One of the things I wrote in the new issue of Uncut (full details here) is a longish review of the new Real Estate album, which is out today, I think. As part of that, I had an email exchange with Martin Courtney, Real Estate’s frontman. There was only room to print a short extract with my review, but I thought it worth reprinting the full Q&A here… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTrL8UyTYRA How do you think Real Estate have changed since the last album? The thing that's changed the most between the last record and this one is the creative process by which we wrote the songs. This was a much more collaboratively written record than Days. We spent eight or nine months working on the songs that I, as well as Matt and Alex, would bring to the group. The four of us in a room arranging the parts and mapping out each song. Then about a month before we went into the studio, we brought Matt (Kallman) in and he wrote his keyboard parts, with our input. As in the past, I did record demos for many of these songs, some of which were just me playing each instrument, but this time the demos were treated much less as a blueprint for the finished product than just a way of getting the idea across. Can you tell us what it was like working in Wilco’s space? Were any of the band around? They have been in that loft for over ten years, and you can tell. It's just really well set-up, very conducive to creativity and experimenting. Basically, as a recording studio, it was set up in such a way that you could try anything at any given time. If you're working on vocals or guitar overdubs, it's possible to drop everything and try a live take of a new song. In our experience, that kind of versatility is pretty rare. In a smaller studio, you have to tear everything down and reset it if you're going to move from one phase of recording to the next. Atlas feels like a very natural and graceful evolution of Days. But you recently told NME this album was about “Adventure”; “It’s like us leaving home for the first time.” Can you explain that? Thanks. And not sure I remember saying that, or what the context was. I do enjoy the Television album Adventure, though. A lot of the lyrics seem to refer to distance, separation and attendant anxieties. Is there any specific reason why that’s the case? Lyrically, I was trying to write songs that reflected my current life more on this album. Having spent a lot of time on the road over the past few years, it was only natural that those themes would end up making their way into the words I was writing. It feels like one of the key lyrics on the album is “This is not the same place I used to know,” and the lyrics of “Past Lives” in general seem especially significant. Can you talk about that a little more? I feel like that song sticks our as being the most backward looking song on the album, but it's written from a perspective rooted in the present. I wrote the music for that song in my parents' attic, where I had a little studio set up for a while in the fall of 2012 before we got our own practice space in Brooklyn. Basically the lyrics are inspired by sitting in the attic of the house I grew up in, recording demos in the middle of the afternoon, like a month after I got married. Just feeling kind of weird and old, I guess. It occurs to me that this theme might tie in with the loss of the Stefan Knapp mural featured on the cover. Is that the case, and could you explain the mural to our readers? To be honest, I hadn't thought of that. I just liked the idea of using the mural on the record cover because of the way it made me feel to remember it. That mural was on the side of a department store called Alexanders. I used to see it all the time from the back seat of my parents car. The store itself was closed down and vacant for the entire time its existence overlapped with my own. The landscaping surrounding the building was all overgrown, and the parking lot crumbling, but this massive, colourful abstract painting remained. The whole building was torn down in I think 1994, and the mural itself is dismantled and in storage now. The whole thing is just kind of a blast from the past, and very specific to the area where Alex, Matt and I grew up. I have this hope that other people who are from Bergen County will be pleasantly surprised when they see our record cover and remember. And finally, who’s best: Maurice Deebank or John Mohan? Deebank Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

