MMJ man goes it alone with an eclectic, intricate LP... Hypnotic, psychedelic, soulful and ragged, My Morning Jacket are one of the most distinctive bands to come out of the American rock underground in the past decade. Much of that is down to frontman Jim James, who has a gorgeous but flexible voice and writes tunes that veer from country to space rock to reggae while retaining MMJ’s absorbing, reverberating sonic palate. Although the band aren’t the most productive around – 2011’s Circuital was only their second album since 2005’s excellent Z –James has spent the past four years quietly beavering away on his own solo project. The result is a lovingly recorded scrap of splendour and beauty that takes some of the more interesting elements of MMJ and runs with them in a series of unexpected directions. ‘I wanted it to sound like the past of the future,’ James told Uncut, ‘Like you are in the year 4037 and you found this record, which was made in the year 3078.’ It begins, tellingly, with a pseudo-retro crackle of vinyl and a surreptitious, almost modest, drum roll. The brilliant “State of The Art (A.E.I.O.U)” slowly builds from a simple piano-and-voice ballad into a claustrophobic funk work-out reminiscent of Spiritualized or 1970s Brian Eno (British influences infiltrate Regions Of Light... despite MMJ being the most American of bands). MMJ are noted for their swirling layers of sound and there are layers here too, but more precise, more considered, placed by an almost visible single hand rather than an opaque ten-legged sound machine lost deep inside the moment. As James adds fresh instruments with each verse, “State of The Art” grows ever more complex but on top of all is James’s voice. This is a wise move: his vocals can get buried in the maelstrom of MMJ but here they remain clean and clear, beautifully illustrating “Know Til Now”, which fuses loops and keyboards to a song with a coda like an old jazzy acetate. It’s like a Tom Waits tune that has been scrubbed and softened while remaining deliciously oddball, with a wonderful, tangible, texture. The record has a unified atmosphere, the result of James producing the album himself, recording at home and playing almost every instrument. “Know Til Now” is one of four songs inspired by God’s Man, a graphic novel by Lynd Ward from 1929 that uses wordless wood engravings. The book is both about love and a Faustian pact, and it is the former, ‘more literal’, part with which James identified when he read it in 2008, shortly after he injured himself falling off the stage – the protagonist of the book hurts himself falling down a cliff. “Dear One”, with squelching bass and 80s drums, is a euphoric love song that reflects the book’s central affair as does the following “A New Life”, which provides the best showcase of James’s voice, as confident and dramatic as a young Brett Anderson on a stunning song that marries a Bowie-style ballad with a Johnny Cash backbeat, sprinkled with MMJ pyrotechnics. Intricate, delicate instrumental “Exploding” offers a bridge into the second half of the album, which begins with a twitter of birdsong and a cascading cherry blossom of keyboards on the regretful, religion-referencing “Of The Mother Again”. Next is “Actress”, a bittersweet lament that typifies the album’s adventurous spirit, combining austere strings with slinky beats and domineering vocals. From there, it’s back to God’s Man and “All Is Forgiven”, a sinister, sonorous theme for the novel’s devil-like figure. Saturated by organ and heavy metal chords, it’s the first piece James wrote inspired by the book and it hangs ominously in the dead air. Perhaps mindful of offering a chirpier denouement, the album closes with the Beatles-esque “God’s Love To Deliver”, in which James harmonises with himself over simple strumming, almost gets lost in a stew of samples, before ending with a buzz and a hum that lingers in the ear long after this strange, beautiful album has played its final note. Peter Watts Q&A Jim James What did you do here that you couldn’t do with MMJ? Well, it’s not a matter of what I could or could not do because MMJ is a very free place, it was rather that this was a chance for me to spread my wings and enjoy playing instruments I don’t normally play in MMJ, but still enjoy a great deal. It also was a chance for me to make a record on my own terms and in my own time, by myself at home. What was the influence of God's Man on the album? I began the album as a score to God’s Man. I feel I have never compromised my soul to the devil so I feel good about that, but there were some more literal parts to the story – injury, love blossoming out of despair, recovery – that I identified with and had a super surreal déjà-vu impact on me. I felt I knew the book from a former life back when it came out. The album has terrific texture, does that come from the production process? Production and soundscape are very important to me. Gear choices and then deciding where things fall along the space-time continuum – these are very important. I’m just as interested in mic-ing and fucking with the piano as I am in simply playing it. INTERVIEW: PETER WATTS Photo credit Jo McCaughey

