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August 2011

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August 2011
16 great tracks, featuring Eddie Cochran, Bo Diddley, Link Wray, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and more Last July, Bob Dylan headlined the Hop Farm festival on the hottest day of the year with perhaps his best UK performance since the great Wembley Arena shows of October 2000. A little shy of 12 mont...

16 great tracks, featuring Eddie Cochran, Bo Diddley, Link Wray, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and more

Last July, Bob Dylan headlined the Hop Farm festival on the hottest day of the year with perhaps his best UK performance since the great Wembley Arena shows of October 2000.

A little shy of 12 months later, and a few weeks after celebrating his 70th birthday, Dylan played the inaugural Feis festival in London’s Finsbury Park on a day of relentless rain. When it wasn’t merely drizzling, it was pouring. Nevertheless, the miserable downpour failed to dampen spirits soon being typically lifted by The Gaslight Anthem’s set of by now well-worn festival favourites, mostly drawn from The ’59 Sound and American Slang. By the end, even people who’d never heard them before were singing along as if they’d been listening to these songs for just about forever, if not a little longer.

With The Cranberries due next on the main stage, it seemed opportune to check out what was happening elsewhere. This involved an arduous trek across the mud to a far corner, where Shane MacGowan was playing in a tent that turned out to be too packed to get into. What I could hear from the back of a noisy throng sounded like a happy shambles, with Shane barely decipherable above a din the crowd inside the tent clearly couldn’t get enough of. Shane’s bedraggled, toothless appearance seemed to put the wind up a few of the photographers I spoke to who were astonished he’d made it through his set without falling over, but he remains uncommonly loved.

It’s 9.15 when Dylan punctually appears, dapper and keen to get on with things, which he does with a sprightly

DAVE ALVIN – ELEVEN ELEVEN

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DAVE ALVIN – ELEVEN ELEVEN

The heart beats a little faster at the thought of The Blasters in their prime, that brief moment when they were by some distance the flat-out most exciting rock’n’roll band a lot of us have ever seen. Dave Alvin was their incendiary lead guitarist and songwriter, his vocalist brother Phil, who formed the band with Dave in the blue-collar East Los Angeles suburb of Downey, their grandstanding front man. The chemistry between them was often as dangerously volatile as their music – a sensational mix of blues, rockabilly, R’n’B and rock’n’roll – and their increasingly fractious relationship meant the band’s career was incredibly lively when it lasted, but woefully short-lived. They did as much as, say, REM, The Replacements and Hüsker Dü to revitalise American music in the early ’80s. They split, though, in 1985, after just four albums. For a while after he quit his own band, Alvin played guitar with X, hooked up briefly with The Gun Club and recorded some still-unreleased sessions with Bob Dylan before making his solo debut with 1987’s admittedly tentative Romeo’s Escape (re-titled Every Night About This Time in the UK). He really hit his stride, however, with 1994’s King Of America and the mostly acoustic folk-blues of 1998’s Blackjack David, for which he should probably have won the Grammy he got for 2000’s Public Domain: Songs From The Wild Land, which drew on a rich heritage of traditional American music in a manner that anticipated Springsteen’s 2006 album The Seeger Sessions. Eleven Eleven is Alvin’s first album of original new material since Ashgrove, seven years ago, and mixes to great effect the rowdy road-house blues of his work with regular touring band The Guilty Men and the more poised and reflective Blackjack David, revisiting along the way many of the themes he’s remained constant to over the years. “The songs are all about life, love, death, loss, money, justice, labour, faith, doubt, family and friendship. The usual stuff,” he says of Eleven Eleven, which unfolds like a series of road movies, vivid vignettes, episodes from distressed lives, real and imagined. Among the former is a song called “Johnny Ace Is Dead”, a dramatic re-telling of the death of the eponymous young R’n’B singer, who drunkenly put a bullet in his own head, backstage at Houston’s City Auditorium on Christmas Night, 1954 – an event also evoked on Paul Simon’s “The Late Great Johnny Ace” from his 1983 album, Hearts And Bones. “Murrieta’s Head” is another song here based on fact, in this instance the story of Joaquin Murrieta – a rebel idol to the hard-pressed Mexican communities of 1850s’ California, a savage bandit according to the state’s legislature who put a bounty on his head and unleashed a small army against him. Bob Frank and John Murry told the same tale on “Joaquin Muriette, 1853”, from their 2007 album of murder ballads, World Without End, casting him in their version as a beleaguered hero, oppressed, brutalised, hounded down and butchered by grim authority. In his own simmering version, Alvin approaches the story from the compromised perspective of one of Murrieta’s executioners, a poor white farmer who needs the bounty to pay off his debts, save his farm and keep his family together even if it costs someone else their life, the song’s bitter fatalism angrily expressed by Alvin’s scorching guitar. The characters we meet in many of the album’s other fine songs are just as vividly rendered. They include the weary road dog drifter of “Harlan County Line”, a swaggering blues written for the TV series Justified, in which Alvin recently made a guest appearance; the ruined boxer in the Bo Diddley-fuelled “Run Conejo Run” and the ageing union man in “Gary, Indiana 1959”. The latter, incidentally, features great barrel-house piano from former Blasters’ pianist Gene Taylor, back in the studio with Alvin for the first time since 1985. Eleven Eleven also reunites Dave with brother Phil, now a professor in mathematical semantics, on the very funny “What’s Up With Your Brother?” – a question asked of each of the Alvins down the years by Blasters fans fascinated by the rivalry between them that drove the band into a ditch. It ends up, hilariously, in squabbling. Best of all, perhaps, are two songs that recall the melancholic drift of Blackjack David and songs on it like “Evening Blues” and “California Snow”. The first is the beautifully wrought “Black Rose Of Texas”, in which the song’s narrator reflects on the lonely death of a former lover. “No Worries Mija”, meanwhile, is a first-person border ballad set to lilting cantina accordion, in which the singer reassures his young wife that he’ll be back in no time from the job he’s doing as a favour for a friend – a drugs run, driving a getaway car, something dangerous anyway. The song’s sombre lilt, however, anticipates a less than happy ending, everything going wrong and his shoes filling with blood. Brilliant stuff. Allan Jones

The heart beats a little faster at the thought of The Blasters in their prime, that brief moment when they were by some distance the flat-out most exciting rock’n’roll band a lot of us have ever seen.

Dave Alvin was their incendiary lead guitarist and songwriter, his vocalist brother Phil, who formed the band with Dave in the blue-collar East Los Angeles suburb of Downey, their grandstanding front man. The chemistry between them was often as dangerously volatile as their music – a sensational mix of blues, rockabilly, R’n’B and rock’n’roll – and their increasingly fractious relationship meant the band’s career was incredibly lively when it lasted, but woefully short-lived. They did as much as, say, REM, The Replacements and Hüsker Dü to revitalise American music in the early ’80s. They split, though, in 1985, after just four albums.

For a while after he quit his own band, Alvin played guitar with X, hooked up briefly with The Gun Club and recorded some still-unreleased sessions with Bob Dylan before making his solo debut with 1987’s admittedly tentative Romeo’s Escape (re-titled Every Night About This Time in the UK). He really hit his stride, however, with 1994’s King Of America and the mostly acoustic folk-blues of 1998’s Blackjack David, for which he should probably have won the Grammy he got for 2000’s Public Domain: Songs From The Wild Land, which drew on a rich heritage of traditional American music in a manner that anticipated Springsteen’s 2006 album The Seeger Sessions.

