Rod Stewart has said that he will likely play with the Faces in 2015.
Speaking to WZLX radio station in Boston, via The Guardian, Stewart said that plans to record an album with Jeff Beck had fallen through, but that he and Ronnie Wood were planning a Faces reunion for the year after next. He comme...
Rod Stewart has said that he will likely play with the Faces in 2015.
Speaking to WZLX radio station in Boston, via The Guardian, Stewart said that plans to record an album with Jeff Beck had fallen through, but that he and Ronnie Wood were planning a Faces reunion for the year after next. He commented: “I think we have got much more of a chance of getting the Faces back together, in fact, Ronnie’s office is talking to my people, and we’re ear-marking 2015.”
The Faces reunited in 2010 and played a number of shows with Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall on lead vocals in place of Stewart, including a headline performance at the Vintage at Goodwood Festival, and the band toured in 2011. In 2012 Hucknall sang “Stay With Me” at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio, even though Stewart had planned to perform with the band, but later came down with the flu. Stewart last played with the band at the Brit Awards in 1993.
Earlier this year Rod Stewart had said he was keen to reform the Faces with Ronnie Wood, suggesting that a reunion could happen if and when The Rolling Stones decide to retire.
You can order Uncut’s Ultimate Music Guide dedicated to the Small Faces and the Faces here. It’s also available through the Uncut app on the iTunes store.
Robby Krieger and John Densmore have been filmed together for the first time in 10 years.
In footage below, Krieger and Densmore reminisce about the impact Ray Manzarek had on the band and their early rehearsals with Jim Morrison.
This conversation was filmed not long after Manzarek's death on May...
Robby Krieger and John Densmore have been filmed together for the first time in 10 years.
In footage below, Krieger and Densmore reminisce about the impact Ray Manzarek had on the band and their early rehearsals with Jim Morrison.
This conversation was filmed not long after Manzarek’s death on May 20 this year and features on an updated version of the Doors app in a section called Ray ‘Manzarek Remembered’.
You can watch a trailer for the Doors app below.
The updated version of the app is available from the iTunes app store from Thursday, December 5. The ‘Ray Manzarek Remembered’ section also features a critical deconstruction of Manzarek’s keyboard playing, a “Riders On The Storm” photo montage, recently discovered transcripts of Morrison’s testimony and bail bond application from the 1969 incident the Dinner Key Auditorium in which Jim Morrison was accused of indecent exposure.
Footage has emerged of Robert Plant, Bonnie Dobson, Bernard Butler and Danny Thompson performing at A Celebration Of Bert Jansch.
The tribute concert took place on Sunday, December 3 at London's Royal Festival Hall.
Plant, Dobson, Butler and Thompson played Dobson's "Morning Dew".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A48ifzmNwBo
You can watch a film here of Neil Young performing "Needle Of Death" which was specially filmed for the concert.
The set list for A Celebration Of Bert Jansch was:
RALPH MCTELL
"Anji"
JACQUI MCSHEE’S PENTANGLE (Jacqui Mcshee: vocals, Gary Foote: sax,
Spencer Cozens: piano, Gerry Conway: drums, Alan Thomson: electric bass)
"I've Got A Feeling"
"Cruel Sister"
DONOVAN
“I Deed I Do”
"House of Jansch"
NEIL YOUNG
“Needle of Death” exclusively recorded for this show in Jack White’s “Record
your own voice” booth
MARA CARLYLE (with Lisa Knapp: Ukelele, Dan Teper: accordion, Rex
Horan: upright bass)
“It Don’t Bother Me”
MARTIN SIMPSON
"Blues Run the Game"
MARTIN SIMPSON & DANNY THOMPSON
“Heartbreak Hotel”
DANNY THOMPSON
"Goodbye Mr Pork Pie Hat"
LISA KNAPP (with Bernard Butler: electric guitar and Paul Wassif: acoustic
guitar)
"Fresh As A Sweet Sunday Morning"
JACQUI McSHEE & DANNY THOMPSON & TERRY COX & BERNARD
BUTLER
“Poison”
~~~~~
BERT JANSCH
“Travelling Man”
VT from recording of L.A. Turnaround (1974)
BEVERLEY MARTYN (with Mark Pavey: acoustic guitar,
Michael Watts: electric guitar, Evan Jenkins: drums, Rex Horan: double bass)
"When the Levee Breaks"
GORDON GILTRAP
"Loren"
PAUL WASSIF (with David Watson: guitar, Evan Jenkins: drums,
Rex Horan: double bass)
"900 Miles"
“Build A Band”
RALPH MCTELL
"A Kiss in the Rain"
LISA KNAPP & MARTIN CARTHY
"Blackwaterside"
MARTIN CARTHY
"Rosemary Lane"
"Georgie"
ROBERT PLANT (with Bernard Butler: electric guitar)
"Go Your Way My Love"
BONNIE DOBSON (with Robert Plant: bongos and vocals, Bernard Butler:
electric guitar, Danny Thompson: acoustic bass)
"Morning Dew"
WIZZ JONES
"Weeping Willow Blues"
"High Days"
BERT JANSCH
“Morning Brings Peace of Mind”
VT from “Dreamweaver” documentary (2000)
ENSEMBLE
Finale: "Strolling Down the Highway"
Footage has emerged of Robert Plant, Bonnie Dobson, Bernard Butler and Danny Thompson performing at A Celebration Of Bert Jansch.
The tribute concert took place on Sunday, December 3 at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
Plant, Dobson, Butler and Thompson played Dobson’s “Morning Dew”.
You can watch a film here of Neil Young performing “Needle Of Death” which was specially filmed for the concert.
The set list for A Celebration Of Bert Jansch was:
RALPH MCTELL
“Anji”
JACQUI MCSHEE’S PENTANGLE (Jacqui Mcshee: vocals, Gary Foote: sax,
Spencer Cozens: piano, Gerry Conway: drums, Alan Thomson: electric bass)
“I’ve Got A Feeling”
“Cruel Sister”
DONOVAN
“I Deed I Do”
“House of Jansch”
NEIL YOUNG
“Needle of Death” exclusively recorded for this show in Jack White’s “Record
your own voice” booth
MARA CARLYLE (with Lisa Knapp: Ukelele, Dan Teper: accordion, Rex
Horan: upright bass)
“It Don’t Bother Me”
MARTIN SIMPSON
“Blues Run the Game”
MARTIN SIMPSON & DANNY THOMPSON
“Heartbreak Hotel”
DANNY THOMPSON
“Goodbye Mr Pork Pie Hat”
LISA KNAPP (with Bernard Butler: electric guitar and Paul Wassif: acoustic
guitar)
“Fresh As A Sweet Sunday Morning”
JACQUI McSHEE & DANNY THOMPSON & TERRY COX & BERNARD
BUTLER
“Poison”
~~~~~
BERT JANSCH
“Travelling Man”
VT from recording of L.A. Turnaround (1974)
BEVERLEY MARTYN (with Mark Pavey: acoustic guitar,
Michael Watts: electric guitar, Evan Jenkins: drums, Rex Horan: double bass)
“When the Levee Breaks”
GORDON GILTRAP
“Loren”
PAUL WASSIF (with David Watson: guitar, Evan Jenkins: drums,
Rex Horan: double bass)
“900 Miles”
“Build A Band”
RALPH MCTELL
“A Kiss in the Rain”
LISA KNAPP & MARTIN CARTHY
“Blackwaterside”
MARTIN CARTHY
“Rosemary Lane”
“Georgie”
ROBERT PLANT (with Bernard Butler: electric guitar)
“Go Your Way My Love”
BONNIE DOBSON (with Robert Plant: bongos and vocals, Bernard Butler:
In September of this year a host of music stars came together in New York for Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating The Music of Inside Llewyn Davis, a fundraising concert for the American non-profit, the National Recording Preservation Foundation.
At the concert in Manhattan's Town Hall Jack White performed a folk music version of The White Stripes' "We're Going To Be Friends", assisted by banjo, fiddle and double bass. The concert was filmed for the US network Showtime, who have now released a clip of White's performance, which you can see below. They will broadcast the concert in full next week.
The show was inspired by the forthcoming new Coen Brothers film, Inside Llewyn Davis, which is released on January 24, 2014 in the UK. The concert featured music from the T Bone Burnett-helmed soundtrack as well as the classic folk songs which inspired the movie, which is set in Greenwich Village in 1961.
You can an Uncut's exclusive interview with the Coens, T Bone Burnett and actor John Goodman in the new issue of Uncut.
In September of this year a host of music stars came together in New York for Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating The Music of Inside Llewyn Davis, a fundraising concert for the American non-profit, the National Recording Preservation Foundation.
At the concert in Manhattan’s Town Hall Jack White performed a folk music version of The White Stripes’ “We’re Going To Be Friends”, assisted by banjo, fiddle and double bass. The concert was filmed for the US network Showtime, who have now released a clip of White’s performance, which you can see below. They will broadcast the concert in full next week.
The show was inspired by the forthcoming new Coen Brothers film, Inside Llewyn Davis, which is released on January 24, 2014 in the UK. The concert featured music from the T Bone Burnett-helmed soundtrack as well as the classic folk songs which inspired the movie, which is set in Greenwich Village in 1961.
