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Jaimie Branch – Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War))

Ana Gavrilovska
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Jaimie Branch – Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War))

The contemporary jazz world was stunned by the untimely death of avant-garde trumpeter and composer Jaimie Branch when she passed away last August at the age of 39. Branch was fierce and thrilling, a trailblazer known for her uncompromising, politically infused jazz and distinct style of composition. Her work deftly occupied a zone of creative music that could just as easily be termed punk-jazz. She was a busy collaborator too, leaving her uniquely dynamic mark on a swath of albums in a variety of settings, most notably in the experimental electro-jazz duo Anteloper. But it’s her music with the Fly Or Die band that really propelled her to the position of one of contemporary jazz’s most compelling artists. Now, her final album with her main ensemble is ready to be heard by the rest of the world.

Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War)) consists of nine songs composed by Branch and then recorded in April 2022 with Fly Or Die (cellist Lester St Louis, bassist Jason Ajemian and drummer Chad Taylor) during her residency at the Bemis Centre for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska. When Branch died, the album was in a nearly completed state. Her family members, bandmates and other collaborators convened to make the final tweaks and add the finishing touches. What should have been the next step in Branch’s innovative career became a tragically beautiful final document that captured an artist cresting a peak.

Surprisingly lush and melodically expansive, the album opens with the electro-gospel “Aurora Rising”, clocking in just under two minutes before resolving precisely into the instantly catchy groove of “Borealis Dancing”, a track that sounds just like its title feels. With steady rhythmic grooves augmented by the sweet melancholy of strings, this song would be right at home on Joe Henderson’s 1974 album The Elements.

She may have been known most for her fiery trumpet, but Branch’s voice was just as vital to her composition and performance. She leaned into it on this album, bringing it front and centre on the incendiary “Burning Grey”. Her perceptive gaze is turned to our crumbling world, the words an exhortation not to forget to fight and urgent reminder that the future lives inside us. The music grooves and swings, tipping towards the sublime tension of cacophony that marks the best free jazz. “Burning Grey” is potent and electrifying, furiously reflective of the depth of love that powers a revolutionary spirit.

That mix of anger and love is just as clearly present on “Take Back The World”, a song that exemplifies Branch’s political point of view. Her voice is front and centre here too, a passionate howl that proves she could have easily led a hardcore band. But she takes the song in a different direction, manipulating her voice to create a psychedelic effect that feels like time dilating, stressing the urgency of her message.

One of the more unexpected (if you never saw Fly Or Die perform, that is) choices is “The Mountain”, a sparse reimagining of the Meat Puppets’ “Comin’ Down”. The original song is country-inflected grunge and the cover here preserves the country influence, stripping the music down even further to Ajemian’s upright bass paired with his and Branch’s voices, concluding with a trumpet solo.

The fun-loving side of Branch is present too, not just in the communal vibes that animate her music but also in the literal components. Look at the credits and you’ll notice she has one for “happy apple”, the Fisher Price toy with an apple face and chimes inside. You hear them most clearly at the end of the album on “World War ((Reprise))”, a sonic coda that sparkles and cries, drawing from all the elements that made Branch’s music soar, down to the playful possibility found within a child’s toy.

Fly Or Die… is many things, but above all it seems to be about the simple act of paying attention. In a political sense, sure, but also to the pleasure of connection, drawing a direct link between empowerment and enjoyment, action and emotion. It’s entirely fitting, then, that the album is dedicated to the lovers and the fighters who live to make the world a more compassionate and generous place. In a world without Branch, her voice reaches us from beyond with a simple but powerful plea to take care of the planet and each other.

Hiss Golden Messenger – Jump For Joy

Nick Hasted
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Hiss Golden Messenger – Jump For Joy

Hiss Golden Messenger’s music reflects faith in an open-armed notion of divinity. This is seen most clearly in a similarly open idea of rock’n’roll rooted in the American South’s soil and spirit, and deepened during Hiss lynchpin MC Taylor’s wonderstruck wanderings across America. But when all that was shut down by the pandemic, their ninth full album, 2021’s Quietly Blowing It, instead absorbed Taylor’s bewilderment, and his country’s chaos. “People often look at Hiss songs like beacons of hope,” he considers, “but those [Covid] years of uncertainty tested my capacity for it. Mentally I went about as low as I could go, and on Quietly Blowing It I can hear how low I was. In its tempo and type of self-reflection, it feels like the last record I can make like that.”

The Sounding Joy: Hiss Golden Messenger Meets Revelators On South Robinson Street (2021), with Spacebomb/Bonny Light Horseman bassist Cameron Ralston, was what Taylor dubs an “instrumental, grooving, cacophonous, free jazz record”, shaking off both his previous album’s heaviness and rigid musical boundaries. Going back on the road with Hiss in 2022, and feeling his returning audience’s hunger, he then began writing songs around a teenage alter ego, Michael Crow, reaching back as he did so to his original musical fervour.

Jump For Joy is the loose-limbed, exuberant result, a Hiss Golden Messenger record designed to close the gap with his recent slew of live albums, and let us dance our troubles away. It’s hardly Hiss Goes Disco, but Americana, too often neutered into an almost literary form, here resumes its bodily origins. Gospel, funk and soul, Memphis and New Orleans flit through highly personal Southern rock, played by the live Hiss band with easy generosity. Little Feat are enduring Taylor influences, exemplars, he says, in meshing “ferocious groove and writing that is smart and deep”. So this music rolls: guitars arrive on the title track like a helping hand, and slide-guitar on “The Wondering” slyly slips in with a wink.

“God, I’m only 16,” Taylor murmurs on “Jesus I’m Bored”, over the drums’ railway chug, heading steadily out of his teenage town. “I want to be something/Can you give me a sign?” The autobiography continues with “The Wondering”, as Michael Crow housebreaks and hunts experience, and Hammond organ shimmers. Here and in “Feeling Eternal”, “I Saw The New Day In The World” and the blinding light and cleansing rock of “Sunset On The Faders”’, there’s a sense of daily, cosmic wonder which the singer is innately part of.

“Woke up this morning, my God I’m feeling happy,” he declares like an anti-blues singer during “Shinbone”’s bright, blissful funk, further enquiring: “Taking chances… If you lose it all, can you love what’s left?” Continuing on from the Revelators album, Taylor is laying down weighty cares, and falling back into the flow of life. Songwriting itself is central to this change, as “The Wondering” pines for the simplest truth: “Let me write just one verse that doesn’t feel like persuasion…”

Taylor has observed a similar shift in perspective in peers across numerous spheres since the pandemic, a recalibrating of what really matters akin to a near-death experience. “I’ve spent decades choosing to put music first, missing weddings and my beloved grandmother’s funeral because I was on the road,” he states. “I’m just not going to be doing that any more.” Hiss Golden Messenger albums have always wrestled with faith, struggling to glean God in Taylor’s North Carolina home. Now one of his most lovely, nakedly autobiographical songs, “My Old Friends”, finds “something to believe in” in longtime compadres, as he returns from his troubadour trials to declare his love. The bass ambles, and slide and acoustic guitars make gossamer harmony, forging a melody that might have fallen off Harvest, or a Cat Stevens record. “My transgressions/May I forgive, the way I’ve been forgiven,” Taylor incidentally prays, pausing lyrically afterwards, as if waiting to be answered.

Jump For Joy is a panoramic, magical reverie on the sometimes hard gift of a life in American music. “I wanted to trace my life as a devotee of music, and as a wandering soul,” Taylor agrees. “And I am finding a lot of solace in this idea that I’m living the life that I dreamed about as a teenager – being footloose in America, and able to create poetic things.” In catastrophe’s slipstream, Hiss Golden Messenger have decided to count their blessings.

Uncut’s New Music Playlist for September 2023

Michael Bonner
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Uncut’s New Music Playlist for September 2023

You’ll have hopefully noticed by now that End Of The Road is on this weekend – Tom, Sam and Mark are on site covering the festival for Uncut – which promises a ton of great things. You can read today’s first EOTR report over here, where Wilco sound like they delivered another excellent headline set. Having seen them in Spain a few weeks ago – more on that in next month’s Uncut – I’m reminded, not for the first time, that they’re probably my favourite live band of the last 15 years or so.