There’s been a lot of excitement around the office over the last couple of weeks, with the imminent arrival of the first David Bowie album since what seems like the end of rationing causing a certain giddiness in the Uncut ranks, followed by the actual release of the long-promised new My Bloody Valentine album, a mere 22 years after Loveless. Then of course Kraftwerk have been at the Tate Modern, which is just a stroll towards the Thames from where we are currently hunched at workstations in our editorial hub, hard at work, as anyone can see, on the next issue. Most of the office has by now been to see at least one of these historic performances, most recently Michael, who went last night. From what he’s just been telling me, there was a degree of audience participation that I’m not sure is typical of Kraftwerk shows, which I am inclined to imagine are attended by many serious types, whose absorbed attention to what they are listening to is respectful to the point of dutiful reverence. I can’t imagine, for instance, that noisy hecklers are frequently in attendance when Kraftwerk play. But Michael reports that last night a group of what he thought were, as he described them, “Brummies”, at one point took to chanting “Ralfie, Ralfie, show us your chin,” at Ralf Hutter, before shouting for “Numbers” at every opportunity. There were a couple of stage invaders, too, which I am even more sure is not usually a part of the Kraftwerk live experience. The first apparently bore a more than striking resemblance to Vod, from Fresh Meat, to the extent Michael wondered if the Fresh Meat team weren’t guerrilla film-making for a new series. She had what Michael says was a “proper dance” – he didn’t go into any greater detail, so I’m not entirely sure what this may have entailed – unlike the blonde gal who hopped onto the stage and just sort of, I’m told, “wibbled around a bit self-consciously” before disappearing back into the crowd. Of course, there are some shows where such behaviour would be received with stern disapproval and the intervention of burly security men in combat trousers and zipped-up nylon jackets, the kind with pockets on the sleeves, multiple pouches for who knows what. The idea of bouncers at a Kraftwerk seems when you think about it is a bit far-fetched, however, and so it was perhaps no surprise when neither the Vod-lookalike or the wibbling blonde were in a manner too unseemly for the occasion dragged kicking and bleating from the stage. From the imposing splendour of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, we now turn to the rather more modest surroundings of The Railway, in Winchester, which for the last couple of years has been hosting the Uncut Sessions, similar to the Club Uncut shows we used to put on at London’s Borderline. Oliver Gray, who promotes the gigs there, has just been in touch with the line-up for his next series of shows, which starts on February 22 with an appearance by Robert Vincent, “the Scouse Springsteen”, according to one admirer, whose album Life In Easy Steps has enjoyed a lot of recent rave reviews. He’ll be supported by Jack Day, whose Bucketfull Of Brains album, The First Ten, is definitely worth looking out for. Arbouretum, whose new Thrill Jockey album, Coming Out Of The Fog, is also highly recommended, play next, on February 25, and are followed by The Coal Porters, with Dave Harding from Richmond Fontaine, on March 9, Chuck Prophet And The Mission Express, who play The Cellar in Southampton as part of the season on April 29. Canadian country-rockers The Deep Dark Woods are on at The Railway on May 3, as are Hurray For The Riff Raff on May 11 and Italian roots rocker Stiv Cantarelli is there on May 30. Cantrelli’s last album, Innerstate, featured Richmond Fontaine as his backing band, but at The Railway he’ll be appearing with The Silent Strangers, basically the rhythm section from Stiv’s former band, Satellite. Tickets for the Uncut Sessions are available from www.railwaylive.co.uk Have a good week. Kraftwerk pic: Jim Dyson/Redferns