Eleven Eleven is Alvin’s first album of original new material since Ashgrove, seven years ago, and mixes to great effect the rowdy road-house blues of his work with regular touring band The Guilty Men and the more poised and reflective Blackjack David, revisiting along the way many of the themes he’s remained constant to over the years. “The songs are all about life, love, death, loss, money, justice, labour, faith, doubt, family and friendship. The usual stuff,” he says of Eleven Eleven, which unfolds like a series of road movies, vivid vignettes, episodes from distressed lives, real and imagined. Among the former is a song called “Johnny Ace Is Dead”, a dramatic re-telling of the death of the eponymous young R’n’B singer, who drunkenly put a bullet in his own head, backstage at Houston’s City Auditorium on Christmas Night, 1954 – an event also evoked on Paul Simon’s “The Late Great Johnny Ace” from his 1983 album, Hearts And Bones.

“Murrieta’s Head” is another song here based on fact, in this instance the story of Joaquin Murrieta – a rebel idol to the hard-pressed Mexican communities of 1850s’ California, a savage bandit according to the state’s legislature who put a bounty on his head and unleashed a small army against him. Bob Frank and John Murry told the same tale on “Joaquin Muriette, 1853”, from their 2007 album of murder ballads, World Without End, casting him in their version as a beleaguered hero, oppressed, brutalised, hounded down and butchered by grim authority. In his own simmering version, Alvin approaches the story from the compromised perspective of one of Murrieta’s executioners, a poor white farmer who needs the bounty to pay off his debts, save his farm and keep his family together even if it costs someone else their life, the song’s bitter fatalism angrily expressed by Alvin’s scorching guitar.

The characters we meet in many of the album’s other fine songs are just as vividly rendered. They include the weary road dog drifter of “Harlan County Line”, a swaggering blues written for the TV series Justified, in which Alvin recently made a guest appearance; the ruined boxer in the Bo Diddley-fuelled “Run Conejo Run” and the ageing union man in “Gary, Indiana 1959”. The latter, incidentally, features great barrel-house piano from former Blasters’ pianist Gene Taylor, back in the studio with Alvin for the first time since 1985. Eleven Eleven also reunites Dave with brother Phil, now a professor in mathematical semantics, on the very funny “What’s Up With Your Brother?” – a question asked of each of the Alvins down the years by Blasters fans fascinated by the rivalry between them that drove the band into a ditch. It ends up, hilariously, in squabbling.

Best of all, perhaps, are two songs that recall the melancholic drift of Blackjack David and songs on it like “Evening Blues” and “California Snow”. The first is the beautifully wrought “Black Rose Of Texas”, in which the song’s narrator reflects on the lonely death of a former lover. “No Worries Mija”, meanwhile, is a first-person border ballad set to lilting cantina accordion, in which the singer reassures his young wife that he’ll be back in no time from the job he’s doing as a favour for a friend – a drugs run, driving a getaway car, something dangerous anyway. The song’s sombre lilt, however, anticipates a less than happy ending, everything going wrong and his shoes filling with blood. Brilliant stuff.

Allan Jones

TREE OF LIFE

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TREE OF LIFE
Directed by Terrence Malick Starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain The long-awaited new film by Terrence Malick is the most outright love-it-or-hate-it phenomenon to emerge from a major American director in living memory. Although it was awarded this year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Fi...

Directed by Terrence Malick

Starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain

The long-awaited new film by Terrence Malick is the most outright love-it-or-hate-it phenomenon to emerge from a major American director in living memory. Although it was awarded this year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Malick’s The Tree Of Life is a polarising experience all the same. While it’s hard not to be bowled over by its immense ambition, it’s difficult to connect with a film that’s so unambiguously religious. As to whether or not it works, that’s like asking whether Chartres cathedral works. You really have to acknowledge its scale and significance and start from there.

At its simplest, The Tree Of Life is about an American family, the O’Briens, from the middle of the 20th century to the present day, and how the dramatic events of the past can still cause aftershocks decades on. Sean Penn, in a pivotal though slight role, appears as a successful businessman, Jack, who finds himself remembering his childhood in the family home in smalltown Texas, with Mr O’Brien (Brad Pitt), Mrs O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) and his two brothers. Very early in this fragmented, hyper-sketchy narrative, Mom receives word that one of their sons has died – presumably in Vietnam, though it’s never made clear. As Malick jumps around in his chronology, we find out more about the O’Briens’ life, a mixture of everyday joys and sorrows – the latter caused partly by Mr O’Brien’s brusque, authoritarian manners.

In fact, if Mr O’Brien represents the earthbound tendency in the family, Mrs O’Brien embodies humanity’s connection with grace – so much so that, in one shot, she’s seen levitating. Meanwhile, Malick represents the ineffable mystery of creation in a grandiose – sometimes dazzling, sometimes bewildering – stream of imagery. He takes us into volcanoes, under oceans, even to primeval beaches and forests where a plesiosaur faces its predator. At times, this resembles nothing less than an insane mash-up of Jurassic Park and Norman Rockwell. Then there are repeated glimpses of a trembling sheaf of light that, if you were so inclined, you might think of as the spark of Creation – or perhaps some sub-atomic phenomenon. One thing you can say about The Tree Of Life is that it makes a bold attempt to reconcile religious imagery with the demands of hard science.

Brad Pitt anchors the film as the loving, but often terrifying paterfamilias. O’Brien is a complex character – he’s a devout man, yet he aspires to wealth. An engineer who invests the family’s savings in patents, he’s also a failed musician. He is a man filled with frustrations and contradictions. Jessica Chastain’s character, however, is too transparently airy to transcend her status as the eternal material archetype. Penn, on the other hand, wanders in and out looking careworn as he contemplates monumental urban architecture – dehumanised hell on Earth, or the modern incarnation of the ageless symbolic Tree that’s glimpsed throughout? Penn is also at the centre of the film’s most questionable dream imagery, which suggests that when you go to heaven you get to hug everyone you ever knew. On a beach.

At its least convincing, Malick’s film is an overblown philosophical folly. But few mainstream films are so ambitious, so downright symphonic in their scale – not to mention so defiantly anti-narrative. There’s certainly something uncomfortably overbearing about the film’s constant need to declaim “Behold – the Miracle of Creation!” The result can feel like an evangelical sermon on an IMAX scale. For better or worse, though, The Tree Of Life pushes American cinema into regions uncharted since Stanley Kubrick’s heyday.

Jonathan Romney

WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE – FIELD SONGS

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WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE – FIELD SONGS

