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The Stone Roses’ London show attended by Team GB’s Jessica Ennis and Bradley Wiggins

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The Stone Roses’ London show attended by Team GB’s Jessica Ennis and Bradley Wiggins
The Stone Roses hailed Team GB's gold medal winning athletes Jessica Ennis and Bradley Wiggins at their intimate London show last night (August 6), calling the pair - who were both in attendance - "the real King and Queen of England". The band played a surprise tiny gig at the Adidas Underground i...

The Stone Roses hailed Team GB’s gold medal winning athletes Jessica Ennis and Bradley Wiggins at their intimate London show last night (August 6), calling the pair – who were both in attendance – “the real King and Queen of England”.

The band played a surprise tiny gig at the Adidas Underground in support of the London 2012 Olympic Games, playing an hour-long set in front of an audience that also included rower Pete Reed, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, John Simm, Example, Wretch 32 and bassist Mani’s former Primal Scream bandmate Bobby Gillespie. Cycling champ Bradley Wiggins also partied with Paul Weller after the gig – thus realising a long-held ambition for the confirmed mod and Weller fan.

Before taking the stage just before midnight at the intimate east London venue, just miles away from the Olympic Park, Ian Brown joked: “Sorry we’re late, we were having a shoot out backstage!”

The band, who were supported by rising star Jake Bugg, played a 11-song, hit-filled set which includes the likes of “I Wanna Be Adored”, “Fools Gold”, “This Is The One”, “She Bangs The Drums” and the closing “I Am The Resurrection”.

The Stone Roses will headline next month’s V Festival in Chelmsford and Stafforshire as well as Northern Ireland’s Tennent’s Vital Festival.

The Stone Roses played:

‘I Wanna Be Adored’

‘Waterfall’

‘Don’t Stop’

‘Shoot You Down’

‘Fools Gold’

‘Something’s Burning’

Love Spreads

‘Made Of Stone

‘This Is The One’

‘She Bangs The Drum’

‘I Am The Resurrection’

Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12-month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Mature Themes

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Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Mature Themes

Now available in stereo: LA minstrel’s junkshop hi-fi comes to life... The last time Ariel Pink attracted any kind of notable attention was when he had an onstage meltdown at Coachella in April 2011. As his band played, Pink – real surname Rosenburg – refused to sing and spent part of the set inspecting the drum riser and biting his fingernails. Later he shrugged it off, as well he might: it’s not the first time Pink has flaked out – Uncut saw a Brighton show in 2006 that lasted five minutes before he flounced off – and it won’t be the last. In his established role as indie-rock’s court jester, a merry prankster prone to tantrums but equally capable of delighting, he can get away with almost anything. Possibly he feels that way too. No one was more surprised than Pink by the success of 2010’s Before Today, his first properly recorded album for 4AD, who’d signed him on the back of a string of enchanting, wildly lo-fi psychedelic bedroom recordings released through Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label – a catalogue that came, incidentally, with a committed fanbase who long ago had cast Pink as an outsider icon. Given a push to a wider audience, the combination of Before Today’s exotic soft-rock nuggets – “Round And Round” in particular – and this loveable LA gutter-punk proved bizarrely appealing, like hipster catnip. Yet for all the acclaim, Pink felt uninspired, because Before Today featured tired old songs from his past, reworked with moderate enthusiasm by his band. Mature Themes represents a fresh start: a new batch of material thoroughly worked through by Pink and the Haunted Graffiti guys in their own time, in a studio they built themselves in downtown LA. Produced and mixed by his friend and former bandmate Cole M Greif-Neill, who even transcribed Pink’s ‘mouth drums’ using a sampler, Mature Themes is Ariel Pink in glorious hi-fi for the first time. Finally, he sounds sharp, shiny and alive – in focus, if you like – excited by the possibilities of his own music. That’s not to say Pink’s eighth album is a pushover like Before Today – it isn’t. Rather, like the eccentric mish-mash of House Arrest, it’s diverse and perverse, even a little juvenile in places: calling it Mature Themes is something of a red herring. Sure, he tackles sex, food and death, but in Pink’s grubby hands that means a woozy waltz called “Symphony Of The Nymph” (“My name is Ariel and I’m a nympho”, he coos), the Zappa fuzz of “Schnitzel Boogie” (”I’m eating schnitzel/ I’m eating schnitzel”), and a line in “Kinski Assassin” that runs “Mother-twin Genesis went down with the plane” which refers to the time Pink travelled to Australia on the same flight as the surgically altered Throbbing Gristle frontman, who he thought looked like his mother. Part of the absurdity of Pink’s ascent into acceptable society lies in the notion that he’s now almost expected to produce hits, when in fact he’s always been an intrepid experimental artist whose preferred form of expression resides somewhere between ’70s psychedelia and ’80s gothic rock. Such freedom means that one moment, he can record a tender cover of Donnie and Joe Emerson’s soul number “Baby” with DāM-FunK, the next he slyly tapes visiting 4AD boss Simon Halliday talking into a microphone and turns this into a medieval jig doused in feedback called “Is This The Best Spot”. On the apple-pie pop of “Mature Themes”, Pink is a dead-ringer for Elvis Costello as he simpers “For I solemnly devote myself to thee” to some college sweetheart. It was Halliday who suggested Pink call the record Mature Themes. He’d wanted to name it Farewell American Primitive after one of its songs, but realised new albums by Neil Young and Dan Deacon also featured America in their titles, and the idea that Pink might be perceived as a flag-waving partriot or as a spokesperson for anything appalled him. The irony is that Mature Themes, full of nonsense and wonderful ideas, further cements his reputation as one of the more vital voices of his generation. He’s a loose cannon, but he sure brightens the place up. Piers Martin Q&A ARIEL PINK Sounds like you’re pleased with Mature Themes. Yeah, I wanted to have an opportunity to write songs like I used to and not worry about being charged for studio time. The first thing we did when we got our advance was we leased a space and built our own studio within it. We made it cosy and lived there for a number of months and it was a delightful experience. Anything on the album you’re particularly proud of? Well, I’m proud of myself for having the guts to write words to these songs, which was a very trying experience for me because I’ve been suffering from artist’s block. The music is easier: everything comes to me as music and then you have to slap a face on top of it if you want it to come across as pop music and not muzak. Does your global fame amuse you? I was thinking about this the other day and I guesstimated the best-case scenario is I probably have about 200,000 fans or 500,000 fans at the very most. Then there are 7 billion people on the planet and so it’s something like 2 or 3 percent of the population has heard me and 97 percent of the population has not heard me. So there is still work to be done. PIERS MARTIN Photo credit: Piper Ferguson

Now available in stereo: LA minstrel’s junkshop hi-fi comes to life…

The last time Ariel Pink attracted any kind of notable attention was when he had an onstage meltdown at Coachella in April 2011. As his band played, Pink – real surname Rosenburg – refused to sing and spent part of the set inspecting the drum riser and biting his fingernails. Later he shrugged it off, as well he might: it’s not the first time Pink has flaked out – Uncut saw a Brighton show in 2006 that lasted five minutes before he flounced off – and it won’t be the last. In his established role as indie-rock’s court jester, a merry prankster prone to tantrums but equally capable of delighting, he can get away with almost anything.

Possibly he feels that way too. No one was more surprised than Pink by the success of 2010’s Before Today, his first properly recorded album for 4AD, who’d signed him on the back of a string of enchanting, wildly lo-fi psychedelic bedroom recordings released through Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label – a catalogue that came, incidentally, with a committed fanbase who long ago had cast Pink as an outsider icon. Given a push to a wider audience, the combination of Before Today’s exotic soft-rock nuggets – “Round And Round” in particular – and this loveable LA gutter-punk proved bizarrely appealing, like hipster catnip.

Yet for all the acclaim, Pink felt uninspired, because Before Today featured tired old songs from his past, reworked with moderate enthusiasm by his band. Mature Themes represents a fresh start: a new batch of material thoroughly worked through by Pink and the Haunted Graffiti guys in their own time, in a studio they built themselves in downtown LA. Produced and mixed by his friend and former bandmate Cole M Greif-Neill, who even transcribed Pink’s ‘mouth drums’ using a sampler, Mature Themes is Ariel Pink in glorious hi-fi for the first time. Finally, he sounds sharp, shiny and alive – in focus, if you like – excited by the possibilities of his own music.

That’s not to say Pink’s eighth album is a pushover like Before Today – it isn’t. Rather, like the eccentric mish-mash of House Arrest, it’s diverse and perverse, even a little juvenile in places: calling it Mature Themes is something of a red herring. Sure, he tackles sex, food and death, but in Pink’s grubby hands that means a woozy waltz called “Symphony Of The Nymph” (“My name is Ariel and I’m a nympho”, he coos), the Zappa fuzz of “Schnitzel Boogie” (”I’m eating schnitzel/ I’m eating schnitzel”), and a line in “Kinski Assassin” that runs “Mother-twin Genesis went down with the plane” which refers to the time Pink travelled to Australia on the same flight as the surgically altered Throbbing Gristle frontman, who he thought looked like his mother.

Part of the absurdity of Pink’s ascent into acceptable society lies in the notion that he’s now almost expected to produce hits, when in fact he’s always been an intrepid experimental artist whose preferred form of expression resides somewhere between ’70s psychedelia and ’80s gothic rock. Such freedom means that one moment, he can record a tender cover of Donnie and Joe Emerson’s soul number “Baby” with DāM-FunK, the next he slyly tapes visiting 4AD boss Simon Halliday talking into a microphone and turns this into a medieval jig doused in feedback called “Is This The Best Spot”. On the apple-pie pop of “Mature Themes”, Pink is a dead-ringer for Elvis Costello as he simpers “For I solemnly devote myself to thee” to some college sweetheart.

It was Halliday who suggested Pink call the record Mature Themes. He’d wanted to name it Farewell American Primitive after one of its songs, but realised new albums by Neil Young and Dan Deacon also featured America in their titles, and the idea that Pink might be perceived as a flag-waving partriot or as a spokesperson for anything appalled him. The irony is that Mature Themes, full of nonsense and wonderful ideas, further cements his reputation as one of the more vital voices of his generation. He’s a loose cannon, but he sure brightens the place up.