But in the meantime, if you’re not going to End Of The Road, please take solace in our latest Playlist – the usual mix of new stuff including Ty, Devendra, Handsome Family, Andy Bell, Beirut and some lanquid, experimental soundscaping from Istanbul-born Berke Can Özcan in cahoots with our favourite Norwegian trumpet mastermind, Arve Henriksen

1
TY SEGALL
“Void”
[DRAG CITY]

2
JEFFREY MARTIN
“There Is A Treasure”
[LOOSE]

3
BEIRUT
“So Many Plans”
[POMPEII]

4
BERKE CAN ÖZCAN FEATURING ARVE HENRIKSEN & JONAH PARZEN-JOHNSON
“Snake Behind Valley”
[OMNI SOUND]

5
DEVENDRA BANHART
“Nun”
[MEXICAN SUMMER]

6
HENRY PARKER
“In The Valley”
[TOMPKINS SQUARE]

7
THE HANDSOME FAMILY
“The King Of Everything”
[LOOSE]

8
OTTO WILLBERG
“Reap What Thou Sow”
[BLACK TRUFFLE]

9
JEREMIAH CHU
“In Electric Time”
[INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM]

10
PYE CORNER AUDIO
“FtrTrx”
[self-released]

11
ISRAEL NASH
“Can’t Stop”
[LOOSE]

12
ROBERT FINLEY
“You Got It (And I Need It)”
[EASY EYE SOUND]

13
ANDY BELL & MASAL
“Hallogallo”
[SONIC CATHEDRAL]

14
THE MARY WALLOPERS
“The Blarney Stone”
[BC Records]

Wilco, Deerhoof: End Of The Road 2023 – Day 1

Mark Beaumont
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Wilco, Deerhoof: End Of The Road 2023 – Day 1

“This must be the largest audience we’ve ever played for,” grins Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier, peering out at End Of The Road’s sizeable early-doors crowd, dampened but not disheartened by Thursday’s insidious drizzle. Just the sort of meeting of minds that EOTR was made for. An band of possibly selective appeal – such are their disjointed songs of math-rock virtuosity, blasts of beastly riffs and delicate Björk-meets-Yoko vocals about death and onions – playing to an attentive crowd of sonic aficionados hungry for a challenge.

It’s what has, over its 17 years, made EOTR Britain’s most refined, exploratory and cultured festival; a place the devoted flock to whatever the line-up, an arthouse Glastonbury. And Deerhoof, like Khruangbin last year, act as a means to become re-accustomed to its values.

Stretches of angular post-rock and looping, hypnotic chorus-pedal guitar lines drift from the stage, stilted and chopped to the degree that they often trip over themselves and land face first in a drum solo (occasionally accompanied by a bout of death-themed poetry). Singer Satomi Matsuzaki does can-can kicks in a green party dress, singing about seeing too many seagulls and growing tomatoes from dead onions. At points they go full Townshend, invent crank metal chanson (“L’Amour Stories”), or just muck about for a laugh. As they segue their math-rock version of the Knight Rider theme into Eddie Grant’s “Electric Avenue”, anyone following along online might assume the wags have got at Setlist.fm again.

It’s been a year of boutique festivals shooting their bolt early – Spiritualized headlined the Thursday night of Green Man, for example – and EOTR wholeheartedly joins in. Wilco top the first night’s limited bill, with Jeff Tweedy in grateful mood, the band quicksilver of motion. Into the gentle Americana of “Handshake Drugs” swoop squealing, hawk-like guitars; over the indie rock regret of “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” grows an avant-garde clatter and clamour reflecting the turmoil of the vindictive mind.

Slow-burn alt-country ventures into the cosmic are a speciality. “Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull” moves from bristling folk self-flagellation – Tweedy lyrically beating himself with sticks and stabbing himself with a penknife – into a scorching segment that could be a lap around the afterlife. The languid “Impossible Germany” becomes a storm in Austin. The gorgeous country folk of “Misunderstood” builds to a chest-pounding finale, Tweedy bawling “Nothing! Nothing!” in anguished rock staccato. A howl from the precipice.

After so much atmosphere-building, it’s refreshing when the set shifts into a simpler lane, “Jesus, Etc” sinking into its sweet country pop melody and the beat pop of “Dawned On Me” coming on like alt-country’s answer to – oh yes – “Alright” by Supergrass. “Gonna play some country music for you,” Tweedy says, strapping on an acoustic guitar for the honky-tonk-ish “Falling Apart (Right Now)”, “that what you’ve been waiting for?” If it is, we’re only briefly indulged: before long, “Shot In The Arm” is making chemtrails across the Nashville skyline. Consider EOTR 2023’s gates not so much open as comprehensively breached.

We’re off to End Of The Road Festival 2023

Michael Bonner
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We’re off to End Of The Road Festival 2023

Bags packed, toothbrush ready, weather forecast checked… and we’re off to this year’s End Of The Road festival.

You can read our daily coverage of the festival on this site throughout this weekend. As well as headliners like Wilco and Angel Olsen, we’ll be digging The Mary Wallopers, Arooj Aftab, Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, Joan Shelley, Sam Burton and a host more.

As well as reporting from around the festival, we’re also holding the Uncut Q&As each day, where Tom Pinnock will be chatting to some very special guests on the Talking Heads stage:

Angeline Morrison: Talking Heads, Friday, 16:00 – 16:45

75 Dollar Bill: Talking Heads, Saturday, 16:00 – 16:45

King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard: Talking Heads, Sunday, 16:00 – 16:45

All in all, it’s a very busy weekend for Uncut and we can’t wait for the gates to open.

See you down the front!

Ultimate Music Guide Definitive Edition: Queen

John Robinson
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Ultimate Music Guide Definitive Edition: Queen

“It’s a huge honour!”

That’s what Queen’s Brian May says about our latest issue in his special new introduction to the magazine – and who are we to argue with a man with all those qualifications?

It’s a very special Ultimate Music Guide that we’ve got for you in a couple of weeks’ time. As the surviving bandmembers get ready for the USA/Japan leg of their tour, and Freddie Mercury’s personal effects are auctioned in London, we present the Definitive 172-page guide to… Queen!

It should go without saying that this is the only place to find our usual top-quality blend of classic interviews and in-depth new reviews. In the former, Freddie is on form throughout (“Darling, I’m too good…”), confronting a music press which is often rude, occasionally bordering on hostile about what he and the band does – even as the public adore it. In the latter, Uncut’s squadron of foot-stomping rockers get stuck into exactly what it is that makes Queen Queen.

In this 172-page definitive edition, however, you’ll find the magazine going all out, piling on the quality like Queen stacking harmonies. Mama mia! Yes, that really is a collectable lenticular cover. The best 30 Queen songs? Bismillah! Here you’ll find Roger Taylor, Brian May and Adam Lambert picking their favourites, from big hits to fan favourites – and giving the lowdown on how they were made and why they still play them now. It’s a great read but I’m afraid that, no, they can’t tell you what “Bicycle Race” is all about.

But don’t stop us now. Before you can even think “huge pink tricycle”, we can direct you to our entertaining new interview with Adam Lambert, who tells us about his journey from American Idol to fronting the band, and guides us through the preparation and responsibility of bringing Queen + Adam Lambert to the stage in 2023. Motorcycles. Heated debates. And no milk! It’s all here. Brian May also drops in again for a word about his part in the performance and the presentation: “At one point I appear to be on top of an asteroid…”

If there’s one thing Queen know about, it’s a big finish. And the same is true with us: the publication’s not over until the exclusive eight-page chronology unfolds. Here we present the Six Ages Of Queen, from early days to afterlife, via the “Red Special”, the Bohemian Rhapsody video, the “Under Pressure” sessions, Live Aid and more…

No! You will not let it go. Pre-order your exclusive lenticular edition here:

Pink Floyd to release standalone remaster of Dark Side Of The Moon

Michael Bonner
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Pink Floyd to release standalone remaster of Dark Side Of The Moon

Pink Floyd are to release a standalone remaster of their Dark Side Of The Moon album on October 13.