The photograph on the cover of William Elliott Whitmore’s fifth album speaks volumes about what lies within. A simple sepia shot of an overloaded hay cart with two farm workers perched on top, it encapsulates the essence of Whitmore’s stark milieu: man’s relationship with the land, the rigours of hard labour, the basic reward of “three square meals and a living wage”. It could have been taken 80 years ago or last week, just as the hard times detailed in one of several stand-out tracks, “Get There From Here”, could be those of 1931 or 2011. Whitmore was raised and still lives on his grandparent’s 160-acre horse farm, situated on the banks of the Mississippi in the south-eastern corner of Iowa. These facts are essential rather than extracurricular. Ground down to little more than banjo, unadorned acoustic guitar and foot stomps, his music is profoundly redolent of America’s agricultural heartland, while his voice summons up the ghost of some atavistic gospel shouter. Signed to Southern in 2003, Whitmore’s first three records, Hymns For The Hopeless, Ashes To Dust and Song Of The Blackbird, formed a trilogy of sorts. Hard and weathered as the black Iowan soil, the mix of folk, blues and gospel initially seemed a million miles from his origins playing at punk shows in Iowa City. Then again, perhaps not. In its unsparing desire to cut directly to the heart of the matter, his music walked the wire connecting Ralph Stanley to Minor Threat. Given Whitmore’s ultra-minimalist aesthetic, the addition of cello, keyboards and backing vocals on 2009’s Animals In The Dark felt like a seismic shift. Lyrically, too, the focus widened, several songs railing against the political machinations of the Bush era. Field Songs backs away from such matters. As its title implies, it returns unequivocally to the earth. Entirely self-played, Field Songs thrums with the sounds of rural life. Cocks crow, birds cheep, water flows and bees buzz, while Whitmore seeks transcendence through simplicity. On “Don’t Need It” he renounces everything except his own iron will; as if to prove the point, the song is stripped to just a thudding heartbeat rhythm and skeletal banjo. Much of the imagery in his lyrics is deathly, borrowed from old blues and gospel. We might find Whitmore “rowing to the other shore”, or laying down his earthy load in the bleak blues of “Bury Your Burdens In The Ground”. The loss of both parents in his teens is revisited on “We’ll Carry On”, where Whitmore addresses the departed and finds solace in memory and nature’s resilience: “The birds are still singing”. Similarly, on “Everything Gets Gone” he measures the precarious nature of his own fleeting existence against the trees, hills and rivers that surround him. Elsewhere he gazes far beyond his farm fence. “Let’s Do Something Impossible” is a rousing call to arms which finds inspiration in history’s heroic acts of opposition, from the French Resistance to Custer’s vanquishing at Little Bighorn. “Field Song”, meanwhile, has more than a hint of Springsteen’s widescreen grandeur. Telling an alternative history of agricultural America, it follows the original pioneers out west, tracing their progress through the rigorous decades of factory-farming and barn-burning. If the sense of hard-won victory here is palpable, the closing “Not Feeling Any Pain” feels more like a valediction. Seeds die, crops fail, the rains don’t come, even death – that hard arbiter – won’t answer the call, yet Whitmore “toasts the setting sun” and rages joyously against the eternal struggle, ultimately finding reassurance in the fact that we’re forever at the mercy of nature’s whims. For what keeps Field Songs on the right side of unyielding darkness, what keeps it ringing with an affirming note of beauty, is the certain knowledge that however black it gets, “the sun’s about to rise”. Graeme Thomson

The photograph on the cover of William Elliott Whitmore’s fifth album speaks volumes about what lies within. A simple sepia shot of an overloaded hay cart with two farm workers perched on top, it encapsulates the essence of Whitmore’s stark milieu: man’s relationship with the land, the rigours of hard labour, the basic reward of “three square meals and a living wage”. It could have been taken 80 years ago or last week, just as the hard times detailed in one of several stand-out tracks, “Get There From Here”, could be those of 1931 or 2011.

Whitmore was raised and still lives on his grandparent’s 160-acre horse farm, situated on the banks of the Mississippi in the south-eastern corner of Iowa. These facts are essential rather than extracurricular. Ground down to little more than banjo, unadorned acoustic guitar and foot stomps, his music is profoundly redolent of America’s agricultural heartland, while his voice summons up the ghost of some atavistic gospel shouter.

Signed to Southern in 2003, Whitmore’s first three records, Hymns For The Hopeless, Ashes To Dust and Song Of The Blackbird, formed a trilogy of sorts. Hard and weathered as the black Iowan soil, the mix of folk, blues and gospel initially seemed a million miles from his origins playing at punk shows in Iowa City. Then again, perhaps not. In its unsparing desire to cut directly to the heart of the matter, his music walked the wire connecting Ralph Stanley to Minor Threat.

Given Whitmore’s ultra-minimalist aesthetic, the addition of cello, keyboards and backing vocals on 2009’s Animals In The Dark felt like a seismic shift. Lyrically, too, the focus widened, several songs railing against the political machinations of the Bush era. Field Songs backs away from such matters. As its title implies, it returns unequivocally to the earth. Entirely self-played, Field Songs thrums with the sounds of rural life. Cocks crow, birds cheep, water flows and bees buzz, while Whitmore seeks transcendence through simplicity. On “Don’t Need It” he renounces everything except his own iron will; as if to prove the point, the song is stripped to just a thudding heartbeat rhythm and skeletal banjo.

Much of the imagery in his lyrics is deathly, borrowed from old blues and gospel. We might find Whitmore “rowing to the other shore”, or laying down his earthy load in the bleak blues of “Bury Your Burdens In The Ground”. The loss of both parents in his teens is revisited on “We’ll Carry On”, where Whitmore addresses the departed and finds solace in memory and nature’s resilience: “The birds are still singing”. Similarly, on “Everything Gets Gone” he measures the precarious nature of his own fleeting existence against the trees, hills and rivers that surround him.

Elsewhere he gazes far beyond his farm fence. “Let’s Do Something Impossible” is a rousing call to arms which finds inspiration in history’s heroic acts of opposition, from the French Resistance to Custer’s vanquishing at Little Bighorn. “Field Song”, meanwhile, has more than a hint of Springsteen’s widescreen grandeur. Telling an alternative history of agricultural America, it follows the original pioneers out west, tracing their progress through the rigorous decades of factory-farming and barn-burning.

If the sense of hard-won victory here is palpable, the closing “Not Feeling Any Pain” feels more like a valediction. Seeds die, crops fail, the rains don’t come, even death – that hard arbiter – won’t answer the call, yet Whitmore “toasts the setting sun” and rages joyously against the eternal struggle, ultimately finding reassurance in the fact that we’re forever at the mercy of nature’s whims. For what keeps Field Songs on the right side of unyielding darkness, what keeps it ringing with an affirming note of beauty, is the certain knowledge that however black it gets, “the sun’s about to rise”.

Graeme Thomson

Red Hot Chili Peppers: ‘Our career has been a series of deaths and rebirths’

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Red Hot Chili Peppers: ‘Our career has been a series of deaths and rebirths’
Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea has spoken about their new album and the change in direction from the band, brought on by John Frusciante's departure. Speaking to Stereogum about their imminent release, Flea said, "The number one difference is John Frusciante left the band, and he was a huge par...

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea has spoken about their new album and the change in direction from the band, brought on by John Frusciante‘s departure.

Speaking to Stereogum about their imminent release, Flea said, “The number one difference is John Frusciante left the band, and he was a huge part of our creative process for a long time. I’m so grateful for him.

“He just gave us so much as a songwriter, as a player, as a human being, and just his relationship to music, which is such a beautiful and pure and powerful one.”

Frusciante left the band in 2009. He has since worked on music with The Mars Volta and Wu Tang Clan as well as his own duo, Speed Dealer Moms.

Flea, real name Michael Balzary, said of the Chili Peppers, “Those changes are really big for us, you know, aesthetically and emotionally and spiritually.

“It’s a much different thing, our career has been a series of lives and deaths and rebirths. It’s just like a very meaningful and rejuvenating rebirth for us.”

‘I’m With You’, the Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ 10th album, is due for release on August 30.

The band will headline the Summer Sonic Festival in Japan in August.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Paul McCartney: ‘I was told to retire when I reached 50’

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Paul McCartney: ‘I was told to retire when I reached 50’
Paul McCartney has said he was advised to retire when he reached 50. The former Beatle, whose solo career is still going strong at 69, said his former manager suggested he call time on his career but the singer refused. "One of my old guys who I used to have as my manager, I was knocking 50 and he...

Paul McCartney has said he was advised to retire when he reached 50.

