Tonight, August 26, Kate Bush returns to the stage for her first live shows in 35 years. To celebrate, here’s our cover story from the archives (June 2010, Take 157), in which Uncut takes a phantasmagorical trip into suburbia to learn the untold story of Kate Bush’s masterpiece, Hounds Of Love. "She ain’t daft. People shouldn’t be fooled by the mystical hippy stuff, this girl is very, very tough." Story by: Graeme Thomson__________
This is the full text of my interview with Hurray For The Riff Raff in New Orleans, that appeared in the print edition of Uncut a couple of months ago. I've added a lot of music to listen to as you read; not just by Alynda and the Riff Raff, but by some of the other New Orleans musicians who are critical to the story.
This week, Thurston Moore announced further details of his new solo album, The Best Day, featuring former Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and My Bloody Valentine’s Debbie Googe. To whet your appetite for the new tracks, here’s a piece from Uncut’s December 2006 issue (Take 115) – judging by this, perhaps The Best Day will sound like a cross between John Coltrane, the Ramones and Yes…
How does the most innovative guitarist of his generation spend his spare time? By writing masterful film scores and trying to reinvent how music sounds, it seems. Jonny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood soundtrack is performed at London’s Roundhouse on August 6 and 7, and here, in this piece from Uncut’s April 2011 issue (Take 167), Rob Young penetrates Greenwood’s studio lair and discovers, among other things, what Radiohead have been up to of late...
John Fogerty is out on an extensive tour of the US right now, so it seems a good time to dip into the archives and remind ourselves of this great feature from Uncut’s February 2012 issue (177). At the dawn of the ’70s, Creedence Clearwater Revival were the biggest band in the world – a brilliant and driven hit machine with deep roots in American tradition. By 1972, though, it was all over, and the ex-bandmates embarked on a bitter war that still continues, 40 years later.
I've been playing the new Jeff Tweedy album, "Sukierae", a good deal these past few weeks - or, I should say, the new Tweedy album, since these quietly wired tracks are, strictly speaking, collaborations between the Wilco man and his eldest son, Spencer. I'm slowly beginning to think it might be the best studio album he's been involved with since "A Ghost Is Born".
In this month's Uncut, I reviewed the deluxe edition of The The's Soul Mining, which has been reissued as a box set with additional material. I was fortunate enough to speak to Matt Johnson for a Q&A to run with the review. In the end, we ended up talking for about an hour, so I thought I'd post the full transcript of my interview here. I hope you enjoy it. I'll endeavour to post the review itself in the next week or so; better still, you can find it in the issue on sale now... (apologies for the shameless plug...)
It’s not a situation I could have predicted 20 years ago, I’ll admit, but there’s a point I reach quite often on Friday afternoons when all I really want to hear is The Grateful Dead. As default, I’ll cue up something from 1972 – the Wembley Empire Pool set from that year, say – mention it on Twitter, then receive a lot of static from my Dead friends who see me as something of a lightweight for clinging so conservatively to that year.
