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Blur – Parklive

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Blur – Parklive

Sound and vision live bonanza; improved audio is the icing on the Hyde Park memorial cake... Last spring, following his Twitter comments early in the year concerning Blur’s “amazing” work in the studio on new material, producer William Orbit announced that Damon Albarn had unexpectedly pulled the plug on recording sessions. The hearts of the eternally hopeful sagged, despite the fact that there had never been any confirmation from the band that they were embarking on an album. The release in early July of “Under The Westway” and “The Puritan” – two of only three new tracks recorded since 2003 – was very likely no more or less than what Blur had planned; that is, a teaser for their headlining set in Hyde Park on August 12 to mark the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. However clear a full stop at the end of the latest chapter in the Britpop survivors’ history it appears to be, the issue of this hefty (five-disc) deluxe live set – including DVD and 60-page hardback book of exclusive photographs – is unlikely to stem constant, see-sawing speculation about their future. It’s necessarily a time capsule, in which are sealed reminders of the twin triumphs of team Blur and Team GB, bathed in the glow of nostalgic pop euphoria and swollen national pride, albeit tempered by Albarn’s expressed distaste for the Olympics’ overweening commercialism. He declared that the band’s performance that summer evening was “for the human beings” – all 60,000 of them, packed in nose-to-neck. This wasn’t Blur’s first gig in the royal park – they played two shows there on their initial reunion run in July of 2009 – but the double-CD that is the centerpiece of Parklive underscores the monumentality of the event. It’s rare among live recordings in that it offers a high-definition and overall vastly superior listening experience to the real-time performance, where the volume was frustratingly inadequate and echo a problem, prompting Albarn to enquire anxiously, “Can you hear us at the back? Back, back, back… well, I hope so.” It’s an ecstatically hits-stuffed set that features only two songs from ‘The Great Escape’ (“Country House” and “The Universal”), just one (“Sing”) from ‘Leisure’ and seldom-aired, Hoople-like B-side, “Young And Lovely”, which Albarn prefaces with a group dedication to “our beautiful children.” Blur have released three compilation albums, but none of them point up the band’s engagingly contrary creativity and elastic pop nous quite like these two discs. Songs switch from rowdy and attitudinal (“Tracy Jacks”, a grungey and squalling “Trimm Trabb”, “Colin Zeal”) to sombre and reflective (“Beetlebum”, “Caramel”, the always touching “No Distance Left To Run”); from galumphing (“Country House”, “For Tomorrow”) and geezerish (“Sunday Sunday”, conceptual albatross “Parklife”, which features a comically rough-voiced Phil Daniels) to almost graceful (a compelling, desert-blues variation on “Out Of Time”, featuring Iranian oud player Khyam Allami, and horns-assisted closer “The Universal”). There’s no shortage of sing-along opportunities, but an epic and unravelled “Tender” takes the communal biscuit. Given the fullness of this set, the “live extras” disc – comprised chiefly of a Wolverhampton Civic Hall warm-up in June, plus “Under The Westway” and “The Puritan” as performed live on Twitter from a London rooftop – demands a second sitting. As does the recording of Blur’s show at the tiny 100 Club on August 2, where Albarn tests out his introduction to “Young And Lovely” and the sweaty ambience is almost audible. Any live audio recording, however impressive its quality, stumbles at the verisimilitude hurdle; those who were there are reminded of something they already remember, those who weren’t can only imagine it. The Parklive DVD bridges that gap. There’s Graham Coxon rolling on his back, legs flailing during a gnarly guitar workout; here he is mid-“Tender”, receiving an affectionate kiss on the cheek from Albarn; now, in a raucous “Song 2” the singer’s losing his shit and – during one particularly athletic leap – almost his trousers, too. Even the appearance during “Parklife” of Harry Enfield dressed as a tea lady, complete with trolley and urn looks less like a hideously dated gaucherie and more a crowd-pleasing concession made by a band in their mid-40s who’ve made peace not only with one other, but also their pop past. Parklive, of course, comes with a cockles-warming narrative; four grown men with wildly divergent interests – lo-fi garage punk, local politics, artisan cheese and Chinese opera – who’ve somehow beaten the survival odds. But it takes more than sentimentality to sustain a live record, however “historic” the event. Blur’s set will stand. Until their next move… Sharon O'Connell

Sound and vision live bonanza; improved audio is the icing on the Hyde Park memorial cake…

Last spring, following his Twitter comments early in the year concerning Blur’s “amazing” work in the studio on new material, producer William Orbit announced that Damon Albarn had unexpectedly pulled the plug on recording sessions. The hearts of the eternally hopeful sagged, despite the fact that there had never been any confirmation from the band that they were embarking on an album. The release in early July of “Under The Westway” and “The Puritan” – two of only three new tracks recorded since 2003 – was very likely no more or less than what Blur had planned; that is, a teaser for their headlining set in Hyde Park on August 12 to mark the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics.

However clear a full stop at the end of the latest chapter in the Britpop survivors’ history it appears to be, the issue of this hefty (five-disc) deluxe live set – including DVD and 60-page hardback book of exclusive photographs – is unlikely to stem constant, see-sawing speculation about their future. It’s necessarily a time capsule, in which are sealed reminders of the twin triumphs of team Blur and Team GB, bathed in the glow of nostalgic pop euphoria and swollen national pride, albeit tempered by Albarn’s expressed distaste for the Olympics’ overweening commercialism. He declared that the band’s performance that summer evening was “for the human beings” – all 60,000 of them, packed in nose-to-neck.

This wasn’t Blur’s first gig in the royal park – they played two shows there on their initial reunion run in July of 2009 – but the double-CD that is the centerpiece of Parklive underscores the monumentality of the event. It’s rare among live recordings in that it offers a high-definition and overall vastly superior listening experience to the real-time performance, where the volume was frustratingly inadequate and echo a problem, prompting Albarn to enquire anxiously, “Can you hear us at the back? Back, back, back… well, I hope so.”

It’s an ecstatically hits-stuffed set that features only two songs from ‘The Great Escape’ (“Country House” and “The Universal”), just one (“Sing”) from ‘Leisure’ and seldom-aired, Hoople-like B-side, “Young And Lovely”, which Albarn prefaces with a group dedication to “our beautiful children.” Blur have released three compilation albums, but none of them point up the band’s engagingly contrary creativity and elastic pop nous quite like these two discs. Songs switch from rowdy and attitudinal (“Tracy Jacks”, a grungey and squalling “Trimm Trabb”, “Colin Zeal”) to sombre and reflective (“Beetlebum”, “Caramel”, the always touching “No Distance Left To Run”); from galumphing (“Country House”, “For Tomorrow”) and geezerish (“Sunday Sunday”, conceptual albatross “Parklife”, which features a comically rough-voiced Phil Daniels) to almost graceful (a compelling, desert-blues variation on “Out Of Time”, featuring Iranian oud player Khyam Allami, and horns-assisted closer “The Universal”). There’s no shortage of sing-along opportunities, but an epic and unravelled “Tender” takes the communal biscuit.

Given the fullness of this set, the “live extras” disc – comprised chiefly of a Wolverhampton Civic Hall warm-up in June, plus “Under The Westway” and “The Puritan” as performed live on Twitter from a London rooftop – demands a second sitting. As does the recording of Blur’s show at the tiny 100 Club on August 2, where Albarn tests out his introduction to “Young And Lovely” and the sweaty ambience is almost audible.

Any live audio recording, however impressive its quality, stumbles at the verisimilitude hurdle; those who were there are reminded of something they already remember, those who weren’t can only imagine it. The Parklive DVD bridges that gap. There’s Graham Coxon rolling on his back, legs flailing during a gnarly guitar workout; here he is mid-“Tender”, receiving an affectionate kiss on the cheek from Albarn; now, in a raucous “Song 2” the singer’s losing his shit and – during one particularly athletic leap – almost his trousers, too. Even the appearance during “Parklife” of Harry Enfield dressed as a tea lady, complete with trolley and urn looks less like a hideously dated gaucherie and more a crowd-pleasing concession made by a band in their mid-40s who’ve made peace not only with one other, but also their pop past.