The former Beatle, whose solo career is still going strong at 69, said his former manager suggested he call time on his career but the singer refused.

“One of my old guys who I used to have as my manager, I was knocking 50 and he said ‘I think it’s time you retired’,” McCartney told Mojo. “I thought, I know what you mean, but I don’t really feel like it, you know.”

“And if I’m really enjoying this, why retire? So I decided against it, and got rid of him,” he added. “I wonder what he thinks today. Perhaps that he was right, but hopefully not.”

Since then he has continued to enjoy a successful career releasing 11 further albums and famously headlining Glastonbury in 2004.

McCartney also said he has no plans to retire soon and that he doesn’t see his music career as work.

“People say to me ‘you work so hard’. We don’t work hard, we play music – we don’t work music,” he added. “It sounds simplistic but it’s really true. It’s not like going into an office.”

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Arcade Fire play biggest ever UK show at London’s Hyde Park

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Arcade Fire play biggest ever UK show at London’s Hyde Park
Arcade Fire headlined their biggest UK show ever at London's Hyde Park tonight (June 30). The Montreal band played a host of tracks from all three of their albums plus new track 'Speaking In Tongues', which features on the repackaged version of their 2010 LP 'The Suburbs'. Although ex-Talking Hea...

Arcade Fire headlined their biggest UK show ever at London‘s Hyde Park tonight (June 30).

The Montreal band played a host of tracks from all three of their albums plus new track ‘Speaking In Tongues’, which features on the repackaged version of their 2010 LP ‘The Suburbs’.

Although ex-Talking Heads singer David Byrne features on the studio performance of the track, he didn’t make a surprise appearance tonight. Instead support act Owen Pallett stepped in to help out on violin.

It was only the song’s second appearance after a recent show in France. “That was the least time we’ve been scared doing a song, we’ve only really played in rehearsal to 60,000 people, so thank you so much,” Butler said after it was warmly received.

The band arrived onstage to a huge cinema billboard backdrop and a giant screen which projected old cinema ads and clips from the band’s short film ‘Scenes From The Suburbs’ before they kicked off with ‘Ready To Start’.

Singer Win Butler then took the 60,000 crowd by surprise early on when he declared: “I can’t tell you how happy we are to be here. This a song we normally do later in the set but I want to fucking do it now.” The band then launched into ‘Wake Up’ to huge cheers.

Before starting ‘The Suburbs’ he made a joke about the warm weather and before later taking a pop at the local residents while he was mid-song on ‘Month Of May’. “You know all the rich people who live around this park, every year they try to buy up the rights so you can’t make a little noise,” he said referring to the venue’s strict time curfew.

He took a further dig during ‘Neighborhood #2 (Laika)’, adding: “The neighbourhood is asking if you can keep it down a little bit.”

The band went on to wrap up their show with ‘Keep The Car Running’, ‘Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)’ and ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’.

As they left the stage, Butler told the crowd it could be a while before Arcade Fire return to the UK. “Goodbye London, we’ll see you in a couple years,” he added.

Arcade Fire played:

‘Ready To Start’

‘Wake Up’

‘No Cars Go’

‘Haïti’

‘Intervention’

‘Rococo’

‘Speaking In Tongues’

‘Crown Of Love’

‘The Suburbs’

‘Month Of May’

‘Rebellion (Lies)’

‘Neighborhood #2 (Laika)’

‘We Used To Wait’

‘Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)’

‘Keep The Car Running’

‘Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)’

‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’

Earlier Mumford & Sons played their last performance in the capital before they head into the studio to record their second album.

They performed a series of new tracks including ‘Below My Feet’, ‘Lover Of The Light’ and ‘Lover’s Eyes’ alongside more well-known hits such as ‘Little Lion Man’.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

The 25th Uncut Playlist Of 2011

John Mulvey
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I suspect there may be one or two things on this list that you’ll be asking questions about, though bear with me a little: I’m playing Number 11 for the first time as I type… 1 Basement Jaxx Vs Metropole Orkest - Basement Jaxx Vs Metropole Orkest (Atlantic Jaxx) 2 Sun Araw – Ancient Romans (Drag City) 3 PG Six – Starry Mind (Drag City) 4 St Vincent – Strange Mercy (4AD) 5 Glenn Jones – The Wanting (Thrill Jockey) 6 Fairport Convention – Full House (Island) 7 Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know (Virgin) 8 Wilco – I Might (dBpm) 9 Bjõrk – Crystalline (One Little Indian) 10 Carlos Paredes – Guitarra Portuguesa (Drag City) 11 Wilco – The Whole Love (dBpm)

I suspect there may be one or two things on this list that you’ll be asking questions about, though bear with me a little: I’m playing Number 11 for the first time as I type…

Continue

Arcade Fire promise a ‘great show’ at London’s Hyde Park

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Arcade Fire promise a ‘great show’ at London’s Hyde Park
Arcade Fire's Win Butler has admitted that it is hard work writing, recording and touring as part of the band. In a new interview with Q Magazine, the band have also promised to deliver a "great show" when they headline London's Hyde Park on Thursday (June 30). Asked about how seriously Arcade F...

Arcade Fire‘s Win Butler has admitted that it is hard work writing, recording and touring as part of the band.

In a new interview with Q Magazine, the band have also promised to deliver a “great show” when they headline London‘s Hyde Park on Thursday (June 30).

Asked about how seriously Arcade Fire take recording and touring, Butler replied: “Every record, there’s been some point where we’ve looked at each other and gone, ‘What are we doing? This is so hard’. Because it is. It’s just hard. Making anything properly is really hard.”

The frontman also spoke about what fans can expect from their performance at Hyde Park, Win Butler replied: “It should be a great show. We’re just going to do what Arcade Fire do best. Just get out there and play some rock n’roll.”

Arcade Fire have also revealed the stage times for their Hyde Park show, which are as follows:

The Vaccines: 16:40 – 17:10

Beirut: 17:30 – 18:30

Mumford & Sons: 19:00 – 20:10

Arcade Fire: 20:45 – 22:15

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Morrissey slammed by drummer for performing Smiths’ songs at Glastonbury

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Morrissey slammed by drummer for performing Smiths’ songs at Glastonbury

Former Smiths sticksman Mike Joyce has criticised Morrissey for singing the band's songs at Glastonbury. The drummer took to his Twitter page Twitter.com/mikejoycedrums immediately after the show last Friday (June 24) to make his feelings known. "Great performance from M at Glasto but didn't like the cover versions," he wrote. "M was in the group...but not in the band, those tunes belong to them. The 'band'were the musicians in The Smiths... Mozzer wasn't in the 'band' M was the singer/lyricist in the group." Joyce later backtracked for branding his renditions "cover versions" and added that he "just didn't enjoy The Smiths songs". Morrissey played five of his former band's tracks during his performance, including 'This Charming Man' and 'Meat Is Murder'. During his slot on the Pyramid Stage the singer also took a pop at U2 and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk. Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Former Smiths sticksman Mike Joyce has criticised Morrissey for singing the band’s songs at Glastonbury.

The drummer took to his Twitter page Twitter.com/mikejoycedrums immediately after the show last Friday (June 24) to make his feelings known.

“Great performance from M at Glasto but didn’t like the cover versions,” he wrote. “M was in the group…but not in the band, those tunes belong to them. The ‘band’were the musicians in The Smiths… Mozzer wasn’t in the ‘band’ M was the singer/lyricist in the group.”

Joyce later backtracked for branding his renditions “cover versions” and added that he “just didn’t enjoy The Smiths songs”.