Piers Martin

Q&A

ARIEL PINK

Sounds like you’re pleased with Mature Themes.

Yeah, I wanted to have an opportunity to write songs like I used to and not worry about being charged for studio time. The first thing we did when we got our advance was we leased a space and built our own studio within it. We made it cosy and lived there for a number of months and it was a delightful experience.

Anything on the album you’re particularly proud of?

Well, I’m proud of myself for having the guts to write words to these songs, which was a very trying experience for me because I’ve been suffering from artist’s block. The music is easier: everything comes to me as music and then you have to slap a face on top of it if you want it to come across as pop music and not muzak.

Does your global fame amuse you?

I was thinking about this the other day and I guesstimated the best-case scenario is I probably have about 200,000 fans or 500,000 fans at the very most. Then there are 7 billion people on the planet and so it’s something like 2 or 3 percent of the population has heard me and 97 percent of the population has not heard me. So there is still work to be done.

PIERS MARTIN

Photo credit: Piper Ferguson

Luke Haines’ Art Will Save The World

Michael Bonner
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Luke Haines’ Art Will Save The World

“I find it faintly ridiculous that anyone would want to make a film about me,” says Luke Haines at the start of Niall McCann’s documentary, currently touring film festivals. Haines has spent much of his career as both a musician and, latterly, an author, raging splenetically and repeatedly against Britpop and those musicians he considers of lesser creative stature – which is most of them. Dressed here in what looks like the kind of Edwardian cricketer’s outfit sported by Peter Davison’s Doctor Who, Haines essentially regurgitates his anti-Britpop spiel familiar from his first book, Bad Vibes, and revisits his glorious failures with The Auteurs, Baader-Meinhof and Black Box Recorder. His comment on The Oliver Twist Manifesto is bracingly honest: “No fucker bought that record.” Of the talking heads – mostly authors like David Peace and Stuart Home – Jarvis Cocker remains the most “mystified” by Haines’ “spectacular moment of sabotage”, when he used the word ‘cunt’ in “Upper Classes”. Author John Niven describes Haines as the “Travis Bickle of Britpop; a man who just won’t take anymore.” McCann seems to play around with the idea of Haines as a curmudgeon; but it’s only about two thirds of the way in to his sympathetic film that Haines relax enough to let his guard down; accordingly, the man who emerges is witty, erudite and charming. It would have been good to have spent more time in his company. Photo credit: Steve Double

“I find it faintly ridiculous that anyone would want to make a film about me,” says Luke Haines at the start of Niall McCann’s documentary, currently touring film festivals. Haines has spent much of his career as both a musician and, latterly, an author, raging splenetically and repeatedly against Britpop and those musicians he considers of lesser creative stature – which is most of them.

Dressed here in what looks like the kind of Edwardian cricketer’s outfit sported by Peter Davison’s Doctor Who, Haines essentially regurgitates his anti-Britpop spiel familiar from his first book, Bad Vibes, and revisits his glorious failures with The Auteurs, Baader-Meinhof and Black Box Recorder. His comment on The Oliver Twist Manifesto is bracingly honest: “No fucker bought that record.” Of the talking heads – mostly authors like David Peace and Stuart Home – Jarvis Cocker remains the most “mystified” by Haines’ “spectacular moment of sabotage”, when he used the word ‘cunt’ in “Upper Classes”. Author John Niven describes Haines as the “Travis Bickle of Britpop; a man who just won’t take anymore.” McCann seems to play around with the idea of Haines as a curmudgeon; but it’s only about two thirds of the way in to his sympathetic film that Haines relax enough to let his guard down; accordingly, the man who emerges is witty, erudite and charming.

It would have been good to have spent more time in his company.

Photo credit: Steve Double

Neil Young, Tom Waits and Lou Reed

Michael Bonner
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Neil Young, Tom Waits and Lou Reed

Hi there. I hope you all had good weekends. Were you, like me, glued to the BBC for the duration of the athletics? Incredible stuff. In fact, the whole Olympics has been brilliant - whatever that sourpuss Morrissey says. Even simple things have been a blessing, like being able to get to work without too much disruption, despite the dire warnings issued by the authorities and Boris' awful tannoy announcements. We had a family friend in the boxing - Josh Taylor - and we were fortunate enough to grab tickets when they first went on sale to go and see him fight at the ExCel. It was a tremendous experience, and we're already saving now for Rio 2016. It's been an equally incredible few days for music, too. We're waiting with baited breath for Tom Waits to announce, well, something later on today. They might be tour dates - although judging by the picture of Waits with an eye patch and cutlass that's on his website, it might simply be that he's signed up to play Johnny Depp's uncle in another Pirates Of The Caribbean movie. Towards the end of last week, we got our first official taste of Bob Dylan's new album, Tempest, when the track "Early Roman Kings" appeared on the trailer for an American TV series. Over the weekend, Neil Young decided to kick off his 2012 tour with Crazy Horse by working six new songs into the set list. One of these new songs - an acoustic track called "Twisted Road" - is about the first time Neil heard "Like A Rolling Stone": "Poetry rolling off his tongue like Hank Williams Jr bubblegum, asking me, 'How does it feel?'" You can watch Neil play it at the bottom of the page. Incidentally, there's a strong rumour Twisted Road will be the name of the new album he's recorded with Crazy Horse, as discussed in our recent cover story. Shows closer to home this week include two shows at Antony's Meltdown series at London's South Bank, just down the road from the Uncut offices. Tonight, I'm off to see former Cocteau Twin Liz Fraser (I'll blog about that show tomorrow), while on Friday, Allan and I will be at Lou Reed. Very different shows, but I'm looking forward to both of them. Finally, I've just got time to say our current issue of Uncut is on sale, if you've not already got a copy. There's Joe Strummer on the cover and lots of great stuff inside - including Captain Beefheart, Mark Knopfler, the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Animal Collective, Wayne Coyne, MAARS and more. Enjoy the rest of your week. Cheers! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo7M3hvPczc .

Hi there. I hope you all had good weekends. Were you, like me, glued to the BBC for the duration of the athletics?

Incredible stuff. In fact, the whole Olympics has been brilliant – whatever that sourpuss Morrissey says. Even simple things have been a blessing, like being able to get to work without too much disruption, despite the dire warnings issued by the authorities and Boris’ awful tannoy announcements. We had a family friend in the boxing – Josh Taylor – and we were fortunate enough to grab tickets when they first went on sale to go and see him fight at the ExCel. It was a tremendous experience, and we’re already saving now for Rio 2016.

It’s been an equally incredible few days for music, too. We’re waiting with baited breath for Tom Waits to announce, well, something later on today. They might be tour dates – although judging by the picture of Waits with an eye patch and cutlass that’s on his website, it might simply be that he’s signed up to play Johnny Depp’s uncle in another Pirates Of The Caribbean movie. Towards the end of last week, we got our first official taste of Bob Dylan’s new album, Tempest, when the track “Early Roman Kings” appeared on the trailer for an American TV series. Over the weekend, Neil Young decided to kick off his 2012 tour with Crazy Horse by working six new songs into the set list. One of these new songs – an acoustic track called “Twisted Road” – is about the first time Neil heard “Like A Rolling Stone”: “Poetry rolling off his tongue like Hank Williams Jr bubblegum, asking me, ‘How does it feel?'” You can watch Neil play it at the bottom of the page. Incidentally, there’s a strong rumour Twisted Road will be the name of the new album he’s recorded with Crazy Horse, as discussed in our recent cover story.

Shows closer to home this week include two shows at Antony’s Meltdown series at London’s South Bank, just down the road from the Uncut offices. Tonight, I’m off to see former Cocteau Twin Liz Fraser (I’ll blog about that show tomorrow), while on Friday, Allan and I will be at Lou Reed. Very different shows, but I’m looking forward to both of them.

Finally, I’ve just got time to say our current issue of Uncut is on sale, if you’ve not already got a copy. There’s Joe Strummer on the cover and lots of great stuff inside – including Captain Beefheart, Mark Knopfler, the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Animal Collective, Wayne Coyne, MAARS and more.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Cheers!

.

Watch Mad Men star duet with The Jesus And Mary Chain

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Watch Mad Men star duet with The Jesus And Mary Chain

Mad Men star Jessica Paré, who plays Megan Draper, joined the Jesus And Mary Chain in Buffalo, New York and Toronto last week. Paré sang "Just Like Honey" with the band on August 2 in Buffalo and then joined them for "Just Like Honey" and "Sometimes Always" the next day in Toronto. Scroll down to watch Paré sing "Just Like Honey" with the Jesus And Mary Chain, who include Uncut's picture researcher Phil King in the line-up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvLS5Ou80lI Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12-month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Mad Men star Jessica Paré, who plays Megan Draper, joined the Jesus And Mary Chain in Buffalo, New York and Toronto last week.

Paré sang “Just Like Honey” with the band on August 2 in Buffalo and then joined them for “Just Like Honey” and “Sometimes Always” the next day in Toronto.

Scroll down to watch Paré sing “Just Like Honey” with the Jesus And Mary Chain, who include Uncut’s picture researcher Phil King in the line-up.

Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12-month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Morrissey condemns London Olympics

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Morrissey condemns London Olympics

In a statement published on fan site true-to-you.net, Morrissey reportedly slams the Olympics for "blustering jingoism". In a statement, dated 3 August 2012, Morrissey writes of his recent tour experiences in Italy, Turkey, Israel and Greece before launching into a sustained criticism of the London Olympic Games. He writes: I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness. As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the "dazzling royals", laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought. As I recently drove through Greece I noticed repeated graffiti seemingly everywhere on every available wall. In large blue letters it said WAKE UP WAKE UP. It could almost have been written with the British public in mind, because although the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain, the 2013 grotesque inevitability of Lord and Lady Beckham (with Sir Jamie Horrible close at heel) is, believe me, a fate worse than life. WAKE UP WAKE UP. Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12-month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

In a statement published on fan site true-to-you.net, Morrissey reportedly slams the Olympics for “blustering jingoism”.

In a statement, dated 3 August 2012, Morrissey writes of his recent tour experiences in Italy, Turkey, Israel and Greece before launching into a sustained criticism of the London Olympic Games.

