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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.

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!

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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Jarvis Cocker, Johnny Marr, Alex Kapranos and Pete Townshend call on Putin to release Pussy Riot

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Jarvis Cocker, Johnny Marr, Alex Kapranos and Pete Townshend call on Putin to release Pussy Riot
Jarvis Cocker, Johnny Marr, Alex Kapranos and Pete Townshend are among a list of musicians who have signed a letter calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release Pussy Riot. The President will arrive in London today to meet with Prime Minister David Cameron, who is expected to raise the t...

Jarvis Cocker, Johnny Marr, Alex Kapranos and Pete Townshend are among a list of musicians who have signed a letter calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release Pussy Riot.

The President will arrive in London today to meet with Prime Minister David Cameron, who is expected to raise the trial of the band members.

Three members of Russian punk collective – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich – have been in detention since March of this year, after they staged a protest gig against Putin’s re-election. They are currently on trial in Moscow, facing up to seven years in jail on hooliganism charges.

Writing in The Times today, a roll call of artists which also includes Kate Nash, the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant, Cornershop, Micachu, and The Joy Formidable condemn the “preposterous” charges against the band. They write:

“We are extremely concerned about the treatment [Pussy Riot] have received since their arrest and during their trial. We feel that a minor breach of the peace for an incident at the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour in Moscow in February was a legitimate protest.”

The musicians add: “Dissent is right in any democracy and it is entirely disproportionate that they face seven years in jail for what we consider a preposterous charge of ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred'”.

At the start of their trial this week, the three women were led into court in handcuffs and locked into a cage of bullet-proof glass. In court, Tolokonnikova said they would not plead guilty, but that did not mean they were not prepared to apologise for the pain their performance in the cathedral had caused.

Earlier this week, other members of the group claimed that Putin is frightened of them. One member, known as Squirrel, said: “Putin is scared of us, can you imagine? Scared of girls. The most important dictator, Putin, is really afraid of people.”

She added: “More specifically, he’s afraid of Pussy Riot. Afraid of a bunch of young, positive, optimistic women unafraid to speak their minds.”

Franx Ferdinand have previously voiced their support for the band at gigs in Moscow along with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The three women were arrested following an impromptu Pussy Riot performance at Moscow’s Christ The Saviour Cathedral, where the band sang a song called “Holy Shit” as a protest against the Orthodox Christian church’s alleged support for Putin. Although Putin regained power in the last Russian election, the verdict has drawn accusations of fraud by his competitors.

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.”

Amnesty International have called for the release of the band members, arguing that they are “prisoners of conscience”.

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Pink Floyd for Olympic Games Closing Ceremony?

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Pink Floyd for Olympic Games Closing Ceremony?

Ed Sheeran has confirmed he will duet with Pink Floyd 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 has now 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'." Sheeran then confirmed that the performance would not feature all the surviving members of Pink Floyd, but said that drummer Nick Mason would definitely be involved. This means that either Roger Waters or Dave Gilmour will not be present for the performance. The surviving members of Pink Floyd last performed together in 2011 when Gilmour and Mason joined 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. 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!

Ed Sheeran has confirmed he will duet with Pink Floyd 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 has now 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‘.”

Sheeran then confirmed that the performance would not feature all the surviving members of Pink Floyd, but said that drummer Nick Mason would definitely be involved. This means that either Roger Waters or Dave Gilmour will not be present for the performance.

The surviving members of Pink Floyd last performed together in 2011 when Gilmour and Mason joined 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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Bjork and David Attenborough team up for music documentary

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Bjork and David Attenborough team up for music documentary
Bjork and legendary broadcaster David Attenborough have teamed up for a music documentary. Attenborough And Bjork: The Nature Of Music looks at the evolution of music, our relationship with music and how technology could impact this relationship in the future. Directed by Louise Hooper, the film ...

Bjork and legendary broadcaster David Attenborough have teamed up for a music documentary.

Attenborough And Bjork: The Nature Of Music looks at the evolution of music, our relationship with music and how technology could impact this relationship in the future.

Directed by Louise Hooper, the film is set to be broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK, reports Hollywood Reporter.

It has been made by Pulse Films – who were also behind the Blur film No Distance Left To Run. The film’s executive producer, Lucas Ochoa, has said of the documentary: “Born from Bjork’s revolutionary music project [2011’s ‘Biophilia’] we are thrilled to be able to document this incredible journey with her; she is undeniably one of the most iconic figures in popular culture and truly pushes boundaries like no other artist does”.

Bjork’s multi-media ‘Biophilia’ project will feature strongly in the film, and Attenborough will show how music exists in the natural world, using footage of the lyre bird, reed warbler and blue whales.