Morrissey played five of his former band’s tracks during his performance, including ‘This Charming Man’ and ‘Meat Is Murder’.

During his slot on the Pyramid Stage the singer also took a pop at U2 and UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

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Tom Petty threatens Republican congresswoman with legal action

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Tom Petty threatens Republican congresswoman with legal action
Tom Petty has threatened Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann with legal action after she used his 1977 single 'American Girl' without his permission. According to Rolling Stone, Bachmann, who is intending to stand as a candidate for the presidency in 2012, used 'American Girl' as the exit m...

Tom Petty has threatened Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann with legal action after she used his 1977 single ‘American Girl’ without his permission.

According to Rolling Stone, Bachmann, who is intending to stand as a candidate for the presidency in 2012, used ‘American Girl’ as the exit music at the launch of her campaign earlier this week. However, as soon as Petty was informed of this, he instructed his lawyer to issue a cease and desist letter.

Bachmann, who was recently heavily criticized after she confused actor John Wayne with serial killer John Wayne Gacy in a speech, represents Michigan in US Congress and hopes to secure the Republican nomination in the 2012 race for the White House.

This is the second time in recent years Petty has criticized a Republican presidential candidate for using his music.

In 2000, he issued a similar threat to George W.Bush, who had been using his song ‘I Won’t Back Down’ at campaign rallies. Bush agreed to stop after being informed of Petty‘s displeasure.

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Colin Meloy on Gillian Welch

John Mulvey
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The new issue of Uncut is out sometime this week, and among many other things it contains an interview I did a few weeks back with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings in Nashville. As part of my preparation, I contacted Colin Meloy of The Decemberists to talk about Welch and her music; here are his answers in full, as a kind of prelude to the feature. Meloy's comment about how “their love of simplicity and clarity comes from a kind of insanely finicky place,” is especially perceptive, and turned out to be a key theme in the piece, I think. Thanks for all your comments on “The Harrow And The Harvest” blog, by the way. As more of you finally get to hear the album, please let me know what you think, not least about how it fits into the Welch/Rawlings canon… When did you first become aware of Gillian's music? I was introduced to Gillian at Rockin' Rudy's, a very fine record store in Missoula, MT. I think a friend turned me on to her first record right after it came out. I was immediately smitten. It happens that I also spent the summer of '97 working in the vineyards of the Willamette Valley in Oregon and the song "One More Dollar" felt particularly auspicious. How did she come to be involved with your record? Tucker Martine and I were wanting to create a kind of vibe that we had always loved in old country records - the idea of pairing a male and female vocal really hot in the mix, like every song was a duet. I'd always loved Neil Young's record, Comes A Time, and was really taken by the fact that the late, great Nicolette Larson sang on nearly every song, lending a tone and tenor to the record that just wouldn't exist without her voice. We wanted to do something similar with The King Is Dead. Can you describe her input to The King Is Dead? She and Tucker worked very closely for a few days in LA, sending rough mixes of all their passes to me via e-mail. When it comes down to it, harmony can be a very personal, subjective thing. Even though it might seem like a simple sort of prospect, I've found that everybody brings their own form and sensibility to it. Gillian and Dave have such a natural talent for finding the most compelling harmony vocal that we ended up giving very little feedback - they just took it and ran with it. How does she work as a collaborator? When an artist doesn't make a record for eight years, it's usually critical shorthand to describe them as in some way 'reclusive'. But as a collaborator, she's been highly visible throughout that period. Do you have any insights as to why that might be? Gill and Dave very clearly work in a completely different way than many people I know. I get the feeling for all their love of simplicity and clarity comes from a kind of insanely finicky place. Which is funny; so many of her songs feel so off the cuff, so underthought. But there's a lot of thinking that goes on, I think, to get to that place. Why do you think her music's appeal seems to transcend the usual roots/Americana boundaries? I find it fascinating that, besides The Decemberists, her recent guest appearances were on Tom Jones and Jerry Lee Lewis albums; it's quite a span. Like all great artists and musicians, she and Dave, as far as I can tell, are just great lovers of music -- of all sorts. Their collective voice tends toward the Americana/country side of things, but their hearts don't necessarily hew to just one thing. And it all makes perfect sense to me -- they are the bridge between Robyn Hitchcock and the Louvin Brothers. And if you think about it, that bridge isn't necessarily that long. What is it about her voice, her songs, her persona, her character, that's so appealing to you? You get the sense that there's, like, a direct channel between her heart and her lips. I don't think the girl has an oesophagus; she's got a some kind of weird, fleshy soul-conduit.

The new issue of Uncut is out sometime this week, and among many other things it contains an interview I did a few weeks back with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings in Nashville.

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Throwing Muses set to release ‘best of’ compilation

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Throwing Muses set to release ‘best of’ compilation
Throwing Muses are set to release a 'best of' and B-sides/rarities compilation on September 5. The album, which is titled 'Anthology', features 43 tracks taken from across the band's career, and is being released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their debut LP 'Untitled', which came out in 1986...

Throwing Muses are set to release a ‘best of’ and B-sides/rarities compilation on September 5.

The album, which is titled ‘Anthology’, features 43 tracks taken from across the band’s career, and is being released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their debut LP ‘Untitled’, which came out in 1986.

The band, who feature singer Kristin Hersh among their line-up, have released eight studio albums in their career thus far.

‘Anthology’ is split into two discs, one features the band’s more popular tracks and the second contains B-sides and rarities. The compilation will also be accompanied by a 28-page hardcover book.

The tracklisting for ‘Anthology’ is as follows:

Disc one

‘Garoux Des Larmes’

‘Finished’

‘A Feeling’

‘Marriage Tree’

‘Fish’

‘Hate My Way’

‘No Way In Hell’

‘Colder’

‘Tar Kissers’

‘Mr Bones’

‘Limbo’

‘Summer St.’

‘Furious’

‘Bright Yellow Gun’

‘Pretty Or Not’

‘Flying’

‘You Cage’

‘Two Step’

‘Vicky’s Box’

‘Mania’

‘Cry Baby Cry’

Disc two

‘Hillbilly’

‘Same Sun’

‘Amazing Grace’

‘Cottonmouth’

‘Cry Baby Cry’

‘Manic Depression’

‘Snailhead’

‘City Of The Dead’

‘Jak’

‘Ride Into The Sun’

‘Handsome Woman’

‘Like A Dog’

‘Crayon Sun’

‘Red Eyes’

‘Tar Moochers’

‘Serene Swing’

‘Limbobo’

‘If’

‘Heel Toe’

‘Take (Live)’

‘Finished (Live)’

‘Back Road (Matter of Degrees)’

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The Who’s Roger Daltrey: ‘I got very, very seriously ill touring’

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The Who’s Roger Daltrey: ‘I got very, very seriously ill touring’
The Who's frontman Roger Daltrey has revealed that the band's touring schedule has in the past left him feeling "seriously ill". The singer, who recently revealed that he had an operation to remove a pre-cancerous growth on one of his vocal cords, claims that his health really suffers when he is on...

The Who‘s frontman Roger Daltrey has revealed that the band’s touring schedule has in the past left him feeling “seriously ill”.

The singer, who recently revealed that he had an operation to remove a pre-cancerous growth on one of his vocal cords, claims that his health really suffers when he is on the road.

“I was having terrible trouble hearing what I was singing and it did get to me,” he said. “In fact, I’ve been suffering for quite a few of the previous tours. I never understood that if you sweat as much as I used to every night, you drain your body of salts.”