Tender, string-soaked twelfth from Canuck songwriter... As a teenager in smalltown Canada, Ron Sexsmith was known as ‘The Human Jukebox’, able to deliver the latest hit at a shout from the crowd. At times during his prolific career the singer has likewise seemed to want to please the public rather than himself – with the drum loops and beats of Retriever, for example, or 2011’s Long Player, Late Bloomer, a stab at commercial breakthrough overseen by Metallica producer Bob Rock. The latter effort worked, kind of. The album tickled the lower end of the charts while Love Shines, the documentary about its making, offered an insight into Sexsmith’s shyness and musical fluency. He’ll likely never be as elevated as his heroes – Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Ray Davies – but Sexsmith remains a treasure, a quality songwriter whose downbeat disposition seemingly precludes outbursts of unfettered joy, anger or recrimination. Instead come reflection, insight, and the flicker of redemption. Forever Endeavour majors in all those qualities. With producer Mitchell Froom at the console, the record often recalls Sexsmith’s first three albums, which Froom likewise polished, with the songs’ acoustic root spiced with arrangements: strings here, woodwind there, an occasional Duane Eddy twang. Sexsmith’s vocals remain unchanged, even at their strongest full of fragility, extra fragility if anything , reflecting the cloud of anxiety under which some of the songs were written in summer 2011, when a lump was discovered in the singer’s throat. The subsequent health scare proved unfounded, but Sexsmith recalls “lying in bed wondering if this thing inside was going to get me.” The shadow of mortality lies over several numbers. “Deeper With Time” looks back to a childhood heritage that is rosy but nonetheless “leaves us scarred”. “If Only Avenue” is a slow, rueful piece of hindsight, while “Snake Road” resolves not to to return to “dark days when I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight, couldn’t keep my trousers on”, a droll observation set to soul horns. The most affecting consideration of an early exit comes with the lightest touch. Set to solo guitar picking, the three minutes of “Sneak Out The Back Door” sound deceptively jaunty, and shift sneakily from feeling “a pang of anxiety at the society gathering” to thinking that “when life is over”, Ron would likewise exit the party with a minimum of fuss. Not all of Forever Endeavour has the Reaper’s watchful eye on it. “Me Myself and Wine” is a happy-on-my-own piece with rag-time horns blowing lazily and a melody and delivery that might have come from the Kinks’ Muswell Hillbillies. “Back Of My Hand”, with its chiming guitars and ascending middle eight, sounds like homage to another Sexsmith favourite, The Beatles. It starts unremarkably, as its composer “takes my thoughts out for a walk” before spiralling into the idea that God is looking down on humans like a kind of benign songwriter. There is also a slew of love songs. “Nowhere Is”, “Lost In Thought” and “She Does My Heart Good” are gentle, count-your-blessings affairs that ponder where their author might have ended up without his current better half. All are given dreamy stringed treatment by Froom, who seems to have been listening to a lot of Bacharach/David. “Blind Eye” opens with trembling violins and a yearning French horn before a scratch guitar helps settle its empathic observations on the way of the world and the pain in which so many humans live. The album’s final flourish ties together the personal and the universal, shifting cleverly from wishing a partner sweet dreams to a pledge to shine in the light of morning while life still flows. It’s a poetic piece that challenges its creator’s quavering voice on the high notes and is all the more moving for it; a graceful end to a delicate, moving album. Neil Spencer Q&A RON SEXSMITH You’re back with Mitchell Froom… They don’t make producers like him any more. He’s about arrangements whereas a lot of producers are coming from the technical side. I haven’t made such an orchestral album since my third. It’s quite a contrast to Long Player, Late Bloomer. That was a little slick but commercially it’s one of my most succesful albums. I had songs I thought were hits and I felt my career was circling round the drain. That seems harsh. You have made a dozen albums! You undervalue your output. Not the songs, I’m always proud of them, but the actual albums tend to disappoint - I don’t feel I ‘ve hit one out of the park so to speak. Is there a difference between depression and being philosophical? I got painted with that ‘melancholia’ brush early on, but I have always written uplifting and spiritual songs. That said, there is comfort in a sad song. I like those depression era songs like “Pennies from Heaven” that brough the nation together. What are you reading? I’m re-reading Dickens’ Martin Chuzzelewit in an old edition a friend gave me. It’s one of his funniest books, especially the part where he visits America and you can see that a lot really hasn’t changed. INTERVIEW: NEIL SPENCER