This month’s issue of Uncut (dated July 2012) features Suede recalling the writing and recording of their debut single, “The Drowners” – so it seemed a good time to revisit frontman Brett Anderson’s An Audience With… from Uncut’s December 2010 issue as this week’s archive feature. Expect questions and answers on Damon Albarn, Brett’s obsession with art and The Great War, and the lure of East London’s kebab shops… Interview: John Lewis
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A serene beginning this morning, with a new Terry Riley album, “Aleph”. Over on my 40 Favourites Of 2012 Thus Far blog, however, things became a little less genteel yesterday, as you can see in the comments thread at the bottom of the chart.
Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be The Place muses on the existence of a fictional rock star. This is Cheyenne, who’s spent 20 years out of the spotlight, living in a mansion outside Dublin. Played by Sean Penn and modeled physically on Robert Smith – the crows’ nest of black hair, lipstick, eyeliner, fondness for black – Cheyenne spends his days watching Jamie Oliver programmes on television, debating whether or not to sell his shares in Tesco and pondering, “Why is Lady Gaga?” Fully Gothed up, he goes shopping in a nearby mall to buy pizza.
Trying hard to disregard the fact that one record here has possibly irritated me more than anything I’ve played for a while, another nice list this week. Second Jack White track out is another keeper, and the Ililta! 12, especially, is really growing on me.
“David Byrne, all neurasthenic nettles pointing inward. He looked like someone who’d just OD’d on Dramadine – all cold sweat clammy and nerve net exoskeleton… just looked like some nut just holidayed from the ward with a fresh pocket of Thorazine, that’s all. There was something gentle, shy, reflective and giving about his hideous old psychosocial gangrene.”
That’s Lester Bangs, in full flow, recalling the first time he saw Talking Heads live, around 1976, in a rambling, sometimes flashing essay written in 1979 as a review of the Fear Of Music album, but only published for the first time now, as accompaniment to this superbly conceived DVD.
