This year’s Le Guess Who? – taking place in Utrecht, Netherlands, on November 9-12 – has added the final names to its impressive line-up.
The four-day festival will now include appearances from Zamrock originators WITCH, Aussie adventurers The Necks, a solo set from Low’s Alan Sparhawk and the last ever European show by New York dance-punk pioneers ESG.
Other new names include Bala Desejo, Joanna Sternberg, Lost Girls, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Ustad Noor Bakhsh and Caterina Barbieri with Space Afrika.
They join the likes of Bitchin Bajas, Rose City Band, Bombino, Rhys Chatham, Bill Orcutt, Kali Malone and Richard Dawson on a bill partly curated by fellow performers Stereolab and Nala Sinephro.
A limited number of new day tickets will go on sale at 10am BST on Friday (September 15) from here.
All copies come with a free, 10-track The Who CD taken from The Who’s upcoming Who’s Next/Life House deluxe edition – a mod-tastic feast of home demos, studio rarities and live versions.
INSIDE THIS MONTH’S UNCUT
THE WHO: Pete Townshend on his abandoned Life House project – finally seeing the light of day as part of a mammoth boxset along with its successor, Who’s Next
ROBBIE ROBERTSON: He helped change the course of music history – twice: fi rst as Dylan’s sidekick, then as songwriter with The Band… Van Morrison pays tribute
WILCO: How they rebuilt their richly experimental new album with guest producer Cate Le Bon
TEENAGE FANCLUB: The band reveal the secrets of their longevity and discuss a brilliant new LP as they convene in a Glasgow rehearsal room
PHAROAH SANDERS: With the reissue of his groundbreaking self-titled 1977 album, we explore the saxophone legend’s spiritual masterplan
THE MARY WALLOPERS: The rabble-rousing collective bring a raucous power to traditional Irish music
AN AUDIENCE WITH… KRISTIN HERSH: The Throwing Muses supremo talks wild swimming, Michael Stipe’s surprise duet and how she found her Clear Pond Road
THE MAKING OF “TOTAL CONTROL” BY THE MOTELS: New Wave deep cut resurrected in series 2 of The Bear.
ALBUM BY ALBUM WITH CRIME & THE CITY SOLUTION: Tracing the tracks of Simon Bonney’s ever-evolving, continent-hopping band
MY LIFE IN MUSIC WITH WILL SERGEANT: The Bunnymen guitarist on his plastic passions
REVIEWED Modern Nature, Sufjan Stevens, Emma Anderson, Robert Finley, Gaslight Anthem, Daniel Villarreal, The Replacements, Joni Mitchell, Hawkwind, Sarah Davachi, Laura Nyro and more
PLUS Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sandy Denny, May Pang, Budgie and Lol Tolhurst and introducing cosmic improv folk trio, Setting
ON August 11, two days after Robbie Robertson passed away, Bob Dylan released a rare public statement. “This is shocking news,” he wrote. “Robbie was a lifelong friend. His passing leaves a vacancy in the world.”
The Band’s music was a lodestone for many of us at Uncut – and for many of the musicians we write about – and the ‘vacancy’ left by Robertson can never be filled. It’s not just his ability to conjure up a new form of American music along with the rest of The Band – music that was simultaneously ancient and modern, vibrant but sepia-toned – it’s the transcendent power of the songs that came with it. “The only thing I’m trying to do is write songs that if you listen to them in a couple of years, they’re not going to go down,” Robertson told Richard Williams, back in 1971. “A lot of people’s records that I really liked a couple of years ago, I listen to them now and I can’t understand how come I liked them so much… Timelessness is what I’m trying for, most of the time when it’s possible.”
You can read Richard’s definitive tribute to Robertson – which draws on his 1971 encounter with Robertson and his bandmates when they were in London to play the Royal Albert Hall – in the new issue. Van Morrison is also on hand to share his memories of Robertson, stretching back through many decades. “Robbie knew what was going on,” Van tell us. “I mean, he was in right at the very beginning of this music, when he was recording with the Hawks when they were kids – he knew the score. Robbie wasn’t flashy, he didn’t solo pointlessly. It was like an arranged attack. He wrote some great songs. It’s all there. Were his songs different when he had The Band to play them? Yeah, well they had a word for it – chemistry.”
If you’ll forgive the segue, there is plenty of chemistry going on elsewhere in the issue. We travel to Spain, where Jeff Tweedy reveals how Cate Le Bon helped Wilco realise their brilliant new album Cousins, to Glasgow where Teenage Fanclub mull over the long tail of their enduring friendships, and – for our cover story – to a National Trust property in Wiltshire where Pete Townshend digs deep into The Who‘s masterpiece Who’s Next and it’s lost predecessor, Life House. There’s also Pharoah Sanders, The Mary Wallopers, Kristin Hersh, Sandy Denny, Crime & The City Solution, The Motels (one for fans of The Bear), Will Sergeant and Lynyrd Skynyrd plus reviews of new released by Modern Nature, Sufjan Stevens, Gaslight Anthem and reissues from The Replacements, Joni Mitchell, Hawkwind and more.
As part of our cover story, you’ll have hopefully noticed by now that all copies of this issue come with a free 10-track Who CD, taken from The Who’s upcoming Who’s Next/Life House deluxe edition – a mod-tastic feast, in other words. “I think the music on this Uncut CD, with demos and studio sessions and live tracks, is an interesting selection of stuff,” explains Townshend. “It gives a kind of cross-section of the mix-up that’s on the boxset. And you’re getting fucking free music!”
Four years ago, Smithsonian Folkways released an album by four American women of colour who formed a kind of banjo supergroup called Our Native Daughters. Of the quartet, Rhiannon Giddens and Leyla McCalla needed little introduction as former alumni of the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops. Amythyst Kiah, an alt.country blues singer from Tennessee, was less known and a genuine find – but in many ways the record’s real revelation was Allison Russell.
Born in Montreal in 1980 to a Canadian teenage single mother and an absent Caribbean father, she endured a troubled upbringing of foster care and abuse. At 15 she ran away and went to stay with a folk-singing aunt in Vancouver with whom she started performing in the local clubs.
There followed two decades of dues paying with folk-roots outfit Po’Girl and latterly as Birds Of Chicago with her life partner JT Nero, touring in a tiny van with their daughter and playing up to 300 gigs a year. Then came 2019’s Songs For Our Native Daughters, to which she contributed perhaps the album’s two most powerful songs. In the devastating “Quasheba Quasheba”, she sang about a matriarchal family ancestor sold into slavery from the coast of Ghana who survived the ocean passage, horrific violation and her children being sold – the catharsis made more potent by the realisation that Russell only existed because of what Quasheba had endured. By contrast, “You’re Not Alone”, written for her daughter, cast the story optimistically forward to the next generation.
Our Native Daughters proved to be a career turning point. She moved to Nashville and with the aid of celebrity fan Brandi Carlile landed a record deal with Fantasy. Her 2021 solo debut Outside Child took up where “Quasheba Quasheba” left off and built movingly upon its themes of survival and resilience with tales of social injustice and racial reckoning that sometimes told of harrowing oppression and abuse but were shot through with hints of transcendence and the saving grace of community, connection and family. It garnered three Grammy nominations and won the Americana Music Association’s Album Of The Year award.