Parklive, of course, comes with a cockles-warming narrative; four grown men with wildly divergent interests – lo-fi garage punk, local politics, artisan cheese and Chinese opera – who’ve somehow beaten the survival odds. But it takes more than sentimentality to sustain a live record, however “historic” the event. Blur’s set will stand. Until their next move…

Sharon O’Connell

Jack White: ‘Meg White was uninterested in The White Stripes’

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Jack White: ‘Meg White was uninterested in The White Stripes’
Jack White has said he found it difficult sharing the good moments in The White Stripes with Meg White as she was often "uninterested". The duo found commercial popularity in 2001 following the release of their third album White Blood Cells and became one of the biggest bands of the decade, but fro...

Jack White has said he found it difficult sharing the good moments in The White Stripes with Meg White as she was often “uninterested”.

The duo found commercial popularity in 2001 following the release of their third album White Blood Cells and became one of the biggest bands of the decade, but frontman Jack White claims drummer Meg White never shared his level of enthusiasm during their glory years.

White, who released his debut solo album Blunderbuss earlier this year, told Esquire:

“In The White Stripes, it was impossible to share the good moments with Meg because she was very uninterested. If something nice happened, it wasn’t like we would hug or have a drink. That wasn’t what went on.

“We would record a White Stripes song in the studio and it would be me, Meg and an engineer,” he added. “So we would finish a mix of a song and I’d say, ‘Wow! That’s pretty good!’ I’d look around and Meg would just be sitting there, and the engineer would just be sitting there.”

He continued: “So it’d be sorta like, ‘OK… Let’s just move on to the next one.’ It was just me by myself. But it was the best thing for me. It taught me a lot about trusting my gut.”

However, Jack White, who was once married to Meg White, said that there were a lot of treasurable moments shared between the duo during their time in The White Stripes. “It’s strange to know that there’s beautiful moments that no one will ever know about,” he said. “It’s whether I’m going to tell you, because Meg’s never going to tell you. There’s a sadness to that, a romance.”

Jimmy Page plans 2013 solo tour

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Jimmy Page plans 2013 solo tour
Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page has revealed that he plans to go out on a solo tour next year. The guitarist, who is busy promoting the release of Led Zeppelin's live DVD Celebration Day, said he had planned to tour this year but with the release of the O2 Arena concert film he has had to postpone his so...

Led Zeppelin‘s Jimmy Page has revealed that he plans to go out on a solo tour next year.

The guitarist, who is busy promoting the release of Led Zeppelin’s live DVD Celebration Day, said he had planned to tour this year but with the release of the O2 Arena concert film he has had to postpone his solo trek till 2013.

Speaking in an interview with Guitar World, Page said: “This time last year I intended to be actually playing by now in a live outfit. So that will have to be postponed now into sort of next year, tail end of next year. But I definitely want to be doing that.”

Page also spoke out about rumours that he, bassist John-Paul Jones and drummer Jason Bonham were looking to replace Robert Plant with another singer and tour as Led Zeppelin.

“[After the 2007 O2 Arena tribute gig] Jason, myself and John Paul Jones felt it was the right thing to do to go in and start playing new material and see how we were getting on,” said Page. “There was talk about bringing in some other singers, but that would have changed the character of what we were doing, and done it rather suddenly.”

He added: “There was a lot of… I won’t say pressure but a lot of hinting about ‘this singer and that singer.’ And for me, it was more about, ‘Let’s see what we can really do.’ But I don’t think we really got a chance to do that.”

Last week, Led Zeppelin were honoured at the White House by Barack Obama for their contribution to America culture and the arts. Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page were among a group of artists who received Kennedy Centre Honours.

Pic credit: Getty Images

Neil Young Journeys

Michael Bonner
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Neil Young Journeys

In May 2011, Jonathan Demme filmed Neil Young on the three hour drive from the singer’s hometown of Omemee to Toronto’s Massey Hall, where he was scheduled to play the final shows of his Le Noise tour. “I’m giving a tour, from the driver’s seat, of my old haunting grounds,” as Young described it in his autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace. Demme splices footage from this tripalongside film of the Massey Hall show into what Young describes a “docu-music-entary”, acknowledging the slightly uneven hybrid nature of the thing. Demme, now on his third concert film with the singer (after Heart Of Gold and, as yet unreleased in the UK, Neil Young Trunk Show), finds Young in a white panama hat, linen jacket, black t-shirt and blue jeans. The opening moments of the film show Young's sound mixers setting up their boards; the soundtrack for Journeys has been tweaked in super high-resolution audio and the audience applause has been dampened. This serves to foreground the music, privileging the rich textures and vivid effects Young coaxes from a number of guitars, including Old Black for an elemental version of “Hitchhiker”. The lack of audience footage, or establishing shots, creates an incredibly intimate piece. Unlike Demme’s previous films, which featured Young accompanied by a band, this is just Young on his own, up close, everything focussed on his actions and the delivery of the songs. Demme even fixes a camera to the microphone stand, granting us an extra level of intimacy as the camera displays Young’s immaculate nashers and catches flecks of spit. The songs come mostly from Le Noise, but Young adds in “Ohio”, “Down By The River”, “After The Goldrush” and “Hey Hey My My (Into The Black)” as well as a pair of new songs – a jaunty piano ballad “Leia” and the more sombre “You Never Call”, about Larry Johnson, the head of Shakey Pictures who died in 2010. Meanwhile, back on the road, Young is a lively raconteur:here he is, as he steers his ’56 Crown Victoria past Goof Whitney’s house, telling us about the time he ate tarmac off the road – “that was the beginning of my relationship with cars” – or putting firecrackers up a turtle’s ass: “My environmental roots are not that deep,” he admits. He follows his brother Bob through Omemee – approvingly, Bob drives “Not too fast, not too slow” – to the site of the Young family home, since burned down. Young tells Demme about sleeping in the garden during summer, “to be closer to my chickens.” Back in the car, Young reflects on this journey through his past: “That’s why you don’t have to worry when you lose friends. They’re still in your head. Still in your heart.” Neil Young Journeys opens in the UK this Friday

In May 2011, Jonathan Demme filmed Neil Young on the three hour drive from the singer’s hometown of Omemee to Toronto’s Massey Hall, where he was scheduled to play the final shows of his Le Noise tour.

“I’m giving a tour, from the driver’s seat, of my old haunting grounds,” as Young described it in his autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace.

Demme splices footage from this tripalongside film of the Massey Hall show into what Young describes a “docu-music-entary”, acknowledging the slightly uneven hybrid nature of the thing. Demme, now on his third concert film with the singer (after Heart Of Gold and, as yet unreleased in the UK, Neil Young Trunk Show), finds Young in a white panama hat, linen jacket, black t-shirt and blue jeans. The opening moments of the film show Young’s sound mixers setting up their boards; the soundtrack for Journeys has been tweaked in super high-resolution audio and the audience applause has been dampened. This serves to foreground the music, privileging the rich textures and vivid effects Young coaxes from a number of guitars, including Old Black for an elemental version of “Hitchhiker”.

The lack of audience footage, or establishing shots, creates an incredibly intimate piece. Unlike Demme’s previous films, which featured Young accompanied by a band, this is just Young on his own, up close, everything focussed on his actions and the delivery of the songs. Demme even fixes a camera to the microphone stand, granting us an extra level of intimacy as the camera displays Young’s immaculate nashers and catches flecks of spit. The songs come mostly from Le Noise, but Young adds in “Ohio”, “Down By The River”, “After The Goldrush” and “Hey Hey My My (Into The Black)” as well as a pair of new songs – a jaunty piano ballad “Leia” and the more sombre “You Never Call”, about Larry Johnson, the head of Shakey Pictures who died in 2010. Meanwhile, back on the road, Young is a lively raconteur:here he is, as he steers his ’56 Crown Victoria past Goof Whitney’s house, telling us about the time he ate tarmac off the road – “that was the beginning of my relationship with cars” – or putting firecrackers up a turtle’s ass: “My environmental roots are not that deep,” he admits. He follows his brother Bob through Omemee – approvingly, Bob drives “Not too fast, not too slow” – to the site of the Young family home, since burned down. Young tells Demme about sleeping in the garden during summer, “to be closer to my chickens.” Back in the car, Young reflects on this journey through his past: “That’s why you don’t have to worry when you lose friends. They’re still in your head. Still in your heart.”