This edition first appeared earlier this year in the Dark Side 50th anniversary box. It’ll now be released on CD, LP and Blu-ray. The Blu-ray contains the Dolby Atmos and a 5.1 Surround mix as well as the remastered Stereo version. The package comes with commemorative postcards, stickers and a 24-page booklet.

The Floyd album is in shops a week after Roger Waters‘ reimagining of Dark Side is released, on October 6.

As part of the general Dark Side 50th anniversary celebrations, the Floyd have also announced a competition to create animated music videos for any of the 10 songs on the album. Animators can enter up to 10 videos, one per song on the album. A winner will be selected from a panel of experts which will include Nick Mason and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell. The deadline for submissions is November 30, 2023. To enter and for more information go to https://www.pinkfloyd.com/competition/

Soft Cell announce super deluxe Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret

Michael Bonner
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Soft Cell announce super deluxe Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret

Soft Cell are releasing an expanded edition of their 1981 debut, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.

It will now land as a 6-CD 98-track super deluxe edition featuring 40 unreleased tracks. You can hear “Frustration (Extended Version)” below.

It’s released by Mercury-EMI / UMR on October 20 and you can pre-order it here.

CD1: Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret: 2023 Remaster + Singles, B-Sides & Edits
Frustration 04:12
Tainted Love 02:35
Seedy Films 05:05
Youth 03:21
Sex Dwarf 05:47
Entertain Me 03:00
Chips On My Shoulder 04:06
Bedsitter 03:36
Secret Life 03:37
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye 05:34
Memorabilia (Single Version) 04:49
A Man Could Get Lost (Single Version) 03:17
Persuasion (Edit of 12” Single B-Side) 03:36 *
Where Did Our Love Go? (Single B-Side) 03:14
Facility Girls (Single B-Side) 02:23
Fun City (Edit of 12” Single B-Side) 04:24
Torch (Single Version) 04:08
Insecure Me (Single B-Side) 04:40
What! (Single Version) 02:51
…So (Single B-Side) 03:49

CD2: Non-Stop Extended Cabaret: Full-Length Versions & New Remixes
Frustration (Extended Version) 06:02 *
Tainted Love (2021 10″ Extended Version) 05:05
Seedy Films (2023 Extended Version) 05:16 *
Youth (2018 ‘Wasted On The Young’ Extended Version) 05:41
Sex Dwarf (2023 Extended Version) 05:45 *
Entertain Me (2023 Extended Version) 06:05 *
Chips On My Shoulder (2018 Extended Version) 06:16
Bedsitter (1981 Original 12” Mix) 07:52
Secret Life (2018 Extended Version) 05:20
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (2018 Dave Ball ‘Lateral Mix’) 07:07
A Man Could Get Lost (2023 Extended Version) 05:08 *
Memorabilia (Daniel Miller 2023 Remix) 05:16
Memorabilia (The Hacker 2023 Remix) 06:37

CD3: Non-Stop Exotic Cabaret: Curios, Rarities, Sessions & Alternate Mixes
Frustration (Original ‘Mutant Moments’ Version) 03:32
Tainted Love (New 2023 Version) 03:01 *
Seedy Films (Richard X Remix) 05:20
Youth (Dave Ball ‘Warhol Funeral’ Mix) 03:05 *
Sex Dwarf (Live On BBC ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ 4th February 1982) 05:16
Entertain Me (Richard Skinner Session, Radio 1, 26th July 1981) 03:45
Chips On My Shoulder (Live From ‘The Oxford Road Show’ 22nd January 1982) 03:28 *
Bedsitter ((Richard Skinner Session, Radio 1, 26th July 1981) 03:34
Secret Life (George Demure Remix) 05:10
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (Live From ‘The Oxford Road Show’ 22nd January 1982) 04:33 *
A Man Could Get Lost (Live at Leeds Warehouse, 16th July 2018) 03:30 *
Torch (Live from ‘Top Of The Pops 2’, 28th January 2002) 04:05 *
Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go (US Radio Edit) 04:01 *
Seedy Films (Richard Skinner Session, Radio 1, 26th July 1981) 03:58
Youth (Live On BBC ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ 4th February 1982) 03:15 *
Chips On My Shoulder (Richard Skinner Session, Radio 1, 26th July 1981) 04:20
Tainted Love (Live from ‘Top Of The Pops’ 1981 Reunion, 2001) 03:14 *
Bedsitter (‘Flexipop’ Version) 03:45 *
Memorabilia (2023 Dub Mix) 5:44 *
Tainted Love (Aborted 1981 Studio Take) 1:07 *

CD4: Non-Stop Instrumental Cabaret: Instrumentals & Bonus Demos
Frustration (Instrumental) 04:15 *
Tainted Love (Instrumental) 03:01 *
Seedy Films (Instrumental) 05:10 *
Youth (Instrumental) 03:25 *
Sex Dwarf (Instrumental) 05:15 *
Entertain Me (Instrumental) 02:57 *
Chips On My Shoulder (Instrumental) 04:09 *
Bedsitter (Instrumental) 03:39 *
Secret Life (Instrumental) 04:03 *
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (Single B-Side Instrumental) 03:54
A Man Could Get Lost (Original Daniel Miller Instrumental Version) 03:30 *
Torch (Instrumental) 04:12 *
What! (Instrumental) 03:11 *
Insecure Me (Instrumental) 03:12 *
Tainted Love (Original 1981 Daniel Miller Demo) 02:47
Seedy Films (Original 1981 Demo) 04:02 *
Sex Dwarf (Original 1981 Demo) 06:53 *
Chips On My Shoulder (Original Demo) 03:50 *
Secret Life (Original 1981 Demo) 03:39 *
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (Original 1981 Demo) 04:39 *

CD5: Non-Stop Original Cabaret: The 1981 / 1982 12” Mixes & B Sides
Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go? (Original 12″ Version) 08:57
Memorabilia (Original 12″ Version) 07:47
Torch (Original 12″ Version) 08:28
What! (Original 12″ Version) 06:09
Tainted Dub (Original Version) 09:14
Persuasion (Original 12″ Version) 07:35
Facility Girls (Original 12″ Version) 07:16
Fun City (Original Version) 07:33
Insecure Me (Original 12″ Version) 08:16
…So (Original 12″ Version) 08:29

CD6: Non-Stop Intimate Cabaret: Live In Concert, London 2021 & 2018
Frustration (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Tainted Love (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Seedy Films (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Youth (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Sex Dwarf (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Entertain Me (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Chips On My Shoulder (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Bedsitter (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Secret Life (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Torch (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Memorabilia (Live at Eventim Apollo London, November 2021)
Insecure Me (Live at 02 Arena London, 30 September 2018
What! (Live at 02 Arena London, 30 September 2018
Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go? (Live at 02 Arena London, 30 September 2018

Neil Young reveals new Crazy Horse guitarist

Michael Bonner
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Neil Young reveals new Crazy Horse guitarist

Neil Young has revealed Nils Lofgren‘s replacement in Crazy Horse for two shows on September 20 and 21.

The shows are part of a benefit to mark the 50th anniversary of The Roxy in Los Angeles – which Young opened with the Santa Monica Flyers. Their shows were recorded and released as the 2018 live album, Roxy: Tonight’s the Night Live.

As Lofgren will be playing with Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band for the Roxy’s 50th anniversary shows, Young has drafted in Micah Nelson. Nelson has already played substantially with Young, as part of the Neil Young + Promise Of The Real line-up that toured between 2014 and 2019.

Young confirmed the news on his archives website.

With Springsteen touring until the end of September and then from November to December, it’s possible Nelson will continue to deputise for Lofgren should further Crazy Horse dates emerge…

Wiltshire joy!

Sam Richards
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Wiltshire joy!

We’ve already got our bags packed in anticipation of this weekend’s End Of The Road Festival. While we can’t wait to see old favourites like Wilco, King Gizzard, Panda Bear & Sonic Boom and Cass McCombs, here’s End Of The Road co-founder Simon Taffe’s six picks to seek out at this year’s festival… and don’t forget you can read the full line-up here.