Rather like Giddens’ recent You’re The One, the follow-up finds her breaking out of the Americana stockade to emerge as a restless and versatile creative spirit who refuses to be confined. She hasn’t totally abandoned her folk roots, nor has she turned her back on the struggles at the interstices of race and gender which informed the Our Native Daughters project. On “Eve Was Black”, she demands “Is that why you hate my black skin so?” over keening banjos and fiddles, delivering the lyrics with a soulful intensity that makes it the funkiest folk song you’ve heard since Roberta Flack sang “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” or Nina Simone reinterpreted “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair”.
However, this is an album about redemption and resilience and the key lies in its title. “Being a returner is stealing joy from the teeth of turmoil,” Russell explains and after chronicling her own pain and abuse on Outside Child this is the sound of her saying goodbye to suffering and standing tall and proud as a fiercely joyous black woman proclaiming her survival.
The sound of studio laughter punctuates the opener “Springtime” as she sings “So long, farewell/Adieu, adieu to that tunnel I went through.” Then on the gospel-like “Rag Child” she exhorts us to “sing until you love yourself”, adding that she “didn’t know the joy I was living until I rose to my feet”.
Sonically, The Returner celebrates a long, groove-rich legacy of African-American popular song. Bouyed by a female chorus, there’s the jazzy sassiness of the Pointer Sisters all over “Demons”. On “Shadowlands” she somehow manages to fuse a touch of stringed Philly soul magic with a syncopated Meters-inspired hint of New Orleans. “Stay Right Here” even has a disco beat and a tune not a million miles from Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”.
She ends gloriously and upliftingly with the six-minute “Requiem”, a universal and redemptive hymn for our times, like a secular 21st-century equivalent of “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” or “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” as Russell and the all-star heavenly choir she dubs The Rainbow Coalition sing “the question is not if, it was always when”. It’s a mantra that could be applied to her own career. From the moment you heard her with Our Native Daughters, you knew it was only a matter of time before she made her album for the ages. The Returner is that album.
A terrible beauty was born when the first official full-length Cardiacs album arrived in 1988. Still sounding arrestingly weird and gloriously wonky 35 years later, A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Windowremains an attention-grabbing explosion of crazy-paving mania, avant-punk surrealism and wildly promiscuous stylistic overload. There are so many ideas stuffed in here that famous fans like Blur, Radiohead, Napalm Death, Faith No More and neo-prog luminary Steven Wilson could all later cite Cardiacs as an inspiration without sounding remotely like each other.
Formed in London’s leafy southwest fringes by visionary perfectionist frontman Tim Smith, Cardiacs had already spent a decade shaping themselves into a kind of living artwork before making A Little Man…. With their strikingly theatrical image and a pan-dimensional sound that combined punk aggression with prog-rock virtuosity, free-jazz skronk with brass-band pomp, orchestral psychedelia with warped sea shanties, the Kingston band were heroically unfashionable and critically derided in the late 1980s.
Decades later, Cardiacs’ reputation as cult originals has mostly outlasted their naysayers. Although this album is still a bracing listen in places, its mannered eccentricity no longer sounds quite so jarring, while Smith’s keen ear for catchy pop melody shines through even the most obtuse tempo-twisting numbers. This vivid remastered version was one of Smith’s final projects before his untimely death in 2020.
Around the recording of A Little Man…, Cardiacs enjoyed playing mischievous games with the media. In 1987, Tim and his wife Sarah played along with lurid tabloid reports that they were incestuous siblings. This performance-art provocation also coloured the band’s bleakly funny conceptual backstory as captive clowns controlled by a malign management company, the Alphabet Business Concern. In their soiled, crumpled uniforms they resembled “a Salvation Army of the Damned”, as music writer Cathi Unsworth memorably puts it in her background essay for this boxset.
A Little Man… was recorded sporadically, between 1985 and 1987, mostly during cheaper overnight sessions at veteran blues-rocker Manfred Mann’s Workhouse studio in South London. The band’s new six-piece “classic” lineup of Tim Smith on guitar and lead vocals, brother Jim on bass, wife Sarah on saxophone and woodwind, plus William D Drake (keyboards), Tim Quy (percussion, marimba and synthesisiser) and Dominic Luckman (drums) gave Cardiacs their most expansive baroque’n’roll sound to date.
A loose recurring theme in Smith’s opaque, profane, macabre lyrics here is the psychosis and despair lurking behind suburbia’s placid facade. That certainly informs opening track “A Little Man And A House”, a roaringly sinister nursery rhyme whose anguished narrator is reluctantly leaving home for a job he hates. The grimly cheery folk-horror refrain “That’s the way we all go!” later resurfaces in “RES”, a commendably ambitious Dadaist collage whose title reportedly pays oblique homage to legendary US art-rock collective The Residents.
Notably, for all its discordant extremes, A Little Man… also showcases Smith’s flair for accessible melody and crisp studio production. It even features the band’s most successful semi-hit, “Is This The Life”, a thunderous juggernaut of jangly post-punk guitars and plaintive, sobbing vocals that sounds like a great lost collaboration between The Cure and U2. Dating back almost a decade, the song had already appeared in embryonic form on two previous ‘demo’ albums, but this anthemic take became the definitive version and a modest chart smash, climbing to Number 80. Similarly, the album’s closing number, “A Whole Wide Window”, dials down the avant-prog mania for a sweeping, crashing, romantic power ballad with a proto-Blur feel.
Three additional discs in this lavish boxset feature radio and studio sessions and a 1987 live show. Most have a pleasingly messy work-in-progress feel compared to their more polished studio takes, but there are some fine non-album tracks here too including “All Spectacular”, a pomp-metal banshee howl with a whiff of mid-period PiL, and a surprisingly dainty “There’s Too Many Irons In The Fire”. The sole previously unreleased inclusion is a version of “Gina Lollabrigida” featuring Smith counting in the players, a pleasant but inessential footnote.
Revisited in 2023, A Little Man… still sounds thrillingly weird. It also inescapably feels like a memorial, not just to Smith but to Tim Quy too, following his death in February this year. The most electrifying bonus material is the live concert, recorded at London’s Town & Country Club (now The Forum), which captures the confrontational majesty of Cardiacs at their peak, roaringly alive, exploding with rude humour and raw humanity. “When you come to die,” Smith implores the audience, “please try and remember me.” It was stylised rock theatre back then, of course. But today, these tiny details pack an extra emotional punch.
The deluxe box set celebrates Dylan’s 1978 world concert tour and the 45th anniversary of hisfirst concert appearances in Japan.
The Complete Budokan 1978 presents two full shows originally recorded on 24-channel multitrack analog tapes at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan Hall on February 28 and March 1, 1978.
It includes 36 previously unreleased Dylan performances – and you can hear a previously unreleased performance of “The Man In Me” from The Complete Budokan 1978 here.
