The Smile have released a new track, “Don’t Get Me Started“, which is their first new music since their second studio album, Wall Of Eyes, in January this year.
You can watch the video below, directed by audiovisual artist Weirdcore.
White Roses, My God, the debut album proper by Alan Sparhawk, formerly of Low, is our Album Of The Month in the September 2024 issue of Uncut. Here’s an extended version of the Q&A that appears alongside the review, in which the songwriter tells us more about the record, rediscovering his voice and even his next album…“I didn’t set out to be contrary…”
You’ve certainly been keeping yourself occupied, musically… Yeah, between a few different bands and local things and just people asking, ‘Hey, can you do this?’ ‘Yeah, I suppose I could do that. Let’s just get this band going…’ It’s pretty fun. It keeps me on my toes and keeps me playing, and engaged. I’m better if I have deadlines and things coming up, it helps shape my motivation, figuring out each day what I need to do.
The last couple of years since Mimi passed away can’t have been easy. It’s a wild process… There’s of course the grief, the loss, the shock of this thing that was so so real being gone, but you really do find out how deeply you are just one part of a whole, that you’re incomplete without that person that you’ve resonated with, and lived with, and experienced with your whole life. There’s a lot more subconscious interaction going on than people realise, there’s a lot of sharing of tasks and processing of life that is really subconscious but still shared. And it feels very much incomplete without the other person.
In some ways, White Roses… isn’t so different to the last few Low albums – they all had a lot of processing of instruments and voices. Yeah, a lot of processing, a lot of trying to find something new. We were really getting into a pretty deep, deep aesthetic with pushing things forward and finding new sounds and new ways to deliver songs. Even, you know, to the end, I felt like we were gaining even more confidence as singers, and I thought Mim certainly was becoming an even more poignant and masterful singer, right to the end.
This album feels very fresh, as if a lot of the songs were quite improvisatory? Yeah, it was. I had been messing around with stuff and at first thinking I was just trying to figure out the gear. But when “I Made This Beat” happened, I realised that I was starting to get some songs. That one was very much a moment. There were moments when you know you’ve found a line onto this very alive and electrical current that sort of runs throughout the universe. Once you have tasted that a few times, you can really become very acute at feeling when it’s happening, and you learn pretty quickly to not try to move in and manipulate it too much, and [just] let it come out of you, and to trust the light and trust the thread.
Were you inspired by any artists or was the technology driving things? I would sit down and start pushing buttons and moving knobs and mumbling into the microphone. It was exciting to me was because I was just capturing the moment something was being written, essentially being freestyled. My son is into hip-hop and him and his buddies will freestyle over beats. It’s pretty great to hear, and if you do it a lot, your mind gets used to that. So a lot of hip-hop he listens to inspired this, as well as other moments I’ve experienced with Low or other bands, where you’ve opened up your ear and your mind and your soul to what needs to be translated in that moment, and what needs to be made into sound. I became very aware that the key here was to capture that moment and have that be the recording, not go ‘This is a cool demo… let me write another verse and then go six months later to a studio…’ I wanted to trust that it was all there.
It’s hard not to see the vocal processing as being designed to put a distance between the listener and your emotions, which you probably needed. I don’t know. I’ve definitely pondered it. I’ve had to ask myself, like, what is this voice thing? Why do I like it? What do I like doing it? What’s going on here? Is it an escape? Is it healthy? Am I doing it out of fear? Am I doing it out of fearlessness? How I fell into it was very visceral and very unexpected, and there were things about it that really surprised me once I started doing it. The thing I’m using is like a hard pitch corrector, you can dial in and set the key and then sing. I found it interesting. Over the last handful of years, I’ve been trying to figure out, ‘Who am I? What is my voice without Mim’s?’ Part of me is tired of hearing my own voice a little bit, so I thought, ‘Why not just [process it, and] say it’s this and then see what I can do within this parameter?’ When you take pitch off the table, it really opens up possibilities of what you’re doing, especially when you’re improvising something.
What hip-hop have you been listening to? Whenever we’re driving my son will be like, ‘Hey, check this out.’ I was listening to a lot of Earl Sweatshirt, a lot of old OutKast, Kendrick Lamar… There’s something about Earl Sweatshirt that really has awoken my mind a little bit, there are some subtleties that kind of cracked open my mind a little bit. I wasn’t necessarily thinking like, ‘Oh, I wanna rap’, there’s just something about [that] style and delivery that sounds sort of lazy and effortless, but it’s actually really, really clever and really well delivered. I became really aware of how talented hip-hop artists are – a lot of hip-hop artists can just freestyle the hell out of stuff, that blows my mind. I have huge respect for that, because I’ve had just the slightest glimpse of what it takes. I’ve touched that energy, and I’ve seen that glowing horizon… I’m still listening to reggae, and Alice Coltrane’s something that keeps coming around. I’m trying to tap into the universe, I’m trying to listen, I know there’s a voice out there and I’m trying to figure out what it’s trying to say.
There’s another record coming soon, we hear, a more traditional one? I mean, at least using more traditional instruments, right. We’re finishing it up right now, and I think we’ve come to something that’s pretty unique, something that’s pushed both of the entities involved, Trampled By Turtles and myself. I’m excited. I didn’t set out to be contrary or second guess, you know, [or have] a plan going here or there and whatever, but it just kind of happened to be how things unfolded. And I ended up with some time with those guys to do some recording. They’re all friends, and it just clicked so easily. And we’ve we decided we had to follow through and make something with it.
Nobody can make a cello honk, slither, twang and gurgle like Mabe Fratti. In just a few short years, the prolific Guatemala-born, Mexico City-based musician, singer and composer has built an impressive international profile in experimental pop circles. Sentir Que No Sabes (which translates as Feel Like You Don’t Know) is her fourth album under her own name since 2020. Last year, she also released an album as half of Titanic, a jazzy avant-chanson duo project with her musical and life partner Hector Tosta (AKA I La Católica), and another with the improvisational quartet Amor Muere.
The 32-year-old Fratti has also worked with a promiscuous gallery of collaborators from Berlin post-punk legend Gudrun Gut to Danish indie-rockers Efterklang, British post-folk singer Ben Howard and sometime Björk/Thurston Moore drummer Chris Corsano. Howard likens Fratti’s performance style to “watching a sunbeam” while Corsano calls her music “a continual opening of possibilities.”
Following in a rare lineage that includes Arthur Russell, Charlotte Moorman and her current personal hero, South Korea’s Okkyung Lee, Fratti uses the cello as wide-open sound laboratory as much as solo instrument, fusing acoustic chamber-pop with analogue electronics, improvisation with more composed pieces, vocal-led songs with instrumental audioscapes. Crucially, even the most obtuse music she creates with Tosta (credited here as arranger, producer, co-writer and multi-instrumentalist) mostly falls on the sweeter side of wonky, the sunny side of abrasive. This is art-pop in the tradition of Kate Bush, Björk and Julia Holter more than confrontational icons like Yoko Ono, Merzbow or Gazelle Twin. All have their own beauty, of course, but Fratti’s sonic exploration tends to be more playful than punishing.
Fratti has billed Sentir Que No Sabes as her embrace of “groovy” sounds, which makes sense up to a point. Although the album is hardly stacked with banging party anthems, she gives more prominence to shiny melodic hooks and sinewy, propulsive rhythms than on past releases. Twinkly and lustrous, “Enfrente” (“In Front”) brings electronic dance-pop signifiers to the foreground with sudden eruptions of glassy, crystalline synth and unexpected swerves into organic drum’n’bass percussion. The spectral sci-fi lullaby “Quieras O No” (“Whether You Want It Or Not”) features layered vocoder harmonies that sound almost like devotional hymns, while “Márgen Del Índice” (“Index Margin”) opens with a fragrant, airy vocal and an infectious mechanical shuffle-beat before unravelling into gnarly clatter and merciless cello abuse.