Neil Young Journeys opens in the UK this Friday

Joni Mitchell – The Studio Albums 1968 – 1979

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Joni Mitchell – The Studio Albums 1968 – 1979

From Laurel Canyon to jazz-rock's far outposts - the suffragette of sensuality's stunning first decade... Joni Mitchell may be the most influential female artist in music history. While there have undoubtedly been more impressive singers, from Billie Holiday to Aretha Franklin to Dusty Springfield, prior to Mitchell's emergence female performers were largely restricted to interpretive roles. Even the formidably talented Carole King had to wait until the '70s for significant success as a singer-songwriter with Tapestry. But Mitchell's wider influence is undeniable, with artists far removed from her initial folk-music scene acknowledging her impact - Prince, famously, is a huge fan, and Madonna has admitted that "of all the women I've heard, she had the most profound effect on me from a lyrical point of view". Not to mention, one imagines, Mitchell's presentation of herself as a sexually self-determining woman at a time when submissive acquiescence was the dominant mode afforded newly "liberated" women; nor her capacity to negotiate some of the most complex and unvarnished emotional analyses ever set to music. Joni Mitchell was a true emancipator, a suffragette of sensuality blessed with a heightened poetic sensibility. There is no better evocation of the dawn of a new, more questing consciousness than Joni's early albums: the very album title Ladies Of The Canyon is redolent of flaxen-haired damsels in Angeleno hippie paradise. Mitchell had been discovered by David Crosby, who became the first of her Laurel Canyon lovers. As producer of her debut album Songs To A Seagull, Crosby's main aim was to capture her talent as clearly as possible, unencumbered by overweening arrangements. "I didn't do a very good job producing it," Crosby once told me modestly, "but she did make an astounding record." The opening track "I Came To The City" deals with her early marriage, as if opening the album with a line drawn under her previous life. As such, it presages the strain of confessional honesty that runs throughout her work. Couched in imagery of pirates and seabirds, gems, flowers and fabrics, the rest of the album expresses her driving need for freedom, especially from the anchoring restraints of would-be suitors keen to pin her down. Heard retrospectively, the cold detail of the songs, and the austere purity of her voice, speak volumes about her clear-eyed ambition. Studded with the early classics "Chelsea Morning" and "Both Sides Now", Clouds is suffused with romantic uncertainty, hope and betrayal, like a ledger of the emotional accounting of the free-love era, profit and loss measured not just in love, but in the restraints and expectations love places upon us: the older woman "left to winter here" in "The Gallery" and the hesitant steps into new territory taken in "Tin Angel" and "I Don't Know Where I Stand". Ladies Of The Canyon added "Big Yellow Taxi", "Woodstock" and "The Circle Game" to her burgeoning canon of classics, while "Willy" - lover Graham Nash's nickname - became one of the earliest examples of the new mode of autobiographical revelation that turned Laurel Canyon scenesters' songs into diaristic soap operas. But Blue was the landmark album, the apotheosis of Joni's early style in which her lyrical strategies, melodies and vocal approaches were handled with a compelling confidence, and sequenced with an intelligent regard for what might be called the album's emotional topography. Even today, there is no better evocation of the light-hearted joy of romance than "Carey", with its see-sawing melody, and a delivery that slips so easily between affectionate yearning and bubbly excitement. The same themes sustained through For The Roses in the fretful self-absorption of "Woman Of Heart And Mind" and "Lesson In Survival", while both "You Turn Me On I'm A Radio" and "Blonde In The Bleachers" dealt head-on with the difficulties of sustaining relationships between musicians. But it was Tom Scott's reeds that offered the clearest indicator of how Mitchell's music would develop through the '70s. The fuller arrangements of Court And Spark, with their jazz-inflected horns, have the effect of freeing up the songs: the material is just as romantically themed as before, just as anxious about appearances and social graces, but the general mood is lighter and less insular: the backing vocals, flute and Larry Carlton's guitar give a mousse-light soul mood to a song like "Help Me", while the jazz-pop texture of "Car On A Hill" offers an early blueprint of the sophisticated sound for which Steely Dan were searching at the time. With Carlton, vibraphonist Victor Feldman and the Dan's Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter involved, that sound came even closer on The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, perhaps Mitchell's greatest accomplishment. The arrangements this time incorporated bass flute, flugelhorn, and miasmic electric piano, with "The Jungle Line" offered the most dynamic expression of the album's overall theme tracking the thin veneer, between the primitive and the sophisticated. The album's protagonists live in gated communities like prisons ("He gave her a room full of Chippendale that nobody sits in"), disguise themselves in the "stolen clothes" of long-gone movie icons, and engage in the courtly rounds of "The Boho Dance", pointedly contrasted with the reminiscence of a furtive but free youthhood of romance and rock'n'roll in "In France They Kiss On Main Street". Besides Larry Carlton, bassist Jaco Pastorius had the biggest impact on Mitchell's late-'70s sound, his floating fretless tones and deft harmonics at their most sensuous on the lovely "Coyote" from Hejira, an album about her constant search for love and music, depicted as a flight from both boredom and the anchorages of partnership and marriage. Accordingly, the songs are missives from a variety of locales (New York, LA, Memphis, Savannah), a succession of hotel rooms, and a string of lovers - literally, in the closing track's title, "The Refuge Of The Roads". Unfortunately, Joni's Jazz Odyssey leads her into less agreeable territory on the double-album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus, the tribute album of songs co-written with the late Charles Mingus. On the former, Pastorius's bass becomes deeply irritating, evoking the supercilious self-satisfaction of '70s jazz-rock, while the side-long semi-improvised jazz symphony "Paprika Plains" is one of the least appealing items in Mitchell's catalogue. One can't help thinking that Tim Buckley blended folk and jazz so much more guilelessly, and infinitely more enjoyably, ten years before. Sadly, Mingus finds her more deeply embroiled with such as Pastorius, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, pursuing the etiolated, lifelessly academic jazz style of the era. Her description of the pieces as "audio paintings" exactly fingers the problem: I don't want audio paintings from a great songwriter, I want songs. Is there something wrong with that? Andy Gill

From Laurel Canyon to jazz-rock’s far outposts – the suffragette of sensuality’s stunning first decade…

Joni Mitchell may be the most influential female artist in music history. While there have undoubtedly been more impressive singers, from Billie Holiday to Aretha Franklin to Dusty Springfield, prior to Mitchell’s emergence female performers were largely restricted to interpretive roles. Even the formidably talented Carole King had to wait until the ’70s for significant success as a singer-songwriter with Tapestry.

But Mitchell’s wider influence is undeniable, with artists far removed from her initial folk-music scene acknowledging her impact – Prince, famously, is a huge fan, and Madonna has admitted that “of all the women I’ve heard, she had the most profound effect on me from a lyrical point of view”. Not to mention, one imagines, Mitchell’s presentation of herself as a sexually self-determining woman at a time when submissive acquiescence was the dominant mode afforded newly “liberated” women; nor her capacity to negotiate some of the most complex and unvarnished emotional analyses ever set to music. Joni Mitchell was a true emancipator, a suffragette of sensuality blessed with a heightened poetic sensibility.

There is no better evocation of the dawn of a new, more questing consciousness than Joni’s early albums: the very album title Ladies Of The Canyon is redolent of flaxen-haired damsels in Angeleno hippie paradise. Mitchell had been discovered by David Crosby, who became the first of her Laurel Canyon lovers. As producer of her debut album Songs To A Seagull, Crosby’s main aim was to capture her talent as clearly as possible, unencumbered by overweening arrangements. “I didn’t do a very good job producing it,” Crosby once told me modestly, “but she did make an astounding record.”

The opening track “I Came To The City” deals with her early marriage, as if opening the album with a line drawn under her previous life. As such, it presages the strain of confessional honesty that runs throughout her work. Couched in imagery of pirates and seabirds, gems, flowers and fabrics, the rest of the album expresses her driving need for freedom, especially from the anchoring restraints of would-be suitors keen to pin her down. Heard retrospectively, the cold detail of the songs, and the austere purity of her voice, speak volumes about her clear-eyed ambition.