He added: “So I got very, very, seriously ill. I got to the stage where I was almost hospitalised with serious problems.”

Daltrey also said he was worried about bandmate Pete Townshend‘s hearing. The guitarist has endured a long battle with tinnitus throughout his career.

“Pete is having terrible hearing problems at the moment,” he told Rolling Stone. “There’s nobody I’d rather be on stage with than Pete. But equally, I don’t want to be on stage with him destroying the last bit of his hearing. That would be completely foolish. He’s a composer.”

Despite the pair’s health problems, The Who frontman says they have no plans to retire.

“We’re in the last bits of our career,” he added. “I feel that we owe it to the public that supported us all these years to go down with us.”

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Morrissey refuses to self-release new album like Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’

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Morrissey refuses to self-release new album like Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’
Morrissey has refused to self-release his new album despite his growing frustration with record labels. The ex-Smiths singer is currently unsigned and has said he won't release the follow up to 2009's 'Swords' until he has a record deal. He ruled out any chance of releasing the record himself in t...

Morrissey has refused to self-release his new album despite his growing frustration with record labels.

The ex-Smiths singer is currently unsigned and has said he won’t release the follow up to 2009’s ‘Swords’ until he has a record deal.

He ruled out any chance of releasing the record himself in the same way Radiohead did with ‘In Rainbows’ in 2007.

“I don’t have any need to be innovative in that way,” he told Pitchfork. “I am still stuck in the dream of an album that sells well not because of marketing, but because people like the songs.

“Once it becomes public that you aren’t signed, you assume that anyone who wants you will come and get you.”

The singer believes the reason he hasn’t been signed yet is because record labels are more interested in new artists.

“I think labels for the most part want to sign new discoveries so that that label alone is seen to be responsible for the rise of the artist,” he added. “Not many labels want bands who have already made their mark, because their success is usually attributed to some other label somewhere else at another time.”

Morrissey also slammed the current state of the music industry and said it had been “destroyed in a thousand ways”.

“The internet has obviously wiped music off the human map – killed the record shop, and killed the patience of labels who consider debut sales of 300,000 to not be good enough,” he explained.

He added: “There are no risks taken with music anymore – no social commentary songs, no individualism. This is because everyone is deemed instantly replaceable.”

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Dave Grohl plays ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for first time in 17 years

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Dave Grohl plays ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for first time in 17 years
Dave Grohl has spoken of the time he, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and live second guitarist Pat Smear played 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' for the first time in 17 years. Speaking in today's Observer (June 26), Grohl recounts the occasion that, during a run-through for a Foo Fighters gig, the ex-Ni...

Dave Grohl has spoken of the time he, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and live second guitarist Pat Smear played ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for the first time in 17 years.

Speaking in today’s Observer (June 26), Grohl recounts the occasion that, during a run-through for a Foo Fighters gig, the ex-Nirvana musicians found themselves revisiting their most famous song.

“Krist is on bass, Pat‘s on guitar. I’m on drums,” Grohl explains. “Krist says, ‘You wanna run through some oldies?’ Me and Pat look at each other. I mean, that’s something I’ve never considered before. I was like ‘OK.’

“Krist says, ‘Fuck it, let’s do ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. And Pat starts playing and we kick into it. I haven’t played that drumbeat in 17 years.”

He concluded, “It was like… a ghost. It was heavy.”

The studio manager was the only other person to hear the rendition, on which nobody sang.

The 20th anniversary of Nirvana‘s album Nevermind will be celebrated with a ‘Super Deluxe Edition’.

The seminal album was originally released on September 24, 1991.

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Alice Cooper joined on stage by Johnny Depp at The 100 Club

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Alice Cooper joined on stage by Johnny Depp at The 100 Club
Alice Cooper was joined on stage by Johnny Depp during his intimate show at London's 100 Club tonight (June 26). The actor and occasional musician surprised the crowd when he picked up a guitar and played along for 'I'm Eighteen' and a mash-up of ’School's Out' and Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'. Cooper...

Alice Cooper was joined on stage by Johnny Depp during his intimate show at London‘s 100 Club tonight (June 26). The actor and occasional musician surprised the crowd when he picked up a guitar and played along for ‘I’m Eighteen’ and a mash-up of ’School’s Out’ and Pink Floyd‘s ‘The Wall’.

Cooper introduced the special guest as “Johnny D from Kentucky”. The shock-rocker had hinted towards the appearance earlier in the night on his Twitter page, writing: “Chuck [Garric, bass] and Damon [Johnson, guitar] go over a few notes with tonight’s Special Guest… Oh, you’ll never guess, don’t even bother.”

As Depp left the stage, Cooper joked: “I think we can use another guitar player. If this whole movie thing doesn’t work out, call us.”

The two will be appearing together in a new Tim Burton film, ‘Dark Shadows’, based on the 1960s American soap opera of the same name, due for release in May 2012.

This tiny show was announced less than two weeks ago, and sold out before an official release was announced. According to the band’s publicist, the decision to play the gig came after Sonisphere Bulgaria was canceled due to logistical problems. With a few extra days off in the UK, Cooper decided to treat his fans to the small gig.

The band’s set included a few of their classics, as well as a rendition of new song ‘I’ll Bite Your Face Off’. They also played quite a few covers from the likes of The Yardbirds, The Beatles, The Animals, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks.

“We’ve been featuring bands that were influential to us in high school,” Cooper said of his song selections, citing them as tracks from the “British Invasion”. He’ll be returning to the UK for a series of Halloween shows this October, joined by the New York Dolls.

Alice Cooper played:

‘Train Kept A Rollin’

‘Under My Wheels’

‘No More Mr Nice Guy’

‘Is It My Body?’

‘Brown Sugar’

‘I’ll Bite Your Face Off’

‘Muscle Of Love’

‘Cold Ethyl’

‘Billion Dollar Babies’

‘Back In The USSR’

‘Poison’

‘You Really Got Me’

‘School’s Out’

‘Elected’

‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’

‘Fire’

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Sly Stone announces comeback album ‘I’m Back! Family & Friends’

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Sly Stone announces comeback album ‘I’m Back! Family & Friends’
Sly Stone has announced plans to release his first album in almost 30 years. The Sly And The Family Stone leader has teamed up with a host of guest stars including Jeff Beck, former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek and Heart lead singer Ann Wilson for the 11-track album 'I'm Back! Family & Friend...

Sly Stone has announced plans to release his first album in almost 30 years.

The Sly And The Family Stone leader has teamed up with a host of guest stars including Jeff Beck, former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek and Heart lead singer Ann Wilson for the 11-track album ‘I’m Back! Family & Friends’, which is due out on August 16.

The LP features reworkings of his classic songs as well as three previously unreleased tracks including ‘His Eye Is On The Sparrow’ – the CD version is backed by three club mixes.

The full tracklisting for ‘I’m Back! Family & Friends’ is as follows:

‘Dance To The Music’ feat. Ray Manzarek

‘Everyday People’ feat. Ann Wilson

‘Family Affair’

‘Stand!’ feat. Carmine Appice & Ernie Watts

‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)’ feat. Johnny Winter

‘(I Want To Take You) Higher’ feat. Jeff Beck

‘Hot Fun In The Summertime’ feat. Bootsy Collins

‘Dance To The Music’

‘Plain Jane’

‘His Eye Is On The Sparrow’

‘Get Away’

Stone released his last album ‘Ain’t But The One Way’ in 1982. He last made an appearance with his band onstage at the Lovebox festival in London four years ago.