Sentir Que No Sabes features some of Fratti’s most beautiful avant-pop compositions so far. Witness the precisely sculpted jewel-box ballad “Pantalla Azul” (“Blue Screen”), with its luminous falsetto harmonies, plucked pizzicato strings and deceptively sweet lounge-jazz sparkle, which takes its author into Joni Mitchell territory. There’s also the voluptuous “Oidis” (“Ears”), whose brassy fanfares, stumbling waltz-time rhythm and warm-blooded serotonin surges invoke Zach Condon’s rapturously retro Beirut project. Fratti’s voice is sublime here, tremulous and delicate and loaded with the heightened emotional quality of duende, despite lyrics which often translate as goofy wordplay on the page. “Flee towards your ears,” she sobs, “dreams are for days / The days are days.” It sounds much more dramatic in Spanish.
Ears are something of a motif in Fratti’s opaque lyrical ruminations. “Maybe there are ears in the ceiling,” she muses on album opener “Kravitz”, “maybe someone is on the other side of the wall”. The track’s title playfully references the broad mixtape menu that Fratti and Tosta ingested during the album’s production, which included Lenny Kravitz alongside Alice In Chains and late-career Scott Walker. Needless to say, it sounds nothing like the funk-pop superstar with its stately martial backbeat, skeletal bassline and seasick brass swirls, all braided with a bluesy, breathy vocal that morphs into spine-tingling wordless abstraction.
As on Fratti’s previous albums, Sentir Que No Sabes is punctuated by shorter instrumental pieces that play like wilder digressions from the more polished, structured songs. “Elastica I” is a delicious exercise in time-warping cello-tronica, digital fuzz and artfully muffled distortion, while “Kitana” turns the cello into a bristling, rustling, scratchy bustle of noise, as if a family of mice are building a nest inside Fratti’s favoured instrument. Which frankly seems entirely possible, given her all-embracing musical credo.
Not everything on Sentir Que No Sabes is prime grade. There is a lightness to Fratti’s approach that can shade into whimsy at times, while the five-minute closing track “Angel Nuevo” never quite shakes off the feeling of an undercooked, unfocussed patchwork. That said, Fratti delivers some of her most musically and emotionally rich work to date here, her dreamy voice and impressionistic Spanish-language lyrics adding an extra layer of magical realism. That infinite possibility horizon just opened a little wider.
Wayne Shorter’s career contains virtually the entire history of the second half of 20th century jazz. He cut his teeth with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers and eventually became the band’s musical director; he helped crystallise the emerging new sounds of Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet and often composed for Davis; and he co-founded the pioneering jazz fusion group Weather Report. Not only was he an absolute master of the saxophone (originally on the less common soprano, then switching his focus to tenor) but he also redefined jazz composition, penned a number of pieces that have since become beloved standards, and has won numerous awards, including several Grammys. He died at the age of 89 in 2023, but his spirit lives on in the music he composed and the exploratory outlook of the many musicians he influenced.
This year sees the reissue of two major Shorter albums in the Blue Note catalogue: 1965’s JuJu, as part of their Classic Vinyl Series and 1971’s Odyssey Of Iska, as part of their Tone Poet Vinyl Series. JuJu, recorded in 1964, is squarely post-bop, showcasing Shorter’s facility as a bandleader and composer, exploring the edges of modal jazz with a melodic rush and a fired-up rhythm section of musicians best known for working with John Coltrane: pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Elvin Jones. In an interview with the writer Jim Macnie, Shorter explained that Coltrane wanted to get together because they were playing “not the same way, but in the same areas of the horn.” Shorter also described his own view of the rhythm section as the vessel; if Coltrane was the leader, Tyner would accompany him as the navigator. Together, they were the frontline. All of which is to say that Shorter was incredibly well-suited to work with Coltrane’s rhythm section – not in the same way as Trane, but perhaps in the same areas.
Tyner is navigator on JuJu too, a commanding presence with impressive solos. The ensemble’s energy is instantaneous on the title track that opens the record, Tyner’s piano and Shorter’s horn dancing with one another in agile formation while the rhythm section builds the foundation. Shorter’s post-bop work is characterised by distinctively melodic sax lines in a variety of moods, and this is evident from the jump on JuJu. He’s upbeat on the excellent “Deluge” but gets melancholy on “House Of Jade”. Then there’s “Mahjong”, another gorgeous song on an album full of stand-outs. Every musician gets their chance to shine, while Shorter’s horn channels sophistication and grace, tinged with a meditative edge. JuJu was Shorter’s fifth album as leader and second for Blue Note, but perhaps the first to really show the potential of his capability, not merely hinting but announcing further greatness.
Odyssey Of Iska is a nearly perfect bookend, not only because it was one of two final albums Shorter recorded for Blue Note (until a return in the 2010s) but also because it marks a shift in his style. The album was recorded in 1970, right around the time that Weather Report was formed by Shorter and keyboardist Joe Zawinul. The band would go on to define jazz fusion, alongside Chick Corea’s Return To Forever and Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters. Slivers of the forthcoming fusion can be heard on Odyssey Of Iska, which consists of four moody Shorter originals and a handsomely gentle take on “Depois Do Amor, O Vazio (After Love, Emptiness)”, a bossa nova-flavoured tune by Bobby Thompson.
The album is exploratory and atmospheric, the musicians working with a dense palette as they trace impulses both spiritual and avant-garde. The personnel includes iconic bassist Ron Carter and drummer Billy Hart (a member of Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band), alongside a broader selection of instrumentation that includes guitar, vibraphone and marimba. Misty percussion sets the mood on “Storm”, but when Shorter’s horn enters the fray, it’s a call to arms that matches the freneticism of the guitar. Iska is a reference to Shorter’s daughter, born around the time the album was recorded, but to continue the metaphor of vessels and navigation, Iska may well be a majestic ship carrying these sonic travellers on a freely flowing journey. Taken together, the albums are a striking showcase for Shorter’s development as a bandleader and composer. From modal jazz and post-bop to fusion and the avant-garde to his orchestral explorations later in life, Shorter’s legacy is undeniably far-reaching. His contributions are forever woven into the very fabric of jazz.
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“It was a complete accident,” says filmmaker Mark Warmington, explaining how he came across the remarkable story of the Cimarons, the UK’s first indigenous reggae band. He was living and working as a cameraman in Brent when someone at the council suggested he speak to Cimarons guitarist and co-founder guitarist Locksley Gichie. “When he told me about who they’d worked with and what they’d done, it was just incredible.”
The result is Warmington’s film Harder Than The Rock, which tells how the Cimarons formed in Harlesden, took reggae around the world, worked with everyone from Bob Marley to Paul McCartney, but ultimately disappeared under the radar – something that the documentary is seeking to put right. As Gichie says, “It will mean that all our blood, sweat and tears haven’t gone to waste.”
Jamaican-born teenagers Gichie and Franklyn Dunn (bass) met in a bus shelter in 1967, subsequently being joined in rehearsals by Carl Levy (keyboards), Maurice Ellis (drums) and Carl Lewis (vocals). After playing their first gig at Harlesden cricket club to an audience who Gichie remembers “going crazy” for their live versions of rocksteady imports, the Cimarons initially made their reputation as a backing band for visiting Jamaican stars such as Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff.