Studded with the early classics “Chelsea Morning” and “Both Sides Now”, Clouds is suffused with romantic uncertainty, hope and betrayal, like a ledger of the emotional accounting of the free-love era, profit and loss measured not just in love, but in the restraints and expectations love places upon us: the older woman “left to winter here” in “The Gallery” and the hesitant steps into new territory taken in “Tin Angel” and “I Don’t Know Where I Stand”. Ladies Of The Canyon added “Big Yellow Taxi“, “Woodstock” and “The Circle Game” to her burgeoning canon of classics, while “Willy” – lover Graham Nash’s nickname – became one of the earliest examples of the new mode of autobiographical revelation that turned Laurel Canyon scenesters’ songs into diaristic soap operas. But Blue was the landmark album, the apotheosis of Joni’s early style in which her lyrical strategies, melodies and vocal approaches were handled with a compelling confidence, and sequenced with an intelligent regard for what might be called the album’s emotional topography. Even today, there is no better evocation of the light-hearted joy of romance than “Carey”, with its see-sawing melody, and a delivery that slips so easily between affectionate yearning and bubbly excitement.

The same themes sustained through For The Roses in the fretful self-absorption of “Woman Of Heart And Mind” and “Lesson In Survival”, while both “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio” and “Blonde In The Bleachers” dealt head-on with the difficulties of sustaining relationships between musicians. But it was Tom Scott’s reeds that offered the clearest indicator of how Mitchell’s music would develop through the ’70s. The fuller arrangements of Court And Spark, with their jazz-inflected horns, have the effect of freeing up the songs: the material is just as romantically themed as before, just as anxious about appearances and social graces, but the general mood is lighter and less insular: the backing vocals, flute and Larry Carlton’s guitar give a mousse-light soul mood to a song like “Help Me”, while the jazz-pop texture of “Car On A Hill” offers an early blueprint of the sophisticated sound for which Steely Dan were searching at the time.

With Carlton, vibraphonist Victor Feldman and the Dan’s Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter involved, that sound came even closer on The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, perhaps Mitchell’s greatest accomplishment. The arrangements this time incorporated bass flute, flugelhorn, and miasmic electric piano, with “The Jungle Line” offered the most dynamic expression of the album’s overall theme tracking the thin veneer, between the primitive and the sophisticated. The album’s protagonists live in gated communities like prisons (“He gave her a room full of Chippendale that nobody sits in”), disguise themselves in the “stolen clothes” of long-gone movie icons, and engage in the courtly rounds of “The Boho Dance”, pointedly contrasted with the reminiscence of a furtive but free youthhood of romance and rock’n’roll in “In France They Kiss On Main Street”.

Besides Larry Carlton, bassist Jaco Pastorius had the biggest impact on Mitchell’s late-’70s sound, his floating fretless tones and deft harmonics at their most sensuous on the lovely “Coyote” from Hejira, an album about her constant search for love and music, depicted as a flight from both boredom and the anchorages of partnership and marriage. Accordingly, the songs are missives from a variety of locales (New York, LA, Memphis, Savannah), a succession of hotel rooms, and a string of lovers – literally, in the closing track’s title, “The Refuge Of The Roads”.

Unfortunately, Joni’s Jazz Odyssey leads her into less agreeable territory on the double-album Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter and Mingus, the tribute album of songs co-written with the late Charles Mingus. On the former, Pastorius’s bass becomes deeply irritating, evoking the supercilious self-satisfaction of ’70s jazz-rock, while the side-long semi-improvised jazz symphony “Paprika Plains” is one of the least appealing items in Mitchell’s catalogue. One can’t help thinking that Tim Buckley blended folk and jazz so much more guilelessly, and infinitely more enjoyably, ten years before.

Sadly, Mingus finds her more deeply embroiled with such as Pastorius, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, pursuing the etiolated, lifelessly academic jazz style of the era. Her description of the pieces as “audio paintings” exactly fingers the problem: I don’t want audio paintings from a great songwriter, I want songs. Is there something wrong with that?

Andy Gill

My Bloody Valentine announce 2013 UK tour

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My Bloody Valentine announce 2013 UK tour
My Bloody Valentine have announced a trio of UK dates for early next year. The band will kick off their brief UK tour at Glasgow's Barrowlands on March 9, before playing Manchester Apollo on March 10 and London's Hammersmith Apollo on March 12. The UK dates will follow a series of six gigs in Japa...

My Bloody Valentine have announced a trio of UK dates for early next year.

The band will kick off their brief UK tour at Glasgow’s Barrowlands on March 9, before playing Manchester Apollo on March 10 and London’s Hammersmith Apollo on March 12.

The UK dates will follow a series of six gigs in Japan and four dates in Australia, all taking place in February. My Bloody Valentine are also confirmed to headline the 60,000 capacity Tokyo Rocks festival in May.

Speaking to NME at the beginning of November, frontman Kevin Shields revealed that the band’s new album – their first since 1991’s classic Loveless – will be released on his website before the end of the year.

He said of the new album: “I think with this record, people who like us will immediately connect with something. Based on the very, very few people who’ve heard stuff – some engineers, the band, and that’s about it – some people think it’s stranger than Loveless. I don’t. I feel like it really frees us up, and in the bigger picture it’s 100 per cent necessary.”

My Bloody Valentine will play:

Glasgow Barrowlands (March 9)

Manchester Apollo (10)

London Hammersmith Apollo (12)

The Rolling Stones’ ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ documentary to get DVD release

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The Rolling Stones’ ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ documentary to get DVD release
The Rolling Stones documentary Crossfire Hurricane is set for DVD release. The film, which premiered in cinemas across the UK on October 18 and was subsequently broadcast on BBC2 to coincide with the band's two date stint at London's O2 Arena last month (November 25 and 29), will be released on DVD...

The Rolling Stones documentary Crossfire Hurricane is set for DVD release.

The film, which premiered in cinemas across the UK on October 18 and was subsequently broadcast on BBC2 to coincide with the band’s two date stint at London’s O2 Arena last month (November 25 and 29), will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on January 7, 2013.

The film, directed by Brett Morgen, documents the band’s career from their early road trips and gigs in the 1960s, via the release of 1972’s seminal ‘Exile On Main Street’ right up to present day.

It features stacks of unseen footage of the band, including commentaries from Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood and former Stones Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor.

Speaking about the film previously, director Brett Morgen said: “Crossfire Hurricane invites the audience to experience firsthand the Stones’ nearly mythical journey from outsiders to rock and roll royalty. This is not an academic history lesson. Crossfire Hurricane allows the viewer to experience the Stones’ journey from a unique vantage point. It’s an aural and visual rollercoaster ride.”

The Rolling Stones will play the Barclays Center in New York on December 8. They will then play two dates at The Prudential Center in Newark, New Jerseyon December 13 and 15.

Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Keith Richards for Johnny Depp’s ‘pirate’ compilation

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Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Keith Richards for Johnny Depp’s ‘pirate’ compilation

A host of musicians are set to feature on a pirate themed compilation album, called Son Of Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys. The album is being put together by Johnny Depp, director Gore Verbinski and producer Hal Willner and follows their similar 2006 effort, Rogue's Gallery. The new, 36 track double CD will be released on February 18, 2013, on the Anti- label and features a host of talent, including Tom Waits featuring Keith Richards, Iggy Pop featuring A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Patti Smith and Johnny Depp, Beth Orton, Shane MacGowan, Michael Stipe and Courtney Love, Dr John, Marianne Faithfull and Broken Social Scene. The Son oOf Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys tracklisting is: CD 1 Shane MacGowan – “Leaving of Liverpool” [ft. Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski] Robyn Hitchcock – “Sam’s Gone Away” Beth Orton – “River Come Down” Sean Lennon – “Row Bullies Row” [ft. Jack Shit] Tom Waits – “Shenandoah” [ft.Keith Richards] Ivan Neville – “Mr Stormalong” Iggy Pop – “Asshole Rules the Navy” [ft. A Hawk and a Hacksaw] Macy Gray – “Off to Sea Once More” Ed Harcourt – “The Ol’ OG” Shilpa Ray – “Pirate Jenny” [ft. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis] Patti Smith and Johnny Depp – “The Mermaid” Chuck E Weiss – “Anthem for Old Souls” Ed Pastorini – “Orange Claw Hammer” The Americans – “Sweet and Low” Robin Holcomb and Jessica Kenny – “Ye Mariners All” Gavin Friday and Shannon McNally – “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” Kenny Wollesen and The Himalayas Marching Band – “Bear Away” CD 2 Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention – “Handsome Cabin Boy” Michael Stipe and Courtney Love – “Rio Grande” Marc Almond – “Ship in Distress” Dr John – “In Lure of the Tropics” Todd Rundgren – “Rolling Down to Old Maui” Dan Zanes – “Jack Tar on Shore” [ft. Broken Social Scene] Sissy Bounce (Katey Red and Big Freedia) – “Sally Racket” [ft. Akron/Family] Broken Social Scene – “Wild Goose” Marianne Faithfull – “Flandyke Shore” [ft. Kate and Anna McGarrigle] Ricky Jay – “The Chantey of Noah and his Ark (Old School Song)” Michael Gira – “Whiskey Johnny” Petra Haden – “Sunshine Life for Me” [ft. Lenny Pickett] Jenni Muldaur – “Row the Boat Child” Richard Thompson – “General Taylor” [ft. Jack Shit] Tim Robbins – “Marianne” [ft. Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs] Kembra Phaler – “Barnacle Bill the Sailor [ft. Antony, Joseph Arthur, and Foetus] Angelica Huston – “Missus McGraw” [ft. The Weisberg Strings] Iggy Pop and Elegant Too – “The Dreadnought” Mary Margaret O’Hara – “Then Said the Captain to Me (Two Poems of the Sea)”

A host of musicians are set to feature on a pirate themed compilation album, called Son Of Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys.