Bjork and Attenborough collaborated last year, as the BBC presenter and naturalist provided an introduction and narration to Bjork’s three-week Manchester International Festival residency, her first UK shows in three years. Bjork declared her admiration for Attenborough since childhood in a Rolling Stone interview, describing him as “my rock star”.

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The Stone Roses to release new studio album in 2013 and play secret gig this week?

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The Stone Roses to release new studio album in 2013 and play secret gig this week?
The Stone Roses are set to release a brand new studio album in 2013, according to tabloid reports this morning (August 2). The Manchester legends, who originally split up in 1996, reunited last year and have taken part in globe trotting reunion tour this year, which has included three sold-out gig...

The Stone Roses are set to release a brand new studio album in 2013, according to tabloid reports this morning (August 2).

The Manchester legends, who originally split up in 1996, reunited last year and have taken part in globe trotting reunion tour this year, which has included three sold-out gigs at Manchester’s Heaton Park and a series of festival headline sets.

When the band reunited they signed a new two-album deal with Universal Records, but have debuted no new material in their live sets so far. However, according to today’s The Sun, they will release a brand new album next year.

A source told the tabloid: “John [Squire] and Ian [Brown] have been sending each other ideas for over a year now. During rehearsals they have tried some new songs and really felt that the old magic was still there with the songwriting. They have decided they will give it another spin with new music next year.”

The report also suggests that the band will play a secret gig later this week for Adidas to help celebrate the Olympic games, though no details on when or where that will take place have emerged as yet.

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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Rolling Stones documentary to air on HBO

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Rolling Stones documentary to air on HBO

A documentary celebrating the Rolling Stones' 50th anniversary is to air on HBO, home of The Sopranos and The Wire, this autumn. In a statement, HBO President of Programming Michael Lombardo said: "This is all done as part of the band's 50th anniversary. This documentary has the full involvement of the four current band members – Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ron – as well as the former band members Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor. We'll follow the band from their early club days through their arrival as the greatest band in the world." Speaking in March to Rolling Stone, director Brett Morgan, best known for The Kid Stays In The Picture, said: "Nobody has put the story together as a narrative. We've been looking under every rock, going through their archives. It will be music never heard before, and I've conducted 50-plus hours of interviews so far. By the time we're done, they will be the most extensive group interviews they've ever done." 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!

A documentary celebrating the Rolling Stones‘ 50th anniversary is to air on HBO, home of The Sopranos and The Wire, this autumn.

In a statement, HBO President of Programming Michael Lombardo said: “This is all done as part of the band’s 50th anniversary. This documentary has the full involvement of the four current band members – Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ron – as well as the former band members Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor. We’ll follow the band from their early club days through their arrival as the greatest band in the world.”

Speaking in March to Rolling Stone, director Brett Morgan, best known for The Kid Stays In The Picture, said: “Nobody has put the story together as a narrative. We’ve been looking under every rock, going through their archives. It will be music never heard before, and I’ve conducted 50-plus hours of interviews so far. By the time we’re done, they will be the most extensive group interviews they’ve ever done.”

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Hear Bob Dylan’s new song, “Early Roman Kings”

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Hear Bob Dylan’s new song, “Early Roman Kings”
Bob Dylan will preview two songs from his new album, Tempest, on the American TV show Strike Back, according to breaking news this morning. We'll get two songs - "Early Roman Kings" and "Scarlet Town". You can "Early Roman Kings" below, on a video of clips from the new series of Strike Back, whil...

Bob Dylan will preview two songs from his new album, Tempest, on the American TV show Strike Back, according to breaking news this morning.

We’ll get two songs – “Early Roman Kings” and “Scarlet Town”. You can “Early Roman Kings” below, on a video of clips from the new series of Strike Back, while “Scarlet Town” will play over the end credits of an episode showing on Friday, August 17 on the Cinemax channel.

Strike Back, it seems, is a globe-trotting action series about a top secret intelligence agency – you might think of Ultimate Force with a higher production budget. But for our purposes, what’s more interesting here is that this is the first time Dylan’s chosen to debut new music via the trailer for a TV show.

Dylan, of course, has a history of releasing songs by this kind of unorthodox method. Thanks to our own Damien Love – an assiduous Dylan spotter – here’s a list of previous instances where a Dylan song, at the time unavailable anywhere else, has appeared in a film or TV.

Dylan’s cover of Dean Martin’s “Return To Me” recorded specifically for the Sopranos soundtrack

“Tell Ol Bill” for the movie North Country

“Cross The Green Mountain” for Gods & Generals

“Huck’s Tune” for the movie Lucky You

“Things Have Changed” for Wonderboys

“Waitin For You” for Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“People Get Ready” for Flashback

“You Belong To Me” Natural Born Killers

Let us know if there’s any others we might have missed!