Uncovering photos and film from those days turned Warmington into “a detective”. Sadly, no footage survives of the Cimarons backing Bob Marley, but Gichie tells how, in 1972, the Jamaican legend-in-the-making came to London without the Wailers and was stunned to realise the Harlesden band not only knew but could play his songs. “Bob said ‘Man, I can’t believe this,’” smiles the guitarist. “‘You guys sound like The Beatles, in Jamaica.’” The Cimarons did three shows billed as the Wailers. Other achievements include becoming the first reggae band to play in places such as Africa, Spain, Japan and Ireland, appearing on the Old Grey Whistle Test and even scoring a Jamaican No. 1 – still the only British reggae band to do so – with Marley’s “Talkin’ Blues”.
As Hot Rod All Stars, they were the unseen studio band on countless hits by “Dennis Brown, Errol Dunkley, Sheila Hylton, you name it…” They appeared on Top Of The Pops several times with “Everything I Own” chart-topper Ken Boothe, but despite playing on The Hotshots’ 1973 reggae hit “Snoopy Vs The Red Baron” were replaced on the show by a white band. Such frustrations meant that after new vocalist Winston Reid joined in 1973 they made seven albums of their own, including On The Rock(1976), produced in Black Ark Studios, Kingston by Lee “Scratch” Perry. “An inspiration,” says Gichie. “He’d make you laugh, so you’d want to play.”
As punk and reggae collided, they played with The Clash, The Jam and Generation X. “The mind-blowing one was a national tour with Sham 69,” grins Gichie. “We eventually had to set up our equipment at the back of the stage because all the crazy punks were spitting.” Another fan was Linda McCartney, who encouraged them to cover her husband’s material. “Paul brought his entire catalogue of songs. He just said, ‘Do whichever you want to.’” Sadly, 1981’s resulting Reggaebility flopped, but despite line-up changes the Cimarons journey hasn’t stopped. Warmington’s film poignantly captures drummer Ellis’s last studio performance in 2021, after which he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and “gone within six weeks”. Gichie and Dunn are now the only originals in the current line-up, but recognition is long overdue. As ragga MC General Levy – who grew up in Harlesden – explains in the film, “They were the spark that started a big flame.”
John Murry and Cowboy Junkies‘ Michael Timmins have released “What Remains“, taken from a little bit of Grace and Decay, their upcoming soundtrack to the documentary, The Graceless Age: The Ballad Of John Murry.
The album is released on September 20 on deluxe CD as a download on TV Records, preceded by “What Remains” on September 13.
In the meantime, The Graceless Age: The Ballad Of John Murry screens on Monday, September 16 at 18:15 at Rich Mix cinema on Bethnal Green Road, London. It features a live solo performance from Murry and a Q&A with Murry and director Sarah Share.
You can watch the trailer below:
Murry will also play these acoustic shows, with more to be announced:
Lone Justice return with a new album, Viva Lone Justice, which is released on October 25 on Afar. You can hear “Jenny Jenkins” and “Teenage Kicks” below.
The band’s first album since 1986’s Shelter features original band members Maria McKee, Ryan Hedgecock, Marvin Etzioni and the late Don Heffington – who died in 2021. Guests on the album include string arranger Tammy Rogers, multi-horn player David Ralicke, Greg Leisz on steel guitar and Benmont Tench on piano.
You can pre-order Viva Lone Justice on LP, CD and digitally here and the tracklisting for the album is:
The album features Perrett’s sons Jamie (guitar / production) and Peter Jr (bass) plus members of his live band, alongside guests including Johnny Marr, Bobby Gillespie, Fontaines D.C.’s Carlos O’Connell and Dream Wife guitarist Alice Go.
Tracklisting for The Cleansing is: 1. I Wanna Go With Dignity 2. Disinfectant 3. Fountain Of You 4. Secret Taliban Wife 5. Solitary Confinement 6. Women Gone Bad 7. Survival Mode 8. Mixed Up Confucius 9. Do Not Resuscitate 10. The Cleansing 11. All That Time 12. Kill A Franco Spy 13. Set The House On Fire 14. Feast For Sore Eyes 15. There For You 16. Art Is A Disease 17. World In Chains 18. Back In The Hole 19. Less Than Nothing 20. Crystal Clear
The Cleansing is available to preorder on DomMart-exclusive red double vinyl with signed sleeve, standard double vinyl, CD and digitally.
Perrett also plays a special show on Saturday October19 at the Moth Club, London.
One day, my first grade teacher, Mrs Robertson – not Robinson! – said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna put on this record, and I want everybody to sing along.’ And she passed out lyrics to “The Sound Of Silence”. I didn’t know what the words meant, but it was heavy: “Hello darkness, my old friend…” I remember the hair standing up on my neck. We were church-going folks, but I never felt the spirit moving through me the way that I did singing along with my friends to that song. I almost see it as the moment when I was really introduced to music. I go back to that song probably at least once a year. Usually it’s a moment when I’m by myself, so I can get weepy.
THE BEATLES
Let It Be
APPLE, 1970
My uncle had given me a couple of singles, including a copy of “Help”, but this was the first full-length album that I ever bought. If I had to name one favourite all-time song, “Across The Universe” might be that song. I didn’t know what he was singing about, but I knew it was magic. There’s something childlike about that melody that hit me super-hard, and I remember playing it over and over and over again. And my mom really liked “Let It Be”, so whenever that song was playing, she’d walk in the room and listen to it with me. In my twenties, I went back and listened to Revolver and Rubber Soul> and obviously ‘The White Album’ and Abbey Road. But this record still holds a special place.
KISS
Alive!
CASABLANCA, 1975
I grew up in a little town in Montana, so the way that I found out about music, a lot of it was just seeing stuff on TV. Kiss were on Midnight Special and I’d never heard of them before. There was a little local record store called Ricky’s Records, run by this Lester Bangs character. I said, ‘Hey, have you heard of Kiss?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, they suck!’ But he ordered <Hotter Than Hell> for me. The next year Alive! came out, and I just wore that record out. I think it was being so far away from live music – there was no live music really being played in our state. It gave me a little taste of what it must have felt like being at a rock show.
RAMONES
Leave Home
SIRE, 1977
I had been reading about the Ramones in Creem magazine, and then I had a couple of copies of this magazine called Rock Scene, which was kinda about the New York scene. There’s lots of backstage pictures of Patti Smith and David Johansen and Debbie Harry, and it was the first time I’d heard about the Sex Pistols. So I’d heard of those bands, but hadn’t heard them. I was at Woolworths going through the cut-out bins, and there were all these Sire tapes for two bucks. I bought Leave Home, Rocket To Russia, Dead Boys’ Young, Loud And Snotty and Blank Generation by Richard Hell. It completely turned the corner for me. Ted Nugent and Aerosmith were totally out, and I was fixated with buying punk rock records.
DEVO
Duty Now For The Future
WARNER BROS, 1979
In summer of ’79, skateboarding was at its peak for me. I was skating in contests, so there were all these freaky, punk rock skateboarders from all over the state that would congregate. It was the first time I was around 40 or 50 kids who were all punk rockers. Devo were getting talked about a lot in a skateboarder magazine that I read, and I saw them on Saturday Night Live when they did “Satisfaction”. Playing something in 7/4 time isn’t odd for me because of listening to Devo. I think it helped me in playing with a guy like Matt Cameron [Pearl Jam drummer] who loves those odd time signatures. I saw Devo last fall on their farewell tour and it was spectacular, better than ever.
PUBLIC IMAGE LTD
Second Edition
VIRGIN/ISLAND, 1979
I bought the first PiL record and I didn’t love it because it didn’t sound like Sex Pistols. But when I saw them on American Bandstand, it made me buy the second record, and now that probably gets played more than anything I own. There’s something hypnotic about it – it’s almost like watching a movie. Jah Wobble was a huge influence on my bass-playing. He was like a non-musician with a lot of attitude, picking up an instrument and making it his own by doing something totally original with it. I love listening to how he played on that record because it’s raw, but he’s very sure of his playing. It’s the strongest part of the music.