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ALICE

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ALICE

Filmed in a bakery in Prague in 1988 with money practically smuggled into the country by Channel 4, Alice is as twisted a version of the Lewis Carroll tale as has ever been made. In many ways, it’s a miracle it ever got made at all. Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer’s surreal and subversive stop-motion animation films had periodically been banned by the Communist state since the ’60s. But by employing a complex combination of smart business practices and subterfuge, and working patiently indoors with a crew of five for a year, he managed to sneak Alice into the West shortly before the Iron Curtain came down for good. Jan Švankmajer’s film begins with a sweet blonde girl (Kristýna Kohoutová, the only human actor in the film), mouthing the words: “Now you will see a film made for children… Perhaps.” Švankmajer’s intention to operate one step removed from Carroll’s original text is implicit from the start – whereas most adaptations begin with Alice sleepily reading in the garden, Švankmajer’s Alice is stuck in a junk room, surrounded by a clutter of jars, stuffed animals, skeletons, teacups and dolls. In a glass case in one corner, a stuffed white rabbit slowly comes to life and leads her down the rabbit hole – or in this case, across a ploughed a field and through a school desk drawer – so that her adventures can begin. And what a rabbit. Instead of a cute, anthropomorphic bunny with twitchy nose and fluffy tail, this white rabbit is like the re-animated dead, with sewn-on button eyes and sharp, yellow teeth. It has a bodyguard of freakish half-skeleton animals and keeps its pocket-watch inside its chest. Every time the rabbit removes the watch to check the time, sawdust leaks out, which the rabbit licks up, like a vampire feasting on its own blood. It’s no surprise that this creature later moonlights as the Queen Of Hearts’ willing – and energetic – executioner. Švankmajer had been a member of the Surrealists since 1970, but some of the treatment he dishes out to Alice is more cruel than absurd. She repeatedly hits her head against the ceiling as she grows too fast after drinking magic ink, or falls flat on her back as doorknobs come off in her hand. The film is laced with the sort of acidic visual humour – the caterpillar is made from a sock and sews up its own eyelid when it goes sleep – that Terry Gilliam brought to the mainstream through Monty Python. As you might expect, then, there’s little of Carroll’s whimsical wordplay in evidence – the film has no dialogue and is only sparsely narrated by Alice. Some of the more humorous characters, like the Cheshire Cat, have been excised completely. The overall tone, then, is so dark it makes Tim Burton’s recent version resemble a pantomime (indeed, Burton’s Beetlejuice or even Henry Selick’s Coraline are more favourable comparisons). Although it is often surreal, it is not plotless: there are no Lynchian non-sequiturs or narrative dead ends. Each bizarre episode – and some are very bizarre indeed – leads on quite naturally to the next, as the film proceeds under its own ghoulish internal logic. The animation itself is fabulous. Because of the constraints of the filming locations, most of the narrative takes place inside, in a series of cramped cellars that adds a palpable sense of claustrophobia to the already supremely weird proceedings. At times, Alice’s nightmare becomes positively Kafkaesque, as when a puppet Mad Hatter and a clockwork March Hare find themselves repeating the same fruitless behaviour over and over again. “I think it worked quite well, though not entirely as I expected,” says Alice at one point. A line that seems a satisfying motto for the film itself. EXTRAS: HD and SD versions, original Czech and English-language audio versions, related shorts, including 1903’s Alice In Wonderland, and a 34-page booklet. HHH Peter Watts

Filmed in a bakery in Prague in 1988 with money practically smuggled into the country by Channel 4, Alice is as twisted a version of the Lewis Carroll tale as has ever been made. In many ways, it’s a miracle it ever got made at all. Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer’s surreal and subversive stop-motion animation films had periodically been banned by the Communist state since the ’60s. But by employing a complex combination of smart business practices and subterfuge, and working patiently indoors with a crew of five for a year, he managed to sneak Alice into the West shortly before the Iron Curtain came down for good.

Jan Švankmajer’s film begins with a sweet blonde girl (Kristýna Kohoutová, the only human actor in the film), mouthing the words: “Now you will see a film made for children… Perhaps.” Švankmajer’s intention to operate one step removed from Carroll’s original text is implicit from the start – whereas most adaptations begin with Alice sleepily reading in the garden, Švankmajer’s Alice is stuck in a junk room, surrounded by a clutter of jars, stuffed animals, skeletons, teacups and dolls. In a glass case in one corner, a stuffed white rabbit slowly comes to life and leads her down the rabbit hole – or in this case, across a ploughed a field and through a school desk drawer – so that her adventures can begin.

And what a rabbit. Instead of a cute, anthropomorphic bunny with twitchy nose and fluffy tail, this white rabbit is like the re-animated dead, with sewn-on button eyes and sharp, yellow teeth. It has a bodyguard of freakish half-skeleton animals and keeps its pocket-watch inside its chest. Every time the rabbit removes the watch to check the time, sawdust leaks out, which the rabbit licks up, like a vampire feasting on its own blood. It’s no surprise that this creature later moonlights as the Queen Of Hearts’ willing – and energetic – executioner.

Švankmajer had been a member of the Surrealists since 1970, but some of the treatment he dishes out to Alice is more cruel than absurd. She repeatedly hits her head against the ceiling as she grows too fast after drinking magic ink, or falls flat on her back as doorknobs come off in her hand. The film is laced with the sort of acidic visual humour – the caterpillar is made from a sock and sews up its own eyelid when it goes sleep – that Terry Gilliam brought to the mainstream through Monty Python.

As you might expect, then, there’s little of Carroll’s whimsical wordplay in evidence – the film has no dialogue and is only sparsely narrated by Alice. Some of the more humorous characters, like the Cheshire Cat, have been excised completely. The overall tone, then, is so dark it makes Tim Burton’s recent version resemble a pantomime (indeed, Burton’s Beetlejuice or even Henry Selick’s Coraline are more favourable comparisons). Although it is often surreal, it is not plotless: there are no Lynchian non-sequiturs or narrative dead ends. Each bizarre episode – and some are very bizarre indeed – leads on quite naturally to the next, as the film proceeds under its own ghoulish internal logic.

The animation itself is fabulous. Because of the constraints of the filming locations, most of the narrative takes place inside, in a series of cramped cellars that adds a palpable sense of claustrophobia to the already supremely weird proceedings. At times, Alice’s nightmare becomes positively Kafkaesque, as when a puppet Mad Hatter and a clockwork March Hare find themselves repeating the same fruitless behaviour over and over again. “I think it worked quite well, though not entirely as I expected,” says Alice at one point. A line that seems a satisfying motto for the film itself.

EXTRAS: HD and SD versions, original Czech and English-language audio versions, related shorts, including 1903’s Alice In Wonderland, and a 34-page booklet.