There’s other, weird Bob TV interactions, too.

You can check out his 1999 cameo in on Dharma And Greg here. My personal favourite, however, is his appearance on Pawn Stars – an American reality TV series about a pawn shop in Las Vegas – where Dylan’s supposedly doorstepped in Vegas and signs a copy of Self Portrait for one of the show’s presenters.

Anyway, here’s the clip for “Early Roman Kings”.

Grateful Dead to release 18-CD ‘Spring 1990’ box set

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Grateful Dead to release 18-CD ‘Spring 1990’ box set
The Grateful Dead are set to release an 18-CD box set on September 1. According to a report on Rolling Stone, the set - released by Rhino in America and available to pre-order at www.dead.net - is limited to 9,000 copies and includes six full concerts, one from each venue on that tour and a 60-page...

The Grateful Dead are set to release an 18-CD box set on September 1.

According to a report on Rolling Stone, the set – released by Rhino in America and available to pre-order at www.dead.net – is limited to 9,000 copies and includes six full concerts, one from each venue on that tour and a 60-page hardcover book.

The shows in Spring 1990 will not be sold individually, but Rhino also has in the works a two-CD compilation of material from the box.

It is not clear whether the Spring 1990 box set will be available in the UK.

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PIC CREDIT: IAN DICKSON/REDFERNS

Bob Dylan unveils his new album, Tempest

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Bob Dylan unveils his new album, Tempest
Bob Dylan has been speaking about his new album, Tempest. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan explained that the album - his 35th studio record - started out as "something more religious," he says. "I just didn't have enough [religious songs]. Intentionally, specifically religious songs is wh...

Bob Dylan has been speaking about his new album, Tempest.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan explained that the album – his 35th studio record – started out as “something more religious,” he says. “I just didn’t have enough [religious songs]. Intentionally, specifically religious songs is what I wanted to do. That takes a lot more concentration to pull that off 10 times with the same thread – than it does with a record like I ended up with.”

The album was recorded in Jackson Browne‘s studio in Los Angeles with Dylan’s touring band – bassist Tony Garnier, drummer George G. Receli, steel guitarist Donnie Herron, and guitarists Charlie Sexton and Stu Kimball – as well as David Hidalgo on guitar, violin and accordion.

The title track is a 14 minute epic about the Titanic disaster, with Dylan drawing from a number of sources including the Carter Family song, “The Titanic”.

“I was just fooling with that one night,” Dylan explains to author Mikal Gilmore. “I liked that melody – I liked it a lot. ‘Maybe I’m gonna appropriate this melody.’ But where would I go with it?”

Dylan also makes reference in the song to James Cameron‘s multi-Oscar winning movie about the disaster, which took place in April, 1912. “Yeah, Leo [DiCaprio],” says Dylan. “I don’t think the song would be the same without him. Or the movie.”

As to whether the title is, as some have suggested, a reference to Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, Dylan was quick to make a distinction, explaining to Rolling Stone: “Shakespeare’s last play was called The Tempest. It wasn’t called just plain Tempest. The name of my record is just plain Tempest. It’s two different titles.”

You can read Uncut editor Allan Jones’ sneak preview of the album here.

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Bruce Springsteen breaks his own longest gig record with four-hour set

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Bruce Springsteen breaks his own longest gig record with four-hour set
Bruce Springsteen passed a whole new milestone last night [July 31] by playing a show that lasted for over four hours. The singer, who was played the final night of his European tour in the Finnish capital city of Helsinki, played a set that lasted for four hours and six minutes in the city's Olymp...

Bruce Springsteen passed a whole new milestone last night [July 31] by playing a show that lasted for over four hours.

The singer, who was played the final night of his European tour in the Finnish capital city of Helsinki, played a set that lasted for four hours and six minutes in the city’s Olympiastadion.

Springsteen’s set lasted for 33 songs and included four covers, John Fogerty‘s “Rockin’ All Over The World”, Southside Johnny’s “I Don’t Want To Go Home”, Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher” and The Isley Brothers’ classic “Twist And Shout”.

All of Springsteen’s sets on this European tour have been lengthy and this 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.

The decision drew criticism from Mayor of London Boris Johnson and prompted consternation on Twitter, with Springsteen’s guitarist Steven Van Zandt leading a chorus of disapproval. He wrote: “Is there just too much fun in the world? We would have been off by 11 if we’d done one more. On a Saturday night! Who were we disturbing?”

Bruce Springsteen begins a US tour next month in support of his latest album Wrecking Ball, which came out earlier this year.

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