BRIAN ENO
Discreet Music
OBSCURE, 1975
In college, there was a group of older punk rockers that were always playing Roxy Music and the Brian Eno solo records. I didn’t really get it because I was into Black Flag at the time, but shortly afterwards I really got into Music For Airports and Discreet Music. I have a huge crush on Brian Eno, so I was having a hard time picking one record… there’s also The Pearl, the Harold Budd collab which I absolutely love. In my off-time I make ambient music at home, so there’s something about all those records that really hit me hard. He has such strong melodies, and I think that’s probably why he’s such a sought-after producer – he knows how to pull that out of bands.
IDLES
Joy As An Act Of Resistance
PARTISAN, 2018
When I heard that record, it was the first time since the hardcore movement where I was like, ‘Holy shit, this has every bit of the power and the economy and the vulnerability that Black Flag had.’ Most of the punk rock stuff in between didn’t really do it for me. But I saw Idles on tour in Seattle and I’ve been a huge fan ever since. I love how they play with a sparseness – there’s almost like a Wire / Gang Of Four element, the way that they don’t play over the top of each other, there’s just a stabbing of instruments. And they’re getting better and better. There’s not very many bands where I just can’t wait for the next record, but Idles are one of those bands.
Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter is out now on Monkeywrench/Republic
Mercury Rev, MJ Lenderman, John Murry & Michael Timmins and more appear on our On The Highway compilation
All copies of the September 2024 issue of Uncut come with a free, 15-track CD – On The Highway – that showcases the wealth of great new music on offer this month, from Mercury Rev, MJ Lenderman and John Murry & Michael Timmins to Enumclaw, Harlem Gospel Travelers and Krononaut. Now dive in…
1 Enumclaw Not Just Yet This young group from Tacoma, Washington state, summon up a mighty noise to kick us off this month. Taken from their second album Home In Another Life, “Not Just Yet” careens headlong like a thrilling amalgamation of Drive-By Truckers and Nirvana.
2 MJ Lenderman She’s Leaving You Still just 25 years old, Lenderman’s reputation has been growing for years now, most notably with his 2022 album Boat Songs and his work with Wednesday. Manning Fireworks is his latest record, and full of literate, lilting indie-rock like this delight.
3 Nick Lowe Different Kind Of Blue Indoor Safari is the first Lowe album in a decade, a set of new songs and reworked demos recorded with his loyal Los Straitjackets band. Here’s a sultry, lush ballad, originally written for 2001’s The Convincer.
4 X Big Black X The LA punks are bidding farewell with their final album, Smoke & Fiction, before a goodbye tour. Naturally, the album is a victory lap rather than a late-in-the-day reinvention, and tracks such as this one find John Doe and Exene Cervenka as blood-pressure-elevating as ever.
5 Nathan Bowles Trio Gimme My Shit Nathan Bowles, Rex McMurry and Casey Toll have united as an instrumental cosmic-folk trio on Are Possible, their first album together. This highlight lopes along for a brilliant eight-and-a-half minutes, Bowles’ banjo incessant and chiming.
6 El Khat La WaLa Led by former classical cellist Eyal El Wahab, the Arab-Jewish outfit, now based in Berlin, conjure up a thrilling maelstrom of sound with homemade junkyard instruments and Middle Eastern ululations. Here’s one of the peaks of their new LP, Mute.
7 Amy Rigby Last Night’s Rainbow Hang In There With Me is the latest from this New York State-based indie-folk singer-songwriter, and another demonstration of her peerless abilities. In just two minutes, she weaves a tale of the dull ordinary world and the occasional magic that can enliven our lives.
7 Amy Rigby Last Night’s Rainbow Hang In There With Me is the latest from this New York State-based indie-folk singer-songwriter, and another demonstration of her peerless abilities. In just two minutes, she weaves a tale of the dull ordinary world and the occasional magic that can enliven our lives.
8 John Murry & Michael Timmins Silver Or Lead New documentary The Graceless Age: The Ballad Of John Murry is charmingly soundtracked by Murry himself, teaming up with Cowboy Junkie Timmins. Here’s a fragile, sparse version of his A Short History Of Decay track, with Murry in the moment in the studio.
9 Moon Diagrams Fragment Rock When he’s not drumming in Deerhunter, Moses Archuleta makes diverse, occluded music as Moon Diagrams. Cemetery Classics is his second album, co-produced by James Ford, and songs like “Fragment Rock” come enigmatically shrouded in echo and reverb.
10 Mercury Rev Ancient Love Born Horses is the first proper Rev album since 2015’s The Light In You, and it showcases a partially changed group. There are new members, Jonathan Donahue’s vocals are deeper and darker, and the music is more synth-based and new age, as the floating “Ancient Love” shows.
11 The Jesus Lizard Alexis Feels Sick Another returning group, this Texas/Chicago noise-rock outfit are back with their first album since 1998’s Blue. They haven’t changed a bit, as this slice of raging, lopsided garage suggests. Check out page 10 to hear from them.
12 Peter Cat Recording Co Suddenly New Delhi’s finest indie-rockers, this group led by Suryakent Sawhney mix colourful genres with ease on their new album Beta: on this track, as our reviewer writes, the group take “The Beach Boys to a tropical nightclub”.
13 Myles Cochran Making Something Out Of Nothing Raised in Kentucky and now resident in the UK, Cochran creates his own brand of ambient Americana on his new, second album You Are Here. It’s cinematic at times, with echoes of Brian Eno, Ry Cooder and Bruce Langhorne.
14 Harlem Gospel Travelers Somebody’s Watching You This New York trio delve through the archives of lost gospel-soul treasures, assisted by producer and mentor Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed, and reshape in their own, more modern image. Rhapsody is their latest LP, the follow-up to 2021’s acclaimed Look Up!.
15 Krononaut Silver Silver (Edit) Guitarist Leo Abrahams and drummer Martin France come from different worlds – in short, experimental ambient and jazz – but their second collaboration as Krononaut once again marries their skills perfectly, with the result at once propulsive, drifting and gently psychedelic.
The 13-track album will be available from Thursday, August, on limited edition vinyl at all Third Man stores with a wider vinyl release at select independent record stores, as well as a global digital release, following on Friday, August 2.
The album was recorded, produced, and mixed by White at his Third Man Studio throughout 2023 and 2024, pressed to vinyl at Third Man Pressing, and released by Third Man Records.
Drive-By Truckers are an American institution: alt.country punks turned Southern rock revivalists, grizzled latter-day flag-wavers for the 20th-century indie idealism Michael Azerrad documented in This Band Can Be Your Life, and a crucible of world-class songwriting talent that includes ex-Trucker Jason Isbell and founding fathers Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. Over the course of 14 studio albums and almost three decades of hardscrabble touring, the group has honed a sound and sensibility that’s ragged, steaming, sentimental, political, smartass, heartfelt and heartbreaking, with hollered harmonies and white-knuckle guitar jams owing more to Lynyrd Skynyrd than the Allman Brothers, while also invoking Neil Young & Crazy Horse, old-time string bands and the Southern soul music forged at Alabama’s historic FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound studios (both of which employed Hood’s bass-playing father David in pivotal roles).
The Truckers also made one of the 21st century’s greatest concept albums. Released a day after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Southern Rock Opera is an epic tale of a doomed musician that also made a potent political statement on “the duality of the Southern thing” (a coinage the album introduced) – the problematic mix of pride and shame that informs, many would say warps, the cultural identity of the American South. The story of Southern Rock Opera’s creation is nearly as epic as the album’s semi-fictional narrative, and it’s documented in this impressive, overdue and yet timely reissue, a double-turned-triple LP with added outtakes, unreleased overflow songs, live cuts and a meaty new essay by loquacious ringleader Patterson Hood.