The Complete Budokan 1978 will be available in 4CD, 8LP (Japan only) and digitally. Also available is Bob Dylan – Another Budokan 1978, a 2-album, highlight edition featuring 16 unreleased tracks from the box set.
The Complete Budokan 1978
4-CD Deluxe Box
Live at Nippon Budokan Hall, Tokyo, Japan – February 28, 1978 CD1
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall*
Repossession Blues*
Mr. Tambourine Man*
I Threw It All Away*
Shelter From The Storm
Love Minus Zero/No Limit
Girl From The North Country*
Ballad Of A Thin Man*
Maggie’s Farm*
To Ramona*
Like A Rolling Stone*
I Shall Be Released*
Is Your Love In Vain? *
Going, Going, Gone*
CD2
One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) *
Blowin’ In The Wind*
Just Like A Woman*
Oh, Sister*
Simple Twist Of Fate
You’re A Big Girl Now*
All Along The Watchtower*
I Want You*
All I Really Want To Do*
Tomorrow Is A Long Time*
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
Band introductions*
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
Forever Young
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Live at Nippon Budokan Hall, Tokyo, Japan – March 1, 1978
CD3
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall*
Love Her With A Feeling*
Mr. Tambourine Man
I Threw It All Away*
Love Minus Zero/No Limit*
Shelter From The Storm*
Girl From The North Country*
Ballad Of A Thin Man
Maggie’s Farm
One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)
Like A Rolling Stone
I Shall Be Released
Is Your Love In Vain?
Going, Going, Gone
CD4
One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) *
Blowin’ In The Wind
Just Like A Woman
Oh, Sister
I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) *
You’re A Big Girl Now*
All Along The Watchtower
I Want You
All I Really Want To Do
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
The Man In Me*
Band introductions*
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)*
Forever Young*
The Times They Are A-Changin’*
*Previously Unreleased
The Complete Budokan 1978
8-LP Deluxe Box
Live at Nippon Budokan Hall, Tokyo, Japan – February 28, 1978 LP1 – Side A
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall*
Repossession Blues*
Mr. Tambourine Man*
I Threw It All Away*
LP1 – Side B
Shelter From The Storm
Love Minus Zero/No Limit
Girl From The North Country*
Ballad Of A Thin Man*
LP2 – Side A
Maggie’s Farm*
To Ramona*
Like A Rolling Stone*
LP2 – Side B
I Shall Be Released*
Is Your Love In Vain? *
Going, Going, Gone*
LP3 – Side A
One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) *
Blowin’ In The Wind*
Just Like A Woman*
Oh, Sister*
LP3 – Side B
Simple Twist Of Fate
You’re A Big Girl Now*
All Along The Watchtower*
I Want You*
LP4 – Side A
All I Really Want To Do*
Tomorrow Is A Long Time*
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
Band introductions*
LP4 – Side B
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
Forever Young
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Live at Nippon Budokan Hall, Tokyo, Japan – March 1, 1978 LP5 – Side A
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall*
Love Her With A Feeling*
Mr. Tambourine Man
I Threw It All Away*
LP5 – Side B
Love Minus Zero/No Limit*
Shelter From The Storm*
Girl From The North Country*
Ballad Of A Thin Man
LP6 – Side A
Maggie’s Farm
One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)
Like A Rolling Stone
LP6 – Side B
I Shall Be Released
Is Your Love In Vain?
Going, Going, Gone
LP7 – Side A
One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) *
Blowin’ In The Wind
Just Like A Woman
Oh, Sister
LP7 – Side B
I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) *
You’re A Big Girl Now*
All Along The Watchtower
I Want You
LP8 – Side A
All I Really Want To Do
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
The Man In Me*
Band introductions*
LP8 – Side B
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) *
Forever Young*
The Times They Are A-Changin’*
*Previously Unreleased
Another Budokan 1978
2-LP with Gatefold Sleeve
All Tracks Previously Unreleased
Live at Nippon Budokan Hall, Tokyo, Japan – February 28, 1978 LP1 – Side A
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Repossession Blues
Ballad Of A Thin Man
To Ramona
LP1 – Side B
Like A Rolling Stone
Blowin’ In The Wind
All Along The Watchtower
Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Live at Nippon Budokan Hall, Tokyo, Japan – March 1, 1978
LP2 – Side A
Love Her With A Feeling
I Threw It All Away
Girl From The North Country
One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)
LP2 – Side B
I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
You’re A Big Girl Now
The Man In Me
Forever Young
It is mid-afternoon in Hackney, East London. Since before noon, a chunk of Mare Street next to the Hackney Empire has been cordoned off. There are news crews setting up opposite a specially constructed raised platform by the backstage door, a camera crane hovers in mid-air and a crowd of onlookers gather expectantly. It could be a crime scene, but the truth is no less dramatic. We are here for the unveiling of Hackney Diamonds – the Rolling Stones’ first album of original material since 2005.
The launch itself has been teased for a few weeks, since a cryptic advert appeared last month in The Hackney Gazette for “Hackney Diamonds, specialists in glass repair, opening September 2023…” The ad was followed a week or so later by a snippet of a song called “Angry” which appeared on a website… that didn’t quite load properly. Shortly after, some more conventional digital messaging appeared – fancy computer-generated artwork on the Stones’ socials promising “A new Stones era. Worldwide September 6th”, accompanied by a YouTube clip of Jimmy Fallon receiving a summons to Hackney via a call on his ’70s-style rotary “Stones phone”. Yesterday, Jagger and Fallon were pictured sitting in The Old Ship pub next to the Empire, reading copies of local free paper, The Hackney Citizen – presumably before jumping on a 38 bus up to Dalston for an ocakbasi.
As album campaigns go, it’s far more relaxed and confident than the usual hoopla around these kinds of launches. Jagger, you suspect, rather enjoyed the global furore caused by a half-page ad in a local London paper. It leads us, anyway, to today and the goings-on at the Hackney Empire. A press conference, livestreamed on Youtube, with Fallon in conversation with Jagger, Keith Richards and Ron Wood.
What to make of such a thing? Ostensibly, it provided an opportunity for Fallon to deliver some excellent impressions of Jagger while also revealing the album’s full tracklisting ahead of plan. The band, meanwhile, showcase an easy chemistry – they’re pros, of course – with Jagger at his most charming. The Q&A lasts 20 minutes – including bows – about as long as a side of vinyl.
But for all the laughs, there are some revelations. Decked out in smart black suits (a hat and shades for Keith, of course), they share prospective album titles, which included Hit And Run and Smash And Grab, before they settled on Hackney Diamonds. “When you get your windscreen broken on a Saturday night and all the bits go on the street, those are Hackney diamonds,” explains Jagger. Slang aside, it appears to be a wry, Jagger-esque witticism. The diamond/stone gag aside, Hackney is far from the Stones’ usual haunts. From one end of their career, it is the other side of the river to Dartford, while these days you assume that the Stones are more comfortably at home in Chelsea or Kensington than the pavements of E1. But perhaps Jagger recognises something in Hackney’s gentrification that – at least on a romantic level – reflects his band’s own transition from scruffy miscreants to upwardly mobile suburban rockers.