He writes:

I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The “dazzling royals” have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness. As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the “dazzling royals”, laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought.

As I recently drove through Greece I noticed repeated graffiti seemingly everywhere on every available wall. In large blue letters it said WAKE UP WAKE UP. It could almost have been written with the British public in mind, because although the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain, the 2013 grotesque inevitability of Lord and Lady Beckham (with Sir Jamie Horrible close at heel) is, believe me, a fate worse than life. WAKE UP WAKE UP.

Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12-month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Pussy Riot: ‘We are not enemies of Christianity’

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Pussy Riot: ‘We are not enemies of Christianity’

One of the imprisoned members of Pussy Riot has spoken out about their case, claiming they are not "enemies of Christianity". Nadia Tolokonikovoy is one of three members of the Russian punk collective who have been in detention since their arrest in March following an impromptu gig at Moscow's Christ The Saviour Cathedral. The band sang a song called "Holy Shit" as a protest against the Orthodox Christian church's support for Russian president Vladimir Putin. The three women face up to seven years in jail on hooliganism charges. "Pussy Riot never means to show any disrespect to any viewers or witnesses of our punk concerts," Tolokonikovoy wrote in an essay published on Free Pussy Riot. "The themes of our songs and performances are dictated by the present moment. We simply react to what is happening in our country, and our punk performances express the opinion of a sufficiently large number of people. In our song 'Hail Mary, Expel Putin' we reflected the reaction of many Russian citizens to the patriarch’s calls for vote for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin during the presidential election of 4 March 2012." She added: "We are not enemies of Christianity. We care about the opinion of Orthodox Christians. We want all of them to be on our side – on the side of anti-authoritarian civil society activists. That is why we came to the Cathedral." Tolokonikovoy also said that their protest was not meant to insult Christians, but was a specific response to Putin's re-election. "Our performance contained no aggression towards the audience, but only a desperate desire to change the political situation in Russia for the better," she added. Yesterday, one of the lawyers representing Pussy Riot said that their criminal trial is one of "the most shameful" in modern Russian history. Nikolai Polozov criticised the way the punk group have been treated by the Russian justice system and insisted that the courts were more honest "even in Stalin's times". A host of musicians have joined ranks to support Pussy Riot, with Johnny Marr, Alex Kapranos, Kate Nash and many other artists signed a letter calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release the three detained members of the band. Putin himself, meanwhile, claimed earlier this week (August 3) that the three detainees should not be judged too severely for their actions. Shortly before their arrest, members of Pussy Riot spoke to NME, calling Putin's reaction to their church protest "childish". "We knew what the political situation was but now we're personally feeling the full force of Putin's Kafka-esque machine," they said. "The state's policy is based on a minimum of critical thinking and on a maximum of spite, and a desire to get even with those who don't please it." Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12-month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

One of the imprisoned members of Pussy Riot has spoken out about their case, claiming they are not “enemies of Christianity”.

Nadia Tolokonikovoy is one of three members of the Russian punk collective who have been in detention since their arrest in March following an impromptu gig at Moscow’s Christ The Saviour Cathedral. The band sang a song called “Holy Shit” as a protest against the Orthodox Christian church’s support for Russian president Vladimir Putin. The three women face up to seven years in jail on hooliganism charges.

“Pussy Riot never means to show any disrespect to any viewers or witnesses of our punk concerts,” Tolokonikovoy wrote in an essay published on Free Pussy Riot. “The themes of our songs and performances are dictated by the present moment. We simply react to what is happening in our country, and our punk performances express the opinion of a sufficiently large number of people. In our song ‘Hail Mary, Expel Putin’ we reflected the reaction of many Russian citizens to the patriarch’s calls for vote for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin during the presidential election of 4 March 2012.”

She added: “We are not enemies of Christianity. We care about the opinion of Orthodox Christians. We want all of them to be on our side – on the side of anti-authoritarian civil society activists. That is why we came to the Cathedral.”

Tolokonikovoy also said that their protest was not meant to insult Christians, but was a specific response to Putin’s re-election. “Our performance contained no aggression towards the audience, but only a desperate desire to change the political situation in Russia for the better,” she added.

Yesterday, one of the lawyers representing Pussy Riot said that their criminal trial is one of “the most shameful” in modern Russian history. Nikolai Polozov criticised the way the punk group have been treated by the Russian justice system and insisted that the courts were more honest “even in Stalin’s times”.

A host of musicians have joined ranks to support Pussy Riot, with Johnny Marr, Alex Kapranos, Kate Nash and many other artists signed a letter calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release the three detained members of the band. Putin himself, meanwhile, claimed earlier this week (August 3) that the three detainees should not be judged too severely for their actions.

Shortly before their arrest, members of Pussy Riot spoke to NME, calling Putin’s reaction to their church protest “childish”. “We knew what the political situation was but now we’re personally feeling the full force of Putin’s Kafka-esque machine,” they said. “The state’s policy is based on a minimum of critical thinking and on a maximum of spite, and a desire to get even with those who don’t please it.”

Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12-month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Interview: John Murry

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Interview: John Murry
John Murry first entered Uncut airspace in 2006 with World Without End, the bleakly brilliant album of country death songs he wrote and recorded with Bob Frank. Six years on, Murry has just released his first solo album, The Graceless Age, an album of almost symphonic emotional turmoil, co-produced ...

John Murry first entered Uncut airspace in 2006 with World Without End, the bleakly brilliant album of country death songs he wrote and recorded with Bob Frank. Six years on, Murry has just released his first solo album, The Graceless Age, an album of almost symphonic emotional turmoil, co-produced by late American Music Club drummer Tim Mooney. The songs on the record deal sometimes explicitly with Murry’s heroin addiction, specifically the 10-minute ‘Little Coloured Balloons’, a harrowing account of a near-fatal OD. I reviewed The Graceless Age for the current issue of Uncut and emailed Murry some questions, to which he replied in detail and at illuminating length, as you will see from the fascinating transcript that follows.

UNCUT: What was the starting point for The Graceless Age?

JOHN MURRY: I wanted to exorcise everything I couldn’t tolerate within. I thought that just as I had tried to do with World Without End, with my own fear of our innate and all too human mortality, I could do the same with The Graceless Age and the hurt that riodes shotgun right beside the knowledge of how painful life can become when you let go of the wheel and let the car run itself into the ditch. Essentially, the impetus for beginning it came from losing my wife to my own fucked up choices and desperately wanting to create something, anything, to exorcise it all. Not out of some desire to use loss to justify crating a record, but out of a fool’s need to create something to avoid madness and lunacy. I thought I could tell the truth – one bigger than facts – and that in telling it, I could create something that might bring her back. We began work on it prior to Bob and I touring Europe in support of World Without End in 2007.

The album took four years to complete. Why so long?

I wanted it to be right. To be real. I knew that I was exposing myself to a flailing world that hides itself behind the screens of iPhones and computers and illusion and wanted to make it all work together, in harmony with the discord and dissonance given us by life, both sonically and lyrically. Not in some ‘Look how fucking dark my sad stupid life is’ way, but in a way that allowed me and, I suppose, others, the ability to hear pain as a tolerable and even essential element of all that’s decent and real and alive, maybe even expansive and symphonic and beautiful at times. I wanted love to sound like the confused and flawed force it truly is. I wanted to create something that perhaps at least one other person could relate to so I could find solace in the knowledge that we’re all fucked up – that I wasn’t alone in feeling something more than frustration over bad seats at a movie theatre or long lines at the grocery store or poor cell phone reception.

Ultimately, though, it was my own self doubt and addiction that kept me from allowing it to be finished. Regardless, I eventually decided that the opinions of anyone listening couldn’t matter because if I allowed them to matter I’d be creating among ‘peers’ and ‘contemporaries’. I don’t want any of those. Not really. Why ‘compete’? There is no value in recognition. Not when what’s recognised is a preconceived farce we are led to embrace and become. There is no value in the trappings of this neo-disco nonsense we call ‘indie rock’. Not in this wasteland of musical vanity and sonic boredom. I prefer my exile to most musical companionship – with Tim [Mooney] and Bob [Ford] being huge exceptions – unless Jason Pierce wants to make a record with me. That’d be fine. Yeah, that’d work. I’m not kidding.

Chuck Prophet , who plays on the Graceless Age, says you made the album ‘in spite of yourself’. What do you think he meant by that?

Oh, I know what he meant. I owe him a great deal. Chuck took me into detox the first time. I get in my own way and often wonder why. Heroin didn’t help, of course. Chuck and I are friends and would be whether either of us played an instrument or not. We talk more about Herzog and Malick and David Milch and Hunter Thompson and records everybody seems to dislike for no good reason and eat lunch and pretend we have money and go shopping for random crap more than we do anything else. Chuck has made records in spite of himself, too. Still does. Don’t we all, though, do anything we do that’s worth anything at all in spite of ourselves, always? It seems to me that in order to create anything of value, you have to bleed a bit. You’ve got to give of yourself. Not in some hippy way, but in a truly visceral way. You have to live and feel and hurt and love and hate and stop and start and give of the blood you’re given. Happiness, as a constant, is fraudulent. It’s delusional. Show me a happy person and I’ll show you an imbecile. Insanity, in theory, is the only sane response to this modern life I can see. Graham Greene said that “Reality is not something to be faced”. In a truly awful sense, he was lucky. He got to die before this century came clanging in like some ice cream truck from hell.

Would you say you have a talent for self-destruction?

I’m not too good at seeing myself as ‘talented’, but I’ll accept that one! Yes! But unfortunately, I’ve gotten far too good at almost destroying myself to actually destroy myself any more, I think. My family certainly thinks I do. That can be satisfying to know at times. As do my friends. Again: often satisfying. My inability to not fuck things up is unfortunate. Things need fucking up. Things are fucked up. I don’t mind the heavy lifting as long as it one day leads to self-annihilation and not ‘chronic back pain’. I don wonder, though, if I didn’t intentionally push as far as I could push before the hinges came undone. I allowed irony to replace reality. I don’t want to giggle overt wordplay any more. I want to feel something real, hear something real, tell the truth, call out all the liars, all that nonsense. I’m sure I won’t, that I’ll become frustrated, and (as I’m often warned against) do something to piss the wrong person off again soon-ish; all out of sheer frustration. I’ll remain the ‘angry young man’ I’m accused of being quite often, even as I age without dignity. I accept the accusation. Fuck it. Short answer: YES. It’s likely my only talent. I’ll wear it like a scar.