The condensed backstory goes like this. After a couple of well-received albums recorded on the cheap, the Truckers get a crazy notion to create a magnum opus, which began as a brainstorm for a movie about a fictional band called Betamax Guillotine, with a narrative drawn in part from the real-life story of Lynyrd Skynyrd – whose guitarist and songwriter Ronnie Van Zant, as legend incorrectly but provocatively had it, was beheaded by a flying VCR in the plane crash that killed him and other band-members in 1977. The story would also be colored by Hood’s “near-phobia”, as he writes in the reissue notes, of dying on tour in a van accident, as happened to fellow musicians in the Southern indie band The Jody Grind in 1992.
With the death of the famously racist Alabama politician George Wallace in 1998, the storyline ballooned to include him, the Devil, the legacy of the Jim Crow South, Neil Young and more. The stress of the album project coincided with, and no doubt contributed to, collapsed marriages, internal feuding and bouts of poverty that nearly destroyed the band. But after self-financing the $7000 recording (made on the now-defunct Hi8 audiocassette format), releasing the CDs themselves and taking the album out on the road, Southern Rock Opera was wildly well-received, changing the course of the band’s career. In 2024, the record remains as powerful as ever, with its triple guitar assault and disturbingly current themes, from the dangers of life on the road to the special place in hell it posits for “kiss-ass politicians who pander to assholes.”
By today’s standards, Act 1 should perhaps begin with a trigger warning. It opens with “Days Of Graduation”, Hood’s explicit narration of a bloody car wreck delivered in a distorted voice suggesting a police radio dispatcher. That’s the introduction to “Ronnie And Neil”, a song unpacking a famous songwriter beef that, in 1970s American rock’n’roll terms, was no less seismic than this year’s Kendrick Lamar vs Drake dust-up. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”, of course, was an answer record to Young’s “Southern Man” and “Alabama,” songs confronting the uglier legacies of the American South. Hood’s offering is no less bold, invoking the 1963 Birmingham church bombings that killed four black girls (a turning point in the Civil Rights movement) alongside an image of Aretha Franklin coming to Alabama “to record that sweet soul music / to get that Muscle Shoals sound.” If some verses are less than factually accurate – it’s maybe a stretch to say Van Zant and Young became “good friends,” or that “Neil helped carry Ronnie in his casket to the ground” – the song still amply supports Hood’s narrative argument that “Us Southern men need both of them around.”
Southern Rock Opera, too, was an album that needed both its songwriters. Mike Cooley may log fewer tracks than Hood (five to the latter’s 14, including one co-write), but his are in some ways the album’s emotional heart, palate-cleansers that arguably function as standalones better than Hood’s. Indeed, the record’s most-streamed songs on Spotify are both Cooley’s: “Women Without Whiskey”, a boozy fist-pumper that conjures a losing battle with problem drinking; closely followed by “Zip City”, an affectingly frank jam about adolescent male sexual frustration, questionable as some of its verses might be by current standards.
But Hood is the big-picture conceptualist, a word-drunk storyteller who introduces the three-minute long “Wallace” – a jaunty number recalling Rickie Lee Jones’ “Chuck E’s In Love” sung in the voice of the Devil welcoming the deceased Governor Wallace to his new home – with a near seven-minute spoken word track (“The Three Great Alabama Icons”) that rocks even harder. And after Cooley sings the rollicking “Shut Up And Get On The Plane”, Hood gets the album’s final word with the rave-up “Greenville To Baton Rouge” and “Angels And Fuselage”, a Crazy Horse-scented slowburner that has the narrator, moments from death, pondering his choices and confessing “I’m scared shitless/ Of what’s coming next”. As bravura, knock-kneed existentialist singalongs go, it’s one helluva finale.
EXTRAS: The Deluxe Edition’s bonus LP adds leftovers from the original Betamax Guillotine sessions, including the previously unreleased Replacements-style noise ballad “Mystery Song”, and four tracks from a 2001 tour stop, including the phallocentric headbanger “Don’t Cockblock The Rock”. A 28-page book, in addition to photos and Hood’s writing (he’s as strong an essayist as a songwriter), serves as a lovely showcase for the work of the late Wes Freed, whose fantastical cartoon cover art – a Southern indie-rock version of Pedro Bell’s work on the Parliament-Funkadelic catalog – became part of the Truckers’ brand. In all, it’s a fitting reboot of an album that still has plenty to say about post-Civil War American politics, with the sort of clear-eyed insight the US could use more of. As Hood says in his essay, the album may not change anything, but perhaps it can provide “a tonic… as we rally to make a better South and better country and better world.” Cheers to that.
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The genre of collaborative albums between a younger fan and an older hero has started to take on several distinct forms in recent years. Sometimes the artists collaborate as equals, writing new songs together – take Franz Ferdinand and Sparks’ 2015’s album FFS, or Elton John’s 2010 LP with Leon Russell, The Union. Sometimes, the younger fan coaxes the older legend into writing new songs, as Jack White did with Loretta Lynn on Van Lear Rose in 2004, or as Dan Auerbach did with Dr John on 2012’s Locked Down. Then there are those collabs where the ageing legend seems barely aware he’s making an album at all, as with Richard Russell’s <Bowfinger>-style LP with Gil Scott Heron in 2010, I’m New Here.
There’s also the collaboration that’s actually a tribute in disguise, like Elvis Costello’s 2005 album with Allen Toussaint, The River In Reverse, where Costello revived seven obscure old Toussaint songs and co-wrote a few hymns to his hero. This is very much the approach that Esperanza Spalding has adopted here with Milton Nascimento.
Nascimento has been a legend of Brazilian music since the late ’60s. He absorbed some of the psychedelic innovations of his more provocative contemporaries, like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, but was more musically adventurous, mixing samba and bossa nova with the religious music of Minas Gerais where he grew up, the folksongs of Brazilian cowboys and the music of indigenous people. He also engaged with American jazz, recording several albums with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter from the 1970s onwards, and has collaborated with everyone from Peter Gabriel to Duran Duran.
Now aged 81, Nascimento is pretty much retired. He no longer plays live and his only album in the last decade was another collaboration with a bass player – 2015’s Tamarear, where Dudu Lima and his jazz-rock trio persuaded Nascimento to revive some of his 1970s material. Singer and bassist Spalding, one of the leading breakout stars of American jazz in recent years, adopts a similar approach. Backed by her regular band, she duets on some of her favourite Nascimento songs, singing an octave apart from him, imitating his deliciously chewy brand of Brazilian Portuguese.
“Cais” is a track from Nascimento’s landmark 1972 album Clube Da Esquina. The original is slow and dreamy, just an acoustic guitar and light percussion; here it acquires a sense of urgency with a minimalist piano backing. “Outubro”, a dramatic, string-drenched psychedelic ballad from Nascimento’s 1969 album Courage, is transformed into a piece of mid-’70s CTI-style style funk, complete with a propulsive bassline and a terrific flute solo from Elena Pinderhughes. “Morro Velho”, a delicate, guitar-led ballad from 1967’s Travessia, becomes a dreamy piece of chamber jazz, as does “Saudade Dos Avioes Da Panair”, from the 1975 album Minas.
There are several delightfully odd cover versions. Nascimento’s world-weary growl adds a wonderful piquancy to the John Lennon section of “A Day In The Life”, here presented as a crazed, Os Mutantes-style orchestral wig-out. He duets with Dianne Reeves on a slightly overwrought version of Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song”, but one that drives home the environmental message. “When You Dream”, from Wayne Shorter’s 1985 album Atlantis, is taken into Rio carnival territory. Even better is “Saci”, a ballad by the Brazilian songwriter Guinga (who also guests on guitar), whose title refers to the black, one-legged highwayman of Brazilian myth. Guinga’s lyric presents Saci as a mysterious, gleefully disruptive spirit, here evoked by the delicate, unresolved guitar and piano chords.