Speculation aside, Jagger is suitably droll when Fallon asks why it’s been 18 years since A Bigger Bang, the last Stones album of new material. “We’ve been lazy,” he deadpans. “Then we decided to put a deadline. We had a chat and decided to make this record at Christmas and finish it by Valentine’s Day… We went into the studio in December, cut 23 tracks, finished it off on January and mixed it in February.”
Jagger and Richards wrote “Angry” in Jamaica – “the first song to stick out,” says Keith – then Wood joined in New York, recruited producer Andrew Watt and recorded the album in Los Angeles. They recorded 23 songs, of which 12 made it to Hacnkey Diamonds.
Meanwhile, two songs, “Mess It Up” and “Live By The Sword”, feature Charlie Watts, from sessions recorded in 2019. The latter also features Bill Wyman – his first time on a Stones track since the band’s 2011 cover of Dylan’s “Watching The River Flow” for the Ian Stewart tribute album, Boogie 4 Stu.
Another song, “Dreamy Skies”, is about Jagger “trying to get away from it all”; “Tell Me Straight” features lead vocals from Richards; “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven” is a gospel song that features Stevie Wonder and Lady Gaga. “You’ve never been to church in your life,” Richards ribs Jagger.
The conversation quickly expands to include the absence of Watts (“ever since Charlie’s gone, it’s different”), playing festival shows during daylight hours (“imagine playing ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ at 8 o’clock”), whether or not they can play darts (spoilers: they can’t) and Wood’s extra-curricular guitar playing (more recently, with Van Morrison). Needless to say, it’s all good fun.
After Fallon’s Q&A, we get to see the video for “Angry”, which finds the actress Sydney Sweeney being driven around Los Angeles while billboards display historic Stones images (Mick Taylor eras onwards) that have been animated, as if the band are singing this new song. It’s a clever device, although one might like to see a little more mono Stones – though how they’d stand up in the California sun is anyone’s guess.
We’ll finish, however, with Jagger’s memories of The Rolling Stones’ very first press conference for their debut album: a very different experience to today’s shebang. “Keith and I were in a pub on Denmark Street. We had the album and there were two journalists, one from the NME and one from the Melody Maker. We bought them a pint of beer, said, ‘Here’s our album, give it a listen.’ Then we went out and that was it. There were no photos, nothing. The reviews were mixed, but it sold well…”
And if anyone’s interested, here’s the tracklisting for Hackney Diamonds as revealed by Fallon:
Angry
Get Close
Dependng On You
Bite My Head Off
Whole Wide World
Dreamy Skies
Mess It Up
Live By The Sword
Driving Me Too Hard
Tell Me Straight
Sweet Sounds Of Heaven
Rolling Stone Blues
Hackney Diamonds is out October 20 via Universal and you can pre-order a copy here.
Acetone will release I’m still waiting. on November 17 via New West Records.
You can hear a previously unreleased demo of “No Need Swim” from the box set below.
Formed in 1991, Acetone consisted of Mark Lightcap on guitar and vocals, Richie Lee on bass and vocals and Steve Hadley on drums. The band disbanded after Lee committed suicide on July 23, 2001, aged 34. A book about the band, Hadley Lee Lightcap, is highly recommended.
The 11-album box set includes their full-length studio albums: Cindy (1993), If You Only Knew (1995), Acetone (1997), and York Blvd. (2000). The collection also includes their debut EP, Acetone (1993), the mini-album, I Guess I Would (1995), and the nine-song bonus album, Prime Cuts. Spanning 63 total tracks, I’m still waiting. features eight previously unreleased recordings.
All of the full-length albums have been expanded to double album housed in gatefold jackets, and If You Only Knew is available on vinyl for the first time ever. Additionally, the Acetone album features the band’s original mix, previously available only on rare first pressings, and is pessed on crystal clear vinyl.
The set also includes a 60-page, full-colour book featuring never-before-seen photos and extensive liner notes written by Spiritualized‘s Jason Pierce and Drew Daniel of Matmos and the Soft Pink Truth.
You can watch an unboxing of the set here:
Says Mark Lightcap, “It’s amazing to me how much love there is for Acetone out in the world, especially considering how few records we actually sold at the time. That love, unrequited as the catalog moldered in record company vaults, has now been fully consummated in the form of this box set. Infinite gratitude to New West for pulling out all the stops on this project. Records that were squeezed onto one disc in the vinyl-as-an-afterthought 90s have all mushroomed into doubles, and I can truthfully say that it’s like hearing them for the first time. With really beautiful liner notes by our pals Drew Daniel and Jason Pierce, and a bonus LP of personal favorite, unreleased recordings from the band’s own vault, this thing is the mother lode for Acetone fans. Salut!”
Acetone EP:
I’m Gone
For A Few Dollars More
D.F.B
Cindy
Cindy:
Come On
Pinch
Sundown
Chills
Endless Summer
Louise
Don’t Cry
No Need Swim
Barefoot On Sunday
I Guess I Would:
Juanita
The Late John Garfield Blues
I Guess I Would
Sometimes You Just Can’t Win
All For The Love Of A Girl
How Sweet I Roamed
Border Lord
If You Only Knew:
If You Only Knew
I Don’t Really Care
In The Light
I’ve Enjoyed As Much Of This As I Can Stand
The Final Say
When You’re Gone
Hound Dog
99
What I See
Nothing At All
Esque
Always Late
Acetone:
Every Kiss
All The Time
Germs
Might As Well
Shobud
All You Know
Good Life
Dee
Waltz
Another Minute
So Slow
Chew
York Blvd.:
Things Are Gonna Be Alright
Wonderful World
19
Vibrato
Like I Told Yoou
It’s A Lie
Bonds
One Drop
Vaccination
Stray
Prime Cuts:
O.I.E (If You Only Knew outtake)
Shaker (York Blvd. outtake) *
Nobody Home (demo) *
Vibrato (demo) *
Nothing At All (live on CJAM 99.1 FM) *
No Need Swim (demo) *
Cindy (live at the Lizard Lounge, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 30, 1998) *
York Blvd. (rehearsal tape) *
She Belongs To Me (rehearsal tape) *
In a press conference today at London’s Hackney Empire, The Rolling Stones confirmed that their new album Hackney Diamonds would be released by Universal on October 20. It will be their first album of new studio material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang.
Watch a video for the first single “Angry” below, directed by Francois Rousselet and starring Sydney Sweeney.
Hackney Diamonds was recorded in various locations around the world, including Henson Recording Studios, Los Angeles; Metropolis Studios, London; Sanctuary Studios, Nassau, Bahamas; Electric Lady Studios, New York; and The Hit Factory/Germano Studios, also in New York. It’s produced by Andrew Watt, who’s previously worked with Pearl Jam, Iggy Pop and Elton John.