You can an Uncut’s exclusive interview with the Coens, T Bone Burnett and actor John Goodman in the new issue of Uncut.
The band move on with a subtle change of emphasis following Tim Smith's departure...
Bands who survive the exit of their creative leader are rare. Bands who keep the same name, carry on regardless and thrive are almost unheard of. When the first Midlake recording sessions since 2010’s Top 20 album The Courage Of Others exposed the rifts at the heart of the band and resulted in the departure of lead singer and songwriter Tim Smith, Eric Pulido, Paul Alexander, Eric Nichelson and McKenzie Smith would have been forgiven calling time on the band, or at least drifting aimlessly for a while as they decided whether to stick or twist.
Instead, Pulido – who had only joined the band in 2004, five years after Smith initially formed Midlake – stepped up and essentially took over Smith’s role. This didn’t involve a radical change of direction; Pulido favours the same ‘70s folk-meets-soft-rock melodies and dark bucolic lyricism, and is even a dead ringer for Smith as vocalist, a smooth tenor who loves to bed his lead within warm band harmonies. A casual fan of their two breakthrough albums, 2006’s The Trials Of Van Occupanther and The Courage Of Others, may not even notice the difference.
But the opener and title track immediately introduces the subtle changes of emphasis. Pulido’s stately melody throws sudden curveballs. Alexander’s bass is deep and tough, an almost post-punkish element within a sound that constantly recalls Days Of Future Passed-era Moody Blues. He and McKenzie Smith step forward as a rhythm section, giving a discreet funk to the mid-tempo stroll. The playing feels more spontaneous and freewheeling, with organ or guitar or drums suddenly taking centre-stage before even more suddenly falling back into line. The song ends dissolves abruptly into a radioactive synth crackle, and segues straight into “Provider”; a trick pulled repeatedly, giving Antiphon the feel of a suite of songs, rather than a simple album.
A record so ambitious musically – with all the elements above joined by orchestras, woodwinds, surprisingly angular guitar and lots of carefully deployed prog-rock synth runs – needs one big song to pull the listener into its world, and it arrives three songs in. “The Old And The Young” is a bubbling, swinging anthem on the subject of Be Here Now, with a chorus so infectious and celebratory that it manages to bathe the entire album in sunshine. It opens the way for less instant songs – the symphonic instrumental “Vale”, the resigned divorce ballad “Aurora Gone”, the stormy, pensive triptych “Ages”, “This Weight” and “Corruption” – to take hold of ears, head and heart.
The latter two, in particular, dominate the end of the album with bleak visions. “This Weight” opens with the couplet, “I’m not fooling anyone but me/I don’t love anyone but me”, which is more a withering judgement on human selfishness than either a Pulido confessional or, as it could easily be read, as a coded kiss-off to Smith. Meanwhile, Paul Alexander’s piano-led “Corruption” poses a philosophical question: ‘Science our daughter/Religion our father… Who is mother?” Its rhetorical, as Alexander has already answered his own question in the song’s title. This cryptic form of political overview dovetails with Antiphon’s sleeve art, which looks like a global firework display but is actually a visual representation of the corporations that control the world.
Antiphon, named after a form of call-and-response song, is not a call-to-arms. But it is a response to a time of sadness and change, and an attempt to find solace in the simple act of keeping going. It’s full of notes to us and to self about throwing off the past and moving forward, even though erasing the past is impossible. And it might just grow into an even better record than The Courage Of Others, as one gets used to the way it replaces Smith’s precision and popcraft with the new Midlake’s love of digression and sonic adventure.
Garry Mulholland
Q&A
Eric Pulido
You’ve said that, when Midlake began recording after touring The Courage Of Others, “something was missing.” What was that something?
Energy. Cool ideas were forming, but as we kept beating them to death the life got sucked out of it. All that material was completely scrapped when Tim decided to leave.
When Tim announced his departure, did Midlake consider splitting?
I should’ve been shitting my pants at the beginning of this! But I think we have more of a dynamic vision now. We’d got a little too comfortable in just facilitating Tim’s vision. When he left we were able to throw everything out and say, “OK - how do we wanna start again, so that everybody feels ownership of this?” The excitement had been lost. There weren’t even many of us coming to the studio anymore. It was like, “Call me when you need me.” And that’s just not a band.
You re-presented the brilliant John Grant to the world by being his backing band on Queen Of Denmark. What effect has his subsequent success had on Midlake?
That’s a great question because we made John’s record while making The Courage Of Others, where we had many obstacles to overcome and which came out quite dark, and found making John’s record quite cathartic. It was enjoyable and collaborative and subconsciously reminded us that making music can be fun.
INTERVIEW: GARRY MULHOLLAND
The band move on with a subtle change of emphasis following Tim Smith’s departure…
Bands who survive the exit of their creative leader are rare. Bands who keep the same name, carry on regardless and thrive are almost unheard of. When the first Midlake recording sessions since 2010’s Top 20 album The Courage Of Others exposed the rifts at the heart of the band and resulted in the departure of lead singer and songwriter Tim Smith, Eric Pulido, Paul Alexander, Eric Nichelson and McKenzie Smith would have been forgiven calling time on the band, or at least drifting aimlessly for a while as they decided whether to stick or twist.
Instead, Pulido – who had only joined the band in 2004, five years after Smith initially formed Midlake – stepped up and essentially took over Smith’s role. This didn’t involve a radical change of direction; Pulido favours the same ‘70s folk-meets-soft-rock melodies and dark bucolic lyricism, and is even a dead ringer for Smith as vocalist, a smooth tenor who loves to bed his lead within warm band harmonies. A casual fan of their two breakthrough albums, 2006’s The Trials Of Van Occupanther and The Courage Of Others, may not even notice the difference.
But the opener and title track immediately introduces the subtle changes of emphasis. Pulido’s stately melody throws sudden curveballs. Alexander’s bass is deep and tough, an almost post-punkish element within a sound that constantly recalls Days Of Future Passed-era Moody Blues. He and McKenzie Smith step forward as a rhythm section, giving a discreet funk to the mid-tempo stroll. The playing feels more spontaneous and freewheeling, with organ or guitar or drums suddenly taking centre-stage before even more suddenly falling back into line. The song ends dissolves abruptly into a radioactive synth crackle, and segues straight into “Provider”; a trick pulled repeatedly, giving Antiphon the feel of a suite of songs, rather than a simple album.
A record so ambitious musically – with all the elements above joined by orchestras, woodwinds, surprisingly angular guitar and lots of carefully deployed prog-rock synth runs – needs one big song to pull the listener into its world, and it arrives three songs in. “The Old And The Young” is a bubbling, swinging anthem on the subject of Be Here Now, with a chorus so infectious and celebratory that it manages to bathe the entire album in sunshine. It opens the way for less instant songs – the symphonic instrumental “Vale”, the resigned divorce ballad “Aurora Gone”, the stormy, pensive triptych “Ages”, “This Weight” and “Corruption” – to take hold of ears, head and heart.
The latter two, in particular, dominate the end of the album with bleak visions. “This Weight” opens with the couplet, “I’m not fooling anyone but me/I don’t love anyone but me”, which is more a withering judgement on human selfishness than either a Pulido confessional or, as it could easily be read, as a coded kiss-off to Smith. Meanwhile, Paul Alexander’s piano-led “Corruption” poses a philosophical question: ‘Science our daughter/Religion our father… Who is mother?” Its rhetorical, as Alexander has already answered his own question in the song’s title. This cryptic form of political overview dovetails with Antiphon’s sleeve art, which looks like a global firework display but is actually a visual representation of the corporations that control the world.
Antiphon, named after a form of call-and-response song, is not a call-to-arms. But it is a response to a time of sadness and change, and an attempt to find solace in the simple act of keeping going. It’s full of notes to us and to self about throwing off the past and moving forward, even though erasing the past is impossible. And it might just grow into an even better record than The Courage Of Others, as one gets used to the way it replaces Smith’s precision and popcraft with the new Midlake’s love of digression and sonic adventure.
Garry Mulholland
Q&A
Eric Pulido
You’ve said that, when Midlake began recording after touring The Courage Of Others, “something was missing.” What was that something?
Energy. Cool ideas were forming, but as we kept beating them to death the life got sucked out of it. All that material was completely scrapped when Tim decided to leave.
When Tim announced his departure, did Midlake consider splitting?
I should’ve been shitting my pants at the beginning of this! But I think we have more of a dynamic vision now. We’d got a little too comfortable in just facilitating Tim’s vision. When he left we were able to throw everything out and say, “OK – how do we wanna start again, so that everybody feels ownership of this?” The excitement had been lost. There weren’t even many of us coming to the studio anymore. It was like, “Call me when you need me.” And that’s just not a band.
You re-presented the brilliant John Grant to the world by being his backing band on Queen Of Denmark. What effect has his subsequent success had on Midlake?
That’s a great question because we made John’s record while making The Courage Of Others, where we had many obstacles to overcome and which came out quite dark, and found making John’s record quite cathartic. It was enjoyable and collaborative and subconsciously reminded us that making music can be fun.
The Rolling Stones have announced the full run of dates for their forthcoming tour.
The 14 On Fire tour will take in Australia, New Zealand, the Far East and Asia.
