment opportunity more suited to his unique portfolio of talents. “He phoned me up and said, ‘I’ve joined Motörhead’,” says Eddie.
In late 1975, Motörhead was a three-piece comprising Taylor, alongside two musicians with a rich countercultural pedigree. From the Pink Fairies, a talented guitarist and songwriter: Larry Wallis. From Hawkwind, a bass player, vocalist, and man of laconic wit: Lemmy. The band had already recorded an album called On Parole for United Artists – but it was languishing unreleased. A chance encounter with Lemmy at a rehearsal studio led Clarke to audition for a job playing second guitar in the group.
Clarke was keen. He booked the studio, at Furniture Cave in Lots Road, Fulham, drove the gear, got everyone there on time. They played – but Larry Wallis was late. When Wallis eventually arrived, things didn’t go at all well. Clarke could feel the bad atmosphere and went home. “I paid the bills and fucked off,” he says. “I thought ‘fuck it.’” He went home, and went to bed, crestfallen.
“Then Saturday morning I get a knock on the door at 8am,” says Clarke. “I thought, ‘Who the fucking hell’s this?’ So I go to the door in my fucking underpants, like, ‘What the fuck’s all this?’ And it’s Lemmy, standing there with a bullet belt in one hand and a leather jacket in the other. He gave them to me and said, ‘You got the job,’ and walked off.”
One of the most immediate tracks on This Is The Kit’s fourth album, “By My Demon Eye” turns out to be a sweet deceiver. With its rolling melody, rippling highlife guitar line and sing-song refrain – inspired by an African folk tale, The Rabbit And The Tortoise – it has the naïve charm of a children’s playground chant. That is, until we discover that the chorus translates as: “Boil, boil, water boil/Let the liars boil!”
Such incongruity cuts to the heart of This Is The Kit. A vehicle for the songs of Kate Stables, a displaced Bristolian now residing in Paris, they are much admired by Guy Garvey, The National and Sharon Van Etten, and it’s easy to hear why. Their music is a slinky, slippery thing, forever shifting between light and dark, prettiness and abrasion, innocence and lowering psychodrama – often during the same song.
Though Stables’ roots lie in the West Country’s indie-folk scene, strumming a banjo in sensible sweaters, these days her music is a full-bodied beast, rich and rhythmic. Points of reference range from Sufjan Stevens to Can, Tony Allen to PJ Harvey. The one overt folk signifier is her voice. Coolly self-contained and very English, comparisons with Sandy Denny are, for once, far from fanciful.
A loose collective, which over the past decade has swelled from a duo to football team proportions and back, This Is The Kit currently consist of Stables alongside Rozi Plain, Jamie Whitby-Coles and Neil Smith. On Moonshine Freeze they’re aided by such notables as The National’s Aaron Dessner (who produced 2015’s Bashed Out) and John Parish, Harvey’s right-hand man. In 2008, Parish produced the first This Is The Kit LP, Krülle Bol, and returns to the hot seat here. His task was to unify and cohere. Where on previous albums Stables seemed to stand at one remove from her collaborators, This Is The Kit now sound like a band.
If Bashed Out was at times aloof and glacial, Moonshine Freeze possesses an almost trance-like intensity; dense, primal and repetitive. Drums circle, synths fuzz and throb and saxophones blow free with thrilling unruliness. When this churning disruption connects with Stables’ atmospheric lyric world, it makes for an intoxicating music. Concentric grooves come shrouded in a fairytale darkness. There’s a frequent sense of deep unease, of ancient spirits rising and shapeless creatures lurking, exposing hidden fears. On “Hotter Colder”, built around a nervy, shunting chord sequence, like a rootsier Nirvana, Stables is literally scared of her own shadow as it cuts through water.
“Blood in my mouth… blood on my boots,” sings Stables in “Two Pence Piece”, which rumbles ominously over a simple electro pulse and low-rolling electric guitar. “People want blood, and blood is what they’ve got,” she continues on “Easy On The Thieves”. “All Written Out In Numbers”, another sly, slumbering groove, promises that “one of us has to die”. In the first and final songs – the beautiful “Bulletproof” and stately “Solid Grease”, respectively – precious things lie broken. Some cryptic numerology is also at play. The title track warns of “cycles of three”; “All Written Out In Numbers” is an earth creation story in five minutes: “Nine for the nine bright shiners… Seven for the seven stars in the sky.”
