Last night, it was all about anticipation. First, the rumours started circulating that Michael Gove was implicated in some job-threatening scandal, only for those rumours to reach a resounding anti-climax, as The Observer’s story was revealed to be a little spat between a couple of hacks and some unsavoury Tory operatives.
My Bloody Valentine have released their brand new album, mbv.
The nine-track follow-up to 1991's Loveless was released at midnight (GMT) on the evening of February 2 via a brand new website for the band, however the site Mybloodyvalentine.org crashed almost immediately after launching.
The album is available exclusively from the website and will be sold as a download only, CD and download or as a 180g vinyl, CD and download package. The vinyl and CD packages will be posted within three weeks of purchase date, but the download will be immediate.
In this archive feature from Uncut's May 2003 issue (Take 72), rock's greatest living soap opera tell the story of how they went to hell and back to bring the world some of the most popular, and most perfect, hard-centred easy listening music of all time. However, it nearly cost them their sanity. And their lives… Words: Nigel Williamson_________________
A quiet office these past few days, as members of the Uncut team have dispersed to the States, Morocco and Portugal on various missions and holidays. Yesterday, the rest of us finished the next issue, which goes on sale January 31, and which features, among many other things, a piece about David Bowie and Tony Visconti, relating to something happening in March which isn’t “The Next Day”…
Until I woke up this morning and checked Twitter, I had planned to write something about the new Low album today. The enormously unexpected return of Bowiemania put paid to that; I’ll try again with Low tomorrow, unless in the intervening 24 hours Kevin Shields is finally shamed into pulling his finger out.
There’s a lot to be said for the charisma of premature death. And the manner of his particular dying – turning blue on a motel floor at the age of 26, his heart fatally faltering, ice cubes being stuffed up his ass in a pathetic attempt to bring him back from the brink after one binge too many – booked Gram parsons an automatic place of honour in a rock’n’roll Valhalla already overcrowded with dead young heroes, Jimi, Janis, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and more already among its spectral population when Gram died in September, 1973.
We seem to be posting a lot more lists than actual joined-up writing at the moment – Michael’s just put Uncut’s full Top 75 of 2012 on the website, with links, and is promising our Archive/Reissues chart tomorrow – but, hey, here’s another. Among some other good new arrivals, another strong recommendation for Parquet Courts: check them out here.