Mick Taylor has been confirmed as special guest on all dates.
The Rolling Stones will play:
February 21: du Arena, Abu Dhabi
Februa...
The Rolling Stones have announced the full run of dates for their forthcoming tour.
The 14 On Fire tour will take in Australia, New Zealand, the Far East and Asia.
Mick Taylor has been confirmed as special guest on all dates.
Not uncharacteristically, I’ve spent the past few days repressing a bunch of unnecessary rage about the publicity afforded the BBC’s Sound Of 2013 poll. Not so much because of the artists selected, but because of the way it effectively presents an ultimatum to new talent: have something resembling success in the next 12 months, or else people will weary of your miserable underachievement and move on to the next batch of hopefuls.
It’d be disingenuous, of course, to pretend that the music industry - and, indeed, music fans – have only just become pathologically hungry for the next big thing, and correspondingly ruthless with regards to those who don’t have the requisite instant impact. But I think this calendar-anchored turnaround, this churning of new artists on a 12-month cycle, effectively compresses what was once a more flexible, if not exactly laidback, business model.
It also, of course, ignores how a lot of what I’d perceive as more interesting artists develop in a quite different way, quietly assembling a deepish catalogue of music before many people actually notice them. Such, it transpires, is the case with Ryley Walker, a Chicago-based guitarist who I would’ve voted for in the Sound Of 2013 poll if I didn’t think my participation in these things was kind of hypocritical (I wasn’t actually invited this year, after declining to be involved last year in what I recall was pretty pompous fashion).
I’ve been hyping Walker’s “West Wind” single for Tompkins Square pretty hard for the past few weeks; a brackish and magical seven-inch that sits somewhere between Tim Buckley’s soaring reveries and Bert Jansch circa “LA Turnaround” (Bernard Butler, a key player in last night’s Jansch tribute show, has been on Twitter repping for Walker, too).
I’d thought “The West Wind” was a debut single, but – much as industry manoeuvres like the Sound Of 2013 would have us believe otherwise – the dissemination of good music in 2013 is a lot more complicated than that. A few minutes on the internet (or, now, on this blog) and you can find another great single by Walker, “Clear The Sky”…
… plus a very fine live set, and a whole album of Takoma-ish guitar duets with Daniel Bachman from a couple of years back (both are linked below). I’m sure there’s more worth discovering by him out there (I have the b-side of “The West Wind”, “A Home For Me”, which I haven’t spotted online and which might be my favourite Walker song yet): let me know if you hunt down anything else.
In the meantime, a lot more to dig into here: the first exquisite track to surface from Linda Perhacs’ comeback album (going to see her at Cecil Sharp House tomorrow); the new record by my favourite Sumatran devotional folk scholars, Suarasama; the Angel Olsen album, especially the bits where she sounds like a cross between Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith; Ben Chasny and Donovan Quinn’s New Bums album; Neil Young doing “Needle Of Death” in Jack White’s record booth; and Mark McGuire, who appears to have become Steve Hillage, more or less…
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey
1 Suarasama – Timeline (Space)
2 Mark McGuire – Along The Way (Dead Oceans)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGxosUuBg0A
3 ?
4 Ryley Walker – The West Wind/A Home For Me (Tompkins Square)
5 Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire For No Witness (Jagjaguwar)
6 FC Judd – Electronics Without Tears (Public Information)
7 Ryley Walker - The Bootleg: Live at Galerie Rademann, Schwarzenberg/GER, 15-Oct-2013 (Dying For Bad Music)
8 Ryley Walker & Daniel Bachman - Of Deathly Premonitions (Plustapes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trTVW8dq7oY
9 Marissa Nadler – July (Bella Union)
10 Aziza Brahim – Soutak (Glitterbeat)
11 Fat White Family – Taman Shud EP (Trashmouth)
12 Quilt – Held In Splendor (Mexican Summer)
13 Black Dirt Oak – Wawayanda Patent (MIE Music)
14 Francisco Lopez – Untitled#295 (God)
15 Joan As Policewoman – The Classic (PIAS)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfXqJth6Eo4
16 Holden – The Inheritors (Border Community)
17 Thurston Moore – Detonation (Blank Editions)
18 New Bums – Voices In A Rented Room (Drag City)
19 Linda Perhacs – Freely (Asthmatic Kitty)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n-nWy6fB00
20 Neville Skelly – Carousel (PIAS)
21 Lou Reed – Street Hassle (Arista)
22 Hiss Golden Messenger – Bad Debt (Paradise Of Bachelors)
23 Rob St.John And Tommy Perman – Water Of Life (Edinburgh Water Of Life)
24 Neil Young – Needle Of Death (Live At Third Man)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeZFOWNJ_X4
Not uncharacteristically, I’ve spent the past few days repressing a bunch of unnecessary rage about the publicity afforded the BBC’s Sound Of 2013 poll. Not so much because of the artists selected, but because of the way it effectively presents an ultimatum to new talent: have something resembling success in the next 12 months, or else people will weary of your miserable underachievement and move on to the next batch of hopefuls.
It’d be disingenuous, of course, to pretend that the music industry – and, indeed, music fans – have only just become pathologically hungry for the next big thing, and correspondingly ruthless with regards to those who don’t have the requisite instant impact. But I think this calendar-anchored turnaround, this churning of new artists on a 12-month cycle, effectively compresses what was once a more flexible, if not exactly laidback, business model.
It also, of course, ignores how a lot of what I’d perceive as more interesting artists develop in a quite different way, quietly assembling a deepish catalogue of music before many people actually notice them. Such, it transpires, is the case with Ryley Walker, a Chicago-based guitarist who I would’ve voted for in the Sound Of 2013 poll if I didn’t think my participation in these things was kind of hypocritical (I wasn’t actually invited this year, after declining to be involved last year in what I recall was pretty pompous fashion).
I’ve been hyping Walker’s “West Wind” single for Tompkins Square pretty hard for the past few weeks; a brackish and magical seven-inch that sits somewhere between Tim Buckley’s soaring reveries and Bert Jansch circa “LA Turnaround” (Bernard Butler, a key player in last night’s Jansch tribute show, has been on Twitter repping for Walker, too).
I’d thought “The West Wind” was a debut single, but – much as industry manoeuvres like the Sound Of 2013 would have us believe otherwise – the dissemination of good music in 2013 is a lot more complicated than that. A few minutes on the internet (or, now, on this blog) and you can find another great single by Walker, “Clear The Sky”…
… plus a very fine live set, and a whole album of Takoma-ish guitar duets with Daniel Bachman from a couple of years back (both are linked below). I’m sure there’s more worth discovering by him out there (I have the b-side of “The West Wind”, “A Home For Me”, which I haven’t spotted online and which might be my favourite Walker song yet): let me know if you hunt down anything else.
In the meantime, a lot more to dig into here: the first exquisite track to surface from Linda Perhacs’ comeback album (going to see her at Cecil Sharp House tomorrow); the new record by my favourite Sumatran devotional folk scholars, Suarasama; the Angel Olsen album, especially the bits where she sounds like a cross between Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith; Ben Chasny and Donovan Quinn’s New Bums album; Neil Young doing “Needle Of Death” in Jack White’s record booth; and Mark McGuire, who appears to have become Steve Hillage, more or less…
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey
1 Suarasama – Timeline (Space)
2 Mark McGuire – Along The Way (Dead Oceans)
3 ?
4 Ryley Walker – The West Wind/A Home For Me (Tompkins Square)
5 Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire For No Witness (Jagjaguwar)
6 FC Judd – Electronics Without Tears (Public Information)
7 Ryley Walker – The Bootleg: Live at Galerie Rademann, Schwarzenberg/GER, 15-Oct-2013 (Dying For Bad Music)
8 Ryley Walker & Daniel Bachman – Of Deathly Premonitions (Plustapes)
9 Marissa Nadler – July (Bella Union)
10 Aziza Brahim – Soutak (Glitterbeat)
11 Fat White Family – Taman Shud EP (Trashmouth)
12 Quilt – Held In Splendor (Mexican Summer)
13 Black Dirt Oak – Wawayanda Patent (MIE Music)
14 Francisco Lopez – Untitled#295 (God)
15 Joan As Policewoman – The Classic (PIAS)
16 Holden – The Inheritors (Border Community)
17 Thurston Moore – Detonation (Blank Editions)
18 New Bums – Voices In A Rented Room (Drag City)
19 Linda Perhacs – Freely (Asthmatic Kitty)
20 Neville Skelly – Carousel (PIAS)
21 Lou Reed – Street Hassle (Arista)
22 Hiss Golden Messenger – Bad Debt (Paradise Of Bachelors)
23 Rob St.John And Tommy Perman – Water Of Life (Edinburgh Water Of Life)
24 Neil Young – Needle Of Death (Live At Third Man)
A specially recorded film of Neil Young covering Bert Jansch's "Needle Of Death" was shown last night [December 3, 2013] during a tribute concert to Jansch.
A Celebration Of Bert Jansch took place at London's Royal Festival Hall. Among the performers were original Pentangle members Jacqui McShee and Danny Thompson, Robert Plant, Ralph McTell, Martin Simpson, Bernard Butler, Martin Carthy and Beverley Martyn. Bert Jansch died on October 5, 2011 at the age of 67.