FLOODLIGHTS
It’s perfect indie-pop from Australia: really catchy songs, great-sounding vocals. I don’t usually like music like that, but they make it work. There’s an honesty to their songwriting that feels very personal. They’re one of the new bands I got most excited about last year, and we booked them to come over before they were signed. I think this will be their first UK trip.

INFINITY KNIVES & BRIAN ENNALS
They made my album of the year last year [King Cobra]. It’s bedroom hip-hop but it sounds big, and the lyrics are amazing – just so funny and interesting. Honestly, I think it’s up there with Kendrick Lamar’s first couple of records. The album has a lot of variation, from late-’80s/early-’90s hip-hop to soul and gospel, and some of it even sounds like Anohni! I’m excited to see where they go. I feel like they’re going to write a big hit.

CHARLOTTE CORNFIELD
She just gets better and better with every record. There’s something so personal and intimate about her songwriting which you can relate to, a bit like a female Jonathan Richman. Some of it reminds me of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, or The Beatles’ classic songwriting. There’s a great song on her latest album [] about going to see a Magnetic Fields gig. She’s a real storyteller.

JOHN FRANCIS FLYNN
I saw him on The Boat stage last year and he really blew me away, so I went up to him straight away and he became the first act booked for this year. I guess he’s in that same world as Lankum. It’s almost as if Portishead were doing Irish folk music – he has these trancey, drone elements, but it really works with the traditional Irish sound. He’s made it his own in a very original way.

75 DOLLAR BILL
They were booked to play before the pandemic, and we’ve finally got them playing this year down at The Boat. It’s a massive sound that they somehow create, just the two of them. I guess it reminds me of post-rock bands like Tortoise, but even more uplifting: sometimes it’s jazz, sometimes it’s quite folky, sometimes it’s metal! And it’s really upbeat, almost like dance music. I loved the records, but I didn’t realise how danceable they could be until I saw them live.

THE MARY WALLOPERS
This is a band that I shouldn’t really like, but I love them, they’re infectious. Obviously, they remind me of The Pogues – it’s traditional Irish folk music played by a bunch of punks with mullets. It’s just so uplifting, I think it’ll be an amazing live show. I saw them play twice at Glastonbury and it was crazy. Even in the tiny Crow’s Nest, people were smashing into each other and crowd-surfing. They bring the party.

End Of The Road 2023 takes place at Larmer Tree Gardens near Salisbury on August 31 – September 1. To get you in the mood for this year’s festival, why not remind yourselves of the highlights from last year’s edition…

Hear Ty Segall’s new track, “Void”

Michael Bonner
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Hear Ty Segall’s new track, “Void”

Ty Segall has released a new track, “Void“. Clocking in at almost seven minutes, it’s his first new material since last year’s Hello Hi album.

You can watch the video – directed by Ty and Denée Segall – below.

The track is available to buy on Segall’s Bandcamp page.

Segall has also announced a slew of live dates in the States for next year.

Wednesday, September 6 – Topanga Canyon, CA @ Theatricum Botanicum*
Thursday, September 7 – Topanga Canyon, CA @ Theatricum Botanicum*
Thursday, October 5 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom^
Friday, October 6 – Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theatre^
Saturday, October 7 – Indianapolis, IN @ Deluxe at Old National Centre^
Thursday, October 26 – Austin, TX @ LEVITATION
Friday, November 10 – Jersey City, NJ @ White Eagle Hall – Solo Acoustic
Saturday, November 11 – Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom – Solo Acoustic
Tuesday, February 20 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
Wednesday, February 21 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
Saturday, February 24 – Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up
Friday, April 19 – Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole
Saturday, April 20 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sister Bar
Tuesday, April 23 – Jackson, MS @ Duling Hall
Wednesday, April 24 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl
Friday, April 26 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
Saturday, April 27 – Washington, DC @ Atlantis
Sunday, April 28 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
Monday, April 29 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall
Wednesday, May 1 – Boston, MA @ Royale
Thursday, May 2 – Montreal, QC @ Club Soda
Friday, May 3 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall
Sunday, May 5 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom
Monday, May 6 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
Tuesday, May 7 – Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room
Thursday, May 9 – Englewood, CO @ Gothic Theatre
Saturday, May 11 – Sacramento, CA @ Harlow’s

* Acoustic set w/ The Freedom Band
^ w/ Axis: Sova

Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain

Peter Watts
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Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain

Shortly before Judee Sill died prematurely in her LA apartment in 1979, she left an entry in a journal. Forty-five years later, that journal was entrusted by Sill’s estate to Buck Meek after he appeared in a documentary about the singer. He turned this set of unfinished lyrics dedicated to Sill’s boyfriend and his daughter into “The Rainbow”, the final song on his third solo album. Lyrically, “The Rainbow” is a slender affair, a series of abstract, rhetorical questions that Meek grafts to a sweet, Sill-like folk setting. But the project shows the level of trust now afforded to Meek as a songwriter and interpreter thanks to his work with Big Thief as sympathetic collaborator to Adrienne Lenker. Meek clearly enjoys writing partnerships, and in the absence of Lenker he turns on Haunted Mountain to Jolie Holland, who co-writes five of the 11 songs, including the album’s three stand-outs – the title track, “Paradise” and “Lullabies”.

Although Haunted Mountain was recorded by much the same personnel as Meek’s previous solo album, 2021’s Two Saviors, it’s a very different record. That one was recorded in a house in New Orleans in a week, a quick and lo-fi approach that suited songs about loss and heartbreak. Haunted Mountain is largely about love of various kinds, and Meek and producer Mat Davidson (The Low Anthem/Twain) took the band to Sonic Ranch in Texas and gave the record a much more expansive, full-sounding presentation, a resounding and confident tone that matches these optimistic and often unfiltered emotions.

The one thing undercutting that is Meek’s voice, which, with striking nominative determinism, is faltering and a little hesitant, with a high-pitched country edge that recalls Slim Whitman via Hank Williams. On songs like the Neil Young-inspired “Cyclades” – with rollicking refrain “too many stories to remember”, this adds an intriguing edge, as if Meek isn’t entirely sure about what he is singing, lacking confidence not so much in the sentiment but more in himself for expressing it. On “Paradise”, he delivers a beautiful song entirely about the magic of looking in a lover’s eyes; the vocal catch accentuates the mood, that of somebody overcome by the hold another person has over them. “Where You’re Coming From” sees Meek sing of a friendship which holds no doubts, the crunching guitar providing the underlying note of confidence and happiness. A similar theme is covered on the sparkling “Didn’t Know You Then”, about falling in love, no ifs, no buts, no caveats – “I knew the moment that I saw you/That my life would never be the same”. There is much beauty in the simplicity and unfettered honesty of these statements of love.

Meek also explores Big Thief-style territory of greater ambiguity. The opening song, “Mood Ring”, is full of treated effects, delays and echoes that appear to be designed to unsettle, while country lament “Lagrimas” (Spanish for ‘tears’) is about a mysterious necromancer who sends a message to the dead on the wings of a bird. On “Secret Side”, he admits “I’ll never know the secret side of you”, while the Flaming Lips-style “Undae Dunes” boasts a slightly off-kilter, wild guitar and general sense of psychedelia that very much suits an enjoyably weird song about, maybe, space.

The two songs that really stick in the brain are “Haunted Mountain” and “Lullabies”. The first was largely written by Holland then finished by Meek, a song about the majestic appeal of nature and place with a hint of death. It’s set to a melody that rolls and yearns, with some lovely pedal steel by Davidson, and is as close to anthemic as Buck Meek is likely to get, recalling artists such as Phosphorescent or Jason Isbell. “Lullabies” is a wonderful track about the bond between mother and daughter. It’s beautifully observed by Meek, who writes with subtlety and sensitivity about childbirth – a subject many men would actively avoid, or not even consider worth exploring. In this case, Meek used Holland as more of a sounding board, and she added some colour but otherwise gave it the seal of feminine approval. It is, like much of Haunted Mountain, audacious in an understated way. Meek but not mild.

Call The Cosmos!