You can pre-order the album here, including a special limited ‘Carnaby red’ vinyl edition, available exclusively from The Rolling Stones’ official store. Uncut were in attendance at the Hackney Empire press conference, full report to follow…
The 30th anniversary of Nirvana’s In Utero this autumn will be marked by a raft of multi-format reissues, released on October 27 by Geffen/UMe.
The three Super Deluxe Edition releases (8-LP, 5-CD and digital) include two full In Utero-era concerts – from Los Angeles in 1993 and the band’s final Seattle performance in 1994 – as well as six bonus live tracks from Rome, Springfield and New York, all reconstructed from stereo soundboard tapes by Bleach producer Jack Endino.
In Utero’s original 12 songs, along with five bonus tracks and B-sides, have been newly remastered from the analogue master stereo tapes by Bob Weston, who assisted Steve Albini as the only other engineer at the original sessions.
The physical Super Deluxe sets also include a 48-page hardcover book with unreleased photos; a 20-page newly designed fanzine; a Los Angeles tour poster lithograph; replicas of the 1993 record store promo angel mobile; three gig fliers; two ticket stubs for Los Angeles and Seattle; an all-access tour laminate; and four cloth sticky tour backstage passes.
To peruse to the full tracklistings of all the various In Utero editions, as well as to pre-order and pre-save, go here.
So we’re just about back from another excellent yet at Larmer Tree Gardens. End Of The Road just keeps getting better – with amazing performances from a huge array of brilliant artists to the packed-out crowds at the Uncut Q&As.
Huge thanks to Tom Pinnock, Sam Richards and Mark Beaumont for representing Uncut so strongly down in Larmer Tree Gardens.
And now, for your convenience, here’s a round up of all our EOTR 2023 blogs… Fill your boots!
“I don’t think we’ve ever played this early in the day before,” muses Konnor Whitney, kicking off Sunday’s proceedings on the Boat stage. But no matter that the crisp, urbane choogle of his band Whitney K is more suited to 2am than 2pm; he seems like the kind of guy who gets straight down to business with the minimum of fuss. One of their best songs sounds a bit like “Sultans Of Swing,” so obviously it’s simply called “Dire Straits”. It’s also full of great lines. “Shouldn’t have bet on rock’n’roll / To save your soul,” Whitney observes drolly in the chorus. Too late!
It’s a family affair on the Garden Stage with Joan Shelley appearing alongside her husband, the equally talented Nathan Salsburg. They hope that their infant daughter may soon be able to join them too, but for now they tell her favourite joke on her behalf (“a duck walks a bar…”). It’s a touching moment in a set full of them, not least when Shelley instigates a gentle singalong to “Like The Thunder”. “I was turned off by Pete Seeger singalongs when I was a kid because they were meant to change the world and didn’t,” she reveals. “But then I realised they can be really good for you.” And she’s not wrong.
Alogte Oho & His Sounds of Joy may be the most aptly named band at the festival. The colourful Ghanaian troupe deal in infectious, uptempo, gospel-infused Afrobeat – with a side order of reggae – complete with a potent brass section and funky synth solos. Oho himself is a relentlessly upbeat presence and by the end of an exhilarating set, he’s made himself several hundred new friends.
Staying in that part of the world, Fatoumata Diawara is a fine ambassador for West African music in all its many forms. Highlife, Afrobeat, desert blues… Diawara (and her terrific band) can do it all, and in a variety of extravagant headgear. Her ‘magic hour’ set on the Woods Stage is pure bliss.
And finally, the big blowout we’d all been hoping for. “Weathered festival friends!” roars King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s Stu Mackenzie, looking suitably crazed in dungaree shorts, no shirt. “Let’s give it one last launch.”
There’s no denying that the Gizz are now a bona fide phenomenon, turning a whole new generation onto the joys of gnarly psychedelic rock. If there is still a whiff of wackiness about them – that name, those mullets – it’s instantly dispelled by a stupendous salvo of face-melting prog-funk brilliance. These boys can really play, but it’s not just pyrotechnics; there’s an unexpected soulfulness at times, particularly when the band’s secret weapon, keyboardist Ambrose Kenny-Smith, unleashes his bluesy croon. In general, the first portion of the set is a lot more Allman Brothers than you might expect.
Obviously that’s followed by an intriguing electropop diversion and a daft ode to a favourite dog. And then, “Time to get heavy!” as recent thrash metal homage “Gila Monster” unleashes absolute pandemonium. The crowdsurfers pour over the barriers in torrents, some barely into their teens, others old enough to know better. But in a lovely touch, a friend of the band hands each of them a breadstick as they are bundled back into the throng. This moment nicely reflects the band’s mission: to play intense, heavy music but with zero aggression, only pure joy and love. Like almost everything else at this incredible festival, it’s a genuinely life-affirming experience.
Catch up with all of Uncut’s coverage of End Of The Road 2023 here.
A sad goodbye to the Turkish grill / funk-and-disco area. But an enthusiastic hello to the new ‘Craft Bar’ serving Britain’s finest ales to a classic Heavenly Social soundtrack…
People getting surprisingly competitive over the marble race in the woods (“Well obviously you won, your marble was more aerodynamic”)…
A packed karaoke tent going crazy as a festival-goer called Gemma performed a pitch-perfect rendition of Boyz II Men’s – of course – “End Of The Road”…
All the guests at the Uncut Q&As being fascinated by the sheep right behind the stage. They even inspired 75 Dollar Bill’s Rick Brown to ask the audience for their recommendations for English sheep cheeses…
The fella in a camping chair, stubbornly filling out the Times crossword as the chaos of Avalanche Kaito unfolded around him…
The most appropriate of the many retro football shirts spotted while wandering through the woods? Nottingham Forest, natch…
The peacocks looking distinctly unimpressed by all the people in giant bird heads invading their manor…
Respect to the roadie who was forced to spend the entirety of Oren Ambarchi’s set crouched down behind a malfunctioning Leslie speaker, rotating it by hand…
Someone pulling out a skipping rope on the dancefloor at The Boat stage…
Deep in the woods, a luminous mushroom grotto soundtracked by a nursery rhyme rendition of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees”…
The lad in wedding drag discovering tequila for the very first time: “You’re actually meant to drink this stuff?”…
Yes, some folks really did lug a full-size white chaise longue into the moshpit during Wet Leg’s set, before dancing on it as triumphantly as you’d expect…
Say, for instance, you’ve just got engaged at End Of The Road. To celebrate, which song would you request the DJ plays? That’s right, “Zombie” by The Cranberries…
Every crowdsurfer at King Gizzard’s show being rewarded with a breadstick…
Catch up with all of Uncut’s coverage of End Of The Road 2023 here.
Brooklyn’s Geese don’t have walk-on music – they finish a ramshackle soundcheck in the Big Top and just, well, crack on – but if they did it should probably consist of the announcement “previously on Rock Music…”. Hitting the stage early on the final day, their 45-minute set is a valiant attempt to summarise the entire history of alternative music.