The album is being put together by Johnny Depp, director Gore Verbinski and producer Hal Willner and follows their similar 2006 effort, Rogue’s Gallery.

The new, 36 track double CD will be released on February 18, 2013, on the Anti- label and features a host of talent, including Tom Waits featuring Keith Richards, Iggy Pop featuring A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Patti Smith and Johnny Depp, Beth Orton, Shane MacGowan, Michael Stipe and Courtney Love, Dr John, Marianne Faithfull and Broken Social Scene.

The Son oOf Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys tracklisting is:

CD 1

Shane MacGowan – “Leaving of Liverpool” [ft. Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski]

Robyn Hitchcock – “Sam’s Gone Away”

Beth Orton – “River Come Down”

Sean Lennon – “Row Bullies Row” [ft. Jack Shit]

Tom Waits – “Shenandoah” [ft.Keith Richards]

Ivan Neville – “Mr Stormalong”

Iggy Pop – “Asshole Rules the Navy” [ft. A Hawk and a Hacksaw]

Macy Gray – “Off to Sea Once More”

Ed Harcourt – “The Ol’ OG”

Shilpa Ray – “Pirate Jenny” [ft. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis]

Patti Smith and Johnny Depp – “The Mermaid”

Chuck E Weiss – “Anthem for Old Souls”

Ed Pastorini – “Orange Claw Hammer”

The Americans – “Sweet and Low”

Robin Holcomb and Jessica Kenny – “Ye Mariners All”

Gavin Friday and Shannon McNally – “Tom’s Gone to Hilo”

Kenny Wollesen and The Himalayas Marching Band – “Bear Away”

CD 2

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention – “Handsome Cabin Boy”

Michael Stipe and Courtney Love – “Rio Grande”

Marc Almond – “Ship in Distress”

Dr John – “In Lure of the Tropics”

Todd Rundgren – “Rolling Down to Old Maui”

Dan Zanes – “Jack Tar on Shore” [ft. Broken Social Scene]

Sissy Bounce (Katey Red and Big Freedia) – “Sally Racket” [ft. Akron/Family]

Broken Social Scene – “Wild Goose”

Marianne Faithfull – “Flandyke Shore” [ft. Kate and Anna McGarrigle]

Ricky Jay – “The Chantey of Noah and his Ark (Old School Song)”

Michael Gira – “Whiskey Johnny”

Petra Haden – “Sunshine Life for Me” [ft. Lenny Pickett]

Jenni Muldaur – “Row the Boat Child”

Richard Thompson – “General Taylor” [ft. Jack Shit]

Tim Robbins – “Marianne” [ft. Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs]

Kembra Phaler – “Barnacle Bill the Sailor [ft. Antony, Joseph Arthur, and Foetus]

Angelica Huston – “Missus McGraw” [ft. The Weisberg Strings]

Iggy Pop and Elegant Too – “The Dreadnought”

Mary Margaret O’Hara – “Then Said the Captain to Me (Two Poems of the Sea)”

Bruce Springsteen joined onstage by Tom Morello and Social Distortion’s Mike Ness in California

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Bruce Springsteen joined onstage by Tom Morello and Social Distortion’s Mike Ness in California
Bruce Springsteen was joined onstage by Mike Ness of Social Distortion and Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine at his show at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Orange County near Los Angeles (December 4). Springsteen and the E Street Band played a typically lengthy, over three-and-a-half-hour set,...

Bruce Springsteen was joined onstage by Mike Ness of Social Distortion and Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine at his show at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Orange County near Los Angeles (December 4).

Springsteen and the E Street Band played a typically lengthy, over three-and-a-half-hour set, opening with ‘Land Of Hope And Dreams’ from Springsteen’s 2012 album Wrecking Ball, with guest guitar from Tom Morello.

Morello – who played on the Wrecking Ball album – also joined Springsteen onstage for ‘Death To My Hometown’, ‘This Depression’, ‘The Ghost Of Tom Joad’, ‘Badlands’ and ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’.

Punk legend Mike Ness later came onstage to perform Social Distortion’s 1992 track ‘Bad Luck’ with Springsteen.

The set included songs from throughout Springsteen’s 40-year career, including ‘Spirit In The Night’ from his 1973 debut Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, and the title track from 1978’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town as well as ‘Adam Raised A Cain’ and ‘Streets Of Fire’ from the same record.

Springsteen and band then donned Santa hats to play ‘Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town’ towards the end of the show.

Bruce Springsteen played:

‘Land Of Hope And Dreams’

‘Adam Raised A Cain’

‘Streets Of Fire’

‘Hungry Heart’

‘We Take Care Of Our Own’

‘Wrecking Ball’

‘Death To My Hometown’

‘My City Of Ruins’

‘Spirit In The Night’

‘The E Street Shuffle’

‘Long Time Comin”

‘Reason To Believe’

‘This Depression’

‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’

‘Bad Luck’

‘Because The Night’

‘Darlington County’

‘Shackled And Drawn’

‘Waitin’ On A Sunny Day’

‘Raise Your Hand’

‘The Ghost Of Tom Joad’

‘Badlands’

‘Thunder Road’

‘Jungleland’

‘Born To Run’

‘Dancing In The Dark’

‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’

‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’

Bruce Springsteen recently announced plans for a run of UK and Ireland dates next summer, as part of a full European tour. He will play London’s Wembley Stadium on June 15, 2013, Glasgow Hampden Park on June 18 and Coventry Ricoh Arena on June 20.

He will then visit mainland Europe before travelling to Ireland to play Limerick Thomond Park on July 16, Cork Páirc Uí Chaoimh on July 18 and Belfast King’s Hall on July 20.

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck dies aged 91

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Jazz legend Dave Brubeck dies aged 91

Jazz musician Dave Brubeck has died at the age of 91. The iconic pianist and composer passed away earlier today at Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut (December 5) of heart failure, reports the Associated Press. He would have turned 92 tomorrow. Born in California in 1920, he went on the serve in the Second World War, mostly as a musician in Europe. He formed the legendary Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951 and their 1959 album, Time Out, was the first ever million-selling jazz LP. Time Out also featured the classic composition 'Take Five'. In 1996, Brubeck won a Grammy lifetime achievement award and received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009. A birthday celebration concert had been planned for tomorrow in Waterbury, Connecticut. The show will still take place but will now be a tribute to the life of Brubeck. Speaking to AP in 1995, Brubeck said of his career: "When you start out with goals — mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically — you never exhaust that. I started doing that in the 1940s. It's still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements."

Jazz musician Dave Brubeck has died at the age of 91.

The iconic pianist and composer passed away earlier today at Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut (December 5) of heart failure, reports the Associated Press. He would have turned 92 tomorrow.

Born in California in 1920, he went on the serve in the Second World War, mostly as a musician in Europe. He formed the legendary Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951 and their 1959 album, Time Out, was the first ever million-selling jazz LP. Time Out also featured the classic composition ‘Take Five’.

In 1996, Brubeck won a Grammy lifetime achievement award and received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009.

A birthday celebration concert had been planned for tomorrow in Waterbury, Connecticut. The show will still take place but will now be a tribute to the life of Brubeck.

Speaking to AP in 1995, Brubeck said of his career: “When you start out with goals — mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically — you never exhaust that. I started doing that in the 1940s. It’s still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements.”