Sam Richards
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Call The Cosmos!

“I really enjoyed meself,” says Shaun Ryder of Mantra Of The Cosmos’s rabble-rousing debut show at The Box in London in June. “I mean, a bunch of 60-year-olds forming a new band’s gotta be punk, annit?” To be fair, drummer Zak Starkey – the band’s instigator – and guitarist Andy Bell are still very much in their fifties, but the point stands: they all seem to be revelling in this little sabbatical from their more famous bands, blasting off together into the great unknown.

“It’s really good fun being with those guys,” confirms Bell. “Whether we’re making music or just sitting around chatting, they’re very entertaining people. The added element of chaos for me is Bez. At one point [during the gig] he dragged me to the front of the stage and suddenly I found myself pulling some guitar hero moves! He brought me out of my shell a little bit.”

It was Starkey who originally floated the idea of a “21st century Hawkwind”, writing the band’s debut single “Gorilla Guerilla” with his wife Sshh. He reveals that, for the position of frontman, Ryder was on a shortlist of one. “I knew that the only singer and poet [who’s] psychedelic and different enough would be Shaun. If he hadn’t’ve said ‘Yeah’, I don’t think I would have taken it any further. Everyone’s calling it a supergroup, but that was never the aim. The aim was to just be different and fantastic.”

Bell describes his role in the band as “creating an atmosphere”, citing Public Image Limited and dub reggae as sonic touchstones. “He’s a psychedelic soundscape genius,” enthuses Starkey. “I really didn’t want anyone who does riffs. There’s a lot of songs with one fucking chord in. There aren’t any rules and anything can go anywhere.”

Ryder, too, has free rein to improvise: “We just press record and I get to throw a shitload of ideas down,” he grins. Lyrical themes are “whatever floats me boat at the time.” One song is based entirely on an article from a 1973 edition of NME he found in Starkey’s studio. Others are more topical, threatening to “put the boot in to Putin” – “It started off worse than that, but we thought ‘Let’s give this band a chance before we all get poisoned’” – or rhyming “laughing gas” with “working class”, prompted by a discovery of nitrous oxide canisters in his teenage son’s bedroom. How does a man with Ryder’s reputation for debauchery approach the ‘drugs chat’? “Me two youngest are 14 and 15 so they’re going through that stage of experimenting. I’m not gonna condone it, but I certainly understand. We just have to educate them, really. We don’t smoke in the house, we don’t have alcohol in the house, we don’t have fuckin’ laughing gas in the house! But the best thing is to just leave it to their mother…”

Mantra Of The Cosmos played The Box as a four-piece, but at Glastonbury they expanded to include Brix Smith on bass. “Another 60-year-old!” cackles Ryder. “It’s not ‘life begins at 40’ any more, it’s life ‘begins at 60’. I’m a lot busier now than I ever used to be.” As well as Mantra Of The Cosmos, he’s playing shows with Happy Mondays throughout the summer and has just recorded a new Black Grape album for release in the autumn. “I’ve finally worked out that life is a lot easier without being off your tits.”

Mantra Of The Cosmos’s latest single, “X (Wot You Sayin?)”, is out now on BMG. Watch the video below:

We’re New Here – Horse Lords

Tyler Wilcox
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We’re New Here – Horse Lords

Their official bio still says they’re a “band from Baltimore”, but three out of four Horse Lords currently live in Germany. Andrew Bernstein (saxophone), Max Eilbacher (bass/electronics) and Owen Gardner (guitar) all decamped a few years ago, leaving drummer Sam Haberman as the sole Stateside member. “It wasn’t part of some big strategy,” Bernstein insists. “But it started to make sense for the three of us, and it’s worked out well so far.”

Whatever the reasoning, Horse Lords fit into the long and distinguished lineage of avant-garde American artists finding a more welcoming response across the pond. “Moving to Europe has had a big effect on the resources available to us,” says Gardner. “In Berlin, experimental music is all around you – it’s almost unfair to compare it to other places. There’s a real appetite for challenging music and huge levels of support for it here, at least relative to the US.”

Horse Lords’ music can certainly be challenging – the group draw from a deep well of minimalism, serial composition, free jazz and polyrhythmic folk music. But don’t let that scare you away. As shown on their masterful 2022 LP Comradely Objects, the band are as inviting (and often as tuneful) as they are adventurous. Listeners may hear echoes of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, Devo or This Heat in the album’s seductive grooves and pleasingly eccentric textures. It begs the question: do Horse Lords consider themselves, when all is said and done, a rock band?

“I’ve begun trying to push ‘progressive rock’ as the genre that we play,” Gardner laughs. “But that might be a little misleading. We certainly use rock instrumentation and there are rock gestures in our music. The DNA of the band is based in rock, but it’s also not where we’re coming from at the same time. For example, everyone in a rock band kind of knows how a song goes once one part is in place. That’s not true in Horse Lords. We have to think about everything in a different way.”

“Extra-musically, we operate as a rock band – or a punk band, more specifically,” offers Bernstein. “We’ve had a pretty DIY ethos, booking our own tours and all of that, just by necessity for most of the band’s history. That’s the world we came up in. If you want to play music with your friends, you form a band and play in basements.”

Horse Lords may be new to Europe, but they’re far from a new band; they formed as a trio in 2010, with Bernstein joining the ranks soon after. “In the Baltimore scene at the time, it wasn’t uncommon for bands to start up, play one show and then the people involved would move on,” Gardner says. “For some reason, with Horse Lords, we started playing shows and writing songs and it just never stopped. There were a lot of commonalities between us and we kind of built this musical language together.”

Part of that shared language is explicitly political – or at least as political as an instrumental band can get. “That might not be the overt aim,” muses Bernstein. “We’re trying to make things that sound interesting to us, first and foremost. But we’re also hoping that the music and the way we operate spurs the listener to think differently. Every act is political, and our decisions might make someone reconsider how they make music or how they go about their lives.”

Horse Lords play Studio 9294, London (Aug 31), End Of The Road festival, Dorset (Sept 1) and Supersonic Festival, Birmingham (Sept 2)

Mellow Candle – Swaddling Songs

Rob Young
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Mellow Candle – Swaddling Songs

Along with Vashti Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day and Comus’s First Utterance, Swaddling Songs by Mellow Candle was one of those lost, cult LPs whose slow rediscovery helped to spark a renewed interest in the British and Irish psychedelic folk, around 25 years ago. While its potion of meadows, myth and magic still presses plenty of the right folk-rock buttons today, the band avoided too many overt Celtic tinges. It’s an album that can come out swinging capably hard as well as veiling itself with the odd dusky ballad. Anyone familiar with albums by Sandy Denny, Fotheringay and John & Beverley Martyn from the same era will find themselves on safe ground in its 12 tracks.

1971, when most of these songs were written, is the zenith of this bulge in folk music, the year when some of the best music was made in the British Isles, but also when the glut began to pile up and wither in a declining economy. Many of the bands you might associate with the pagan pastoralia of Mellow Candle – Comus, Trees, Forest, The Woods Band, Spirogyra, Heron and others – came and went at the same time with few albums left among the mulch.

The title, Swaddling Songs, promises a music to wrap yourself in. Or perhaps it was a music that the two women at the group’s centre, Clodagh Simonds and Alison O’Donnell, desired to be swaddled in. Because if the album has a story, it’s a typical one for the period and the generation, of wanting to move away from the stifling city and find freedom, enlightenment and escape out in the countryside, in a natural realm that is not free of strangeness and danger: wandering brigands, birds of ill omen, faery creatures, coffins and crows.

But at what point does protective swaddling tip over into overprotective suffocation? “Reverend Sisters”, slower, brooding and reflective, stands apart from the other tracks. It harks back to the girls’ younger days at the Holy Child Convent School in Dublin, where they met and began making music. The nuns who taught them, they recall, summoned them to their office to educate them that life is not a dream, and wisdom will come with the years. The song’s retort to the sisters is that wisdom did come, but not the kind they had in mind. “Now the veils are lifted from my eyes and I can see,” it concludes. The inclusion of this backstory gives the album a mature footing, their childhood a yardstick by which to measure the broader horizons they now aim at.