‘What keeps me alive is going to kill me in the end,’ from a song on the album called ‘No Te De Ganas De Reir, Senor Malverde’, is a grim prediction. Didn’t it almost come true, didn’t you nearly die?

I died for several minutes, yes. I shot a gram and a half of dope. I don’t know why that seemed a reasonable amount. Maybe it didn’t. I remember the wife of the dealer yelling at me not to sit down, to stay standing up. I sat down, anyway, and the last thing I apparently said on the floor of The Eula Hotel before waking up in the ambulance was, ‘It’s OK. I’m fine with it.’ That dealer, a confused Vietnam vet I saw as absurdly ethical given his chosen profession was convicted of murdering her maybe a year later. EMTs gave me two shots of Narcon and a shot of adrenaline to start my heart back up. The reference in the song, though, isn’t to drugs. It’s about loving my wife from a distance; from a place that had no map, no road, no end. Unless I was to create my end. Which is what I was doing, in effect, by sabotaging my existence. The song was written prior to the incident, so I see it as an odd occurrence and a grim prediction, too, now; though I never thought of it as such until later.

Can you talk us through ‘Little Coloured Balloons’?

I have read a couple of reviews of the record that sort of question whether I’m telling the truth in that song or whether I wrote it out of something other than personal experience. It’s one of the last songs recorded. It’s true. All of it. I find it distressing that some would question honesty in lyrics when there is no glory in the truth that’s being told. I think some of the references, however, do get lost on many listeners (apart from those who’ve actively bought and used black tar heroin in San Francisco). So I’ll perhaps explain some of the phrases. Black tar heroin is quite different than powdered heroin and isn’t seen much outside North and South America. It looks, quite literally, like black tar and is sticky when warm. Half grams are generally sold in The Mission wrapped in Saran Wrap inside party balloons that aren’t inflated. The needle and spoon part are universal, I’m sure. 16th and Mission is an intersection where, prior to the installation of surveillance cameras, it was easier to find dope than food, I died in The Eula Hotel on 16th. I came back to life out front in an ambulance. The song is a prayer of sorts, I suppose. It’s a plea. For mercy, for salvation from myself, for Lori. I wanted saving but didn’t want help. I wanted death, but didn’t want to die. In the end, I got a life I ought not to be living; one I don’t deserve. One I’ve seen stolen from too many people stuck at that intersection; those crossroads. Better people than me.

What did drugs mean to you – were they an escape, an anaesthetic against the world, or did you just like getting high?

I suppose drugs were all of those things. Ultimately, though, all substances allow for the creation of an illusory world – especially heroin. With heroin, everything’s OK. That becomes incredibly problematic, very quickly. All brands of horror can be seen in the light of it all being ‘OK’. Everything becomes murky, life distorts around you as you create the feedback loop that becomes reality. It’s God’s drug. It destroys pain in a way that allows for only melancholia; one that’s tolerable until the addiction takes on a life of its own. In that dull ache, one can still create. I truly did, however, ant – fuck that – NEED something to keep the wolves at bay. I wanted either death or a life that wasn’t the one I felt I had to lead. The answer t that dilemma was heroin. It worked. Too well. Then it stopped working almost altogether. Ultimately, though, being high isn’t all that different than being alone. There was no internal world I wished to escape into, really. It was an anaesthetic above all else. Let’s face it: nobody says to their friends, ‘I think I’m gonna slam a little dope this weekend! Wanna come?’ Heroin doesn’t need ‘pushing’. It sells itself, and for good reason. Then it sells you out to your fears just as quickly. People talk about how addictive it is in relation to other drugs. They fabricate statistics. Yes: it’s addictive as hell because it works so brilliantly. Until it doesn’t.

The songs on World Without End were often based on actual incidents, has your own life replaced history on The Graceless Age, making it a much more autobiopgraphical record?

It’s certainly autobiographical – perhaps insanely so given our modern aversion to reality and truth. But the realities buried within it extend beyond me, I hope. I’m not so sure that World Without End wasn’t, in a sense, a quite direct precursor to The Graceless Age – one I wasn’t consciously aware of. Whole Bob sang in the third person, I realise now I always took on the songs as the killer or the killed and sang them as the victimised or the victim (or both) Maybe there’s something to that; maybe not. But for a record filled with death and destruction to be followed by another filled with much the same is, well, telling. I just don’t know what the tale is. But I’ve heard the story before, I think. Or wrote it. I don’t know. Both records haunt me.

A lot of the songs on the album seem to be addressed to someone who’s no longer in your life. Can you say who that is and what happened to them?

It’s my wife, Lori. We were separated, on and off, for obvious reasons during the making of the record. She’s on her way home from work now. I got lucky. I don’t lose her in the end. And I don’t intend to pull an Eric Clapton and treat her like he did Patti Boyd. Nor do I intend to cover ‘I Shot The Sherriff’ and destroy the soul of what makes music worthwhile: love and loss and all that’s in between – not evading taxes in Barbados or wherever. Hence the Bobby Whitlock tune at the end of the record [‘Thorn Tree In The Garden’]. I became a bit obsessed with Layla (And Other Assorted Love Songs) and the stories behind all those involved in its creation. It’s proof that life, when lived fully, can become art in truly unexpected and beautiful ways if one is willing to suffer. All Clapton needed was love and dope. And Bobby Whitlock and Duane Allman didn’t hurt. Funny thing is that Whitlock wrote that song about a dog, not a woman. It works best if that’s ignored, I think. Tom [Mooney] didn’t tell me that part until later. It was his idea to end the album that way and I’m glad we did.

Now the album’s out, what else are you working on, what’s next?

I’ll tour in support of it this fall. Tim and I had begun another record and had fleshed out several songs. We’d also finished an EP of covers. There are innumerable outtakes and alternate mixes and the like from the sessions for The Graceless Age. What I am thrilled to have, though, is the mastered mixes Tim and I originally created the lyrics and sonics are less accessible but richer and rawer. I’m excited about creating something with it. But I want to make records. Lots more. There’s plenty more to come, whether anyone gives a fuck or not. I’ve no choice. I can create or be created, make or be made. I chose the freedom to exist as I am, with utter confusion and curiosity. Though we may have no windmills, I’ll tilt at something from here to kingdom come. And I’ll keep trying to create a record worth a damn. Maybe this is the one. I don’t know. If I did, I’d be done with the charade. I’m not. Time flees, there will be more. I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here. But I’m still here.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse debut six new songs on opening date of 2012 tour

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Neil Young & Crazy Horse debut six new songs on opening date of 2012 tour
Neil Young and Crazy Horse debuted six new songs on the opening date of their 2012 tour. The tour opened on Friday night at the Pavilion, Hard Rock Casino in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Young and the Horse played a 15 song, 2-hour show, including six new tracks and an airing for a 1981 studio ou...

Neil Young and Crazy Horse debuted six new songs on the opening date of their 2012 tour.

The tour opened on Friday night at the Pavilion, Hard Rock Casino in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Young and the Horse played a 15 song, 2-hour show, including six new tracks and an airing for a 1981 studio outtake.

The set list for the Albuquerque show was:

1. Love And Only Love

2. Powderfinger

3. Born In Ontario (new)

4. “Walk Like A Giant” (new)

5. The Needle And The Damage Done (acoustic solo)

6. Twisted Road (new) (acoustic w/ the band)

7. For The Love Of Man/I Wonder Why (new/1981 studio outtake)

8. Ramada Inn(new)

9. Cinnamon Girl

10. F*!#in’ Up

11. Psychedelic Pill (new)

12. Mr. Soul

13. Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)

Encore:

14. Jesus’ Chariot

15. Roll Another Number

Pic credit: Steve Snowdon/Getty Images

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Alabama Shakes forced to cancel Lollapalooza set

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Alabama Shakes forced to cancel Lollapalooza set

Lollapalooza festival was forced to postpone on Saturday [August 4] for several hours as heavy thunderstorms rolled into Chicago. At around 3:30pm local time, festival organisers announced an evacuation of the site after weather warnings had been given from the National Weather Service of severe storms approaching. Punters were urged to move to pre-determined, underground evacuation zones. In a statement, posted on the festival website, communications director Shelby Meade said: "Our first priority is always the safety of our fans, staff and artists. We regret having to suspend any show, but safety always comes first." Organisers then released a further statement at 6pm, announcing that the festival would resume following the brief postponement and that a new schedule had been drawn-up for the bands who were due to play during the delay. Among the sets that were disrupted by the weather, Alabama Shakes were forced to cancel theirs completely. They tweeted this apology to fans: Alabama Shakes ✔ @Alabama_Shakes Sorry Chicago, we were really pumped to play for you all but the storm had other plans. We will be back to make it up for you! 5 Aug 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite Some bands took the initiative to perform short sets to the evacuated fans. Folk-pop group The Dunwells played an impromptu gig at the Hilton's Normandie Lounge to waiting punters. Like, Alabama Shakes their set was also cancelled. B.o.B, The Temper Trap were among the artists who had their scheduled slots nixed by the afternoon thunderstorms. Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12-month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Lollapalooza festival was forced to postpone on Saturday [August 4] for several hours as heavy thunderstorms rolled into Chicago.

At around 3:30pm local time, festival organisers announced an evacuation of the site after weather warnings had been given from the National Weather Service of severe storms approaching. Punters were urged to move to pre-determined, underground evacuation zones.

In a statement, posted on the festival website, communications director Shelby Meade said: “Our first priority is always the safety of our fans, staff and artists. We regret having to suspend any show, but safety always comes first.”

Organisers then released a further statement at 6pm, announcing that the festival would resume following the brief postponement and that a new schedule had been drawn-up for the bands who were due to play during the delay.

Among the sets that were disrupted by the weather, Alabama Shakes were forced to cancel theirs completely.