HHH

Peter Watts

LOVE – BLACK BEAUTY

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LOVE – BLACK BEAUTY

Supremely talented yet prone to devastating self-sabotage, Arthur Lee was on the ropes in the early 1970s. Glory days on the Sunset Strip, and authorship of one of the greatest records ever – Love’s Forever Changes – had soured, giving way to an incoherent odyssey, and a meandering, undistinguished string of new “Loves”. Occasional bursts of new inspiration were more likely than not to fizzle amid record label flameouts, reluctance to tour, and concomitant drug and personal problems. Yet for those willing to a) overlook Lee’s steadfast refusal to relive the inimitable themes and textures of Forever Changes, and b) forgive him his excesses and volatilities, by the early ’70s Lee had begun to forge a forceful, distinctive new style: sizzling hard rock true to the spirit of his friend Jimi Hendrix; gritty, inner-city funk underpinnings à la Curtis Mayfield; a few nods to his folk-rock, pop-star past; plus bits of blues and reggae around the edges. Some of this material appeared in real time, in the shape of his ’72 solo outing Vindicator and Love’s ’74 swansong Reel To Real. More has surfaced on archival releases, like Sundazed’s 2009 set, Love Lost. Bankrolled by entrepreneur Michael Butler (producer of the hit musical Hair) and reuniting Lee with his old Elektra friend, producer Paul Rothchild, Black Beauty was intended to be a culmination, the crowning achievement of Lee’s new direction. It ended up as just another scrapped project. Butler’s label, Buffalo Records, went belly-up before the disc ever reached the market. It would be Lee’s penultimate shot at the big time, 1974’s calamitous UK tour with Eric Clapton sealing his future on the margins. Black Beauty began organically enough, though. Ditching the ad hoc bands he’d been gigging with around LA, Lee started from scratch, organising a brand-new, all-black Love. The group – guitarist Melvan Whittington, bassist Robert Rozelle, drummer Joe Blocker – bristles with authority and immediacy, imbuing Black Beauty with a raw, pugnacious, in-your-face sound. Whereas, say, an early take of “Midnight Sun” sounds forced and claustrophobic on Love Lost, its Black Beauty counterpart burns with apocalyptic fervour, resonant of a camaraderie and telepathic interplay oft-lacking in Love’s post-Forever Changes work. Opening with the gut-punch of “Good & Evil (Young & Able)”, a lascivious, un-PC piece of Hendrixian punk-funk, Black Beauty sprouts tentacles, beaming in testosterone-fuelled garage blasts (“Stay Away”, think Nuggets on steroids), the sumptuously anti-authoritarian riff “Lonely Pigs” and “Can’t Find It”, a haunting lament gliding on a gorgeously elliptical melody, with jagged guitar bits bubbling up through the mix. For all its hard-rock glory – and Hendrix’ spectre casts a long shadow everywhere on Love’s 1970s work – Black Beauty is eclectic, shifting gears gracefully, suggesting myriad musical directions a healthy Arthur Lee could have pursued. “Beep Beep”, for instance, reflects his infatuation with reggae, and while it might be fluffy kid’s-song fare, it’s catchy as anything. An off-the-wall cover of The Rooftop Singers’ 1963 smash “Walk Right In” is also an inspired call, an album highlight, its jangly guitars and soulful vocal hook signalling a nod to Love’s 1966 folk-rock heyday. “Skid”, though, with its Dylanesque sneer and gritty depiction of ghetto misery, is Black Beauty’s most startling cut. Lee is at his dramatic best here, falling into the song’s dark atmosphere with an eerie, ghostly desperation – one of his best vocals ever. Skittering from funky acoustic rhythms to a driving, haunting chorus to Whittington’s superb psychedelic guitar fills, one would think this song, if properly promoted, could have put Love back on the map. As it is, it’s an inestimable gem in the group’s vaunted catalogue, its majesty posing a giant “what if?” in the Love saga. In fact, the better-late-than-never appearance of Black Beauty itself poses some big questions. Could Lee and company have refined, expanded and built on its strengths? Did Arthur have yet more material of this calibre up his sleeve? Nonetheless, supplemented by bonus tracks and Ben Edmonds’ fine liner notes, Black Beauty slots in as a fascinating, decidedly consistent effort from an artist in the throes of disintegration. Luke Torn

Supremely talented yet prone to devastating self-sabotage, Arthur Lee was on the ropes in the early 1970s. Glory days on the Sunset Strip, and authorship of one of the greatest records ever – Love’s Forever Changes – had soured, giving way to an incoherent odyssey, and a meandering, undistinguished string of new “Loves”. Occasional bursts of new inspiration were more likely than not to fizzle amid record label flameouts, reluctance to tour, and concomitant drug and personal problems.

Yet for those willing to a) overlook Lee’s steadfast refusal to relive the inimitable themes and textures of Forever Changes, and b) forgive him his excesses and volatilities, by the early ’70s Lee had begun to forge a forceful, distinctive new style: sizzling hard rock true to the spirit of his friend Jimi Hendrix; gritty, inner-city funk underpinnings à la Curtis Mayfield; a few nods to his folk-rock, pop-star past; plus bits of blues and reggae around the edges. Some of this material appeared in real time, in the shape of his ’72 solo outing Vindicator and Love’s ’74 swansong Reel To Real. More has surfaced on archival releases, like Sundazed’s 2009 set, Love Lost.

Bankrolled by entrepreneur Michael Butler (producer of the hit musical Hair) and reuniting Lee with his old Elektra friend, producer Paul Rothchild, Black Beauty was intended to be a culmination, the crowning achievement of Lee’s new direction. It ended up as just another scrapped project. Butler’s label, Buffalo Records, went belly-up before the disc ever reached the market. It would be Lee’s penultimate shot at the big time, 1974’s calamitous UK tour with Eric Clapton sealing his future on the margins.

Black Beauty began organically enough, though. Ditching the ad hoc bands he’d been gigging with around LA, Lee started from scratch, organising a brand-new, all-black Love. The group – guitarist Melvan Whittington, bassist Robert Rozelle, drummer Joe Blocker – bristles with authority and immediacy, imbuing Black Beauty with a raw, pugnacious, in-your-face sound.

Whereas, say, an early take of “Midnight Sun” sounds forced and claustrophobic on Love Lost, its Black Beauty counterpart burns with apocalyptic fervour, resonant of a camaraderie and telepathic interplay oft-lacking in Love’s post-Forever Changes work.

Opening with the gut-punch of “Good & Evil (Young & Able)”, a lascivious, un-PC piece of Hendrixian punk-funk, Black Beauty sprouts tentacles, beaming in testosterone-fuelled garage blasts (“Stay Away”, think Nuggets on steroids), the sumptuously anti-authoritarian riff “Lonely Pigs” and “Can’t Find It”, a haunting lament gliding on a gorgeously elliptical melody, with jagged guitar bits bubbling up through the mix.

For all its hard-rock glory – and Hendrix’ spectre casts a long shadow everywhere on Love’s 1970s work – Black Beauty is eclectic, shifting gears gracefully, suggesting myriad musical directions a healthy Arthur Lee could have pursued. “Beep Beep”, for instance, reflects his infatuation with reggae, and while it might be fluffy kid’s-song fare, it’s catchy as anything. An off-the-wall cover of The Rooftop Singers’ 1963 smash “Walk Right In” is also an inspired call, an album highlight, its jangly guitars and soulful vocal hook signalling a nod to Love’s 1966 folk-rock heyday.

“Skid”, though, with its Dylanesque sneer and gritty depiction of ghetto misery, is Black Beauty’s most startling cut. Lee is at his dramatic best here, falling into the song’s dark atmosphere with an eerie, ghostly desperation – one of his best vocals ever. Skittering from funky acoustic rhythms to a driving, haunting chorus to Whittington’s superb psychedelic guitar fills, one would think this song, if properly promoted, could have put Love back on the map. As it is, it’s an inestimable gem in the group’s vaunted catalogue, its majesty posing a giant “what if?” in the Love saga.

In fact, the better-late-than-never appearance of Black Beauty itself poses some big questions. Could Lee and company have refined, expanded and built on its strengths? Did Arthur have yet more material of this calibre up his sleeve? Nonetheless, supplemented by bonus tracks and Ben Edmonds’ fine liner notes, Black Beauty slots in as a fascinating, decidedly consistent effort from an artist in the throes of disintegration.

Luke Torn

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