When the tumult subsides, Moonshine Freeze offers stark and profound beauty. “Easy On The Thieves” is disarmingly gentle, its plucked banjo and tracked voices recalling Sufjan Stevens at his most intimate. On “Riddled With Ticks”, the memory of a perfect day spent in nature, whipped by wind and sea, is brought wonderfully alive. In contrast, “Show Me So” is quietly sorrowful, with its pattering electric guitar and Stables’ recalling “the vomiting, the heat in your skin, the shock soaking in”.
Now signed to Rough Trade, with at Shepherd’s Bush Empire show to come in September, This Is The Kit are making significant moves. Moonshine Freeze is an impressive conduit for their upward trajectory. On “Bulletproof”, Stables sings, “There are things to learn here, Kate.” She’s not wrong.
Q&A
Kate Stables
There seems to be something primordial about these songs…
Yes, that’s very similar to the image I have in my head when I sing them. There are a lot of dark corners. I feel like a lot of it happens kind of… underwater.
Is This Is The Kit now a settled band?
There was a time when, wherever I played, whoever I knew in that town would become the band, but it has become more established over the years and that’s really important to me. It’s my project, my songs, and it wouldn’t exist if I didn’t exist. But I don’t think it would be anywhere near as good or sound the way it does without all their input and skills.
What did John Parish bring?
For a long time, we’ve wanted to work with him again, because it was so great the first time. Back then it was just two or three days’ recording. I wanted to do it again and have a proper amount of time. My main goal with this album was to have the whole involvement of the band. When you have that many cooks, the broth is in danger! You need someone with the perspective and the skills to steer it, to communicate what’s working and what isn’t. He’s so good at that.
INTERVIEW: GRAEME THOMSON
Jack White has announced plans to release a new 7″ record, which will only be on sale at the Detroit Tigers’ upcoming baseball game.
The baseball team are a longtime favourite of White’s. Those who buy tickets to the team’s August 24 match against their rivals the Minnesota Twins will be eligible to purchase the new record, which is being released in partnership White’s Third Man Records.
The 7″ will feature a new song called “Strike Out” recorded by a roster of Third Man artists under the name the Brushoffs, who the Detroit Metro Times note includes Brendan Benson, Ben Blackwell, Dominic Davis, and Olivia Jean. On the B-side is an interview that White conducted with two-time World Series Champion Kirk Gibson. The 7″ is set to feature the Detroit Tigers’ colours, blue and orange.
In 2013, director David Lowery made his debut feature, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, a lyrical Texan melodrama set during the 1970s, with Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as a young couple on the run. Following his remake of Pete’s Dragon, Lowery reteams with Affleck and Mara for A Ghost Story; another lyrical piece that discretely tackles questions of a cosmic, spiritual nature played out on an intimate level.
Affleck and Mara, a couple identified only as C and M, are in the process of moving in to a new house. One night, there are odd, unexplained noises; the next morning, C is killed in a car accident. In the morgue, his body is draped in a white sheet; in one of the film’s make-or-break moments, the sheet sits up, gets off the table and trudges home across a field at sunrise, sheet dragging in the mud. There, he silently watches over his bereaved partner (in the film’s second make-or-break moment, C sits on the kitchen floor grief-eating an entire pie in one static, five minute take). It is the kind of film where a character might look pensively out of a window, where the only sounds are the rain falling outside and the mournful wheeze of violins on the soundtrack. It is, essentially, an arthouse take on Ghost.
Affleck does an amazing job, managing to be hangdog while buried under a bedsheet for most of the film; how different would the film be if he just hung around moping, without the linen? Mara meanwhile gives a powerful performance, internalizing her grief, conveying deep loss while remaining outwardly inscrutable. As time loops back on itself, Lowery reaches for something profound and moving. “We build our legacy piece by piece,” explains a cameoing Will Oldham. “And maybe the whole world will remember you, or just a couple of people. But you do what you can to ensure you’re still around after you’re gone.”
Q&A
Will Oldham You began your acting career before you started releasing records. Was acting, at one point, your first choice of a career?
If by ‘career’ you mean ‘life’ then yes. Most of my heroes, living and dead, were actors. Hi-diddle-de-dee and all of that. The way that experiencing the good work of others made me feel…that’s what I wanted to do. It felt like a solid path towards every possible life.
Who were your acting heroes?