A minute or two of psych-blues unexpectedly gives way to some weightless indie arpeggios and David Byrne hooks, then howling soul. “Disco” flits at will between Seattle grunge and New York garage rock, like a collaboration no-one ever previously conceived between Pearl Jam and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. There is a country rock rebel song, an alt-country pop lark called “Cowboy Nudes” about dancing around a submerged NYC, and it all descends into an experimental jazz drawl with singer Cameron Winter intoning “Jesus Christ” ahead of a screamcore finale. Up to speed? Then we’ll proceed.
She too may seem to lose her mind at times – when asking the crowd to scream out their favourite Muppet, for instance, or when dedicating a song to a party clown called Jingles she remembers from childhood – but Caitlin Rose provides a reassuring Garden Stage set. “I buried my head in the sand for ten years and you’re all still here,” the Nashville singer exclaims (her 2022 album Cazimi arrived after a nine-year gap), and her songs return sounding luxuriantly upholstered and cushioned. Between thumping country rattlers like new track “Nobody’s Sweetheart”, she deploys beautifully tranquilised balladry in “Blameless” and “Pink Champagne”, the latter perfect accompaniment to the rather magical sight of a motor-glider sailing above the stage.
Allah-Las are similarly comforting, but with Geese’s flashback mindset. Their gentle retro rock revisits and recasts all manner of the alternative’s more languid moments, be it The Byrds guesting with The La’s (“Tell Me (What’s On Your Mind)”, a psych-beat Kinks (“Had It All”) or the brighter acoustic bits of Pixies’ latest album Doggerel (“Sandy”). There are tracks resembling REM playing a laid-back “La Bamba”, and when frontman Miles Michaud hands vocal duties to his more baritoned bandmates – on, say, “The Stuff” – they even start sounding like The Velvet Underground had they hung around long enough to become a new wave band.
Any particularly chill vibes they summon are swiftly dissipated upon the arrival of Ezra Furman. Edgy, intense and suffering severe shaky hand syndrome, she storms and lurches across the Garden Stage with “catharsis coursing through me”. Though a song like “Train Comes Through”, from her brilliant latest album All Of Us Flames, is subtly cast here, the energy is typically febrile and rammed with drama.
“These are our songs of love and war,” Furman declares. On the battle-front assemble Morricone funeral anthem “Throne”, ferocious radio rocker “Suck The Blood From My Wound” and fightback anthem “Lilac And Black”, introduced with a quivering yell of “Trans power!” In matters of love, she shimmies exuberantly through the graceful electronics of “Point Me Toward The Real”, a tentative tale of post-institution uncertainty, delivers an “I Saw The Truth Undressing” that sounds blown by galactic winds and unleashes drone bombs on a prom night slow-dance on “Dressed In Black”, “one of those destroy-the-world teenage love songs”.
“There’s no plans but this,” she explains of this last foreseeable gig, and goes out all rock guns blazing: a crazed cover of Patti Smith’s “Gloria” and a final boogie-rock freakout on “What Can You Do But Rock’n’Roll”. It may not be in such a literal a sense as most Reading & Leeds weekends, but End Of The Road 2023 undoubtedly goes up in …Flames.
Catch up with all of Uncut’s coverage of End Of The Road 2023 here.
“It’s the end of the road for us,” King Gizzard guitarist Joey Walker reveals in the opening minutes of Uncut’s final – and the 2023 festival’s busiest – Q&A of the weekend. Not, thankfully, a very public abdication, but a sign of relief at the final show of the current Gizzard tour, before a lengthy break to welcome three new children to the “family”.
And so begins a Q&A every bit as bizarre and unpredictable as the Australian rockers’ relentless musical output. Our host – Uncut reviews editor Tom Pinnock – explains that his planned joke about the band releasing a new album since the festival began is scuppered by the fact that they actually have: the 40-song, five-hour Live In Chicago ’23. “We did three nights and it’s all three nights back-to-back on one album,” says Stu Mackenzie. “It was actually an ultra-dramatic set of shows, it was fucked up. Every day should have been cancelled, but it kind of made it super fun and we did weird shit.” His explanation for the crankiness of some of the audio? “It rained on the hard drive.”
Things – very briefly – get serious as Pinnock presses the band on the demise-of-humanity themes of their most recent studio album PetroDragonic Apocalypse. “It’s just real,” says Mackenzie. “Sorry to ruin the party. But you just replace climate change with a dragon. I think we’re going down with a bang. We’ll just have fun on the way down.”
He also discusses their forthcoming 25th studio record in eleven years, touted as the yang to PetroDragon…’s yin. “When we made Petro… we thought we’d do this super heavy thing and also do this beautiful electronic record and find some way to make them the same world.”
Before long, though, he’s openly admitting to modelling King Gizzard’s career on The Grateful Dead (“I’m a psychopathic hippie”), and once questions are thrown open to the floor, any semblance of order swiftly deteriorates. One fur-drenched “fan” called King Mink asks them where they got various items of clothing before admitting he has no idea who they are. Another introduces them to the baby they “signed” while she was still in the womb. A third asks for a name for their band, prompting Walker to scroll through the hundreds he’s been collecting on his phone. Rejecting Thai Seagull, Side Salad and Abraham Linkedin, the band are eventually dubbed Colostomy Bag. Watch this pouch.
One fan draws gasps by asking when standard rock band wrangling will inevitably split the band. “In the earlier iteration of Giz,” says Mackenzie, “when we first started doing it and were literally struggling to eat, we thought we’d do this until it just becomes absurd and then we’ll get a job. It felt like a very distant far-out possibility that we could be doing it as long as we are now. That felt like some freakish chance. So to still be doing it now is amazing. I hope we can do it forever.” Whatever the weekend’s marquee message, some roads don’t have to end.
Catch up with all of Uncut’s coverage of End Of The Road 2023 here.
Having been lulled into a false sense of serenity by the lush cello-driven shoegaze of Mabe Fratte and the sonorous Irish folk of John Francis Flynn, the Garden Stage is about to be jolted into life. Avalanche Kaito are billed as a Belgian-Burkinabé avant-punk trio, although it’s only the first part of that equation that’s initially visible on-stage: two seasoned art-rock dudes locking into an angular Afro-punk groove. Then suddenly they stop, and a loud voice hollers from deep in the crowd. Frontman Kaito Winse is here after all – he’s just decided to start the set in the audience (evidently he knows this is a band worth watching). Wince eventually finds his way onto the stage, engaging the crowd in gruff call-and-response chants while also playing a mean peul flute. Invigorating.
Caroline have been coming to End Of The Road since they were teenagers and are visibly thrilled to be playing on “the best stage ever”. But that doesn’t mean they’re here to people-please. After a 30-minute soundcheck, the Sussex troupe proceed to play their stunning deconstructed chamber-folk at an agonisingly glacial pace, soon losing at least half of the large crowd who’ve initially gathered to watch them. “When are they going to finish warming up?” wonders one wag on his way out. Unperturbed, Caroline continue to make the slowest, quietest noise that eight people could conceivably conjure up together. Those who do remain are completely entranced – and when the band dedicate a Low cover to the late Mimi Parker, there isn’t a dry eye in the field.