Robert Plant - accompanied by Butler - performed "Go Your Way My Love" and then joined Bonnie Dobson to play "Morning Dew" at the concert, which was staged to mark Jansch's 70th birthday, which would have fallen on November 3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeZFOWNJ_X4
Neil Young's cover of "Needle Of Death" was recorded in Jack White's Third Man Recording Booth in Nashville on Record Store Day. In the film - which you can see above - Young appears in the booth, while Jack White can be seen in the background.
A specially recorded film of Neil Young covering Bert Jansch’s “Needle Of Death” was shown last night [December 3, 2013] during a tribute concert to Jansch.
A Celebration Of Bert Jansch took place at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Among the performers were original Pentangle members Jacqui McShee and Danny Thompson, Robert Plant, Ralph McTell, Martin Simpson, Bernard Butler, Martin Carthy and Beverley Martyn. Bert Jansch died on October 5, 2011 at the age of 67.
Robert Plant – accompanied by Butler – performed “Go Your Way My Love” and then joined Bonnie Dobson to play “Morning Dew” at the concert, which was staged to mark Jansch’s 70th birthday, which would have fallen on November 3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeZFOWNJ_X4
Neil Young’s cover of “Needle Of Death” was recorded in Jack White’s Third Man Recording Booth in Nashville on Record Store Day. In the film – which you can see above – Young appears in the booth, while Jack White can be seen in the background.
There have been plenty of surprises and revelations in music during the last twelve months. Admittedly, perhaps not all of them have had the same impact as the sudden arrival of records by David Bowie or My Bloody Valentine; nevertheless, a Tweet on June 3 from Edwyn Collins’ label AED carried its own quietly momentous piece of breaking news. “A new @RoddyFrame record in the wind, on AED, early 2014. It’s a lovely thing, just wait til you hear it. Watch this space, popsters.”
It’s been seven years since Roddy Frame’s last studio album Western Skies. Since then, he’s played upwards of 20 gigs and a handful of festivals. I remember an acoustic show at Bush Hall in October 2011: a terrific showcase for Frame’s nimble, life-affirming pop, although it made me wonder (and not for the first time) why unlike so many of his contemporaries Frame hasn’t quite been given the dues he deserves. Indeed, a month before the new album announcement in June, Frame posted on Soundcloud a demo for “Green Jacket Grey”, one of his legendary unreleased tracks from the early Eighties, offering yet more compelling evidence for his astonishing songwriting gifts. And on Sunday, during the first of three shows to mark the 30th anniversary of Aztec Camera’s debut, High Land, Hard Rain, Frame reminded us further of the calibre of his back catalogue.
It’s possible to watch Frame as he bounds around the stage of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with something approaching jealousy. After all, there are few men in their late 40s who look like they've got the same waist size as they had in 1983. Frame at 49 is absurdly youthful, full of boyish enthusiasm - 'the sound of young Scotland' evidently persists - whether in the way he moves round the stage a little like a cat on its uppers, or in his self-deprecating between song banter. “I don't really like photographs," he says, "but tonight I don't mind. Or you can set up an easel at the side of the stage and maybe do a watercolour..."
Although we’re ostensibly here to celebrate High Land, Hard Rain, the evening’s set is broken down into two halves. The first finds Frame – initially solo, then joined by bassist Amulf Linder and drummer Adrian Mehan – treating us to “a few songs from the East Kilbride period”. It’s astonishing to be reminded that Frame was writing songs this good – “Green Jacket Grey”, “Orchid Girl” and “Just Like Gold” are standouts – when he was just 15 or 16, playing them in the youth clubs of East Kilbride. Behind him, black and white images of his hometown appear: a concrete underpass, tower blocks, housing schemes, a disused school, Glasgow in the Seventies in all its glory.
The High Land, Hard Rain set itself faultless. I bought the album in 1983 or so from Max’s Records in Eastbourne – a beloved second home for me as a teenager – and it’s one of the few albums from that period that I’ve regularly revisited since, regardless of how my own personal tastes have shifted. Admittedly, I have an on-off relationship with the production – the drum sound is conspicuously of its time – but the important bits (the songs themselves, that is) continue to shine. Here – with the addition of guitarist Tom Edwards and keyboardist Owen Parker to the band – everything is rendered in splendid technicolour. Opener “Oblivious” sets an astonishingly high standard - but the run of songs that follows – “The Boy Wonders”, “Walk Out To Winter”, “Pillar To Post”, “Down The Dip” – sustain the consistently high level of Frame's songwriting, full of chiming melodies and soaring arpeggios. An impromptu between song Q+A, meanwhile, reveals many useful facts. Yes, this is still the same 1953 Gibson ES-295 Scotty Moore he played on the original album. Yes, he is using a 1mm Plectrum. Aztec Camera’s first professional engagement was supporting The Teardrop Explodes on the day Ian Curtis died. The title for the album came from Highlands Avenue, Acton, where he was living while writing part of it; “If you want to go on a rock pilgrimage, the No. 9 goes there.” There’s another show tonight (Tuesday) in Manchester and tomorrow (Wednesday) in Glasgow. If you can get tickets, I’d advise you to go.
Finally, please excuse the shameless plug, but here's a gentle reminder that the latest collection in our Sonic Editions series is now available. This is the new 2014 collection, which contains 25 iconic images curated by Allan and includes pictures of The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Ryan Adams, The Smiths, Bryan Ferry, Johnny Cash, Bob Marley, Debbie Harry and Tom Waits. Each image is available as a limited edition print, individually numbered, hand printed and framed to order, and you can click here to view the full collection.
Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.
Photo credit: Getty Images
There have been plenty of surprises and revelations in music during the last twelve months. Admittedly, perhaps not all of them have had the same impact as the sudden arrival of records by David Bowie or My Bloody Valentine; nevertheless, a Tweet on June 3 from Edwyn Collins’ label AED carried its own quietly momentous piece of breaking news. “A new @RoddyFrame record in the wind, on AED, early 2014. It’s a lovely thing, just wait til you hear it. Watch this space, popsters.”
It’s been seven years since Roddy Frame’s last studio album Western Skies. Since then, he’s played upwards of 20 gigs and a handful of festivals. I remember an acoustic show at Bush Hall in October 2011: a terrific showcase for Frame’s nimble, life-affirming pop, although it made me wonder (and not for the first time) why unlike so many of his contemporaries Frame hasn’t quite been given the dues he deserves. Indeed, a month before the new album announcement in June, Frame posted on Soundcloud a demo for “Green Jacket Grey”, one of his legendary unreleased tracks from the early Eighties, offering yet more compelling evidence for his astonishing songwriting gifts. And on Sunday, during the first of three shows to mark the 30th anniversary of Aztec Camera’s debut, High Land, Hard Rain, Frame reminded us further of the calibre of his back catalogue.
It’s possible to watch Frame as he bounds around the stage of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with something approaching jealousy. After all, there are few men in their late 40s who look like they’ve got the same waist size as they had in 1983. Frame at 49 is absurdly youthful, full of boyish enthusiasm – ‘the sound of young Scotland’ evidently persists – whether in the way he moves round the stage a little like a cat on its uppers, or in his self-deprecating between song banter. “I don’t really like photographs,” he says, “but tonight I don’t mind. Or you can set up an easel at the side of the stage and maybe do a watercolour…”
Although we’re ostensibly here to celebrate High Land, Hard Rain, the evening’s set is broken down into two halves. The first finds Frame – initially solo, then joined by bassist Amulf Linder and drummer Adrian Mehan – treating us to “a few songs from the East Kilbride period”. It’s astonishing to be reminded that Frame was writing songs this good – “Green Jacket Grey”, “Orchid Girl” and “Just Like Gold” are standouts – when he was just 15 or 16, playing them in the youth clubs of East Kilbride. Behind him, black and white images of his hometown appear: a concrete underpass, tower blocks, housing schemes, a disused school, Glasgow in the Seventies in all its glory.
The High Land, Hard Rain set itself faultless. I bought the album in 1983 or so from Max’s Records in Eastbourne – a beloved second home for me as a teenager – and it’s one of the few albums from that period that I’ve regularly revisited since, regardless of how my own personal tastes have shifted. Admittedly, I have an on-off relationship with the production – the drum sound is conspicuously of its time – but the important bits (the songs themselves, that is) continue to shine. Here – with the addition of guitarist Tom Edwards and keyboardist Owen Parker to the band – everything is rendered in splendid technicolour. Opener “Oblivious” sets an astonishingly high standard – but the run of songs that follows – “The Boy Wonders”, “Walk Out To Winter”, “Pillar To Post”, “Down The Dip” – sustain the consistently high level of Frame’s songwriting, full of chiming melodies and soaring arpeggios. An impromptu between song Q+A, meanwhile, reveals many useful facts. Yes, this is still the same 1953 Gibson ES-295 Scotty Moore he played on the original album. Yes, he is using a 1mm Plectrum. Aztec Camera’s first professional engagement was supporting The Teardrop Explodes on the day Ian Curtis died. The title for the album came from Highlands Avenue, Acton, where he was living while writing part of it; “If you want to go on a rock pilgrimage, the No. 9 goes there.” There’s another show tonight (Tuesday) in Manchester and tomorrow (Wednesday) in Glasgow. If you can get tickets, I’d advise you to go.