They tweeted this apology to fans:

Alabama Shakes

✔

@Alabama_Shakes

Sorry Chicago, we were really pumped to play for you all but the storm had other plans. We will be back to make it up for you!

5 Aug 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite

Some bands took the initiative to perform short sets to the evacuated fans. Folk-pop group The Dunwells played an impromptu gig at the Hilton’s Normandie Lounge to waiting punters. Like, Alabama Shakes their set was also cancelled.

B.o.B, The Temper Trap were among the artists who had their scheduled slots nixed by the afternoon thunderstorms.

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The Stone Roses to play free London show tonight [August 6]

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The Stone Roses to play free London show tonight [August 6]
The Stone Roses are to play a free show in London tonight [August 6]. Tickets for the gig, which is set to take place at a secret location, will be given away to fans who email in via an address they were provided with when they booked tickets for the band's recent Heaton Park shows. Once fans ema...

The Stone Roses are to play a free show in London tonight [August 6].

Tickets for the gig, which is set to take place at a secret location, will be given away to fans who email in via an address they were provided with when they booked tickets for the band’s recent Heaton Park shows.

Once fans email, they will find out details of the show within one hour if they have been successful in securing tickets. Full details of the gig can be found on the band’s Facebook page Facebook.com/Thestoneroses.

Late last week, the band’s biographer John Robb spoke about the reports that the band are planning a 2013 release for their new studio album and revealed that the reason drummer Alan ‘Reni’ Wren actually agreed to rejoin the group was down to the strength of their new material.

It had been reported earlier this week that the band were planning to release a new album next summer and Robb has confirmed that Ian Brown has told him they have a clutch of new songs.

He told BBC 6Music: “I have bumped into Ian Brown a couple of times and he said they have new songs. And they’ve signed a two album record deal so you’d kind of figure that they do have new stuff. Ian Brown described them to me as psychedelic pop songs. And people I’ve spoken to who have been in the rehearsal room say that the new stuff does sound really good.”

Robb then opened up about Wren’s reasons for agreeing to rejoin the band and said that it came after he heard new songs that singer Ian Brown and John Squire have been writing.

He said of this: “At the press conference I spoke to Reni who said he had new songs but he wasn’t sure if they’d make it onto the album. When Ian and John first met for the first time after the funeral [the funeral of bassist Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield’s mother] they started writing songs and those songs were given to Reni and that is what persuaded Reni that he wanted to go back with the Stone Roses because the new songs sounded so good.”

The Stone Roses will headline next month’s V Festival in Chelmsford and Stafforshire as well as Northern Ireland’s Tennent’s Vital Festival.

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First Look – Rian Johnson’s Looper

Michael Bonner
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First Look – Rian Johnson’s Looper

While I’ve been rather excitedly banging on this year about the return to active filmmaking of the class of 1990something – Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Whit Stillman, Todd Solondz – I should, in all fairness, spend a few moments on the new film by Rian Johnson, a veteran of the class of 2000something. Johnson’s debut, 2005’s Brick, brilliantly transposed the dialogue rhythms and story tropes of hardboiled crime fiction into the contemporary world of a suburban Californian high school. His ambitious 2009 follow-up, The Brothers Bloom, with Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo as a pair of globe-trotting con men, slightly missed its mark. It’s encouraging to see, though, the trailer for Johnson’s latest, Looper, which seems to be trying – as with Brick – to find something new to add to an already perilously crowded genre - in this instance, time travel movies. We know that, in the future, time travel is illegal – but the mob use it as a means to dispose of their enemies, sending them back 30 years to where a hit man, called a ‘looper’, finishes them off. One such looper is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt – who toplined Brick, and has since gone on to become one of Christopher Nolan’s stock players in Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. Gordon-Levitt is played in the future by Bruce Willis – who appears to have been sent back in time to be disposed of by his younger self. What could possibly go wrong? We’ll be reviewing Looper in next month’s Uncut; in the meantime, you can watch the trailer below. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_j36C28GQ

While I’ve been rather excitedly banging on this year about the return to active filmmaking of the class of 1990something – Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Whit Stillman, Todd Solondz – I should, in all fairness, spend a few moments on the new film by Rian Johnson, a veteran of the class of 2000something.

Johnson’s debut, 2005’s Brick, brilliantly transposed the dialogue rhythms and story tropes of hardboiled crime fiction into the contemporary world of a suburban Californian high school. His ambitious 2009 follow-up, The Brothers Bloom, with Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo as a pair of globe-trotting con men, slightly missed its mark. It’s encouraging to see, though, the trailer for Johnson’s latest, Looper, which seems to be trying – as with Brick – to find something new to add to an already perilously crowded genre – in this instance, time travel movies.

We know that, in the future, time travel is illegal – but the mob use it as a means to dispose of their enemies, sending them back 30 years to where a hit man, called a ‘looper’, finishes them off. One such looper is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt – who toplined Brick, and has since gone on to become one of Christopher Nolan’s stock players in Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. Gordon-Levitt is played in the future by Bruce Willis – who appears to have been sent back in time to be disposed of by his younger self. What could possibly go wrong?

We’ll be reviewing Looper in next month’s Uncut; in the meantime, you can watch the trailer below.

Homeland Season One

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Homeland Season One

Damian Lewis keeps us guessing in Obama’s favourite post-War On Terror thriller... Jonathan Demme tried the official movie remake in 2004, but it took American television to come up with a Manchurian Candidate that really fits the mood of the moment. Anointed by Barack Obama as his favourite show, Homeland is based loosely on an Israeli TV drama, Prisoners Of War (also released). But it draws its true DNA from John Frankenheimer’s paranoid classic of 1962. Once again, we are in the company of the enemy within. We see a soldier who has made it home after enduring enemy capture, paraded as returning hero. And then we are presented with the notion that, while he was away, this hero was secretly turned, brainwashed by his captors, and is now a timebomb, primed to go off in the heart of the USA. And, once again, on his trail comes a solitary figure who is sure something is very wrong, but whose credibility is undermined by their own problems. Homeland comes into its own with its lonely investigator, CIA Analyst Carrie Mathison (a superb Claire Danes). Frank Sinatra was a troubled soul in The Manchurian Candidate, but compared to Carrie, he was the picture of health. As we discover, she isn’t simply driven by the sharpened paranoia beneficial to anyone in her profession: she’s suffering a bipolar disorder she hides from her bosses, popping anti-psychotic drugs provided by her sister, a doctor. The object of her obsession is Nick Brody (Damian Lewis, seizing his finest role since 2004’s Keane), a US Marine found in Iraq after being held captive, missing presumed dead, for eight years. Home again in a blaze of stars and stripes, he seems to match information Carrie received years before: “An American prisoner of war has been turned.” Against orders, she secretly installs surveillance in his house, spying on him and his family, her own private Big Brother. Nick is a stiff, silent stranger. Thinking him dead, his wife had begun an affair with his best friend. His kids barely know him. It’s Brody’s relationship with Carrie, however, that comes to dominate. But is she right? Fans caught in Homeland’s pull and impatient for the second series may be intrigued to see the Israeli original. But Prisoners Of War [also released] is a different proposition: slower, more meditative, less concerned with thriller moves. It follows Nimrod and Uri, two Israeli Defence Force reservists released from captivity after being held in Lebanon for 17 years, who return home bearing with them the body of another man, and some secrets. Hailed as heroes, they consider themselves traitors, struggle with guilt and post-traumatic stress as much as the changes that await in the home they barely recognise. It’s smaller, more reflective than Homeland, and more moving. But it’s the US hit that sinks its hooks in. Homeland has drawn comparisons with 24, largely because its creators used to write for the Jack Bauer serial. It retains some traits – a confident pace, regular twists – but it adds shadows to the popcorn. Certainly, there’s a more ambivalent attitude to torture, and the writing tries little things 24 tended to avoid: ambiguity, characterisation. Jack Bauer was always up against a ticking time bomb, and we always knew he was right. Here, the clock ticks slower, what it’s counting down toward is disturbingly vague, and it’s hard to tell who the bad guys are. EXTRAS: None. Damien Love

Damian Lewis keeps us guessing in Obama’s favourite post-War On Terror thriller…

Jonathan Demme tried the official movie remake in 2004, but it took American television to come up with a Manchurian Candidate that really fits the mood of the moment. Anointed by Barack Obama as his favourite show, Homeland is based loosely on an Israeli TV drama, Prisoners Of War (also released). But it draws its true DNA from John Frankenheimer’s paranoid classic of 1962.

Once again, we are in the company of the enemy within. We see a soldier who has made it home after enduring enemy capture, paraded as returning hero. And then we are presented with the notion that, while he was away, this hero was secretly turned, brainwashed by his captors, and is now a timebomb, primed to go off in the heart of the USA. And, once again, on his trail comes a solitary figure who is sure something is very wrong, but whose credibility is undermined by their own problems.

Homeland comes into its own with its lonely investigator, CIA Analyst Carrie Mathison (a superb Claire Danes). Frank Sinatra was a troubled soul in The Manchurian Candidate, but compared to Carrie, he was the picture of health. As we discover, she isn’t simply driven by the sharpened paranoia beneficial to anyone in her profession: she’s suffering a bipolar disorder she hides from her bosses, popping anti-psychotic drugs provided by her sister, a doctor. The object of her obsession is Nick Brody (Damian Lewis, seizing his finest role since 2004’s Keane), a US Marine found in Iraq after being held captive, missing presumed dead, for eight years. Home again in a blaze of stars and stripes, he seems to match information Carrie received years before: “An American prisoner of war has been turned.”

Against orders, she secretly installs surveillance in his house, spying on him and his family, her own private Big Brother. Nick is a stiff, silent stranger. Thinking him dead, his wife had begun an affair with his best friend. His kids barely know him. It’s Brody’s relationship with Carrie, however, that comes to dominate. But is she right?

Fans caught in Homeland’s pull and impatient for the second series may be intrigued to see the Israeli original. But Prisoners Of War [also released] is a different proposition: slower, more meditative, less concerned with thriller moves. It follows Nimrod and Uri, two Israeli Defence Force reservists released from captivity after being held in Lebanon for 17 years, who return home bearing with them the body of another man, and some secrets. Hailed as heroes, they consider themselves traitors, struggle with guilt and post-traumatic stress as much as the changes that await in the home they barely recognise.