You know, Holly Hunter, Timothy Carey….the usual. Peter Lorre knocked my socks off. Still does. Jon Voight. And folks in the theater in Louisville, or actors who passed through for work: Ken Jenkins, Patrick Tovatt, Bruce Kuhn, Mary McDonnell, Adale O’Brien. The folks who worked our local rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, they were, in my eyes, the greatest. My bedroom walls were festooned with black-and-white postcards of Humphrey Bogart, Harpo Marx, Lydia Lunch. Then, later, Jonathan Richman, Leonard Cohen.
You were only 17 when you played Danny Radnor in Matewan. What are your memories of working with John Sayles?
Big memories, the biggest. The MATEWAN experience created a false impression that film sets are egalitarian creative work spaces and helped form a template for how I approach making records and assembling tours once I saw that film sets are rarely good places to get good work done among mutually respectful people.
If I hadn’t seen some of your other earlier films like Thousand Pieces Of Gold, Radiation or The Guatemalan Handshake, which one would you recommend I rent, and why?
Go for WHAT COMES AROUND and you will waste time and money watching something that was a waste of time and money. On A THOUSAND PIECES OF GOLD my new life began, it was a great set and I met a friend who did some significant shaping of the rest of my life. Many of the folks from the MATEWAN crew were there as well. I don’t know your taste in pictures… Have you seen JACKASS 3D?
You began your ongoing creative relationship with director Kelly Reichardt on Ode. She was evidently impressed with you; but what qualities do you most admire about her as a filmmaker?
Kelly said she liked my legs. I liked it when she took me to Dubai.
Did you see any parallels between the itinerant life of a musician and Kurt, the character you played in Reichardt’s film, Old Joy?
It’s taken years to recognize an obsession with closure. Kurt, and many touring musicians, are allergic to closure. Not only to closure, but to committing to anything resembling a continuous identity. Shallowness is a disease; Kurt has a terminal case of it. Accepting the reality of streaming music is like drinking from a river of toxic sludge.
I really liked your performances in Pioneer and The Lonely Life. How do you view short films, compared to features? Are short films like 7”s? No less carefully crafted than a full-length LP, but just a more intense experience?
I get to yield authority when it comes to acting work; it’s up to the producers and directors to care about the difference between short films and long ones.
What comparisons do you see between songwriting and acting?
In a film like NEW JERUSALEM, in which the actors are responsible for the creation of the dialogue, there’s a parallel. Usually, though, acting is interpreting, reacting. Songwriting is building from the ground up something to be interpreted.
For those who’ve yet to see the film, can you tell us a bit about the character you play in A Ghost Story and the ideas he’s putting forward in his speech?
I’m still learning. His ideas are not mine. Our ideas tangentially connect. The wardrobe was mine, though I never wear those clothes together. The best part of his diatribe is when his ideas intersect with the Ghost’s objectives. I am more resolved with perceiving our reality as a balance of one part permanent, a billion parts transitory.
Are there any other musicians you admire who also act on the side? What do you think of Dylan’s film work, for instance?
The best acting work in a film by a professional musician is probably Dwight Yoakam’s work in the CRANK movies or Abbey Lincoln’s work in NOTHING BUT A MAN. Musicians who are great in movies, regardless of their acting abilities, I’d say are Dexter Gordon in ROUNDMIDNIGHT, Kris Kristofferson in LIMBO, Kyle Field in HANG LOOSE, Tom Waits in RUMBLE FISH.
INTERVIEW: MICHAEL BONNER
Bruce Springsteen has announced details of his forthcoming run of Broadway concerts.
Springsteen On Broadway begins previews on October 3 ahead of an October 12 opening at the 960-seat Walter Kerr Theatre. The eight-week run is expected to play through to November 26. Springsteen will perform five shows a week.
“I wanted to do some shows that were as personal and as intimate as possible,” says Springsteen. “I chose Broadway for this project because it has the beautiful old theaters which seemed like the right setting for what I have in mind. In fact, with one or two exceptions, the 960 seats of the Walter Kerr Theatre is probably the smallest venue I’ve played in the last 40 years. My show is just me, the guitar, the piano and the words and music. Some of the show is spoken, some of it is sung. It loosely follows the arc of my life and my work. All of it together is in pursuit of my constant goal to provide an entertaining evening and to communicate something of value.”
Tickets will be available via Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan system, which is intended to defeat touts. It requires buyers to register in advance and checks potential customers’ purchase histories and social media to verify them.
Click here for more information about how to pre-register.