Finally, please excuse the shameless plug, but here’s a gentle reminder that the latest collection in our Sonic Editions series is now available. This is the new 2014 collection, which contains 25 iconic images curated by Allan and includes pictures of The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Ryan Adams, The Smiths, Bryan Ferry, Johnny Cash, Bob Marley, Debbie Harry and Tom Waits. Each image is available as a limited edition print, individually numbered, hand printed and framed to order, and you can click here to view the full collection.
James Taylor has announced a 10 date UK tour with his band to take place in September/October 2014.
Taylor, who last toured the UK in 2011, will play:
SEPTEMBER
5 - Plymouth Pavilions
26 – Birmingham LG Arena
27 – Leeds First Direct Arena
29 – Glasgow SSE Hydro
30 – Manchester Phon...
James Taylor has announced a 10 date UK tour with his band to take place in September/October 2014.
Taylor, who last toured the UK in 2011, will play:
SEPTEMBER
5 – Plymouth Pavilions
26 – Birmingham LG Arena
27 – Leeds First Direct Arena
29 – Glasgow SSE Hydro
30 – Manchester Phones 4 U Arena
OCTOBER
2 – Cardiff Motorpoint Arena
4 – Brighton Centre
5 – Bournemouth BIC
7/8 – London Royal Albert Hall
Book from www.ticketline.co.uk / 0844 888 9991 or from the venue direct.
The Uncut team reveal our albums of the year in The Best Of 2013, a special supplement that comes with the new issue, dated January 2014 and out now.
The 52-page supplement includes our Top 80 albums of the year, with high-charting LPs from The National, Daft Punk, Prefab Sprout, Kurt Vile, John Grant and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
The Uncut Best Of 2013 review also features the best of this year’s reissues, music DVDs, TV, films and books.
The new issue of Uncut, including the supplement, is dated January 2014 and out now.
The Uncut team reveal our albums of the year in The Best Of 2013, a special supplement that comes with the new issue, dated January 2014 and out now.
The 52-page supplement includes our Top 80 albums of the year, with high-charting LPs from The National, Daft Punk, Prefab Sprout, Kurt Vile, John Grant and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
The Uncut Best Of 2013 review also features the best of this year’s reissues, music DVDs, TV, films and books.
The new issue of Uncut, including the supplement, is dated January 2014 and out now.
The bard's compact debut plus live counterpart...
There are many reasons to welcome this anniversary edition of Billy Bragg’s seven-track debut album – not all of them directly concerning the music. In an age of extravagantly bloated deluxe packages, there’s something heartening about the fact that, even puffed up to twice its original size, this expanded version of Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy comes in at a shade under 35 minutes.
Then there’s the discovery that the additional material, which constitutes Bragg playing the album in its entirety at a recent London show, for once sounds more polished than the album itself, though there’s not much in it: both versions feature nothing fancier than a man in a room with a microphone and an electric guitar, the latter played with fist-clenched passion rather than any attempt at finesse.
A quick listen to the sophisticated Americana of his latest album, Tooth & Nail, confirms that Bragg has come a long way in the three decades since he released Life’s A Riot..., but it requires no great leap to join the dots. Hearing the original and the 2013 live set back-to-back, it’s immediately apparent how comfortably the 55-year-old inhabits these brief, urgent songs of anger, compassion and confusion. And although the highly politicised street-corner barker of legend is certainly present, Life’s A Riot... reveals that Bragg’s interests were always much broader than that early caricature allowed.
The range of subject matter – love, obsession, class, consumerism, the minutiae of small town life – is not just striking but at times depressingly pertinent. The references to Anna Ford and Angela Rippon might date-stamp the album, but not much else does. “The Busy Girl Buys Beauty” remains a remarkably relevant dissection of the tyranny of must-have teenage fashion fixes and the impossible lure of celebrity. The martial rhythm guitar and rallying chorus of “To Have And Have Not” makes explicit Bragg’s debt to The Clash, and the words follow suit. “At 21 you’re on top of the scrap heap/ At 16 you were top of the class,” he sings, railing against such topical concerns as endemic unemployment and the failures of the education system.
But Bragg’s real interest lies in the politics of the heart. Tenderness might well slide into mawkish sentiment on “The Milkman Of Human Kindness”, where his adenoidal honk dissolves into a sorry sob, but it’s a rare misstep. “Man In The Iron Mask” is genuinely disquieting, a slow, minor-key portrait of a tortured lover lurking in the shadows, staunch and loyal but with a dagger in his heart – and very possibly another in his pocket.
The chorus line of the still-thrilling “A New England” – “I don’t want to change the world” – now seems particularly prescient given Bragg’s gradual shift towards domestic rather than political matters. On the new live version he sings the extra verse written for Kirsty MacColl, a generous acknowledgment that the song has, for decades now, belonged as much to her as to its composer.
The album’s epic at almost three minutes, the tragicomic “Richard” pokes around in the lonely aftermath of love gone astray. The most melodically ambitious song on the record, its highlights include Bragg’s unlikely climb into crystal clear falsetto, and a slinky little guitar motif. In general, though, Life’s A Riot... is – how shall we put it? – economical. “Lovers Town Revisited”, which ponders that early 80s staple, “fighting in the dancehalls”, is barely a minute long, and throughout the guitar playing is similarly efficient, a blunt, trebly, nuisance-noise, intent only on grabbing the listener’s attention.
Though raw and often clumsy, Life’s A Riot... still stirs. Bragg has become such an integral part of the landscape, it’s instructive to be reminded that there was no one like him when he arrived. Listening again to these songs is to realise just how much that voice would have been missed had it not demanded to be heard.
Graeme Thomson
EXTRAS: Life’s A Riot... performed live as an encore at Union Chapel, London, on June 5, 2013. 7/10
Q&A
BILLY BRAGG
What are your memories of making the album?
It was all pretty much one take stuff. I basically just recorded my live set, and some of them worked and some of them I didn’t play well enough. It was a last roll of the dice for me. I was in bands that had come to nothing, and I didn’t think I had another shot. There was no Plan B. Maybe now it sounds like urgency but at the time it was a bit more like desperation! You can hear that sense of now-or-never in the grooves.
I was struck by the emotional range.
“A New England” was really about how all those years of the struggle in punk had come to nothing, and I just needed a cuddle. That side of Billy Bragg sometimes gets forgotten, but it’s still there now on the new album.
The live disc suggests that you still connect to those songs.
Oh yeah. Bollocks to hiring the Albert Hall and the LSO – get a hold of this! It’s great, I can do the whole album as an encore. I recently did an in-store at Grimey’s record store in Nashville and threw in the whole lot. Kurt Wagner was hugging me afterwards in tears, saying “I never thought I’d get to hear that!”
INTERVIEW: GRAEME THOMSON
The bard’s compact debut plus live counterpart…
There are many reasons to welcome this anniversary edition of Billy Bragg’s seven-track debut album – not all of them directly concerning the music. In an age of extravagantly bloated deluxe packages, there’s something heartening about the fact that, even puffed up to twice its original size, this expanded version of Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy comes in at a shade under 35 minutes.
Then there’s the discovery that the additional material, which constitutes Bragg playing the album in its entirety at a recent London show, for once sounds more polished than the album itself, though there’s not much in it: both versions feature nothing fancier than a man in a room with a microphone and an electric guitar, the latter played with fist-clenched passion rather than any attempt at finesse.
A quick listen to the sophisticated Americana of his latest album, Tooth & Nail, confirms that Bragg has come a long way in the three decades since he released Life’s A Riot…, but it requires no great leap to join the dots. Hearing the original and the 2013 live set back-to-back, it’s immediately apparent how comfortably the 55-year-old inhabits these brief, urgent songs of anger, compassion and confusion. And although the highly politicised street-corner barker of legend is certainly present, Life’s A Riot… reveals that Bragg’s interests were always much broader than that early caricature allowed.
The range of subject matter – love, obsession, class, consumerism, the minutiae of small town life – is not just striking but at times depressingly pertinent. The references to Anna Ford and Angela Rippon might date-stamp the album, but not much else does. “The Busy Girl Buys Beauty” remains a remarkably relevant dissection of the tyranny of must-have teenage fashion fixes and the impossible lure of celebrity. The martial rhythm guitar and rallying chorus of “To Have And Have Not” makes explicit Bragg’s debt to The Clash, and the words follow suit. “At 21 you’re on top of the scrap heap/ At 16 you were top of the class,” he sings, railing against such topical concerns as endemic unemployment and the failures of the education system.
But Bragg’s real interest lies in the politics of the heart. Tenderness might well slide into mawkish sentiment on “The Milkman Of Human Kindness”, where his adenoidal honk dissolves into a sorry sob, but it’s a rare misstep. “Man In The Iron Mask” is genuinely disquieting, a slow, minor-key portrait of a tortured lover lurking in the shadows, staunch and loyal but with a dagger in his heart – and very possibly another in his pocket.