“Hi, we’re Oasis!” yells Rhian Teasdale of Saturday’s not-so-secret guests Wet Leg. But frankly, even if the Gallagher brothers had decided to reform and launch their comeback here on the Dorset/Wiltshire borders, they’d struggle to beat the frenzied reception that greets Wet Leg’s arrival. Quickly proving that they’re much more than one-hit wonders, every song is a joyous sing-aloud riposte to whoever’s twisting your melon this week. And when they do finally play that song, the place goes bananas – not least the people who’ve lugged an actual fucking chaise longue into the moshpit.
Dungen have been kicking around for more than 20 years now, to the point where we’re in danger of taking them for granted. But a terrific set on the Boat stage is a timely reminder of their brilliance. By every available metric – quality of guitar tone, length of flute solo, thickness of cardigan – they are the greatest band at this festival. To call them psych-rockers feels too reductive given the agility of their prog-funk rhythms, the splendour of their three-part harmonies, their dense organ-driven groove. Endearingly, they are also very Swedish, bickering about whether signature song “Ta Det Lugnt” translates as “take it easy” or “chill the fuck out” – a directive that could be aimed at guitarist Reine Fiske who slams his instrument down at the end of a storming set, perhaps frustrated at not receiving due recognition for some of the most blistering solos ever played by a man in a knitted tank top.
Not many festivals would dare to put a drum-less ambient jazz trio at the top of the bill, but Arooj Aftab is simply too good not to be headlining the Garden Stage. Back with her original trio of double bassist Petros Klampanis and (heavily pregnant) harpist Maeve Gilchrist, the spell they weave together is mesmerising and at times almost unbearably beautiful. Thankfully Aftab is quick to puncture any pretentiousness with her usual withering New York humour, instructing the photographers to “make me look hot” and complaining that the roses she usually throws to crowd have been sent “to some other fucking stage!” There are new songs too, which bodes well for that hotly anticipated Vulture Prince follow-up.
Aftab lauds her fellow bandmates’ musical skills as “almost offensive” while defining her own role in proceedings as merely “drinking red wine and talking shit”. She’s right about the first bit, but couldn’t be more wrong about the second; Aftab is simply the greatest singer that most of us will ever see outside of an opera house or an Elizabeth Frazer gig. Even as silent discos and late-night secret punk shows call, you’d be happy for her to keep singing “Mohabbat” forever.
Catch up with all of Uncut’s coverage of End Of The Road 2023 here.
The Dire Straits influence on 75 Dollar Bill’s freeform desert jazz is, to be fair, subtle at best. “Mark Knopfler is in every guitar player’s top five in Mauritania,” guitarist Che Chen told Tom Pinnock during the second of End Of The Road’s Uncut Q&A sessions at the Talking Heads stage, considering the lessons he learned in the West African country during his eleven days under the Moorish guitar tutorage of Jheich Ould Chighaly in 2013.
“I got a crash course in the Moorish modal system,” he explained. “Ten years later I’m still digesting the things that I saw and learned there. It’s an important touchstone for the way I play guitar.”
His percussionist bandmate Rick Brown was keen to stress that the band’s influences stretched far beyond Mauritanian styles, let alone the “Money For Nothing” riff. “The minimalist composers of the ‘70s, free jazz musicians, soul jazz musicians and Afro-Caribbean rhythms,” he said, “all of those things are important to one of both of us.” And so it would prove, as the pair wove liquid guitar and exotic polyrhythm into dream-like extended passages during their early evening Boat Stage set.
The duo arrived at the Q&A – delayed but unflustered – fresh from two nights at Dalston’s Café Oto, one of which, by chance, saw them play with baritone saxophonist Cheryl Kingan, who had appeared on 2019’s I Was Real album. Having played there as a duo after US shows as a ten-piece band (best exemplified by 2020’s Live At Tubby’s release, Brown argued), discussion naturally turned to their formation on the New York underground scene of 2012, where Brown became a regular at Chen’s shows with his experimental band True Primes. “People didn’t like us,” Chen joked, “so if you turned up repeatedly at our gigs you were pretty conspicuous.”
Brown immediately saw in Chen a musician with the skill and vision worthy of accompanying a crate he’d found in the street. “I’d found this five-pieces-of-plywood crate on the street in New York years before,” he said. “I didn’t play it very much but I knew when I hit it with my fist it made this nice ‘boom’ sound that I liked and it was open in the back so I could put stuff in it and it didn’t take up too much space. [Chen] heard it and thought ‘these ideas I have with guitar might work with that thing’.”
The box, Brown explained, has “mutated along the decades. The one I’m playing tonight has bits of wood from Italy, Norway and some of the original stuff. It’s all hybridised.” And Brown himself has done some mutating too. Pinnock steered him towards a few choice reminiscences of moving to NYC at the height of the CBGBs punk period, diving into the no wave scene inspired by Pere Ubu and running into a young Sonic Youth.
“I played in a band at the Speed Trials,” he explained. “It was a few-day festival in downtown New York, The Fall were a part of that, Swans and some other bands including Sonic Youth.” You need to write a book, Pinnock urged. “I’m a very slow writer – I’m working on it,” Brown grinned, then corrected himself. “I’m planning on working on it.”
Catch up with all of Uncut’s coverage of End Of The Road 2023 here.
Sylvie are demob-happy. It’s the last date of a long European tour and as soon as they exit stage right, they’re “going to a spa to get back massages”. But if they’re feeling ragged and worn-out, you’d never tell. Now a seven-piece, complete with pedal steel, their ’70s Laurel Canyon homages are pristine and note-perfect. Bandleader Ben Schwab formed Sylvie partly to pay tribute to his dad’s sunshine pop band Mad Anthony, who never made it out of their garage back in the day. Here, they give one of his old songs the audience it deserves, alongside a stunning rendition of their own instant classic “Falls On Me”.
A quick detour via the sylvan harmonies and box-of-wine anecdotes of Lilo on the Piano Stage brings us to the loquacious art-rock racket of Blue Bendy in the Folly. They’re one of those groups where each member looks – and sometimes plays – like they’re in completely different bands. But in a good way, obviously. In his long coat and baseball cap, singer/ranter Arthur Nolan holds forth in the grand tradition of wayward indie bards like Gerard Langley and Julian Cope. Even if the finer details of his wry declamations are often lost in the chaos, you’re behind him all the way.
Post-rock party band Horse Lords are two chaps in smart shirts and slacks, a shaggy haired saxophonist/percussionist and a drummer resembling Garth from Wayne’s World. One tune starts with what sounds like the piano riff from Happy Mondays’ “Step On” before mutating into a manic Celtic jig. In 7/4 time. Others come on like Trout Mask Replica (the !!! remix). People don’t quite know how to dance to it, but they dance anyway. Tremendous stuff.
Sessa brings a touch of Brazilian flair to the Talking Heads stage, playing solo and acoustic save for an occasional female vocalist. In true bossa nova style, his songs present as urbane and breezy, but passionate currents whirl beneath. At the end of a starkly brilliant version of Helene Smith’s southern soul swooner “I Am Controlled By Your Love”, he resorts to swatting his guitar wildly before composing himself for one final, beautiful chord.