Paul McCartney asks climate change talks to consider introducing ‘Meat Free Monday’

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Paul McCartney asks climate change talks to consider introducing ‘Meat Free Monday’
Paul McCartney has called upon those involved in the current climate change conference to consider introducing a 'Meat Free Monday' initiative. The Beatles legend has written two letters to figures involved in the Conference of the Parties' discussions, which are taking place in Doha, Quatar, ask...

Paul McCartney has called upon those involved in the current climate change conference to consider introducing a ‘Meat Free Monday’ initiative.

The Beatles legend has written two letters to figures involved in the Conference of the Parties’ discussions, which are taking place in Doha, Quatar, asking them to take account of livestock production and the impact it can have on climate change.

McCartney, who sent a copy of the letter to Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, wrote: “Although more and more evidence is coming to light showing how the growth of the global meat industry is having alarming environmental consequences, the impact of the livestock sector on global warming does not yet seem to have been acknowledged by the Conference of the Parties (COP).”

It added: “I therefore call upon you to bring this issue to the attention of the conference and encourage the adoption of policy and individual actions, such as a weekly meat-free day… Encouraging initiatives such as Meat Free Monday would make a considerable difference to the future of the planet.”

Paul McCartney is reportedly working on a new album, the follow-up to this year’s collection of covers, Kisses On The Bottom. Producer Ethan Johns recently told NME that he had been in the studio with him, along with Mark Ronson. Adele producer Paul Epworth is also reported to be working on the record.

The 49th Uncut Playlist Of 2012 (watch Low, Nick Cave, Neil Young, Spacin’)

John Mulvey
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The 49th Uncut Playlist Of 2012 (watch Low, Nick Cave, Neil Young, Spacin’)

One of those rushed weeks, I’m afraid – it looks like I won’t be able to construct a Wild Mercury Sound 2012 chart ‘til next week now, if you can bear the agonising wait. Lots of links and clips to be getting on with here, though: please make sure you have a listen to the new Sun Kil Moon and Plush tracks, and check the clip that Neil Young scholars are claiming shows the first time he’s collapsed onto the floor and wiggled his legs in the air mid-solo. Three more things to flag up: one, the new Low album, produced by Jeff Tweedy, heavy on piano, focused on the uncanny beauty of their aesthetic, after a couple of listens feels perhaps like their “Harvest”. Two, the Splashgirl album, which is doom piano jazz and the first record I’ve come across to truly hit that zone since the last one by Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. And three; one of my favourite tracks of 2012 now has a video. If you still haven’t heard Spacin’s “Sunshine, No Shoes”, here’s another chance… Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey 1 Splashgirl – Field Day Rituals (Hubro) 2 Plush – Dream Deferred (www.liamhayesandplush.com) 3 Jim James - Regions Of Light And Sound Of God (V2) 4 Low – Plays Nice Places EP (Sub Pop) 5 Conny Plank – Who’s That Man: A Tribute To Conny Plank (Sampler) (Grönland) 6 Tomahawk – Oddfellows (Ipecac) 7 The Flaming Lips – The Terror (Bella Union) 8 Jamie Lidell – Jamie Lidell (Warp) 9 Various Artists – Copendium: An Expedition Into The Rock’n’Roll Underworld (Faber/Ace) 10 Mark Lanegan/WhoMadeWho – Below The Cherry Moon/Deep Black Vanishing Train (http://wmwlanegan.com/) 11 Alexis Taylor – Nayim From The Halfway Line (Domino) 12 Black Twig Pickers – Rough Carpenters (Thrill Jockey) 13 Spacin’ – Sunshine, No Shoes (Testoster) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNtjlzw0yOw 14 Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba – Jama Ko (Outhere) 15 Low – The Invisible Way (Sub Pop) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2swv0SQI_C4 16 Lloyd Cole/Hans-Joachim Roedelius – Selected Studies Vol 1 (Bureau B) 17 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Push The Sky Away (Bad Seed Ltd) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kBl86cIV3g 18 Tom Morgan – Orange Syringe (Fire) 19 Matmos – The Marriage Of True Minds (Thrill Jockey) 20 Endless Boogie – Long Island (No Quarter) 21 Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Fuckin’ Up (Live in Bridgeport) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8jIEIboffM 22 Sun Kil Moon/The Album Leaf – What Happened To My Brother (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/14646-what-happened-to-my-brother/) 23 Matthew E White – Big Inner (Domino) 24 Dan Friel – Total Folklore (Thrill Jockey) 25 Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – What The Brothers Sang (Domino) Picture credit: Pieter M Van Hattem

One of those rushed weeks, I’m afraid – it looks like I won’t be able to construct a Wild Mercury Sound 2012 chart ‘til next week now, if you can bear the agonising wait. Lots of links and clips to be getting on with here, though: please make sure you have a listen to the new Sun Kil Moon and Plush tracks, and check the clip that Neil Young scholars are claiming shows the first time he’s collapsed onto the floor and wiggled his legs in the air mid-solo.

Three more things to flag up: one, the new Low album, produced by Jeff Tweedy, heavy on piano, focused on the uncanny beauty of their aesthetic, after a couple of listens feels perhaps like their “Harvest”. Two, the Splashgirl album, which is doom piano jazz and the first record I’ve come across to truly hit that zone since the last one by Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. And three; one of my favourite tracks of 2012 now has a video. If you still haven’t heard Spacin’s “Sunshine, No Shoes”, here’s another chance…

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

1 Splashgirl – Field Day Rituals (Hubro)

2 Plush – Dream Deferred (www.liamhayesandplush.com)

3 Jim James – Regions Of Light And Sound Of God (V2)

4 Low – Plays Nice Places EP (Sub Pop)

5 Conny Plank – Who’s That Man: A Tribute To Conny Plank (Sampler) (Grönland)

6 Tomahawk – Oddfellows (Ipecac)

7 The Flaming Lips – The Terror (Bella Union)

8 Jamie Lidell – Jamie Lidell (Warp)

9 Various Artists – Copendium: An Expedition Into The Rock’n’Roll Underworld (Faber/Ace)

10 Mark Lanegan/WhoMadeWho – Below The Cherry Moon/Deep Black Vanishing Train (http://wmwlanegan.com/)

11 Alexis Taylor – Nayim From The Halfway Line (Domino)

12 Black Twig Pickers – Rough Carpenters (Thrill Jockey)

13 Spacin’ – Sunshine, No Shoes (Testoster)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNtjlzw0yOw

14 Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba – Jama Ko (Outhere)

15 Low – The Invisible Way (Sub Pop)

16 Lloyd Cole/Hans-Joachim Roedelius – Selected Studies Vol 1 (Bureau B)

17 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Push The Sky Away (Bad Seed Ltd)

18 Tom Morgan – Orange Syringe (Fire)

19 Matmos – The Marriage Of True Minds (Thrill Jockey)

20 Endless Boogie – Long Island (No Quarter)

21 Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Fuckin’ Up (Live in Bridgeport)

22 Sun Kil Moon/The Album Leaf – What Happened To My Brother (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/14646-what-happened-to-my-brother/)

23 Matthew E White – Big Inner (Domino)

24 Dan Friel – Total Folklore (Thrill Jockey)

25 Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – What The Brothers Sang (Domino)

Picture credit: Pieter M Van Hattem

Kraftwerk announce eight-night residency at the Tate Modern in London

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Kraftwerk announce eight-night residency at the Tate Modern in London
Kraftwerk will play an eight-night residency at the Tate Modern in London next February. The iconic German electronic band will play a series of shows at the art gallery's Turbine Hall from February 6–14 in 2013. The gigs, which are called '1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8', will take on the same format as the r...

Kraftwerk will play an eight-night residency at the Tate Modern in London next February.

The iconic German electronic band will play a series of shows at the art gallery’s Turbine Hall from February 6–14 in 2013. The gigs, which are called ‘1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8’, will take on the same format as the run of dates they played at New York’s Museum Of Modern Art in April of this year, and the shows they have confirmed to take place in their hometown of Dusseldorf next January.