The chorus line of the still-thrilling “A New England” – “I don’t want to change the world” – now seems particularly prescient given Bragg’s gradual shift towards domestic rather than political matters. On the new live version he sings the extra verse written for Kirsty MacColl, a generous acknowledgment that the song has, for decades now, belonged as much to her as to its composer.
The album’s epic at almost three minutes, the tragicomic “Richard” pokes around in the lonely aftermath of love gone astray. The most melodically ambitious song on the record, its highlights include Bragg’s unlikely climb into crystal clear falsetto, and a slinky little guitar motif. In general, though, Life’s A Riot… is – how shall we put it? – economical. “Lovers Town Revisited”, which ponders that early 80s staple, “fighting in the dancehalls”, is barely a minute long, and throughout the guitar playing is similarly efficient, a blunt, trebly, nuisance-noise, intent only on grabbing the listener’s attention.
Though raw and often clumsy, Life’s A Riot… still stirs. Bragg has become such an integral part of the landscape, it’s instructive to be reminded that there was no one like him when he arrived. Listening again to these songs is to realise just how much that voice would have been missed had it not demanded to be heard.
Graeme Thomson
EXTRAS: Life’s A Riot… performed live as an encore at Union Chapel, London, on June 5, 2013. 7/10
Q&A
BILLY BRAGG
What are your memories of making the album?
It was all pretty much one take stuff. I basically just recorded my live set, and some of them worked and some of them I didn’t play well enough. It was a last roll of the dice for me. I was in bands that had come to nothing, and I didn’t think I had another shot. There was no Plan B. Maybe now it sounds like urgency but at the time it was a bit more like desperation! You can hear that sense of now-or-never in the grooves.
I was struck by the emotional range.
“A New England” was really about how all those years of the struggle in punk had come to nothing, and I just needed a cuddle. That side of Billy Bragg sometimes gets forgotten, but it’s still there now on the new album.
The live disc suggests that you still connect to those songs.
Oh yeah. Bollocks to hiring the Albert Hall and the LSO – get a hold of this! It’s great, I can do the whole album as an encore. I recently did an in-store at Grimey’s record store in Nashville and threw in the whole lot. Kurt Wagner was hugging me afterwards in tears, saying “I never thought I’d get to hear that!”
Junior Murvin has died aged 67.
The Jamaica Observer writes that the singer died at the Port Antonio Hospital in Portland earlier this morning (December 2). Best known for the Lee 'Scratch' Perry produced 1976 single "Police And Thieves", Murvin - real name Murvin Junior Smith - was apparently suff...
Junior Murvin has died aged 67.
The Jamaica Observer writes that the singer died at the Port Antonio Hospital in Portland earlier this morning (December 2). Best known for the Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry produced 1976 single “Police And Thieves“, Murvin – real name Murvin Junior Smith – was apparently suffering from advanced stage diabetes at the time of his death.
The 1977 album Police and Thieves was Murvin’s LP debut and saw him backed by The Upsetters. He released his last studio album, World Cry, in 1995.
The Clash covered “Police And Thieves” on their 1977 debut album. Scroll down to hear Murvin’s original version, as performed on Top Of The Pops.
Murvin’s son, Kevin Smith, told the Jamaica Observer that his father was admitted to hospital last Thursday for diabetes and hypertension treatment.
Looking back on the ways in which Hollywood had changed since he started out as an actor, Bruce Dern told Uncut in 2004, “Where are the people? Where are the stories? That’s what the ‘70s was, and each of us who survived, those are the kind of movies we always wanted to make. And always will try and make. And whenever there’s one out there like that – look for us to be involved in it. I’m still trying to be a better actor. I’m still hoping I’m growing. Y’know, there’s no retirement. Shit, if you’re 80 play 80!”
In many respects, Alexander Payne’s new film, Nebraska, fulfils Dern’s requirements. It gives a plum role to Dern – now in his 77th year – as Woody Grant, a grizzled, faintly bewildered retiree who undertakes an 850 mile road trip from his hometown of Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska on the dubious promise of a million dollar payout. Superficially, at least, the plot resembles another one of Payne’s films, About Schmidt. But Nebraska revives the spirit of Dern’s beloved Seventies’ cinema, too, starting with the vintage Paramount logo Payne dusts down for the start of the film. Meanwhile, you might spot the way the story riffs on Paul Mazursky’s Harry And Tonto – another loose-limbed yarn concerning a septuagenarian on a road trip – or perhaps find similarities to Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show in Payne’s use of monochrome small town photography.
The small town is a critical factor here, I think. Payne is an unusual figure among contemporary film directors in that he still references his non-California origins. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, Payne seems to studiously avoid large metropolitan settings in his films, instead championing recognisably regional environments – in particular his home state. Events in both Election and About Schmidt take place in the suburbs of Omaha; Sideways steers a gentle course round the sleepy vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley; The Descendents, meanwhile, abandons mainland America altogether in favour of the Hawaiian islands.
As Woody – in the company of his long-suffering younger son David (SNL’s Will Forte, in a rare straight role) – make their way through Wyoming and South Dakota towards Nebraska, Payne’s film becomes a quiet requiem to the disadvantaged American heartland; half-empty diners, rusting farm machinery and boarded-up stores suggesting that a great tranche of the country is sinking into a dark economic crisis. On a more intimate level, there is also a question mark over Woody’s mental acuity: is his befuddlement simply a side effect of having nothing constructive to do with his retirement (“He needs something to live for,” says his wife), or is there something more serious going on: is he drifting towards Alzheimer’s? Certainly, David’s decision to travel with his father is motivated as much by wanting to spend what you suspect he believes is his last significant chunk of ‘quality time’ with his father as it is to do with wanting to make sure he doesn’t come to any harm.
But for all this, Nebraska is often a very funny film. The scenes involving a family reunion the Grant’s hometown of Hawthorne, Nebraska are especially funny, as news of Woody’s supposed windfall turns him into a local celebrity, giving rise to expectations of payback for past debts, whether real or otherwise. The chief claimant – and, I suppose, the film’s de facto bad guy – is Woody’s bull-necked former business partner, Ed Pegram, played brilliantly by Stacy Keach. Props in particular go to June Squibb (84), who plays Kathy, Woody’s quarrelsome, foul-mouthed wife. A visit to the Hawthorne cemetery, where she gleefully rattles through the causes of death of various family members and other local residents is hilarious. She gets a terrific, although admittedly unexpected, punchline out of the word “cancer”.
And then there’s Dern, triumphant as Woody, with his shock of white hair, flannel shirt and jeans, stumbling down the road, doing his best work in 40 years. As long-suppressed details about his early life – his time in Korea, alcoholism, former girlfriends – emerge, we begin to see more clearly what has shaped this largely egotistical and cantankerous old man. These are people going nowhere, in need of something to hang on to.
Nebraska opens in the UK on Friday, December 6
Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.
Looking back on the ways in which Hollywood had changed since he started out as an actor, Bruce Dern told Uncut in 2004, “Where are the people? Where are the stories? That’s what the ‘70s was, and each of us who survived, those are the kind of movies we always wanted to make. And always will try and make. And whenever there’s one out there like that – look for us to be involved in it. I’m still trying to be a better actor. I’m still hoping I’m growing. Y’know, there’s no retirement. Shit, if you’re 80 play 80!”
In many respects, Alexander Payne’s new film, Nebraska, fulfils Dern’s requirements. It gives a plum role to Dern – now in his 77th year – as Woody Grant, a grizzled, faintly bewildered retiree who undertakes an 850 mile road trip from his hometown of Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska on the dubious promise of a million dollar payout. Superficially, at least, the plot resembles another one of Payne’s films, About Schmidt. But Nebraska revives the spirit of Dern’s beloved Seventies’ cinema, too, starting with the vintage Paramount logo Payne dusts down for the start of the film. Meanwhile, you might spot the way the story riffs on Paul Mazursky’s Harry And Tonto – another loose-limbed yarn concerning a septuagenarian on a road trip – or perhaps find similarities to Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show in Payne’s use of monochrome small town photography.
The small town is a critical factor here, I think. Payne is an unusual figure among contemporary film directors in that he still references his non-California origins. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, Payne seems to studiously avoid large metropolitan settings in his films, instead championing recognisably regional environments – in particular his home state. Events in both Election and About Schmidt take place in the suburbs of Omaha; Sideways steers a gentle course round the sleepy vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley; The Descendents, meanwhile, abandons mainland America altogether in favour of the Hawaiian islands.
As Woody – in the company of his long-suffering younger son David (SNL’s Will Forte, in a rare straight role) – make their way through Wyoming and South Dakota towards Nebraska, Payne’s film becomes a quiet requiem to the disadvantaged American heartland; half-empty diners, rusting farm machinery and boarded-up stores suggesting that a great tranche of the country is sinking into a dark economic crisis. On a more intimate level, there is also a question mark over Woody’s mental acuity: is his befuddlement simply a side effect of having nothing constructive to do with his retirement (“He needs something to live for,” says his wife), or is there something more serious going on: is he drifting towards Alzheimer’s? Certainly, David’s decision to travel with his father is motivated as much by wanting to spend what you suspect he believes is his last significant chunk of ‘quality time’ with his father as it is to do with wanting to make sure he doesn’t come to any harm.