Ticket registration begins today (August 9) and closes August 27. Tickets are priced from $75 (£58) to $850 (£654). They will go on sale on August 28.
Forty years since its emergence from the New York projects, hip-hop remains an artform in a state of sonic, social and political flux. Few groups, though, appear as evolved as Shabazz Palaces. Resident in Seattle and signed to that town’s venerable independent label Sub Pop, the group – the duo of Palaceer Lazaro and Tendai Maraire – are a truly singular proposition.
Lazaro is just the latest pseudonym of Ishmael Butler, a rapper and musician with some three decades in the game. Back in the mid-’90s he was Butterfly of Grammy-winning rap trio Digable Planets. Butler’s current group share something of Digable’s blunted funk and intellectual curiosity, but Shabazz Palaces feel more like the product of a DMT trip than a dope haze. Butler has transformed himself into a sort of intergalactic beatnik, as likely to be found lounging in embroidered robes or posing with a pair of pythons than anything more familiarly hip-hop. The pair’s music, meanwhile, sounds like rap music viewed through a prism – a psychedelic reverie of glittering electronic textures and unconventional beats that’s sensual, expansive and disorientating.
Shabazz Palaces break their three-year silence since 2014’s Lese Majesty with not one but two albums, released simultaneously but otherwise distinct. Born On A Gangster Star and Vs The Jealous Machines both deal with the tale of Quazarz, an interstellar explorer sent to the “United States Of Amurderca” to chronicle what he finds. Shabazz Palaces’ blend of cosmic invention and Afro-American consciousness places them in an Afrofuturist lineage including Sun Ra, Funkadelic and The Rammellzee, the first wave NY rapper/graffiti artist who performed in the homemade armour of a space assassin. But there’s the sense that Butler embraces cosmic subject matter not just as a flight of fancy, but as a means of observing our age from a new perspective.
Shabazz Palaces have become a weirder proposition since their 2011 debut Black Up, but there are still glimpses of familiar hip-hop tropes in “Fine Ass Hairdresser” and “When Cats Claw”, preening boom-bap numbers loaded with surreal boasts and esoteric disses (“I’m Crazy Horse and you’re Custer/I’m flexing with the force, buster” goes the latter). But Maraire, the son of Zimbabwean mbira player Dumisani Maraire, drives the record with fluid, organic rhythms, while occasional guests push the envelope further: the abstract, funky “Since CAYA” reportedly came together while Butler was hanging with Thundercat and Herbie Hancock at Flying Lotus’ house.
Where it coalesces, …Gangster Star is a light, trippy confection, reinventing R&B with rippling electronics and slippery, Prince-like funk. “Eel Dreams” is a tale of underwater seduction wreathed in bubbly synths; “The Neurochem Mixalogue” imagines doo-wop sung by a malfunctioning Hal 3000; and there are nods to Kraftwerk in “That’s How City Life Goes” and “Moon Whip Quäz”, which flips the melody to “The Model” and uses it as the engine to a galaxy-roaming space opera. There is one moment of straightforward rap classicism in the shape of “Shine A Light”, which cruises in on rhapsodic strings sampled from Dee Dee Sharp’s ’60s soul hit “I Really Love You”.
Quazarz Vs The Jealous Machines differs from its sister album in a few key ways. Recorded in a beachside studio in Los Angeles with producer Sunny Levine, grandson of Quincy Jones, it will be released as a book with illustrations by Joshua Ray Stephens. The change of scenery lends a sweltering, sun-baked quality. Lyrically, meanwhile, the concept – of discomfort with technology – comes a little more into focus here than on …Gangster Star. “Gorgeous Sleeper Cell” paints social media as a control mechanism (“Watching all the currents enticing my mind/Gluttons for distraction swiping all the time”) while “Self-Made Follownaire” finds Palaceer warning of “Illuminati bots trying to scratch my mind…”
Shabazz Palaces operate around the outer limits of hip-hop, but you get little sense here that Butler sees himself as an outsider. Rather, he’s here to get everyone to raise their game. Like interstellar guides, they’re always positioned a little further out than their peers, and these two records offer suggested routes to an infinity of possible futures.
Ahead of the release of Gregg Allman‘s final studio album, Southern Blood, we’re delighted to bring you an exclusive lyric video for “My Only True Friend”.
The video features some never before released photos of Allman and his home in Savannah, where the album cover was shot.