Each gig will see the band accompanied by 3D visuals as they play each of their studio albums live in full. The dates are as follows:

1 – ‘Autobahn’ (1974) (February 6)

2 – ‘Radio-Activity’ (1975) (7)

3 – ‘Trans Europe Express’ (1977) (8)

4 – ‘The Man-Machine’ (1978) (9)

5 – ‘Computer World’ (1981) (11)

6 – ‘Techno Pop’ (1986) (12)

7 – ‘The Mix’ (1991) (13)

8 – ‘Tour De France’ (2003) (14)

Speaking about the shows, Tate Modern director Chris Dercon said: “As a former power station, Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall is an ideal venue for Kraftwerk’s explorations of technology, energy and rhythm. Bringing together music, video and performance, these events will be true gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art.”

Tickets go on sale on Wednesday 12 December at 7.30am GMT. For more information visit Tate.org.uk.

Kraftwerk last performed in the UK in 2009, at Bestival and the Manchester International Festival. At the latter they appeared at the Manchester Velodrome and whilst playing ‘Tour de France’ were accompanied by members of the GB cycling team, who cycled around the track along with the music.

Josh Homme: New Queens Of The Stone Age album “sounds like running in a dream”

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Josh Homme: New Queens Of The Stone Age album “sounds like running in a dream”
Josh Homme has said that the songs he has recorded with Dave Grohl for the new Queens Of The Stone Age album "sound like running in a dream". The frontman, who recruited Grohl to play drums on the album after Joey Castillo left the band, was speaking to Zane Lowe as part of an interview broadcast o...

Josh Homme has said that the songs he has recorded with Dave Grohl for the new Queens Of The Stone Age album “sound like running in a dream”.

The frontman, who recruited Grohl to play drums on the album after Joey Castillo left the band, was speaking to Zane Lowe as part of an interview broadcast on Radio 1 this week and opened up on how the new album sessions are going. Speaking to the DJ, Homme said: “I think this record is a little more lyrically vulnerable, but I also think it’s sort of musically deeper and richer, and it’s a little bit stranger.”

Homme later added that there are “a lot of struggles going on,” with the recording but that: “This record basically sounds like you’re running in a dream the whole time.”

Dave Grohl has a long standing relationship with Homme and famously filled in as drummer when the band recorded their 2002 album ‘Songs For The Deaf’. Speaking about the reunion earlier this year, Homme said: [Grohl] and I have this wonderful musical relationship which we don’t have with other people. It’s a very cool and comfortable position.”

It has also been confirmed that both Trent Reznor and former bassist Nick Oliveri has been recording with the band ahead of their new album release.

Devendra Banhart announces release of new album ‘Mala’

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Devendra Banhart announces release of new album ‘Mala’
Devendra Banhart is set to release his new album, Mala, in the Spring of 2013. Co-produced by Banhart and his guitarist Noah Georgeson, the album comes ahead of festival dates and a full tour, details of which will be released soon. Mala follows the folk rock artist's 2009 album What Will We Be - ...

Devendra Banhart is set to release his new album, Mala, in the Spring of 2013.

Co-produced by Banhart and his guitarist Noah Georgeson, the album comes ahead of festival dates and a full tour, details of which will be released soon.

Mala follows the folk rock artist’s 2009 album What Will We Be – which was nominated for a Grammy for Banhart’s self-designed artwork – and will be his first release on his new label Nonesuch Records. Mala is Banhart’s eighth studio album. He released his debut LP, The Charles C. Leary, in 2002.

Earlier this year, Banhart, alongside LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Beck, provided the soundtrack to a new artwork by Doug Aitken in Washington, DC.

The piece, called “Song 1”, saw the Los Angeles based multimedia artist projecting 360 degree films onto the exterior of the Hirshhorn Museum.

The soundtrack was made up of the above acts and more singing their own versions of the 1930s jazz standard, ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’.

Former Talulah Gosh singer wins The Turner Prize

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Former Talulah Gosh singer wins The Turner Prize

Elizabeth Price, former singer with 1980s indie band Talulah Gosh, has won The Turner Prize. Price scooped the prestigious art world prize last night (December 3) at a ceremony in London. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DZ-NmJdl5U Click above to listen to Talulah Gosh's 1986 single "Beatnik Boy". Twee-poppers Talulah Gosh formed in Oxford in 1986 and split in 1988. Their name came from an NME headline about Altered Images frontwoman Clare Grogan. Actor Jude Law gave Price the £25,000 prize for her 20 minute 'immersive' video piece, The Woolworths Choir of 1979, reports the Guardian. Price's piece incorporated the song 'Out in the Streets' by the Shangri-Las and used archive footage of a deadly 1979 fire which killed 10 people. The piece was part of a trilogy of films. Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis, who chaired this year's Turner Prize jury, said Price won because of the "seductive and immersive qualities" of her work.

Elizabeth Price, former singer with 1980s indie band Talulah Gosh, has won The Turner Prize.

Price scooped the prestigious art world prize last night (December 3) at a ceremony in London.

Click above to listen to Talulah Gosh’s 1986 single “Beatnik Boy”.

Twee-poppers Talulah Gosh formed in Oxford in 1986 and split in 1988. Their name came from an NME headline about Altered Images frontwoman Clare Grogan.

Actor Jude Law gave Price the £25,000 prize for her 20 minute ‘immersive’ video piece, The Woolworths Choir of 1979, reports the Guardian.

Price’s piece incorporated the song ‘Out in the Streets’ by the Shangri-Las and used archive footage of a deadly 1979 fire which killed 10 people. The piece was part of a trilogy of films.

Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis, who chaired this year’s Turner Prize jury, said Price won because of the “seductive and immersive qualities” of her work.

Thom Yorke confirms Atoms for Peace album release date

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Thom Yorke confirms Atoms for Peace album release date
Thom Yorke has confirmed details of Atoms For Peace's debut album Amok, which is set for release on February 25. Atoms For Peace are the Radiohead frontman's side project with Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers, super-producer Nigel Godrich and percussionist Mauro Refosco. Writing about the album an...

Thom Yorke has confirmed details of Atoms For Peace’s debut album Amok, which is set for release on February 25.

Atoms For Peace are the Radiohead frontman’s side project with Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers, super-producer Nigel Godrich and percussionist Mauro Refosco.

Writing about the album and band on Radiohead’s official website, Yorke wrote: “It’s a while to wait I know so I’m sure some other things will occur before then. We formed to learn to play ‘The Eraser‘ record, if you don’t know that, and discovered a really good energy doing that.. and it fell into this record. I’m still reeling from being on tour for much of the year but we are planning to get together and play etc next year! We’re figuring all that out right now. Atoms is a ongoing and open ended project, where it leads i know not for certain …. which is what is nice about it.”

The Amok tracklisting is as follows:

‘Before Your Very Eyes’

‘Default’

‘Ingenue’

‘Dropped’

‘Unless’

‘Stuck Together Pieces’

‘Judge Jury and Executioner’

‘Reverse Running’

‘Amok’

Amok will be released via XL Recordings.

More thoughts on The Rolling Stones. . .

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More thoughts on The Rolling Stones. . .