It’s smaller, more reflective than Homeland, and more moving. But it’s the US hit that sinks its hooks in. Homeland has drawn comparisons with 24, largely because its creators used to write for the Jack Bauer serial. It retains some traits – a confident pace, regular twists – but it adds shadows to the popcorn. Certainly, there’s a more ambivalent attitude to torture, and the writing tries little things 24 tended to avoid: ambiguity, characterisation. Jack Bauer was always up against a ticking time bomb, and we always knew he was right. Here, the clock ticks slower, what it’s counting down toward is disturbingly vague, and it’s hard to tell who the bad guys are.

EXTRAS: None.

Damien Love

The Flaming Lips – Album By Album

Tom Pinnock
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The Flaming Lips – Album By Album
Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips answers your questions in An Audience With… in this month's new issue of Uncut, out now. In this week's archive feature we head back to our June 2008 issue (Take 133), to find the band's frontman looking back over their back catalogue, taking in Vaseline, drug addic...

Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips answers your questions in An Audience With… in this month’s new issue of Uncut, out now. In this week’s archive feature we head back to our June 2008 issue (Take 133), to find the band’s frontman looking back over their back catalogue, taking in Vaseline, drug addiction, union picket lines, the religious right and nothing short of the collapse of civilisation. “My agenda is to go somewhere where we’ve never been before…” Interview: Jaan Uhelszki

–––––––––––––––––––––––––

The tasty starter…

THE FLAMING LIPS

(1985, re-released on Restless Records, 1994)

Produced by The Flaming Lips

The Lips recorded their debut, five-song mini-album with Wayne Coyne’s reluctant rock star brother, Mark, as lead singer. He was fired as soon as the record was released…

Wayne Coyne: “I hear this now and it sounds so demented. It’s kind of druggy, kind of punk rock and it’s kind of psychedelic. We don’t even play in the right key sometimes and we’re out of tune. But we do it with such a ‘Who cares…’ attitude, and it’s wonderful. We felt like that would be the only record we made. We’d run into musicians and we thought, ‘Wow, they’re really musicians. They know what they’re playing.’ They would talk about chord structures and what key things are in on our own record and we’d be like, ‘We have no idea what you’re talking about.’ But at the same time, that worried us. We were pretending that we were musicians and we knew what we were doing, but really we were just dorks that liked music. It’s like suddenly being thrown on Top Chef and saying, ‘Well, I just like eating in a restaurant, I don’t like fucking cooking the food.’ We felt like there’s no way that this hoax could perpetuate itself much further than that. My brother Mark was in the band and at this time we were discovering that he didn’t really like music and didn’t like to sing, so we said, ‘Why don’t we get rid of this guy?’ I think it surprised him that we asked him to quit, since it was his band.”

Death becomes them…

IN A PRIEST DRIVEN AMBULANCE

(1990, Restless Records)

Produced by The Flaming Lips and Dave Fridmann

The first flash of real brilliance from the Lips, In A Priest Driven Ambulance also features Mercury Rev guitarist Jonathan Donahue alongside Wayne Coyne and bassist Michael Ivins…

“I definitely use the ambulance driver as a metaphor, it stands for the kind of the panic that seems to always motivate us at the eleventh hour. I’ve said that The Flaming Lips never arrive by limousine, we always arrive by ambulance. It’s like, there we are at the last fucking possible minute. I like that idea of, ‘Get out of the fucking way, here we are!’ This idea being, if we don’t get there right now, it’s going to die. That’s how a lot of Flaming Lips ideas come into being, because they have a force of panic that gets us through the wall of whatever it is that art has to get through, whether it’s good, great, shitty or whatever… It has to get into the world. And this idea of the ambulance, I’ve always liked that. A lot of what we sing about, even when I go back to our very first records, is death. This thing that happens to you when you’re confronted with the idea that you’re going to die and the people around you are going to die, and how it helps you live for right now.”

The major label debut…

HIT TO DEATH IN THE FUTURE HEAD

(1992, Warner Bros Records)

Produced by The Flaming Lips and Dave Fridmann

Hit To Death In The Future Head found The Flaming Lips refining their pop savvy. That said, the “hidden track”, a 40-second loop repeated for nearly half an hour, was as art-weirdo as you can get…

“One song, ‘Halloween At The Barbary Coast’, summed up where we were at during this record. Back in the late ’80s, we would go to Vegas a lot. We never had any money, but as we were driving through we would stop and gamble away 20 bucks. If we were lucky, we’d win 100 bucks and we’d spend it all just having a kind of experience. We walked into this one casino called the Barbary Coast. There was a strike going on and there was a picket line. At the time we were dyeing our hair and clothes black. You’ve got to remember, we wouldn’t wash the clothes. They’d be dyed black the day that we left for a tour, and we’d wear them for three months. The dye would get all over you, little by little, and we’d all look slightly greyish. We walked up to this picket line, this guy said, “Look at this, it’s Halloween at the Barbary Coast.” We never realised what a strange, ghoulish-looking gang we were until someone said that. Here’s the middle of summer and we’re dressed in black. Everybody does that now. Back then, we were trying to look like weirdos, and so we probably did to this group of union fucking workers on strike. Plus it sounded like one of our song-titles.”

The sexual conquest…

TRANSMISSIONS FROM THE SATELLITE HEART

(1994, Warner Bros Records)

Produced by The Flaming Lips and Keith Cleversley

Transmissions… marked a new phase for the band with the addition of drummer Steven Drozd and guitarist Ronald Jones (Donahue leaving to concentrate on Mercury Rev). The success of single “She Don’t Use Jelly” put the Lips on, erm, everyone’s lips when they became a staple on Beavis & Butt-head and appeared on Beverly Hills 90210…

“When we recorded ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’, we knew we were making something special. Whatever the absurdness of it, you could understand that I’m talking about toast and Vaseline, and it had some kind of innocent little sexual thing that ran through the whole song. That was kind of cool for us because up until then all of our songs were so asexual. I think we felt that there was this sort of the Guns N’ Roses mentality to rock’n’roll, and we were something different. We really had a lot of area to explore that didn’t include a bunch of naked women – but here we felt like, ‘Oh, what the fuck, let’s go for it.’ When we would play it in front of a very hostile commercial audience that could not give a shit about us, they still responded to that song. People would come up later and say, ‘I hated every song you did except when you sang about that Vaseline. I liked that one.'”

Mental machine music…

ZAIREEKA

(1997, Warner Bros Records) Produced by The Flaming Lips, Dave Fridmann, Scott Booker

The Flaming Lips’ equivalent to Metal Machine Music, this was released on four CDs that are all intended to be played simultaneously. The title is a synthesis of the words “Zaire” and “Eureka” that tumbled out of Wayne Coyne’s mouth while on tour in Germany…

“We were in Europe and doing this drudgey, winter tour where the sun is going down at 3:30pm. We had these series of shows that didn’t go that well, and we were on a long drive when a radio announcer starts talking about Zaire crumbling, saying: ‘Civilisation as we know it is breaking down at a phenomenal rate at the moment.’ I wondered what it’s like to be in a country where civilisation is breaking down at a phenomenal rate… I thought: of all the places where you can use this anarchy and this utter falling apart of everything, it’s in music and art. I was trying to destroy my own conceptions of what music could be and see what happened. What if the Lips broke down and they couldn’t quit? Somehow we’d have to scrape along, but it’d be invigorating. And that’s what we did. I thought, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to do some freaky shit, if it’s the last thing I do.’ At the beginning it was just for our own dumb entertainment. Now I think of Zaireeka as a bunch of unmanageable bullshit.”

Uncut Classic

THE SOFT BULLETIN

(1999, Warner Bros Records)

Produced by The Flaming Lips, Dave Fridmann and Scott Booker

The Soft Bulletin finds the Lips changing the entire direction of their aesthetic, introducing lush harmonies and orchestration alongside big themes about love, loss and the future of the human race…

“Everyone thinks that The Soft Bulletin was about my dad’s death, but that was really Zaireeka or maybe even Yoshimi. Zaireeka came out in ’97, but we’d been working on Bulletin that whole time. There was this idea not to reinvent ourselves this time, but go down another path and become these other types of people who could be in The Flaming Lips. I think with Zaireeka you catch us halfway there, but we’re just so fucking weird that it doesn’t matter. By the time you catch us with The Soft Bulletin, we’ve gotten rid of some of the weirder things and we’ve started to find out how to shape the more emotional things. Even that title, it’s a lot like the Priest Driven Ambulance thing. It felt like we were announcing something to the world.

“This idea was that we weren’t talking about a revolution destroying the old regime. It was a revelation of this quiet little thing within us, which felt like a bigger revolution, to us. We wanted to do something more emotional and expressive. We didn’t have an idea of where we were going, but Steven had ‘Race For The Prize’ and the lyrics I put to it made it feel like we’d turned a corner. I had ‘A Spoonful Weighs A Ton’ and it was really something to see Steven dicking around with that, giving that a good musical shape and some drama. Between those two, we felt like, damn, the Lips could sing about this sort of epic-ness to life and not feel like just a bunch of hippies. Once again, we really thought of The Soft Bulletin as being the last thing that we would do. We’ve run into that three or four times in our life, where we sort of felt like it doesn’t matter what we do because no-one really cares. It gave us this great freedom to say, ‘Fuck it.’

“Everyone wants to know on ‘Spiderbite Song’ whether I really knew that Steven had a drug problem. All I can say is, not as much as I knew later! Everybody was busy doing their own trip, and being around drug addicts, they’re not that much different than they were the previous week. I mean, it happens so slowly that you get used to it. It must be like those guys that have giant tumors on their faces. It grows a little every day. When I think of it now, I’m surprised at how precarious the whole thing was. That probably played into the song and the whole theme of the LP. In a way I probably thought that Steven may not even be here for another year. This music that we’re doing now, we have to do it now as I couldn’t do it with anybody else. All that gives you a different urgency and a different sense of energy in this album.”

Big is better…

YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS

(2002, Warner Bros Records)

Produced by The Flaming Lips, Dave Fridmann, Scott Booker

The Lips’ most commercially successful album – due to be turned into a Broadway musical by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin!