Southern Blood is released on September 8 by Rounder. Produced by Don Was, the albums features one original alongside songs by Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Jerry Garcia and Willie Dixon.
“For the first time in about 30 years, I brought my road band into the studio, and man, that made it one of the best recording experiences of my career,” Allman told Uncut last year. “It took me about eight years to bring these cats together, and I couldn’t be happier. Don Was understands how important communication is, and that made it easy. He never tried to complicate things, and that’s what made him the perfect guy to produce the album.”
The album can be pre-ordered from a number of sites:
“It is with the heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of our beloved husband, father, grandfather, and legendary singer and guitarist, Glen Travis Campbell, at the age of 81, following his long and courageous battle with Alzheimer’s disease,” the singer’s family said in a statement.
Campbell announced his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2011, which he followed with the Goodbye Tour and the documentary film I’ll Be Me. He released his last studio album, Adios, in June this year.
Glen Travis Campbell was born in Pike County, Arkansas, on April 22, 1936. His first guitar cost $7 from a Sears catalogue.
As a struggling musician, he moved to Los Angeles and by 1962 was a member of the Wrecking Crew, where he appeared on tracks including Elvis Presley‘s “Viva Las Vegas”, the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”.
In 1964, when Brian Wilson stepped down from performing with The Beach Boys, Campbell replaced him on bass and high harmonies.
Campbell had his first major hit in 1967 with “By the Time I Get To Phoenix“, written by Jimmy Webb; the start of a hugely successful collaborative relationship that yielded “Galveston”, “Gentle On My Mind” and “Wichita Lineman“.
“We both came from almost identical backgrounds, raised in small towns in adjacent states, and both grew up with music as almost a daily application of family ritual, played in church and sang with our brothers and sisters,” Webb told Uncut in 2016.
“We found this area where we were very comfortable together musically. He understood what I was playing. He would stand behind me and watch my hands on the piano keys and divine the positions that he would need to take on the frets of the guitar. He would play the bass notes as well. I realised he was at least my equal and probably someone I could learn a great deal from if I would just shut up and pay attention.”
During a career that spanned six decades, Campbell sold over 45 million records. He also co-starred with John Wayne in 1969’s True Grit.
Since news broke of Campbell’s death, tributes have been paid by Brian Wilson, Ringo Starr, Dolly Parton and many more.
I'm very broken up to hear about my friend Glen Campbell. An incredible musician and an even better person. I'm at a loss. Love & Mercy.
It is worth remembering that for some eyewitnesses during 1977, punk wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Take, for instance, Reg Cliff, who went to see two of the scene’s prime movers in concert – and came away bitterly disappointed. “Last night I went to see the Sex Pistols and Clash (formerly 101’ers) for the first time,” he wrote to NME. “I was very, very disappointed. Both bands were crap and it’s enough to turn you on to Demis Roussos.”
It’s a shame Reg didn’t enjoy the show – The Clash, it transpired, were “a cacophonous barrage of noise” – but perhaps if he’s reading this blog then he might be encouraged to pick up a copy of our latest deluxe edition and experience a change of heart. Yes, we are proud to unveil a deluxe edition of the Uncut Ultimate Music Guide to The Clash, which goes on sale in the UK this Thursday (August 10) – when it also goes on sale in our online store.
1977 was, of course, a pivotal year for The Clash – they released their debut album in April and toured extensively becoming punk’s inspirational standard-bearers in the process. So it seems particularly apt that we celebrate the 40th anniversary of this landmark year in the band’s life with this deluxe guide to all things Clash. It includes a selection of articles originally published in the NME, Melody Maker and Uncut, and with extensive new reviews of every album, we trace the highs, lows and neglected margins of the band’s career and their solo endeavours. An all-star jury – headed by Mick Jones and Paul Simonon – vote on their best Clash tracks ever, and we trace the band’s pre-history back to the pub rock scene and Joe Strummer’s early band, the 101’ers.
By curious coincidence, during 1976 – as The Clash took shape – on the other side of the Atlantic, Neil Young was hard at work on Hitchhiker, an album that he quietly shelved and has remained in his vaults ever since. Until now, that is! Young is finally releasing Hitchhiker in September, and if a post on a new website last week is to be believed, his is also finally raising the curtains on the next volume of his exhaustive Archives project. It seems a timely opportunity, then, to remind you that the current issue of Uncut goes deep into the story behind Hitchhiker, along with Young’s other legendary lost albums.