Spalding has also written several songs inspired by Nascimento. Some are just fragments – “Late September” is a one-and-half-minute freakout, featuring a garrulous Shabaka Hutchings tenor sax solo; “The Way You Are” is an intriguing 44-second mantra intoned over quizzical piano chords – while others feature snippets of in-studio conversation between Spalding and Nascimento. But some are superb pieces in their own right. “Wings For The Thought Bird” is based around a flute riff that resembles birdsong, and taps into Nascimento’s most magical, folkloric material. “Get It By Now”, meanwhile, is a dense, proggy piece that recalls early ’80s Kate Bush.
Best of all is “Um Vento Passou”, a dreamy ballad filled with traditional percussion and sweeping strings, where Nascimento duets with his longtime collaborator Paul Simon: two croaky octogenarian geniuses singing in Portuguese and bringing decades of wisdom and warmth to a fine song.
This is much more of an Esperanza Spalding album than a Milton Nascimento one. But what Spalding has been able to do successfully is subsume herself into the world that Nascimento has created over the last 50 years – a dream-like realm of folkloric myth, plugged into nature’s heartbeat.
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The track is taken from Greatish Hits: I Followed My Dreams and My Dreams Said To Crawl – a compilation of tracks drawn from his five studio albums to date that’s available digitally from Bella Union today [July 31, 2024].
“I Guess Time Makes Fools of Us All” will also appear on Father John Misty’s forthcoming album which is due out later this year.
The tracklisting for Greatish Hits: I Followed My Dreams and My Dreams Said To Crawl is:
1. Nancy From Now On
2. Disappointing Diamonds Are The Rarest of Them All 3. Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins) 4. Goodbye Mr. Blue 5. When You’re Smiling And Astride Me 6. Mr. Tillman 7. Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution
8. Please Don’t Die 9. I’m Writing a Novel 10. Real Love Baby 11. Buddy’s Rendezvous 12. Total Entertainment Forever 13. Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings
14. Holy Shit 15. Pure Comedy 16. I Love You, Honeybear 17. I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All
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Totalling 81 tracks, the collection is due for release on October 25 via BMG.
The set includes “Star“, Ferry’s first original song to be released in over a decade, and a cover of Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me” which you can hear below.
Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 will be released in multiple formats, including a 5CD deluxe box set featuring 81 songs, accompanied by a 100-page hardback book containing extensive new liner notes, rare and unseen photographs and imagery. A 2LP gatefold edition presents The Best Of Bryan Ferry, containing 20 songs pressed to black vinyl with variants including a green/blue vinyl pressing and a clear vinyl pressing. A 1CD version will also feature the same 20 songs and a booklet containing liner notes and photographs. An 81-track edition of the album will be released digitally.
Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 5 CD Track Listing:
Disc One: The Best Of Bryan Ferry
1. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
2. These Foolish Things
3. The ‘In’ Crowd
4. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
5. Casanova
6. Let’s Stick Together
7. Sign of the Times
8. Slave To Love
9. Don’t Stop The Dance
10. Windswept
11. Kiss and Tell
12. As Time Goes By
13. Your Painted Smile
14. I Put A Spell On You
15. Which Way To Turn
16. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
17. Make You Feel My Love
18. You Can Dance
19. Love Letters
20. Johnny and Mary
Disc Two: Compositions
1. Can’t Let Go
2. Tokyo Joe
3. This Island Earth
4. Love Me Madly Again
5. Limbo
6. When She Walks In The Room
7. Boys and Girls
8. Zamba
9. Chain Reaction
10. Bête Noire
11. I Thought
12. The Only Face
13. Valentine
14. Loop De Li
15. Reason or Rhyme
Disc Three: Interpretations
1. The Price of Love
2. Shame Shame Shame
3. Hold On (I’m Coming)
4. Just One Look
5. Girl of My Best Friend
6. What Goes On
7. That’s How Strong My Love Is
8. You Go To My Head
9. Where or When
10. The Way You Look Tonight
11. One Night
12. Simple Twist of Fate
13. Positively 4th Street
14. Song to the Siren
15. Fooled Around and Fell In Love
Disc Four: The Bryan Ferry Orchestra
1. Virginia Plain
2. Do The Strand
3. While My Heart Is Still Beating
4. This Island Earth
5. Bitter-Sweet
6. Dance Away
7. Zamba
8. Reason or Rhyme
9. Avalon
10. Back To Black
11. Limbo
12. Young and Beautiful
13. Love Is The Drug
14. Sign of the Times
15. Chance Meeting
Disc Five: Rare and Unreleased
1. Feel The Need
2. Mother of Pearl (Horoscope Version)
3. Don’t Be Cruel
4. I Don’t Want To Go On Without You
5. I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know
6. Crazy Love
7. Whatever Gets You Through The Night
8. Bob Dylan’s Dream
9. He’ll Have To Go
10. A Fool For Love
11. Lowlands Low
12. Is Your Love Strong Enough
13. Sonnet 18
14. She Belongs To Me
15. Oh Lonesome Me
16. Star (with Amelia Barratt)
Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 Digital Track Listing:
When Stevie Nicks played in the UK in mid-July there wasn’t a dry eye in the house – and by house we mean really large park. Some of that was down to the emotional power of Stevie’s mystical pop music. Much of it, however, also derived from an emotional connection with Stevie’s friend and Fleetwood Mac colleague Christine McVie, who had died since Stevie’s last visit to the country. Images of Christine were projected; tears flowed.
It was a very soft rock moment – a testament to the enduring power of this gentle and supremely melodic music. Perhaps the stars of, say, psychedelic rock were more musically or socially controversial, but as you’ll read in this revised special edition, just because artists in this genre sold an exceptional number of albums – if you enjoy large numbers please see our sales chart on p118 – didn’t mean that they were writing vapid jingles to do so.
Think of Fleetwood Mac, turning the thorny emotional details of their private lives into generational anthems. Or Genesis, mutating in a new decade from Edwardian-era prog into clever and accessible pop. Or, most particularly, of our cover stars Steely Dan, whose huge success was surely an ironic one: two highly-intelligent liberal arts graduates transforming their social difficulty, misanthropy and esoteric musical reference into drivetime staples adored by millions.
Did they crave it? Evidently not. In his 2017 obituary for the Dan’s Walter Becker, Uncut’s David Cavanagh pointed out that the band could relish being unrelatable. Steely Dan apparently approached their song “Chain Lightning” as “a song so abstruse it could never be deciphered”. As time passed and clues were reluctantly dropped, it emerged that the song joins two Nazis at a political rally, plucking up the courage to shake Hitler’s (or perhaps any extremist leader’s) hand. After the guitar solo, we meet them again 40 years later as they travel incognito to the same site on an occult itinerary.
In this particular mission, Steely Dan may have been on their own. But as you’ll read on these pages, Soft Rock was a broad and sophisticated church. From the all-conquering Eagles to Hall and Oates, via Supertramp, Boz Scaggs, Wings and Linda Ronstadt, it was a place which embraced femininity, complexity and melody, which worked live or in the studio, and could solve problems as well as start them. Where to begin? We’ve compiled our Top 40 Soft Rock songs to get you started, a primer to Soft Rock rivalry, and a review of its legacy.
It’ll give you a peaceful, easy feeling. Enjoy the magazine. It’s out Friday but you can pre-order here now.
Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera has today announced a new solo box set, compiling eleven of his remastered albums, plus bonus tracks and a 100-page book.
Among the nine previously unreleased tracks are Roxy Music’s live version of “Impossible Guitars” and Pink Floyd’s early version of “One Slip” called “Demo PM 1”.
Hear “Listen Now (Velvet Season And The Hearts Of Gold Remix)” below:
50 Years Of Music will be released on November 1; pre-order here.
Neil Young has released a trailer for his massive upcoming boxset Archives Vol III: 1976 – 1987, due for release on September 6 via Reprise Records in a number of configurations.
The 17-CD limited edition boxed set of Archives Vol III features a total of 198 musical tracks, including 121 previously unreleased versions of live, studio, mixes, or edits, and 15 previously unreleased songs, available here for the first time ever. 62 tracks have been available on various recordings. The set will be packaged in a slim folding box with a poster. Pre-order here.
In addition, a double vinyl LP-only set titled Takes, will also be available on September 6. Takes is a 16-track compilation featuring one track from each of the 16 out of the 17 CDs in the Archives Vol III box set. This collection will include 3 unreleased songs and 12 previously unreleased versions and will be the only vinyl edition to feature these songs.
A US-only limited edition 22-disc Deluxe Edition box set will also be available via the Greedy Hand Store. It features all 17 CDs, and 5 Blu-Rays which compile 11 films, 4 of which are previously unreleased. The Blu-Rays include 128 tracks, over 14 hours of film. The Deluxe Edition box also includes a 176-page book and a poster.
The music covers live performances with Crazy Horse, solo, with Nicolette Larson and with Devo and with The International Harvesters, along with unreleased studio recordings and outtakes.
NEIL YOUNG ARCHIVES VOL III Tracklisting:
Disc 1: Across The Water I (1976) Neil Young & Crazy Horse
1. Let It Shine (previously unreleased live version)
2. Mellow My Mind (previously unreleased live version)
3. Too Far Gone (previously unreleased live version)
4. Only Love Can Break Your Heart (previously unreleased live version)
5. A Man Needs a Maid (previously unreleased live version)
6. No One Seems to Know (previously unreleased live version)
7. Heart Of Gold (previously unreleased live version)
8. Country Home (previously unreleased live version)
9. Don’t Cry No Tears (previously unreleased live version)
10. Cowgirl in the Sand (previously unreleased mix)
11. Lotta Love (previously unreleased live version)
12. The Losing End (When You’re On) (previously unreleased live version)
13. Southern Man (previously unreleased live version)
14. Cortez the Killer (previously unreleased live version)
Disc 2: Across The Water II (1976):Neil Young & Crazy Horse
1. Human Highway (previously unreleased live version)
2. The Needle And The Damage Done (previously unreleased live version)
3. Stringman (previously unreleased mix)
4. Down By The River (previously unreleased live version)
5. Like a Hurricane (previously unreleased live version)
6. Drive Back (previously unreleased live version)
7. Cortez the Killer (previously unreleased live version)
8. Homegrown (previously unreleased live version)
Disc 3: Hitchhikin’ Judy (1976-1977): Neil Young
1. Rap
2. Powderfinger (previously released on Hitchhiker)
3. Captain Kennedy (previously released on Hawks & Doves, Hitchhiker and Hawks & Doves)
4. Hitchhiker (previously released on Hitchhiker)
5. Give Me Strength (previously released on Hitchhiker)
6. The Old Country Waltz (previously released on Hitchhiker)
7. Rap
8. Too Far Gone (previously released on Songs For Judy)
9. White Line (previously released on Songs For Judy)
10. Mr. Soul (previously released on Songs For Judy)
11. A Man Needs A Maid (previously released on Songs For Judy)
12. Journey Through the Past (previously released on Songs For Judy)
13. Campaigner (previously released on Songs For Judy)
14. The Old Laughing Lady (previously released on Songs For Judy)
15. The Losing End (When You’re On) (previously released on Songs For Judy)
16. Rap
17. Helpless (previously released on The Last Waltz)
18. Four Strong Winds (previously released on The Last Waltz (2002 edition))
19. Rap
20. Will To Love (previously released on American Stars ‘n Bars and Chrome Dreams)
21. Lost In Space (previously unreleased original)
Disc 4: Snapshot In Time (1977): Neil Young with Nicolette Larson & Linda Ronstadt
1. Rap
2. Hold Back The Tears (previously released on Chrome Dreams)
3. Rap
4. Long May You Run (previously unreleased version)
5. Hey Babe (previously unreleased version)
6. The Old Country Waltz (previously unreleased version)
7. Hold Back the Tears (previously unreleased version)
11. Lost In Space (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
12. Goin’ Back (previously unreleased mix)
Disc 7: Neil Young & Nicolette Larson Union Hall (1977):
1. Comes A Time (previously released on Comes A Time)
2. Love/Art Blues (previously unreleased version)
3. Rap
4. Are You Ready For the Country? (previously unreleased version)
5. Dance Dance Dance/Love is a Rose (previously unreleased version)
6. Old Man (previously unreleased version)
7. The Losing End (When You’re On) (previously unreleased version)
8. Heart Of Gold (previously unreleased version)
9. Already One (previously unreleased version)
10. Lady Wingshot (previously unreleased song)
11. Four Strong Winds (previously unreleased version)
12. Down By The River (previously unreleased version)
13. Alabama (previously unreleased version)
14. Are You Ready For the Country? (reprise) (previously unreleased version)
15. Rap
16. We’re Having Some Fun Now (previously unreleased song)
17. Rap
18. Please Help Me, I’m Falling (previously unreleased version)
19. Motorcycle Mama (previously released on Comes A Time)
Disc 8: Boarding House I (1978): Neil Young
1. Rap
2. Shots (previously unreleased live version)
3. Thrasher (previously unreleased live version)
4. The Ways of Love (previously unreleased live version)
5. Ride My Llama (previously unreleased live version)
6. Sail Away (previously unreleased live version)
7. Pocahontas (previously unreleased live version)
8. Human Highway (previously unreleased live version)
9. Already One (previously unreleased live version)
10. Birds (previously unreleased live version)
11. Cowgirl in the Sand (previously unreleased live version)
12. Sugar Mountain (previously unreleased live version)
13. Powderfinger (previously unreleased live version)
14. Comes a Time (previously unreleased live version)
Disc 9: Devo & Boarding House II (1978): Neil Young and Devo
1. Rap
2. Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) (previously unreleased version)
3. Back to the Boarding House
4. My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) (previously unreleased live version)
5. Homegrown (previously unreleased live version)
6. Down by the River (previously unreleased live version)
7. After the Gold Rush (previously unreleased live version)
8. Out Of My Mind (previously unreleased live version)
9. Dressing Room
Disc 10: Sedan Delivery (1978): Neil Young with Crazy Horse
1. Bright Sunny Day (previously unreleased song)
2. The Loner (previously released on Live Rust)
3. Welfare Mothers (previously released on Rust Never Sleeps)
4. Lotta Love (previously released on Live Rust)
5. Sedan Delivery (previously released on Rust Never Sleeps)
6. Cortez the Killer (previously released on Live Rust)
7. Tonight’s the Night (previously released on Live Rust)
8. Powderfinger (previously released on Rust Never Sleeps)
9. When You Dance, I Can Really Love (previously released on Live Rust)
10. Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) (previously released on Rust Never Sleeps)
Disc 11: Coastline (1980-1981): Neil Young
1. Coastline (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
2. Stayin’ Power (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
3. Hawks And Doves (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
4. Comin’ Apart at Every Nail (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
5. Union Man (previously released on Hawks & Doves)
6. Winter Winds (previously unreleased song)
7. Southern Pacific (previously released on RE-AC-TOR.)
8. Opera Star (previously released on RE-AC-TOR.)
9. Rapid Transit (previously released on RE-AC-TOR.)
10. Sunny Inside (previously unreleased original)
11. Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze (previously released on RE-AC-TOR.)