I had the good fortune to interview Jim Jarmusch recently for our An Audience With… feature. As you’d imagine, it was interesting, wide-ranging chat, and inevitably not everything we talked about made it into the magazine. There’s a couple of things in particular that seemed pretty interesting – not least the ‘full’ answer he gave to a question regarding the current status of The Sons Of Lee Marvin, a shadowy cabal whose members – allegedly – include Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Iggy Pop. “You know, I can’t answer these questions,” said Jarmusch. “I’m not permitted. It’s part of the club’s rules. All I can say is the organisation is in full existence. If I tell you any more, you don’t want to suffer the consequences. You could have members appearing at your home, and that’s probably not what you want. Where did the idea come from? Years ago, I had an idea, a silly idea for a film where John Lurie and Tom Waits and, I think, another character were three brothers who did not get along at all – this was the story – and their father was a recluse, semi-alcoholic, but very intelligent, interesting, gruff guy living out in nowhere, basically with a bottle and shotgun. He summons them – I don’t remember why – so it was a story where the three sons came to see their very cranky, difficult father. I wanted the father to be Lee Marvin. And I thought Tom and John Lurie and maybe one other actor – I don’t remember if it was Willem Dafoe or someone that would look like they could be Lee Marvin’s sons. Then we lost him. But the organization existed in spite of the fact the film never did, and incorporated more members that could physically possibly look like Lee Marvin’s son. Once, maybe 15 years ago, Tom was in a bar in Northern California somewhere and the bar tender said, ‘There’s a guy in that booth over there, he wants to talk to you.’ Tom said, ‘I don’t know him, what would I want to talk to him for?’ The guy said, ‘Just go talk to him.’ So Tom went over and says to this guy, ‘I hear you want to talk to me, what is it?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I heard about this organization, the Sons of Lee Marvin. I wanted to know about it.’ Tom said, “What’s it to you?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m Lee Marvin’s son.’ I guess he appeased the son, because we haven’t got into trouble.” One of the other things we discussed that didn’t make it into the piece was Jarmusch’s favourite movie vampires; germane, considering his latest film, Only Lovers Left Alive, is ostensibly a vampire film. Jarmusch’s answer is, I guess, a list, but it’s pretty impeccable. Here goes. "The classic is Nosferatu, with Max Schreck,” he said. “I like these outside vampire films, so I really liked Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie in The Hunger, the Tony Sott film. I'm more comfortable mentioning the films than the vampires themselves. I really loved a recent film, Let The Right One In. I like very much Abel Ferrara's film The Addiction from the Nineties. I like Kathryn Bigelow's film Near Dark, Claire Denis' film Trouble Every Day, I like Polanski's film The Fearless Vampire Killers. I love very much the first kind of marginal or non-horror vampire film, Vampyr by Carl Dreyer. Also George Romero's Martin. But these are ones that don't quite deliver the expectations of a monster movie vampire thing, so they're a big inspiration for me. And don't forget Blacula and Scream, Dracula Scream. The Hammer films, of course. And Bela Lugosi as Dracula in the Universal film from 1931 is fantastic." Only Lovers Left Alive, which is in UK cinemas now, is Jarmusch’s first film in five years, since The Limits Of Control. In the intervening years, he has formed a new band, SQÜRL, and curated a bill for All Tomorrow’s Parties in New York. Jarmusch, of course, is no stranger to music – he has cast musicians ranging from former Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson to Waits, Joe Strummer, Iggy Pop, Jack and Meg White. For Only Lovers Left Alive, one of his characters – Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a musician, living in modern day Detroit. Adam is also a vampire, as is his (very) long-term partner, Eve (Tilda Swinton) who is hanging out in Tangier with none other than Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt). Adam and Eve are an odd couple – he is gloomy and reclusive, she meanwhile is spirited and playful. Reunited in Detroit, Adam takes Eve for a spin round the sites – “That’s Jack White’s old house” – before Eve’s sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) turns up to spoil the party. As you would expect from a filmmaker as idiosyncratic as Jarmusch, Only Lovers Left Alive exists entirely outside the current trend for cinematic vampires: no tweeny Twilight here, nor gruesome monster mash. Instead, this is a mischievous, hyper-literate film – elegantly shot entirely at night by Jarmusch and his cameraman Yorick le Saux – that finds fresh ways of presenting the hoariest of vampire movie clichés. Even the Gothic typeface used in the opening credits is playful. Hiddleson and Swinton, of course, are an excellent double act: pale and interesting old souls drifting through a desolate modern world, with only their connoisseurship to keep them going. Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.