“After Bulletin, we could have gone in and made every record sound like that. Bulletin was us finding what we’re good at; but we decided that we can’t make it over and over. We decided to do something more cartoon-like. We were already writing music that seemed more colorful, not so death-ish, and we had ‘Do You Realize??’ written, but it wasn’t until we wrote ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ that we knew what the LP was about. In Flaming Lip-ian world, of course, the robots would be pink – and then kill themselves for love. But the key song for us is ‘Do You Realize??’ Writing that is like meeting [wife] Michelle, or one of these things that just happens to you where you say: ‘How fucking lucky am I?’ I can say that I created that song, but I wouldn’t have thought it had this otherworldliness. I run into people every time we play who’ve used it at funerals, weddings or when their kids are born. A kid came up to me in a restaurant, and he said, ‘How long did it take you to make Yoshimi?’ I said, ‘It took my whole life.’ Everything I’ve ever thought, in the end got put into this.”

Dark side of the Coyne..

AT WAR WITH THE MYSTICS

(2006, Warner Bros Records)

Produced by The Flaming Lips, Dave Fridmann, Scott Booker

Coyne sets his sights on frothy pop icons, superficial thinkers and the abuse of power on the Lips’ most political album to date…

“In the beginning I had this song and I was talking in the magical sense about witches, warlocks, demons. But really I was writing about these naysayers who think, ‘Oh, the world is kind of just a boring place. Thank God there’s stuff like black magic and supernatural bullshit.’ That’s so wrong. They just don’t see the true beauty and excitement in what’s real and beautiful about human nature. The album title went right along with all this stuff about how insane the religious right has become and the whole mentality of the fanatical religious freaks, and how in a sense they all are self-proclaimed mystics. They seem to know some insight that us regular folk would never see. It sounds like something wicked and dark and opposed to, you know, the cartoony acid sunshine of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. I’m just looking to say, we already went down that road, now let’s go down this dark, scary road and see what that feels like. And so that was my main agenda, to go somewhere other than where we’d been before…”

Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister: ‘Bruce Springsteen predicted the economic crisis’

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Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister: ‘Bruce Springsteen predicted the economic crisis’

Australia's deputy prime minister Wayne Swan has named Bruce Springsteen as one of his economic heroes, and even claims he has the foresight to predict the economic crisis. "You can hear Springsteen singing about the shifting foundations of the US economy which the economists took much longer to detect, and which of course everyone is talking about now," he said in a lecture to members of the ruling Labor party, The Guardian reports. He added: "It's often the case that great artists – people like Bruce Springsteen – tend to pick up the subterranean rumblings of profound social change long before the economic statisticians notice them." Springsteen's songs should serve as a warning to Australians against the widening economic inequality seen in America, he said, demonstrating the point by quoting the lyrics to Springsteen's 1978 track Badlands: "Poor man wanna be rich/Rich man wanna be king/And a king ain't satisfied/'Til he rules everything". Earlier this week (July 31), Springsteen performed his longest ever set – clocking in at four hours and six minutes in Helsinki, Finland. All of Springsteen's sets on his current European tour have been lengthy, which caused a controversy during his set at London's Hard Rock Calling. After the singer passed the show's allotted end time, the decision was made to pull the plug while he was onstage with Paul McCartney. Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12-month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Australia’s deputy prime minister Wayne Swan has named Bruce Springsteen as one of his economic heroes, and even claims he has the foresight to predict the economic crisis.

“You can hear Springsteen singing about the shifting foundations of the US economy which the economists took much longer to detect, and which of course everyone is talking about now,” he said in a lecture to members of the ruling Labor party, The Guardian reports.

He added: “It’s often the case that great artists – people like Bruce Springsteen – tend to pick up the subterranean rumblings of profound social change long before the economic statisticians notice them.”

Springsteen’s songs should serve as a warning to Australians against the widening economic inequality seen in America, he said, demonstrating the point by quoting the lyrics to Springsteen’s 1978 track Badlands: “Poor man wanna be rich/Rich man wanna be king/And a king ain’t satisfied/’Til he rules everything”.

Earlier this week (July 31), Springsteen performed his longest ever set – clocking in at four hours and six minutes in Helsinki, Finland.

All of Springsteen’s sets on his current European tour have been lengthy, which caused a controversy during his set at London’s Hard Rock Calling. After the singer passed the show’s allotted end time, the decision was made to pull the plug while he was onstage with Paul McCartney.

Please fill in our quick survey about Uncut – and you could win a 12-month subscription to the magazine. Click here to see the survey. Thanks!

Jack White’s Third Man Records to release new Willy Moon single

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Jack White’s Third Man Records to release new Willy Moon single
Jack White's Third Man Records is set to release "Railroad Track", the new single from New Zealand singer, musician and producer, Willy Moon. The single is released on 7" and digital on August 20 and will be backed with a version of Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang". The video was shot on location in Nas...

Jack White‘s Third Man Records is set to release “Railroad Track”, the new single from New Zealand singer, musician and producer, Willy Moon.

The single is released on 7″ and digital on August 20 and will be backed with a version of Nancy Sinatra‘s “Bang Bang”. The video was shot on location in Nashville, which is where White’s Third Man recording studio is based.

Jack White recently confirmed that Radiohead have also been recording new material at Third Man Records. Speaking to BBC 6 Music, the singer revealed that the Oxford band had been working in the studio owned by his record label – but also insisted that he hadn’t been involved in the recording sessions.

Beck released a limited-edition single on Third Man Records earlier this year. “I Just Started Hating Some People Today”/”Blue Randy” was recorded last year at the Third Man studio when Beck was in the Tennessee city recording the follow-up to 2008’s Modern Guilt.

Other established artists to release one-off singles on the Third Man label include Tom Jones, Laura Marling and Insane Clown Posse.

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Elbow reveal new ‘Jewish folk song’ direction

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Elbow reveal new ‘Jewish folk song’ direction
Elbow have revealed that their next new album looks set to contain a "Jewish folk song". Speaking to the Worksop Guardian, the band's bassist Pete Turner explained that they have 'half an album ready'. Of the follow-up to last year's Build A Rocket Boys!, he added that the band are referencing Ride...

Elbow have revealed that their next new album looks set to contain a “Jewish folk song”.

Speaking to the Worksop Guardian, the band’s bassist Pete Turner explained that they have ‘half an album ready’. Of the follow-up to last year’s Build A Rocket Boys!, he added that the band are referencing Ride and My Bloody Valentine. Turner said: “It feels very experimental and we’ve been going very leftfield with things. Spiritualized get referenced quite a lot and we’re trying out new things. We’re referencing My Bloody Valentine, Ride… We were working on this new tune the other day and Guy [Garvey] said ‘this is like a little Jewish folk song’, and we listened back to it and thought ‘that’s brilliant, we have to keep that vibe’. Its got this great feel of one of those Eastern European stop-animation films. I love it.”

Elbow are set to tour UK arenas this autumn. Kicking off at Nottingham’s Capital FM Arena on November 26, the band will then head to Birmingham NIA on November 28 and Liverpool’s Echo Area on November 29, before heading to their Manchester home-town on December 1. They will finish up at London’s The O2 on December 2.

Of the tour, Turner said it will be similar to their last tour “with bringing the crowd in and making the room feel smaller, but there will be new lights, new visuals and new ideas.”

He added that they’ll be delving into their back catalogue more than on their last jaunt, stating: “We’re going to look back into the back catalogue a little bit more and fish out some songs that we’ve not played for a while. But it should just be a couple of hours of fun and partying every night. It’s a nice way of rounding off the album and the year.”

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Ride reissues

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Ride reissues

Shoegazing icons majestic catalogue reissued... The title of Ride’s second album, twenty years old this March, was the closest they ever came to articulating a mission statement. By calling it Going Blank Again they were wryly acknowledging of the oft-repeated criticism that Ride were a band with nothing to say. It was a neat way of responding: “Yeah – and so what?” Formed in Oxford in 1989, Ride were among the first generation of British guitar bands not to have witnessed punk’s storming of the cultural Bastille first-hand. Signed to an indie label for aesthetic rather than ethical reasons, they had no desire to smash or subvert the system; Ride were just four nice boys who did what they did, and if anybody else liked it, that was a bonus. Many did like it, of course. Ride were the first Creation band to crack the Top 40 and represented a shrewd signing by Alan McGee during a period when he was busy shovelling funds the label didn’t have into My Bloody Valentine’s search for the perfect chord and Primal Scream’s search for the perfect high. Ride were dependable and uncontroversial, yet still capable of summoning a majestic cacophony; a clean-cut indie boyband who bolstered their innocent 60s jangle with a formidable sonic assault. Some of the early EP tracks collected on Smile [6/10] sound a little underfed, but 1990’s debut album Nowhere [8/10] (bolstered here, as with previous reissues, by the addition of the Fall and Today Forever EPs) remains a heady trip. If anything, its wan vocals and docile lyrics that all seem to be about flying, falling or fading – providing plenty of fuel for the “nothing to say” mob – actually serve to ease your ascent into Ride’s whirling soundworld. Anything more substantial would have harshed the buzz. Encouraged to experiment by shoegazing’s chief enabler Alan Moulder, Going Blank Again [7/10] finds the band discovering other ways to whip up a storm beyond simply stepping on their effects pedals. It’s brighter and ultimately less enveloping than Nowhere, although “Leave Them All Behind” and “Twisterella” are shimmering examples of indie pop at its ingenuous best. The nostalgic yearning of closing track “OX4”, named after the band’s home postcode, is doubly poignant given that the band would never scale these heights again. Tensions during the recording of 1994’s drippy retro rock folly Carnival Of Light [5/10] led to Andy Bell demanding that his songs be confined to side two, away from Mark Gardener’s. The album is testament to the fact that Ride were better when operating as a harmonious unit than as individual songwriters. A crunchy version of The Creation’s mod nugget “How Does It Feel To Feel?” is the highlight. Posthumous swansong Tarantula [5/10] isn’t quite as bad as reputed – “Dead Man” is a nifty slice of freakbeat that shows why Oasis eventually came a-knocking for Bell – but it sounds like the work of an assiduous Faces/Stones covers band rather than British rock’s former great white hopes. Gardener contributed just the one song, and walked before its completion. The fact that Ride’s principal players failed to make any great impact as songwriters following the break-up of the band – Gardener has pursued an intermittent solo acoustic career while Bell’s settled for a role as Liam Gallagher’s straightman – underlines the point proved by Carnival Of Light. At their best, Ride were all about collective rapture rather than individual talent. It’s no coincidence that the lysergic footage from their 1992 Brixton Academy show, included with Going Blank Again’s 20th Anniversary Edition, resembles a beatific rave as much as a rock gig. Ride may never have had much to say, but they sure made a glorious racket. EXTRAS: Going Blank Again: 20th Anniversary Edition is the only re-released album to come with any new extras, in the form of a sonically remastered DVD of the band’s 1992 Brixton Academy show, previous released on VHS, as well as a new booklet of unseen photos [8/10]. Sam Richards Q&A Andy Bell On the Brixton Academy footage from 1992 you look like a band at the peak of your powers. Is that how it felt at the time? Yeah. I felt like we did ourselves proud that night. I remember having a big celebration afterwards – me and Loz mucking about in the dressing room, throwing things out of the window. We were on a series of stepping stones up to that point, getting bigger and better all the time. To be completely honest, that was the peak. After that it was all downhill. When you started the band, did you ever expect to be having Top Ten records? The ambition was definitely there. We came out of the indie scene – Creation, Valentines, Spacemen 3 – but then again The Smiths and The Stone Roses were having hits. We always felt that good music can be in the charts – you shouldn’t have to compromise, all you’ve got to do is write good songs that appeal to people. Do you have any regrets about what happened to Ride after Going Blank Again? It did all go pear-shaped for sure, but in a way Carnival Of Light is a bit of a glorious failure. We thought we were making Dark Side Of The Moon but it ended up just being a slightly retro-sounding record in the background while Oasis were taking over. We took a wrong turn. But no regrets, really. It was part of my life and I look back on it philosophically. Why are the chances of the four of you playing together as Ride again? I’d hate to feel like I’d got to the end of my life and it hadn’t happened. We should definitely do it at some point, but I don’t think it’ll be like anyone expects. I’m certainly thinking about getting back into the studio with the Ride guys and having a bit of a play. But that’s somewhere down the line, I think. INTERVIEW: SAM RICHARDS