12. Get Up (previously unreleased song)
Disc 12: Trans (1981) & Johnny’s Island (1982): Neil Young
1. Rap
2. Sample and Hold (previously released on Trans)
3. Mr. Soul (previously released on Trans)
4. Computer Cowboy (previously released on Trans)
5. We R In Control (previously released on Trans)
6. Computer Age (previously released on Trans)
7. Transformer Man (previously released on Trans)
8. Rap
9. Johnny (previously unreleased song)
10. Island In The Sun (previously unreleased song)
11. Rap
12. Silver & Gold (previously unreleased version)
13. If You Got Love (previously unreleased version)
14. Raining in Paradise (previously unreleased song)
15. Big Pearl (previously unreleased song)
16. Hold On To Your Love (previously released on Trans)
17. Soul Of A Woman (previously unreleased original)
18. Rap
19. Love Hotel (previously unreleased song)
Disc 13: Evolution (1983-1984): Neil Young
1. California Sunset (previously unreleased original)
2. My Boy (previously unreleased original)
3. Old Ways (previously unreleased version)
4. Depression Blues (previously released on Lucky 13)
5. Cry, Cry, Cry (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
6. Mystery Train (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
7. Payola Blues (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
8. Betty Lou’s Got A New Pair Of Shoes (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
9. Bright Lights, Big City (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
10. Rainin’ In My Heart (previously released on Everybody’s Rockin’)
11. Get Gone (previously unreleased original)
12. I Got A Problem (previously unreleased original)
13. Hard Luck Stories (previously unreleased original)
14. Your Love (previously unreleased version)
15. If You Got Love (previously unreleased version)
16. Razor Love (previously unreleased original)
Disc 14: Grey Riders (1984-1986): Neil Young with The International Harvesters
1. Amber Jean (previously unreleased original)
2. Get Back To The Country (previously unreleased original)
3. Are You Ready For The Country? (previously released on A Treasure)
4. It Might Have Been (previously released on A Treasure)
5. Bound For Glory (previously released on A Treasure)
6. Let Your Fingers Do the Walking (previously released on A Treasure)
7. Soul of a Woman (previously released on A Treasure)
8. Misfits (Dakota) (previously unreleased live version)
9. Nothing is Perfect (previously unreleased version)
10. Time Off For Good Behavior (previously unreleased song)
11. This Old House (previously unreleased original)
12. Southern Pacific (previously released on A Treasure)
13. Interstate (previously unreleased live version)
14. Grey Riders (previously released on A Treasure)
Disc 15: Touch The Night (1984): Neil Young with Crazy Horse
1. Rock (previously unreleased song)
2. So Tired (previously unreleased song)
3. Violent Side (previously unreleased live version)
4. I Got A Problem (previously unreleased live version)
5. Your Love (previously unreleased song)
6. Barstool Blues (previously unreleased live version)
7. Welfare Mothers (previously unreleased live version)
8. Touch The Night (previously unreleased live version)
Disc 16: Road Of Plenty (1984-1986): Neil Young
1. Drifter (previously released on Landing On Water)
2. Hippie Dream (previously released on Landing On Water)
3. Bad News Beat (previously released on Landing On Water)
4. People On The Street (previously released on Landing On Water)
5. Weight of the World (previously released on Landing On Water)
6. Pressure (previously released on Landing On Water)
7. Road of Plenty (previously unreleased song)
8. We Never Danced (previously unreleased original)
9. When Your Lonely Heart Breaks (previously unreleased original)
Disc 17: Summer Songs (1987): Neil Young
1. Rap
2. American Dream (previously unreleased original)
3. Someday (previously unreleased original)
4. For The Love Of Man (previously unreleased original)
5. One Of These Days (previously unreleased original)
6. Wrecking Ball (previously unreleased original)
7. Hangin On A Limb (previously unreleased original)
8. Name Of Love (previously unreleased original)
9. Last Of His Kind (previously unreleased original)
10. Rap
Blu-Ray 1:
Across The Water
Blu-Ray 2:
Boarding House
Rust Never Sleeps
Blu-Ray 3:
Human Highway
Trans
Berlin
Blu-Ray 4:
Solo Trans
Catalyst
A Treasure
Blu-Ray 5:
In A Rusted Out Garage
Muddy Track
Takes (vinyl only)Tracklisting:
Side A: 1.Hey Babe (previously unreleased version) (From: Snapshot In Time: Neil Young with Nicolette Larson & Linda Ronstadt)
2.Drive Back (previously unreleased live version) (From: Across The Water II: Neil Young & Crazy Horse)
3.Hitchhikin’ Judy (From: Hitchhikin’ Judy: Neil Young) 4.Let It Shine (previously unreleased live version) (From: Across The Water I: Neil Young & Crazy Horse)
Side B:
1. Sail Away (previously unreleased original)(From: Windward Passage: The Ducks)
2. Comes A Time (previously unreleased version) (From: Oceanside Countryside: Neil Young)
3. Lady Wingshot (previously unreleased song) (From: Union Hall: Neil Young & Nicolette Larson)
4. Thrasher (previously unreleased live version) (From: Boarding House I: Neil Young)
Side C:
1. Hey Hey, My My, (Into The Black) (From: Boarding House II: Neil Young)
2. Bright Sunny Day (previously unreleased song) (From: Sedan Delivery: Neil Young with Crazy Horse)
3. Winter Winds (previously unreleased song) (From: Coastline: Neil Young)
4. If You Got Love (previously unreleased version) (From: Trans/Johnny’s Island: Neil Young)
Side D:
1. Razor Love (From: Evolution: Neil Young)
2. This Old House (previously unreleased original) (From: Grey Riders: Neil Young and The International Harvesters)
3. Barstool Blues (previously unreleased live version) (From: Touch The Night: Neil Young with Crazy Horse)
4. Last Of His Kind (previously unreleased original) (From: Summer Songs: Neil Young)
Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision – a new documentary and box set chronicling the creation of the New York recording studio and Hendrix’ work there – will be released on September 13, by Experience Hendrix L.L.C., in partnership with Legacy Recordings.
The deluxe box set contains 39 tracks (38 previously unreleased) that were recorded by the new-look Jimi Hendrix Experience (Billy Cox on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums) at Electric Lady Studios between June and August of 1970.
The set also includes 20 newly created 5.1 surround sound mixes of the entire First Rays Of The New Rising Sun album plus three bonus tracks: “Valleys Of Neptune”, “Pali Gap” and “Lover Man”.
The Blu-ray includes the full-length documentary Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision, featuring interviews with Steve Winwood, Billy Cox and original Electric Lady staff members. The documentary includes never-before-seen footage. The package includes an extensive booklet filled with unpublished photos, Hendrix’s handwritten song drafts and comprehensive liner notes.
You can pre-order the set here, meanwhile all confirmed worldwide theatrical bookings for the film can be found here.
You can watch the new music video for “Angel [Take 7]” below.
Jane’s Addiction have shared a new track, “Imminent Redemption“. It’s the first new music from the original line-up for 34 years. You can hear it below.
Speaking on the new single, singer Perry Farrell, guitarist Dave Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Eric Avery said – “It is different this time. To have everyone back together, releasing new music. It’s time. Welcome to the next chapter of Jane’s Addiction. Imminent Redemption is only the beginning.”
The band released three records – 1987’s self-titled live album, 1988’s Nothing Shocking and 1990’s Ritual De Lo Habitual – before their initial break-up in 1991.