But for all this, Nebraska is often a very funny film. The scenes involving a family reunion the Grant’s hometown of Hawthorne, Nebraska are especially funny, as news of Woody’s supposed windfall turns him into a local celebrity, giving rise to expectations of payback for past debts, whether real or otherwise. The chief claimant – and, I suppose, the film’s de facto bad guy – is Woody’s bull-necked former business partner, Ed Pegram, played brilliantly by Stacy Keach. Props in particular go to June Squibb (84), who plays Kathy, Woody’s quarrelsome, foul-mouthed wife. A visit to the Hawthorne cemetery, where she gleefully rattles through the causes of death of various family members and other local residents is hilarious. She gets a terrific, although admittedly unexpected, punchline out of the word “cancer”.
And then there’s Dern, triumphant as Woody, with his shock of white hair, flannel shirt and jeans, stumbling down the road, doing his best work in 40 years. As long-suppressed details about his early life – his time in Korea, alcoholism, former girlfriends – emerge, we begin to see more clearly what has shaped this largely egotistical and cantankerous old man. These are people going nowhere, in need of something to hang on to.
At 80, country’s king takes up with 18 assorted queens...
Willie Nelson is fond of a collaboration – setting aside numerous get-togethers with fellow travellers in the country of Country, can anyone else boast a duet roster that embraces Wynton Marsalis, Julio Iglesias, U2 and Snoop Dogg? Here he plays things mostly safe with a set of country standards – including his own songs, natch – and a stellar roster of female voices. If the results are sometimes unremarkable – a rehash of Kitty Wells “Making Believe” with Brandi Carlisle and a leaden “Far Away Places” with Sheryl Crow fit the frame – the album is redeemed by Nelson’s engagement on most cuts.
It hasn’t always been so – there are many jog-throughs in that mammoth discography – but a new contract and the advent of the big 8-0 have put a spring in the ol’ feller’s step. 2012’s Heroes and this year’s Let’s Face The Music both yielded age-defying highlights. So does To All The Girls. Nelson’s conversational vocal style is deceptive going on offhand, but class acts like Rosanne Cash (on Kristofferson’s “Please Don’t Tell Me”) and Emmylou Harris (on Springsteen’s “Dry Lightning”) spur him to fine performances, while Norah Jones drawls sweetly on “Walkin’” and Alison Krauss adds sublimity to his south-of -the-border “No Mas Amor”. Here, as elsewhere, Willie’s stuttering, Spanish-flavoured guitar is as engaging as vocals that have acquired the timbre of seasoned redwood.
There’s the odd flounder; Nelson’s simply overpowered by Mavis Staples on Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands”, and Dolly Parton’s “From Here to The Moon And Back” is string-laden syrup. He’s more at home in a 1950s Texas ballroom, playing Western Swing with Shelby Lynne on “Till The End Of The World” or whooping it up with Tina Rose on Conway Twitty’s “After the Fire Is Gone”. Needless to say it’s all immaculately played, meaning even the flat spots pass by amicably, leaving Willie’s gap-toothed grin hovering like an ancient Cheshire cat. Long may he endure.
Neil Spencer
At 80, country’s king takes up with 18 assorted queens…
Willie Nelson is fond of a collaboration – setting aside numerous get-togethers with fellow travellers in the country of Country, can anyone else boast a duet roster that embraces Wynton Marsalis, Julio Iglesias, U2 and Snoop Dogg? Here he plays things mostly safe with a set of country standards – including his own songs, natch – and a stellar roster of female voices. If the results are sometimes unremarkable – a rehash of Kitty Wells “Making Believe” with Brandi Carlisle and a leaden “Far Away Places” with Sheryl Crow fit the frame – the album is redeemed by Nelson’s engagement on most cuts.
It hasn’t always been so – there are many jog-throughs in that mammoth discography – but a new contract and the advent of the big 8-0 have put a spring in the ol’ feller’s step. 2012’s Heroes and this year’s Let’s Face The Music both yielded age-defying highlights. So does To All The Girls. Nelson’s conversational vocal style is deceptive going on offhand, but class acts like Rosanne Cash (on Kristofferson’s “Please Don’t Tell Me”) and Emmylou Harris (on Springsteen’s “Dry Lightning”) spur him to fine performances, while Norah Jones drawls sweetly on “Walkin’” and Alison Krauss adds sublimity to his south-of -the-border “No Mas Amor”. Here, as elsewhere, Willie’s stuttering, Spanish-flavoured guitar is as engaging as vocals that have acquired the timbre of seasoned redwood.
There’s the odd flounder; Nelson’s simply overpowered by Mavis Staples on Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands”, and Dolly Parton’s “From Here to The Moon And Back” is string-laden syrup. He’s more at home in a 1950s Texas ballroom, playing Western Swing with Shelby Lynne on “Till The End Of The World” or whooping it up with Tina Rose on Conway Twitty’s “After the Fire Is Gone”. Needless to say it’s all immaculately played, meaning even the flat spots pass by amicably, leaving Willie’s gap-toothed grin hovering like an ancient Cheshire cat. Long may he endure.
Roddy Frame played Aztec Camera's High Land, Hard Rain in full last night [December 1] at the first of three shows to mark the album's 30th anniversary.
The show - at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane - ran across two sets.
The first set featured both Frame solo and accompanied by bassist Amulf L...
Roddy Frame played Aztec Camera’s High Land, Hard Rain in full last night [December 1] at the first of three shows to mark the album’s 30th anniversary.
The show – at London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane – ran across two sets.
The first set featured both Frame solo and accompanied by bassist Amulf Linder and drummer Adrian Mehan. It consisted of pre-High Land, Hard Rain recordings, rarities and b-sides – including a performance of “Green Jacket Grey“, an unreleased song long rumoured to have been the title track for an album Aztec Camera recorded for the Postcard label.
The set set featured Frame accompanied by a full band – Linder, Mehan, guitarist Tom Edwards and keyboardist Owen Parker – for a performance of High Land, Hard Rain in order. During introductions to the songs, Frame revealed the title for the album came from Highlands Avenue, Acton, where he was living while writing part of it. He also revealed that Aztec Camera’s first professional engagement was supporting The Teardrop Explodes on the day of Ian Curtis’ suicide.
Frame will continue his High Land, Hard Rain shows on Tuesday, December 3 at The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester and Wednesday, December 4 at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.
A vinyl-only reissue of High Land, Hard Rain is available now; a new Roddy Frame album is due for release in 2014.
Kim Shattuck has revealed that her time playing with Pixies has come to an end.
The bass player joined the band this summer after Kim Deal left the band. She posted the news of her departure on Twitter and Facebook, saying she was "disappointed" with the decision.
In a recent interview with NME it...
Kim Shattuck has revealed that her time playing with Pixies has come to an end.
The bass player joined the band this summer after Kim Deal left the band. She posted the news of her departure on Twitter and Facebook, saying she was “disappointed” with the decision.
In a recent interview with NME it was revealed that Kim Deal had left the band in October 2012, though the news wasn’t announced until June 2013. Shattuck did not speak to NME during the interview – which was published earlier this month (November 23), suggesting there may have been friction within the group. Black Francis declined to say why she wouldn’t be taking part in the interview, simply saying: “I guess you could ask our manager”.
Meanwhile, Pixies have been announced as the first headline act of next year’s Field Day in London. The festival, which will expand to a two day event when it takes place over one weekend next year, confirmed that the band will headline on Sunday, June 8, 2014. For more information, see Field Day’s website.
The Who have released a brand new iPad digital box set app, to complement the recently-released deluxe and super Deluxe editions of Tommy.
The app, which has been described as the band's record label, Universal, as "the world's first-ever digital box set" is available on tablets and smart phones.
...
The Who have released a brand new iPad digital box set app, to complement the recently-released deluxe and super Deluxe editions of Tommy.
The app, which has been described as the band’s record label, Universal, as “the world’s first-ever digital box set” is available on tablets and smart phones.
Users can download the app for free from the iTunes store.
If they already have Tommy in their iTunes music collection they can play the full tracks on tablet devices along with the visuals and extra features that accompany the super deluxe set. If not, they can play 90-second edited previews through iTunes and buy them directly.
The book written by Richard Barnes, Mike McInnerney’s original artwork and photos included in the box are available to flip through and view using the pinch and swipe navigation of the iPad. As with the music, the photos and the book are included in the in-app purchase mechanic.
The digital box set also includes: a built-in music player (functional whilst reading the book and exploring the photos). The video section includes five tracks streamed into the app taken from The Who’s Live At The Coliseum ’69 show; a specially-developed Pinball Game as well as links to the official Who site, official store and social channels.
Bob Dylan is being sued for alleged 'racism'.
According to Slate.Fr – via Business Insider – a Croatian community association in France is suing Dylan for comments he made in the September issue of the French version of Rolling Stone magazine.
In response to a question about whether he sees pa...
Bob Dylan is being sued for alleged ‘racism’.
According to Slate.Fr – via Business Insider – a Croatian community association in France is suing Dylan for comments he made in the September issue of the French version of Rolling Stone magazine.
In response to a question about whether he sees parallels between Civil War-era America and the US of today, Dylan said: “Mmm, I don’t know how to put it. It’s like . . . the United States burned and destroyed itself for the sake of slavery. The USA wouldn’t give it up. It had to be grinded out. The whole system had to be ripped out with force. A lot of killing. What, like, 500,000 people? A lot of destruction to end slavery. And that’s what it really was all about.