Shoegazing icons majestic catalogue reissued…

The title of Ride’s second album, twenty years old this March, was the closest they ever came to articulating a mission statement. By calling it Going Blank Again they were wryly acknowledging of the oft-repeated criticism that Ride were a band with nothing to say. It was a neat way of responding: “Yeah – and so what?”

Formed in Oxford in 1989, Ride were among the first generation of British guitar bands not to have witnessed punk’s storming of the cultural Bastille first-hand. Signed to an indie label for aesthetic rather than ethical reasons, they had no desire to smash or subvert the system; Ride were just four nice boys who did what they did, and if anybody else liked it, that was a bonus.

Many did like it, of course. Ride were the first Creation band to crack the Top 40 and represented a shrewd signing by Alan McGee during a period when he was busy shovelling funds the label didn’t have into My Bloody Valentine’s search for the perfect chord and Primal Scream’s search for the perfect high. Ride were dependable and uncontroversial, yet still capable of summoning a majestic cacophony; a clean-cut indie boyband who bolstered their innocent 60s jangle with a formidable sonic assault.

Some of the early EP tracks collected on Smile [6/10] sound a little underfed, but 1990’s debut album Nowhere [8/10] (bolstered here, as with previous reissues, by the addition of the Fall and Today Forever EPs) remains a heady trip. If anything, its wan vocals and docile lyrics that all seem to be about flying, falling or fading – providing plenty of fuel for the “nothing to say” mob – actually serve to ease your ascent into Ride’s whirling soundworld. Anything more substantial would have harshed the buzz.

Encouraged to experiment by shoegazing’s chief enabler Alan Moulder, Going Blank Again [7/10] finds the band discovering other ways to whip up a storm beyond simply stepping on their effects pedals. It’s brighter and ultimately less enveloping than Nowhere, although “Leave Them All Behind” and “Twisterella” are shimmering examples of indie pop at its ingenuous best. The nostalgic yearning of closing track “OX4”, named after the band’s home postcode, is doubly poignant given that the band would never scale these heights again.

Tensions during the recording of 1994’s drippy retro rock folly Carnival Of Light [5/10] led to Andy Bell demanding that his songs be confined to side two, away from Mark Gardener’s. The album is testament to the fact that Ride were better when operating as a harmonious unit than as individual songwriters. A crunchy version of The Creation’s mod nugget “How Does It Feel To Feel?” is the highlight.

Posthumous swansong Tarantula [5/10] isn’t quite as bad as reputed – “Dead Man” is a nifty slice of freakbeat that shows why Oasis eventually came a-knocking for Bell – but it sounds like the work of an assiduous Faces/Stones covers band rather than British rock’s former great white hopes. Gardener contributed just the one song, and walked before its completion.

The fact that Ride’s principal players failed to make any great impact as songwriters following the break-up of the band – Gardener has pursued an intermittent solo acoustic career while Bell’s settled for a role as Liam Gallagher’s straightman – underlines the point proved by Carnival Of Light. At their best, Ride were all about collective rapture rather than individual talent. It’s no coincidence that the lysergic footage from their 1992 Brixton Academy show, included with Going Blank Again’s 20th Anniversary Edition, resembles a beatific rave as much as a rock gig. Ride may never have had much to say, but they sure made a glorious racket.

EXTRAS: Going Blank Again: 20th Anniversary Edition is the only re-released album to come with any new extras, in the form of a sonically remastered DVD of the band’s 1992 Brixton Academy show, previous released on VHS, as well as a new booklet of unseen photos [8/10].

Sam Richards

Q&A

Andy Bell

On the Brixton Academy footage from 1992 you look like a band at the peak of your powers. Is that how it felt at the time?

Yeah. I felt like we did ourselves proud that night. I remember having a big celebration afterwards – me and Loz mucking about in the dressing room, throwing things out of the window. We were on a series of stepping stones up to that point, getting bigger and better all the time. To be completely honest, that was the peak. After that it was all downhill.

When you started the band, did you ever expect to be having Top Ten records?

The ambition was definitely there. We came out of the indie scene – Creation, Valentines, Spacemen 3 – but then again The Smiths and The Stone Roses were having hits. We always felt that good music can be in the charts – you shouldn’t have to compromise, all you’ve got to do is write good songs that appeal to people.

Do you have any regrets about what happened to Ride after Going Blank Again?

It did all go pear-shaped for sure, but in a way Carnival Of Light is a bit of a glorious failure. We thought we were making Dark Side Of The Moon but it ended up just being a slightly retro-sounding record in the background while Oasis were taking over. We took a wrong turn. But no regrets, really. It was part of my life and I look back on it philosophically.

Why are the chances of the four of you playing together as Ride again?

I’d hate to feel like I’d got to the end of my life and it hadn’t happened. We should definitely do it at some point, but I don’t think it’ll be like anyone expects. I’m certainly thinking about getting back into the studio with the Ride guys and having a bit of a play. But that’s somewhere down the line, I think.

INTERVIEW: SAM RICHARDS

Pink Floyd deny Ed Sheeran duet at Olympics closing ceremony

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Pink Floyd deny Ed Sheeran duet at Olympics closing ceremony
Pink Floyd have denied Ed Sheeran's claim that he will duet with the rock legends at the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The "+" singer had been rumoured to be joining The Who at the August 12 ceremony, but told Australian radio station Nova that he will in fact be playing with ...

Pink Floyd have denied Ed Sheeran’s claim that he will duet with the rock legends at the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The “+” singer had been rumoured to be joining The Who at the August 12 ceremony, but told Australian radio station Nova that he will in fact be playing with Pink Floyd.

Asked if he was playing, the singer said: “I’m playing the closing ceremony – which I think is kinda cool right? A lot of people think that I’m doing a song with The Who but I’m not – I’m doing a song with Pink Floyd. I’m doing ‘Wish You Were Here’.”

However, a statement from the band issued shortly afterwards reads: “In response to press speculation, Pink Floyd state that the band is NOT performing at the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.”

The surviving members of Pink Floyd last performed together in 2011 when David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined Roger Waters onstage to play “Outside The Wall” during his headline show at London’s O2 Arena.

The line-up for the closing ceremony, which will celebrate 50 years of British music, is being kept a closely guarded secret, with only The Who, Kaiser Chiefs, Take That, George Michael and Emeli Sande reportedly confirmed so far.

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Arctic Monkeys set to score Top 20 hit with their cover of The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’

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Arctic Monkeys set to score Top 20 hit with their cover of The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’
Arctic Monkeys look set to chart in the Top 20 with their cover of The Beatles' "Come Together" this weekend. The band performed the track at the Olympic Opening Ceremony on Friday (July 27) and are set to take the Number 19 spot in Sunday's (August 5) Official UK Singles Chart, according to the O...

Arctic Monkeys look set to chart in the Top 20 with their cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together” this weekend.

The band performed the track at the Olympic Opening Ceremony on Friday (July 27) and are set to take the Number 19 spot in Sunday’s (August 5) Official UK Singles Chart, according to the Official Charts Company.

Meanwhile, Florence And The Machine look set to lose the Number One spot to Wiley’s “Heatwave”.

The other only high new entry is set to come from Underworld‘s Olympics track ‘Caliban’s Dream’, which is set to land at Number Seven.

In the album chart, Conor Maynard looks set to take the Number One spot, knocking Plan B’s Ill Manors down to Number Two.

The teenage singer’s debut Contrast’ is currently outselling Ben Drew’s new soundtrack and Chase and Status singer Delilah’s solo debut ‘Roots’, which is presently at Number Three.

Emeli Sande and Maroon 5 are set to Number Four and Five respectively, with Mike Oldfield‘s Two Sides: The Very Best Of set to shoot up to Number Six after his appearance at the Olympic opening ceremony.

The Gaslight Anthem are currently just outside the Top 10 at Number 11.

Blur‘s enormous box set, 21, is set to chart at Number 33.

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