Simonds and O’Donnell stated making music together in 1963, at the age of 10, and took the name Mellow Candle a couple of years later. 1967 found the duo recording a demo which made its way – after receiving airplay on Radio Luxembourg – to the ears of a talent scout for the actor David Hemmings, who was then looking to break into music production. He invited them to London, where they recorded two songs with an orchestra. Simon Napier-Bell put them out as a single in August 1968, but it didn’t make much of a dent and the friends parted company. Three years on, in the kernel of Britain’s psych-folk Indian summer, they gave it another go. The girlish whimsy had given way to a more windswept vibe. O’Donnell brought David Williams, the guitarist in another band she’d been playing with. Initial rehearsals and writing sessions happened in the suitably rural stables at the home of Simonds’s parents’ house. John Peel hosted the Wexford Festival of Living Music, where the Candle were on the bill, and A&R man/future Chiswick/Ace Records founder Ted Carroll, then managing Thin Lizzy, among others, took them under his wing. (He arranged for Simonds to play keyboards and Mellotron on Lizzy’s second album, Shades Of A Blue Orphanage.) Eventually after a few false starts, including a demo recorded with Caravan’s drummer Richard Coughlan, new members Frank Boylan (bass) and William Murray (drums) were hired. December 1971 found them at Tollington Park Studios in North London, where they recorded Swaddling Songs in a few days. It was released on Deram, the experimental/progressive arm of Decca Records.

The rest of the scenarios are set out in the fields and moors, the perennial landscape of legend in these isles. “Heaven Heath” opens the record with a harpsichord waltz and a romantic vignette, in an Emily Bronte/Christine Rossetti mode, of a woman, a gravestone and a dead child. “Sheep Season” plays out the age-old enmity between shepherd and wolf, while the swaggering, Jefferson Airplane-ish “The Poet And The Witch” opens with an atmospheric snatch of taped tide and gulls. Like many of Mellow Candle’s songs, it’s a stream-of-consciousness mulch of folk-myth archetypes, watered by a diet of romantic lyrical ballads and the visionary-pastoral idealism of WB Yeats. It’s also a great example of the two women’s powerful combined vocals. The next, “Messenger Birds”, showcases O’Donnell’s soaring solo voice in a song that sails a similar course to where Sandy Denny was heading at exactly the same time on The North Star Grassman and the Ravens.

Elsewhere, on “Vile Excesses” and the heavy “Lonely Man”, the Candle lock into their most appealing rhythmic grooves and suggest – in the absence of live tapes – their potential as a jam band, with some strong striding piano from Simonds and twanging electric guitar performance from Williams.

For Mellow Candle, the wilderness offered an enchanted antidote to the crushing boredom of city life. The last track contains just two lines of text, as well as wordless chants: “I know the Dublin pavements/Will be boulders on my grave”. Neither one of Candle’s founders allowed the rocks to gather, even though the band, broke and unnoticed, couldn’t struggle on much longer after the album’s release. They have each enjoyed fascinating, self-driven musical careers in the decades since. Clodagh Simonds was employed as Richard Branson’s PA at Virgin Records, and made guest vocal appearances on Mike Oldfield’s organic ambient LPs Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn. After residing in South Africa for many years she returned and in 2005 formed experimental folk band Fovea Hex. For Alison O’Donnell the 1970s involved being a member of folk band Flibbertigibbett, but in more recent times she has joined forces with Steven Collins’s alternative folk collective The Owl Service, formed her own unit United Bible Studies, and in 2022 released a solo folk album Hark The Voice That Sings For All. If anything remains of the Mellow Candle era in Fovea Hex and UBS, it’s the sense of openness to the moment, the musical fluidity and the focus on atmospheric texture. Above all, they have finally affirmed that it is possible to thrive on making an uncompromised music far away from anything perceived as the mainstream.

End Of The Road extra! Slowdive interviewed: “The destination was never really discussed or known”

Piers Martin
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End Of The Road extra! Slowdive interviewed: “The destination was never really discussed or known”

Ahead of their main slot at tonight’s End Of The Road Festival, Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell and Christian Savill take us through the creation of Slowdive‘s Everything Is Alive, the influence of The Cure and unlikely meetings in Stateside car parks.

Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

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How did this album come about?
Rachel Goswell: We were due to go in to the studio in April 2020, but Covid happened. We had six weeks booked and Neil had been working on his ideas. They were a load of electronic ideas for a solo record, but we were like, ‘Oh we should do another record.’ So he brought all that stuff to us to sift through, to choose the tracks or the ideas we wanted to work on. That got delayed until October 2020 when we finally were able to get together in the studio.

Christian Savill: We finished touring in 2018 and during Covid it often felt like, are we ever going to do anything as a band ever again? So when this record started, it was a nice feeling to all be together again.

Neil Halstead: I’d been working on a lot of electronic music prior to 2019, on my own, at my studio, with no real outlet for it. When the band started talking about working on a new record, I took a bunch of these fairly minimal tracks and started repurposing them for Slowdive. It seemed like an interesting way to start the process. I had about 40 ideas that I sent through to the band and it’s from this pot that most of the record emerged.

Goswell: It’s a culmination of three years’ work are our involvement, as in everyone apart from Neil, was regrouping in studios and in between that, Neil would take stuff away and be tinkering, and would continue to tinker. But it kind of got to the point where he was just so far down rabbit holes trying to do mixes that, you know, we needed to get a different pair of ears in outside of us, and, that’s where Shawn Everett came in to do some of the mixes.

What did you do with this album that you hadn’t done before?
Halstead: Starting the record in a way we hadn’t worked before was a way of pushing Slowdive to take a different journey – the destination was never really discussed or known. As a band, we all have different ideas about where we might end up and part of the nice thing about the collaborative process is that it opens the process up and keeps it fresh and hopefully you surprise yourself too.

Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

Who came up with “Kisses”?
Goswell: One day Neil casually said, ‘I’ve got this song here.’ And we were like, whoa, that’s a great tune!

Halstead: I demoed this song really early in the process and it sort of sat there while we worked on lots of other stuff. Eventually we recorded it but couldn’t really decide on a direction – we ended up with a whole bunch of different versions, with big guitars, no guitars, electro, super indie, lo-fi, hi-fi… There’s a great sort of Kraftwerky version actually, but we kept coming back to the demo, which is essentially the ‘pop’ version which was sort of complete but I think scared me at least because it felt too pop. But that ended up being the way we went. We threw a few bits of the other versions in for good measure. For the video – directed by Noel Paul – we talked about it having a Wong Kar-wai (i)Fallen Angels(i) vibe, which is a film I love. He was keen to use Naples as a backdrop and took it from there. I love what Noel did, and the kids he got in the video are so cool. It’s probably my favourite Slowdive video.

Goswell: The video that Noel did is just brilliant. We had a few treatments for the video come in from various people, but he seemed to capture the mood. And he did this little video introducing himself and saying he’d been a Slowdive fan for years and what he wanted to do in the video. I love how it turned out. It is by far my favourite Slowdive video.

Savill: They had to delay the filming of it, because they had it all planned and then Napoli won Serie A so it was just chaos and they couldn’t film it.

“Andalucia Plays” has a touch of The Cure’s “Faith” to it – have you noticed that?
Goswell: Yeah. That’s fair comment. There was definitely the Cure playing in the studio.

And there’s a kind of Disintegration-style heaviness about the album too, wouldn’t you say?
Goswell: Yes.

Savill: Yes, most definitely. Not going to deny that.

Goswell: So many references. I mean, Nick, our bass player, he only really listens to the Cure, doesn’t he?

Savill: They’re his favourite band of all time.

Does working with electronics help you express yourself?
Halstead: Definitely. Pygmalion was when I really started digging into electronic music, and modular synthesis is a fun way to approach composition. I like that it increases the random/magic factor and opens the process to happy accident. Simon [Scott, drummer] has been working in that world for a long time and it’s something we both geek out on. I saw Simon do a modular show in Berlin recently and it reminded me that it’s still really potent live – it’s always edgy and different every time.