“This country is just too fucked up about colour. It’s a distraction. People at each other’s throats just because they are of a different colour. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighbourhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that.
“If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”
It is that final line that has got the attention of The Council Of Croats in France, who have taken offence to the comment and are suing Dylan and the French version of Rolling Stone.
According to the International Business Times, Vlatko Marić, secretary general of the organization, said: “It is an incitement to hatred. You cannot compare Croatian criminals to all Croats. But we have nothing against Rolling Stone magazine or Bob Dylan as a singer.”
You can read our review of Dylan’s Glasgow Clyde Auditorium shows from November 18, 19 and 20 here.
You can read our review of Dylan’s Albert Hall show from November 26 here.
A dark chronicle of his life and works...
For all that Gene Clark’s story is as peculiar as its wilful, idiosyncratic and volatile subject, it is also one of the most trodden trajectories in modern popular mythology. “Take a group of young men,” sighs one of Clark’s collaborators, David Crosby, “give them some money, introduce them to drugs… I don’t think there was anything wrong with the fact that we all of a sudden got laid a lot. But the money and the drugs. . . that’ll do it every time.”
The Byrd Who Flew Alone is subtitled “The Triumphs And Tragedy Of Gene Clark”. It’s a straightforward chronicling of Clark’s life and his works, which never quite permits itself to become a celebration of his extraordinary and resonant gifts. This is partly because of an implicit suggestion that maybe the determinedly diffident Clark could or should have done (or at least sold) more, mostly because everyone knows how this particular cautionary fable ends: dead at 46, killed by a bleeding ulcer engendered by decades of drink and drugs, topped terminally up via the windfall generated by Tom Petty covering one of his oldest songs (“I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better”, an irony about as leaden as they come).
We’re told how Clark grew up poor, raised along with 12 siblings on the outskirts of Kansas City in a house without indoor plumbing. He was famous before he was out of his teens, recruited from his high school rock band by The New Christy Minstrels. He wearied, not unreasonably, of the Minstrels’ wholesome folk (in the archive footage of this period, Clark is conspicuously awkward in a suit and side-parting). Arriving in Los Angeles in 1964, he wandered into The Troubadour and saw Roger McGuinn playing American folk tunes rearranged in somewhat Beatlesesque fashion. Clark joined The Byrds. He was a megastar before he was 21.
As The Byrd Who Flew Alone tells it, Clark spent his remaining 26 years struggling, with infrequent success, to reconcile an internal riot of contradictory instincts as he proceeded, as McGuinn recalls it, “From innocent country boy to road weary and just tired of it all”. Clark was at once a purist artist and a swaggering rock star. He craved pastoral simplicity, yet spent his money on Porsches and Ferraris. He never appeared happier than when playing music, but hated touring. He treasured the independence his success paid for, but paid little attention to his finances. He wanted to be left alone, but missed the applause when it wasn’t there. He was neither the first nor the last to attempt to drink, smoke, snort and shoot his way through these contradictions. Everyone who knew him speaks of him with a kind of affectionate sorrow.
Yet the music that interrupts the rueful testimonies of family, friends and colleagues sounds nothing like failure. Though The Byrd Who Flew Alone does a serviceable job of relating Clark’s biography, it is difficult not to wish it dwelt a little less on how Clark screwed his health and life up, and a little more on the astonishing music he created despite the best efforts of his legion demons. The film – correctly – brackets Clark alongside the even more wretchedly self-destructive Gram Parsons as a godfather of modern Americana, but seems generally more intent on wringing its hands than applauding. In fairness, this is probably only to be expected when so many of the talking heads – including Clark’s wife, his kids, a brother and a sister, Crosby, McGuinn and Chris Hillman – are recalling first and foremost a husband, father, sibling or friend, rather than a musician.
For those of us who weren’t obliged to worry about what his work was costing him, the niggling subtext to the effect that Clark under-achieved is risible. He was the principal songwriter on The Byrds’ first two albums. The solo records he made in the late 60s – one with the Gosdin Brothers, two with bluegrass maestro Doug Dillard – are pretty much the lodestone of country rock, for better (The Byrds, in cahoots with Parsons, finally caught up with Clark on Sweetheart Of The Rodeo) and for worse (Bernie Leadon, who played bass on the Dillard albums, later joined The Eagles, and took “Train Leaves Here This Morning With Him”). His 1974 album, No Other, is rightly described here by Sid Griffin as a classic. And the songs breathe still: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s 2007 stunner Raising Sand contained two Clark compositions.
It is indisputably sad and outrageous that Clark’s name is not better known, but such is the fate of pathfinders in all fields: the ground they clear, often at considerable risk, ends up profitably settled by the meeker spirits who follow them. The Byrd Who Flew Alone is a richly merited monument, if one less succinct than Clark’s actual monument, a simple gravestone in his birthplace of Tipton, Missouri, which reads “Harold Eugene Clark: No Other.” Indeed.
Andrew Mueller
A dark chronicle of his life and works…
For all that Gene Clark’s story is as peculiar as its wilful, idiosyncratic and volatile subject, it is also one of the most trodden trajectories in modern popular mythology. “Take a group of young men,” sighs one of Clark’s collaborators, David Crosby, “give them some money, introduce them to drugs… I don’t think there was anything wrong with the fact that we all of a sudden got laid a lot. But the money and the drugs. . . that’ll do it every time.”
The Byrd Who Flew Alone is subtitled “The Triumphs And Tragedy Of Gene Clark”. It’s a straightforward chronicling of Clark’s life and his works, which never quite permits itself to become a celebration of his extraordinary and resonant gifts. This is partly because of an implicit suggestion that maybe the determinedly diffident Clark could or should have done (or at least sold) more, mostly because everyone knows how this particular cautionary fable ends: dead at 46, killed by a bleeding ulcer engendered by decades of drink and drugs, topped terminally up via the windfall generated by Tom Petty covering one of his oldest songs (“I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better”, an irony about as leaden as they come).
We’re told how Clark grew up poor, raised along with 12 siblings on the outskirts of Kansas City in a house without indoor plumbing. He was famous before he was out of his teens, recruited from his high school rock band by The New Christy Minstrels. He wearied, not unreasonably, of the Minstrels’ wholesome folk (in the archive footage of this period, Clark is conspicuously awkward in a suit and side-parting). Arriving in Los Angeles in 1964, he wandered into The Troubadour and saw Roger McGuinn playing American folk tunes rearranged in somewhat Beatlesesque fashion. Clark joined The Byrds. He was a megastar before he was 21.
As The Byrd Who Flew Alone tells it, Clark spent his remaining 26 years struggling, with infrequent success, to reconcile an internal riot of contradictory instincts as he proceeded, as McGuinn recalls it, “From innocent country boy to road weary and just tired of it all”. Clark was at once a purist artist and a swaggering rock star. He craved pastoral simplicity, yet spent his money on Porsches and Ferraris. He never appeared happier than when playing music, but hated touring. He treasured the independence his success paid for, but paid little attention to his finances. He wanted to be left alone, but missed the applause when it wasn’t there. He was neither the first nor the last to attempt to drink, smoke, snort and shoot his way through these contradictions. Everyone who knew him speaks of him with a kind of affectionate sorrow.
Yet the music that interrupts the rueful testimonies of family, friends and colleagues sounds nothing like failure. Though The Byrd Who Flew Alone does a serviceable job of relating Clark’s biography, it is difficult not to wish it dwelt a little less on how Clark screwed his health and life up, and a little more on the astonishing music he created despite the best efforts of his legion demons. The film – correctly – brackets Clark alongside the even more wretchedly self-destructive Gram Parsons as a godfather of modern Americana, but seems generally more intent on wringing its hands than applauding. In fairness, this is probably only to be expected when so many of the talking heads – including Clark’s wife, his kids, a brother and a sister, Crosby, McGuinn and Chris Hillman – are recalling first and foremost a husband, father, sibling or friend, rather than a musician.
For those of us who weren’t obliged to worry about what his work was costing him, the niggling subtext to the effect that Clark under-achieved is risible. He was the principal songwriter on The Byrds’ first two albums. The solo records he made in the late 60s – one with the Gosdin Brothers, two with bluegrass maestro Doug Dillard – are pretty much the lodestone of country rock, for better (The Byrds, in cahoots with Parsons, finally caught up with Clark on Sweetheart Of The Rodeo) and for worse (Bernie Leadon, who played bass on the Dillard albums, later joined The Eagles, and took “Train Leaves Here This Morning With Him”). His 1974 album, No Other, is rightly described here by Sid Griffin as a classic. And the songs breathe still: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s 2007 stunner Raising Sand contained two Clark compositions.
It is indisputably sad and outrageous that Clark’s name is not better known, but such is the fate of pathfinders in all fields: the ground they clear, often at considerable risk, ends up profitably settled by the meeker spirits who follow them. The Byrd Who Flew Alone is a richly merited monument, if one less succinct than Clark’s actual monument, a simple gravestone in his birthplace of Tipton, Missouri, which reads “Harold Eugene Clark: No Other.” Indeed.
