One of the records I’ve been playing the absolute hell out of these last couple of weeks is The Graceless Age, the new album by John Murry, who Uncut regulars may remember from World Without End, a sensationally bleak 2006 collection of contemporary murder ballads he made with the Memphis singer-songwriter Bob Frank. The Graceless Age, like World Without End, produced by Tim Mooney, the former American Music Club drummer, at Closer Recording, the studio Tim owned in San Francisco, at 1441 Howard Street. The more I played it, the more The Graceless Age sounded like one of the best things Mooney had been involved in, as either producer or musician, a dark and festering masterpiece.
Welcome back William Friedkin and Matthew McConaughey - both missing in action, it seems, for some years now - with the terribly funny Killer Joe. Typically, for the director of transgressive genre pieces like The Exorcist and Cruising, one of the first things we see here is Gina Gershon’s lower half, naked. “It’s a bit distracting, your bush in my face,” complains her step-son, Chris (Emile Hirsch).
The pianist, singer and songwriter Mac Rebennack, known better as Dr John, faces your questions in the latest Uncut (dated July 2012), out now – but back in October 2010 (Take 161), he took us on a fascinating journey through his most important, and interesting, releases, from Gris-Gris to Exile On Main St. "We went to a nudist camp somewhere, we made up a song called 'The Symphony Of Frogs'…"
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Swans are set to release a new album, featuring Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O and Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low, on August 27.
The Seer, the new album from Michael Gira's reunited New York noise-rock troupe, runs for around two hours, and also features guests including Mercury Rev's Grasshopper, Akron/Family and "honorary Swan" Bill Rieflin.
Karen O sings lead vocal on "Song For A Warrior", while Parker and Sparhawk feature as co-vocalists on opener "Lunacy".
Mogwai have been confirmed as the final headliner of this year's Green Man festival.
The Scottish rockers, who released their seventh studio album 'Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will' in 2011, join Feist and Van Morrison in headlining the event, which takes place in Wales' Brecon Beacons from August 17-19.
Also newly added to the line-up are Dexys, Cate Le Bon, Lower Dens, Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Crybaby, Paul Thomas Saunders, Stuff, Withered Hand and King Charles.