Is there a bit of Pygmalion in this album?
Halstead: Perhaps that was where the record began. There’s a little of that in the centre but it goes its own way.

Savill: Pygmalion was a record that was going against what was expected of us at the time. I’m not saying that this record is completely way out there, but I think it is a case of not trying to do a record to meet expectations of what people want on a Slowdive record, but more like: what do we actually want to do?

Goswell: We’ve always stuck to our guns, apart from when [Alan] McGee didn’t like the original (i)Souvlaki(i) demos. But aside from that, everything we’ve released has been very much what we want to do.

What do you remember about Pygmalion?
Goswell: We waited a year for that record to come out, it was finished a year before it was released. We were rehearsing for a tour, weren’t we, and I remember the rehearsals being a little tense.

Savill: Yes, it wasn’t the greatest time because it felt like everything was against us. We were against what was happening, not necessarily musically, but we were out of step with everything. And it felt like something was just coming to an end, really.

Goswell: We were skint. Nobody cared. All that stuff. A hard time.

Savill: When I come back to that record – and I didn’t listen to it for a long time – I was like, oh man, this is really good. So I’m glad that we did that, because I guess there was probably pressure to do something more commercial If we were to have a future as a band. And, you know, it’s just like no, this wasn’t going to happen.

Goswell: The band definitely came to its natural conclusion at that point.

When did you twig that Slowdive might be getting popular?
Savill: I married an American and went to live in Asheville, North Carolina for a bit. I was working as a janitor in a grocery store. I’d be collecting carts in the car park and kids started coming up to me, going, ‘Hey man, is it true you were in Slowdive?’ That was completely freaky. So I’d become aware that, wow, kids have heard of this band that split up 15 years ago. We could feel it growing.

Rachel: I became aware that the Slowdive stuff was ticking along during the MySpace days, around 2006-7. I logged in and saw “shoegaze” as a genre and remember looking at it very confused – what the hell is this?

After the unusual career you’ve had, do you feel vindicated?
Goswell: Not vindicated but it’s a nice surprise. I think others feel vindicated on our behalf, people who’ve supported us since the beginning. The Slowdive story is a bit of an anomaly. Other bands who’ve reformed, like Blur and Stereolab, didn’t get the kicking we got at the time in the UK press.

Savill: We literally came back from the dead.

This second life of Slowdive has now been going longer than the first – have you got used to the big crowds and constant acclaim now?
Halstead: Yes it’s definitely been a moment longer. I think the first act was six years, three albums and five EPs, and it’s almost nine years since we got back together. We’re way less efficient at this point, that’s for sure, but there’s less angst, and probably more fun on this part of the journey. We play festivals now which was something we never did back in the day. It’s great to see the band being embraced by a new generation of kids and I suppose we all feel pretty lucky to still be able to do it.

Neil, you have a deep love of folk music – has this shaped the new album in any way?
Halstead: Yeah, I spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to make folk music, and I think the only tune that comes directly from that world on this album is the song “Andalusia Plays” which was a song I wrote around 2015 and I wrote it as tune for a solo folky record thing. I was messing around with ideas one day and started playing an organ part that seemed to work with the lyrics and the original melody – it took it into a different world and that seemed to take it to where Slowdive could do a version, so I demoed it up and sent it to the band.

Are you often surprised by the contributions to your tracks by the other members of the band?
Halstead: Yeah, I mean, I love being part of Slowdive and hearing Simon mangle the guitars through his Max patch system or Nick finding a killer bassline or Christian finding something beautiful in a guitar part, Rachel doing her thing – it’s always a fun journey. We argue a lot, we disagree about parts and ideas but there is still a moment where we’ll all be in unison and vibing on something. We work together pretty well and I guess that’s a rare thing.

What are the essential qualities of a Slowdive song?
Halstead: If we all love it, then it has the qualities. What they are exactly, I don’t know.

Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage

This interview originally appeared in Uncut’s June 2024 issue

Deluxe reissue of Prince’s Diamonds & Pearls announced

Michael Bonner
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Deluxe reissue of Prince’s Diamonds & Pearls announced

Prince‘s 1991 album Diamonds & Pearls is due for a deluxe release on October 27 from Paisley Park Enterprises, in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Records. You can hear a previously unreleased track, “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, along with “Insatiable (Early Mix – Full Version)” from the set.

Prince’s first with backing band The New Power Generation, Diamonds & Pearls is coming as a Super Deluxe Edition (7CD+Blu-ray / 12LP+Blu-ray / audio-only download and streaming), a Deluxe Edition (2CD / 4LP 180g vinyl) and Remastered album (1CD / 2LP / 2LP 180g clear “Diamond” vinyl / download and streaming).

Here’s the tracklisting for the Super Deluxe Edition:

CD1 / LP 1 & 2: DIAMONDS AND PEARLS (REMASTERED)
Thunder (2023 Remaster)
Daddy Pop (2023 Remaster)
Diamonds and Pearls (2023 Remaster)
Cream (2023 Remaster)
Strollin’ (2023 Remaster)
Willing and Able (2023 Remaster)
Gett Off (2023 Remaster)
Walk Don’t Walk (2023 Remaster)
Jughead (2023 Remaster)
Money Don’t Matter 2 Night (2023 Remaster)
Push (2023 Remaster)
Insatiable (2023 Remaster)
Live 4 Love (2023 Remaster)

CD2 / LP 3 & 4: SINGLE MIXES & EDITS (REMASTERED)
Gett Off (Damn Near 10 Minutes)
Gett Off (Houstyle)
Violet the Organ Grinder
Gangster Glam
Horny Pony
Cream (NPG Mix)
Things Have Gotta Change (Tony M Rap)
Do Your Dance (KC’s Remix)
Insatiable (Edit)
Diamonds and Pearls (Edit)
Money Don’t Matter 2 Night (Edit)
Call the Law
Willing and Able (Edit)
Willing and Able (Video Version)
Thunder (DJ Fade)

CD 3 – 5 / LP 5 – 9: VAULT I, II, III
VAULT I
Schoolyard
My Tender Heart
Pain
Streetwalker
Lauriann
Darkside
Insatiable (Early Mix – Full Version)
Glam Slam ’91
Live 4 Love (Early Version)
Cream (Take 2)
Skip to My You My Darling
Diamonds and Pearls (Long Version)
All tracks previously unreleased

VAULT II
Daddy Pop (12″ Mix)
Martika’s Kitchen
Spirit
Open Book
Work That Fat
Horny Pony (Version 2)
Something Funky (This House Comes) (Band Version)
Hold Me
Blood on the Sheets
The Last Dance (Bang Pow Zoom and the Whole Nine)
Don’t Say U Love Me
All tracks previously unreleased

VAULT III
Get Blue
Tip o’ My Tongue
The Voice
Trouble
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Standing at the Altar
Hey U
Letter 4 Miles
I Pledge Allegiance to Your Love
Thunder Ballet
All tracks previously unreleased

CD 6 & 7 / LP 10 – 12: LIVE AT GLAM SLAM, 1992
Thunder
Daddy Pop
Diamonds And Pearls
Willing And Able
Jughead
The Sacrifice Of Victor
Nothing Compares 2 U
Thieves In The Temple
Sexy M.F.
Insatiable
Cream/Well Done/I Want U/In The Socket (Medley)
1999/Baby I’m A Star/Push (Medley)
Gett Off
Gett Off (Houstyle)
All tracks previously unreleased

BLU-RAY
LIVE AT GLAM SLAM, 1992
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, JANUARY 11, 1992
SPECIAL OLYMPICS, METRODOME, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, JULY 1991

SOUNDCHECK – JULY 19, 1991:
Let’s Go Crazy/Baby I’m A Star/Push (Medley)

All tracks previously unreleased

SHOW – JULY 20, 1991:
Diamonds And Pearls
Let’s Go Crazy/Baby I’m A Star/Push (Medley)

All tracks previously unreleased

DIAMONDS AND PEARLS VIDEO COLLECTION
Introduction
Thunder (Live)
Gett Off
Cream
Diamonds And Pearls
Dr. Feelgood (Live)
Call The Law
Willing And Able
Jughead (Live)
Insatiable
Strollin’
Money Don’t Matter 2 Night
Live 4 Love (Live)

Bob Dylan announces new tour dates

Michael Bonner
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0
Bob Dylan announces new tour dates

Bob Dylan has announced new dates for his Rough And Rowdy Ways World Tour.