It’s a similar scene at the Garden Stage, where Cass McCombs responds to a somewhat restless early-evening crowd by seeming to play more softly, more intently, forcing you to really lean in and listen. You’re rewarded with picaresque tales of Greek goddesses and “a tremendous harmonica player whose name now escapes me”, as well as gorgeously restrained all-timers like “County Line”. But eventually the sleeping volcano must explode: towards the of set, without warning, McCombs and his band unleash a three-minute torrent of noisy Electric Miles weirdness – no lyrics required.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra are determined not to play a clichéd festival headline set: no guests, no gimmicks, just Ruban Nielson and his supremely tight four-piece band, silhouetted against their own band logo. For all the apparent worldliness detailed in songs like “Multi-Love”, there is an appealing vulnerability to Nielson’s voice; he’s the kid stumbling into the adult’s party, both perturbed and fascinated by what he finds. This innocent quality even pervades crisp upbeat numbers like “Hunnybee” and “Can’t Keep Checking My Phone” (which is easy enough, given there’s no reception here anyway – and, hey, there’s a near-full moon to gawp at instead).
But for the full Peter Pan experience, look no further than Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, the space cadets who never grew up. It’s hard to hang on to your idealism, but by reaching back to the pre-rock era for inspiration, the duo have come up with something totally fresh and life-affirming. They cleave closely to the tracklisting of last year’s excellent Reset, but have begun to toy with the songs a little more, teasing out moments of pure, uncomplicated euphoria, accompanied by primary-coloured visuals and retina-scorching strobes. Who needs a rave tent?
Fingers gently sweeping an autoharp, on the Talking Heads stage Angeline Morrison sings her haunting untold stories. “Mad-Haired Moll O’Bedlam”, sentenced to the sanitorium for raising her voice at a policeman. The victims of the port town race riots in the wake of WWI. The plantation slaves lured to England by the promise of money, land and the African queen they were told ruled the country.
All tracks are from her recent album The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs Of Black British Experience, which formed the basis of the first of the weekend’s Uncut Q&A sessions on the same stage just an hour earlier. “It’s a re-storying of Britain’s lost and forgotten black ancestors, who have been here for over 2,000 years, since Roman times at least, but who seem to be missing from the folk and traditional songs of these islands,” she told host Tom Pinnock.
Morrison’s immersive journey and research into their stories made for a fascinating, eye-opening and often moving discussion. Talk began on the track “Unknown African Boy (D. 1830)” which Morrison recently performed solo on Later… With Jools Holland, about “a child whose estimated age was around eight years of age who was washed ashore when a slave ship was wrecked off the Isles of Scilly.”
“I went to the grave,” Morrison said, “it was so emotional. The story really broke my heart – he was a child and he should have been having fun and playing with his friends and instead was abducted and trafficked halfway across the world destined for a life of torture and an early death by drowning. I wanted to honour that. When it’s a child involved it highlights the bigger picture.”
Discussion moved on to “The Beautiful Spotted Black Boy”, based on the early 19th Century story of George Alexander Gratton, trafficked form St Vincent’s by circus entrepreneur John Richardson at the age of four or five because his vitiligo would have made him a popular exhibit in European freak shows as one of what were called “the spotted children”. “He was bought for a thousand guineas and exhibited around the country,” Morrison explained, “and John Richardson was said to have absolutely adored this boy and loved him as his own child.” When he died, she said, Richardson bankrupted himself building a brick mausoleum to protect the child’s valuable body. “He’s said to have died from a broken heart shortly afterwards and is buried with the child. It’s abhorrent, with notes of ‘ooh’.”
That these stories had been “airbrushed out” of Britain’s folk traditions, Morrison argued, reflected the invisible nature of so many black Britons throughout history. “So many of these black ancestors weren’t officially recorded,” she said. “Unless you had a birth certificate, marriage certificate, death certificate or an official burial in a church, you weren’t recorded. So there’s going to be more than we’re able to count.”
Her next album, she revealed, would be about the art of alchemy: “each song will be a meditation on one of the alchemical stages”. Has she mastered the power of alchemy, Pinnock asked? “It’s a little early to say,” she chuckled. “I’m getting there.”
“Tonight we shall burn in hell,” yells a bloke called Joe as a DJ in a fisherman’s hat and his saxophonist sidekick jog on the spot to some rabid electronic post-ska. A minute ago, everyone was bobbing at the knees to the cabaret drop-down section of a piece of skittering jazz rock that couldn’t be more South London if it had inadequate transport options. This is Fat Dog, freshly signed to Domino and kicking off EOTR Day 2 in customarily esoteric fashion.
Across at the main Woods stage, Brooklyn’s Say She She – named as a tribute to Chic for reasons which swiftly become apparent – are spinning and sync-dancing through a sort of psychedelic disco funk they call discodelia, caught in the exact midpoint between ‘60s psych soul and ‘70s funk where it’s acceptable to sing lines like “be my lover on an astral plane”.
Mid-afternoon at the Talking Heads stage, Angeline Morrison bewitches a crowd perched on hay-bail pews with her haunting folk laments on domestic violence, her supernatural bond to her late grandfather and several sorry tales of slavery, racism and maltreatment from her recent album The Sorrow Songs: Folk Tales Of Black British Experience.
They might share a folk tradition but there could barely be a sharper clash of vibes all day than that between Morrison and The Mary Wallopers on the idyllic Garden Stage. “We all have fleas and we’re proud of it!” they yell, bantering wildly between crazed traditional jigs, reels and yarns celebrating Cork’s red-light district and rich people going to hell. The key signifier? “If you have brand name underwear, you’re fucking rich.” They too boast their fair share of historical social commentary; one battle ballad confronts the warmongering rich while The Dubliners’ “Building Up And Tearing England Down” tackles the Irish “navvy” struggle. But we’re moved here in a very different manner; whirled by the elbow rather than hurled by the heartstrings.
By nightfall, exuberance burnt, a chill descends. “You staying warm?” Angel Olsen asks the Garden Stage crowd as she wraps her country quilt across its shoulders. Hers are opulent Americana songs of big-sky drama and romance; alt-country with an Oppenheimer co-write, Lana writ large.
Accompanied by a string duo, occasional harpsichord and sensitive band, the ghostly melodies of “Give It Up” are imbued with strident emotion, “Unfucktheworld” becomes a devastated waltz. Yet for all the Lynchian haze and sumptuous sadness shrouding her music – she even closes with an impassioned if somewhat tongue-in-cheek cover of Badfinger’s “Without You” – there is also plenty of hope on show. “Sister” balloons with sonic optimism and “Shut Up Kiss Me”, the 2016 hit she craftily introduces as “a song I wrote last night”, catches much of its infectious joy from it sheer determination for love. “We’ve got two more songs,” she says towards the end, “amazing, I love freezing!” But her audience, tonight, burn in heaven.