On my way home last week from The Rolling Stones at the O2, still a-buzz with excitement, I ended up chatting to a group of similarly exhilarated fans, who between them didn’t have enough fingers to count the number of Stones shows they’d been to, Brian Jones still a Stone the first time a couple of them had seen them. There was a lot of chuckling banter about the reviews they’d read of Sunday’s performance by the band at the O2, even the most positive of which had been inclined to wonder whether these current dates in London and New York would be the last time we’d see the Stones in action, the Stones’ future once again brought into question, as it had been almost every time they toured for as long as most of us could remember. It seemed to us, in fact, that there were people who for years had been more than somewhat eager for the Stones to call it a day, predicting with groaning regularity their surely imminent retirement, the curtain expected to finally come down on their career even as the band doggedly continued not only to tour but also break box office records as they did so beyond an age when they might otherwise have been queuing at the post office for their pensions. I told them about my very early days on Melody Maker, in 1974, when I had been frequently left dumbstruck by the indifference displayed towards the Stones by the paper’s senior editors. Back then, we used to have a weekly editorial meeting to decide what features would be going in the next issue of MM. These were chaired by Ray Coleman, the editor. Ray was a balding cove, wore heavy rimmed, slightly tinted glasses and was always dressed in a suit, purple evidently a favourite colour, and looked like a cross between a Soho porn baron and a minor Bond villain. Ray would sit there as chubby-faced Chris Welch ran through the list of possible features for the new issue. Invariably, a member of Yes would be releasing a solo album, and that would more often than not be our cover story. ELP might be releasing a quadruple live set, so they’d be in the mix, also Genesis, Argent and bands with names like Rough Diamond, usually featuring an ex-member of Humble Pie, and thus in Chris’ world a new ‘supergroup’. At one of the very early editorial meetings I was part of, Chris ran through this familiar litany, adding first that hard rock bunglers Budgie have a new single out imminently and are keen to talk before also rather half-heartedly mentioning that the Stones might also be up for interview. I am raised from something resembling a comatose slump at this news. To my complete befuddlement, however, said news is received by everyone else with nonchalant shrugs, so-what expressions and in the case of cravat-sporting Assistant Editor Michael Watts nothing less than withering scorn, Mick dismissing the Stones as ‘penny-dreadful’ while simultaneously showing more interest in the wine list from a local restaurant to which he would soon be repairing for one of his typical three hour luncheons. I have to restrain myself from leaping across the table, clawing his eyes out and eating them, followed by his liver, heart, kidneys and other vital organs I can’t put a name to. Mick goes on to loftily proclaim that in his august opinion, to which we must all, it seems to me, dutifully concur, the Stones ‘have had their day’. My jaw hits the table with a wallop. I mean, for God’s sake, this is only two years after Exile On Main Street! Mick is unmoved by anything I have to say on the subject, however, ticking off a Chablis that’s caught his attention on his wine list and looking at his watch, eager to be done with the meeting. Ray now offers his own Solomon-like judgement. As far as he’s concerned, Mick’s right. The Stones have had their day, probably won’t be around much longer are likely to be shortly replaced in the public’s affection by exciting new talent like Cockney Rebel and Sparks, who he thinks we should be featuring even more than we already do. At the same time, he concedes, there may be a few hardy souls still interested in what the Stones have to currently say for themselves, at which point he gives me a patronising little nod, while Mick merely snorts derisively. I immediately put myself forward to do the interview, but as usual get waved away, my place on the lowest editorial rung at MM somewhere I will hang about for a little while yet. The gig goes to someone else. A small bone is tossed my way, however, by the magnanimous Ray. The next day, I get to interview Budgie. Thanks, Ray. Have a good week.

On my way home last week from The Rolling Stones at the O2, still a-buzz with excitement, I ended up chatting to a group of similarly exhilarated fans, who between them didn’t have enough fingers to count the number of Stones shows they’d been to, Brian Jones still a Stone the first time a couple of them had seen them.

There was a lot of chuckling banter about the reviews they’d read of Sunday’s performance by the band at the O2, even the most positive of which had been inclined to wonder whether these current dates in London and New York would be the last time we’d see the Stones in action, the Stones’ future once again brought into question, as it had been almost every time they toured for as long as most of us could remember.

It seemed to us, in fact, that there were people who for years had been more than somewhat eager for the Stones to call it a day, predicting with groaning regularity their surely imminent retirement, the curtain expected to finally come down on their career even as the band doggedly continued not only to tour but also break box office records as they did so beyond an age when they might otherwise have been queuing at the post office for their pensions.

I told them about my very early days on Melody Maker, in 1974, when I had been frequently left dumbstruck by the indifference displayed towards the Stones by the paper’s senior editors. Back then, we used to have a weekly editorial meeting to decide what features would be going in the next issue of MM. These were chaired by Ray Coleman, the editor. Ray was a balding cove, wore heavy rimmed, slightly tinted glasses and was always dressed in a suit, purple evidently a favourite colour, and looked like a cross between a Soho porn baron and a minor Bond villain.

Ray would sit there as chubby-faced Chris Welch ran through the list of possible features for the new issue. Invariably, a member of Yes would be releasing a solo album, and that would more often than not be our cover story. ELP might be releasing a quadruple live set, so they’d be in the mix, also Genesis, Argent and bands with names like Rough Diamond, usually featuring an ex-member of Humble Pie, and thus in Chris’ world a new ‘supergroup’.

At one of the very early editorial meetings I was part of, Chris ran through this familiar litany, adding first that hard rock bunglers Budgie have a new single out imminently and are keen to talk before also rather half-heartedly mentioning that the Stones might also be up for interview. I am raised from something resembling a comatose slump at this news.

To my complete befuddlement, however, said news is received by everyone else with nonchalant shrugs, so-what expressions and in the case of cravat-sporting Assistant Editor Michael Watts nothing less than withering scorn, Mick dismissing the Stones as ‘penny-dreadful’ while simultaneously showing more interest in the wine list from a local restaurant to which he would soon be repairing for one of his typical three hour luncheons. I have to restrain myself from leaping across the table, clawing his eyes out and eating them, followed by his liver, heart, kidneys and other vital organs I can’t put a name to.

Mick goes on to loftily proclaim that in his august opinion, to which we must all, it seems to me, dutifully concur, the Stones ‘have had their day’. My jaw hits the table with a wallop. I mean, for God’s sake, this is only two years after Exile On Main Street! Mick is unmoved by anything I have to say on the subject, however, ticking off a Chablis that’s caught his attention on his wine list and looking at his watch, eager to be done with the meeting.

Ray now offers his own Solomon-like judgement. As far as he’s concerned, Mick’s right. The Stones have had their day, probably won’t be around much longer are likely to be shortly replaced in the public’s affection by exciting new talent like Cockney Rebel and Sparks, who he thinks we should be featuring even more than we already do. At the same time, he concedes, there may be a few hardy souls still interested in what the Stones have to currently say for themselves, at which point he gives me a patronising little nod, while Mick merely snorts derisively.

I immediately put myself forward to do the interview, but as usual get waved away, my place on the lowest editorial rung at MM somewhere I will hang about for a little while yet. The gig goes to someone else. A small bone is tossed my way, however, by the magnanimous Ray.

The next day, I get to interview Budgie. Thanks, Ray.

Have a good week.

Suede announce Alexandra Palace show for March 2013

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Suede announce Alexandra Palace show for March 2013
Suede have confirmed that they will play London's Alexandra Palace in March 2013. The band will perform at the north London venue on March 30. The gig announcement came at the end of a puzzle-style countdown Suede put on their Facebook page last week. The first revelation that came from the online...

Suede have confirmed that they will play London’s Alexandra Palace in March 2013.

The band will perform at the north London venue on March 30. The gig announcement came at the end of a puzzle-style countdown Suede put on their Facebook page last week.

The first revelation that came from the online game was that a new Suede studio album will be released in 2013. Earlier this autumn, Suede frontman Brett Anderson said that Suede’s new album sounds like “a cross between bits of ‘Dog Man Star’ and bits of ‘Coming Up'”.

Speaking to The Quietus, Anderson explained that their sixth album “doesn’t sound anything like” their last LP, 2002’s ‘A New Morning’, but has more in common with their second album, released in 1994, and their third, which came out in 1996.

He added: “Without wishing to be facetious, it sounds like Suede. We’re not trying to reinvent the sound of the band, that’d be a disastrous thing to do. I think that’s possibly where we went wrong on the last two albums.”

The Specials announce May 2013 UK tour

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The Specials announce May 2013 UK tour
The Specials have announced plans for a 10 date tour of the UK next year. The ska legends will play throughout May 2013, kicking off the run of dates at Glasgow Barrowland on May 10. They will visit Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and more, finishing up at London's O2 Academy Brixton o...

The Specials have announced plans for a 10 date tour of the UK next year.

The ska legends will play throughout May 2013, kicking off the run of dates at Glasgow Barrowland on May 10. They will visit Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and more, finishing up at London’s O2 Academy Brixton on May 28.

The Specials reformed in 2009 and last year changed their mind about splitting up again. Previously, frontman Terry Hall had claimed that he no longer wanted to play live shows with the band, indicating that their 2011 show at London Alexandra Palace would be their final gig.

However, The Specials’ guitarist Lynval Golding then told BBC 6 Music after the show that the band were “in a completely different mood” and that they had not decided to part ways.

The Specials performed alongside Blur and New Order in London’s Hyde Park back in August as part of a special Olympic Games closing ceremony concert.

The Specials will play:

Glasgow Barrowland (May 10, 2013)

Newcastle O2 Academy (13)

Manchester O2 Apollo (15)

Liverpool Olympia (18)

Leicester De Montford Hall (19)

Birmingham O2 Academy (21)

Newport Centre (23)

Margate Winter Gardens (25)

Portsmouth Guildhall (26)

London O2 Academy Brixton (28)

Photo: Phil Wallis

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