Following his run of Asian and European tour dates earlier this year, he is now turning his attention to North America.

Dylan’s dates begin in Kansas City on October 1 and currently run up to October 30, when he plays in Schenectady, NY. More dates will be announced soon, we’re told.

Dylan plays:

October 1 The Midland Theatre – Kansas City, MO
October 2 The Midland Theatre – Kansas City, MO
October 4 Stifel Theatre – St. Louis, MO
October 6 Cadillac Palace Theatre – Chicago, IL
October 7 Cadillac Palace Theatre – Chicago, IL
October 8 Cadillac Palace Theatre – Chicago, IL
October 11 The Riverside Theater – Milwaukee, WI
October 12 The Riverside Theater – Milwaukee, WI
October 16 Murat Theatre – Indianapolis, IN
October 20 The Andrew J. Brady Music Center – Cincinnati, OH
October 21 Akron Civic Theatre – Akron, OH
October 23 Warner Theatre – Erie, PA
October 24 Auditorium Theatre – Rochester, NY
October 26 Massey Hall – Toronto, Ontario
October 27 Massey Hall – Toronto, Ontario
October 29 Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier – Montreal, Quebec
October 30 Proctors Theatre – Schenectady, NY

… and in the meantime, don’t forget we currently have two Dylan specials available: our Ultimate Music Guide: The Deluxe Edition and The Complete Bob Dylan.

Hear Al Green cover Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”

Michael Bonner
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0
Hear Al Green cover Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”

Al Green returns with a cover of Lou Reed‘s “Perfect Day“.

You can hear it below.

It’s Green’s first release since his 2018 cover of Freddy Fender’s “Before The Next Teardrop Falls”. About “Perfect Day”, Green says, “I loved Lou’s original ‘Perfect Day’. The song immediately puts you in a good mood. We wanted to preserve that spirit, while adding our own sauce and style.”

The recording took place at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis, TN during February 2023. Produced by Matthew Johnson and Bruce Watson, the track finds Green reunited with members of the Hi Rhythm Section, including Reverend Charles Hodges [organ], Leroy Hodges [bass], and Archie “Hubbie” Turner [piano].

Green has some tour dates lined up in the States, with more due to follow:

September 30, 2023 – Highland, CA – Yaamava’ Theater
November 24, 2023 – Detroit, MI – Fox Theatre
November 25, 2023 – St. Charles, MO – The Family Arena

Sonic Boom – My Life In Music

Michael Bonner
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0
Sonic Boom – My Life In Music

This week, Panda Bear & Sonic Boom release Reset In Dub – a dub version of their acclaimed 2022 album Reset by British dub producer Adrian Sherwood. To mark this auspicious occasion, here’s Sonic Boom’s My Life In Music from Uncut’s June 2020 issue [Take 277]…

Psychedelic spaceman Pete Kember – aka Sonic Boom – on the music that takes him there: “Any day I listen to Sam Cooke is a good day for me!”

KRAFTWERK
THE MAN-MACHINE
CAPITOL, 1978
This is just a really awesome record. There seemed to be a lot of cool records coming from Germany in this era, like Bowie and Iggy Pop and Kraftwerk, and they were sort of interconnected; I feel like they were all having some sort of conversation with each other on different levels. For me, this and Trans Europe Express are kind of a pair, they’re both just incredibly solid records. Kraftwerk set a bar which I’ve always tried to aspire to – they were so succinct and cleverly minimal in what they did. I really like that combination of the mechanical and the soulful. Their melodies and the overall vibe of what they did was really deep.

SAM COOKE
SAM COOKE
CAMBRA, 1982
I’ve never come across the original Sam Cooke albums when I look to buy stuff online, but the compilations which cherry-pick all his hits and occasionally some other tracks are just so great. The vibe he put out and the feeling that he put into his songs… you totally buy into every word that comes out of his mouth, and I think that’s the greatest thing you can do as a singer or a musician. I can put on songs like “Sad Moods” or “Having A Party” and they instantly transport me. Any day I listen to Sam Cooke is a good day for me, it always makes me feel good.

LAURIE ANDERSON
BIG SCIENCE
WARNER BROS, 1982
I remember hearing “O Superman” on the radio and really not getting it: “What the fuck is this?” Then one day I took some psilocybin mushrooms with a friend, he put this album on, and when I heard the whole record and the song in context, I was just floored by it. I still feel it’s one of the greatest pieces of art that’s been put on a record, and [I love] the innovation, the humour in it… I still listen to it regularly, and I’m constantly amazed by what a tour de force, what genius it was. I have some live records of her doing it, and whatever country she was in she would do it in their language. That’s so deeply fantastic!

PIERRE HENRY & MICHEL COLOMBIER
MESSE POUR LE TEMPS PRESENT
PHILIPS, 1967
The first side of this is a combination of a ’60s beat group and Pierre Henry doing his electronic amazingness on the top of it. Something about it just really works well, and it reminds me of some of the Delia Derbyshire stuff too, like the Dr Who theme. “Psyche Rock” is quite predictive, and presages Silver Apples and Suicide in some ways. Side Two is musique concrète stuff made with the sound of a door hinge opening and closing, so that’s a whole different universe! But Side One has been really influential on me – the tones of the electronics and the boldness with which he uses it.

BO DIDDLEY
ROAD RUNNER: THE CHESS MASTERS, 1959-1960
HIP-O SELECT, 2008
I know most people know him by name and recognise the Bo Diddley beat, but he’s incredibly underrated. He did so many beautiful rhythms on his songs, often using samba and tango beats, and mixing gospel, blues and South American rhythms. I think he rewrote the rulebook over and over again. He might be one of the people who could be credited with the roots of ’60s black soul music. What he did in the ’50s really created the form that everyone used, though I know a large part of that comes from gospel music. I’ve always loved the guy. I got to meet him once and jam with him on Jools Holland, which was pretty surreal!

THE SANDPIPERS
GUANTANAMERA
A&M, 1966
The Sandpipers were a vocal-based group, and I fear they might have fallen into a middle-of-the-road rut. One of their songs that a lot of people might know is called “Inchworm”, and on this album they do a mixture of standards and covers. They do The Beatles’ “Things We Said Today” – but they’ve got beautiful voices and the whole record is really transcendental. When I moved to Portugal I had the privilege of being able to rediscover all my records again in a totally new environment; it’s really beautiful being able to listen to all this music in the mountains. Their vocals are something for me to aspire to, and I envy those who make it look so effortless, which The Sandpipers certainly do.

orchestral manoeuvres in the dark
ARCHITECTURE & MORALITY
DINDISC, 1981
Interestingly, they had two hits off this one, both called “Joan Of Arc”, both Top 5! Later on, I discovered that my mum’s childhood friend, Auntie Avril, used to get a teenage Andy McCluskey to babysit for her kids! I said to her, “I always really loved the first ‘Joan Of Arc’ song, I’d love to try a remix…” So she put us in touch, and Andy sent me both “Joan Of Arc” songs on 24-track, two-inch multitrack. I quickly realised when I got the tapes up that the first “Joan Of Arc” was actually a demo that had had bits added to it, and I couldn’t get it even close to sounding as awesome as the original!

GEORGE FAITH
TO BE A LOVER
BLACK SWAN, 1977
This is a Lee Perry-produced album, from what is probably his best period, around the same time as Junior Murvin’s Police And Thieves. They’re both perfect albums for me – beautiful songs, perfect production, and both subtly psychedelic, which Lee Perry is a genius at. I only found this about four years ago, and it wasn’t too easy to find, but it’s a fantastic record that I think has been overlooked. Someone asked me recently what music I would play on my birthday, and I feel like every time I listen to this record it genuinely feels as good as any birthday I ever had. I don’t know what more you could ask! I highly recommend this to anyone.

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