Get down and get with it! The UGG Glam is in shops on Friday!
As you will discover when you read this stomping new publication, there were many ways to be glam. Conceptual, like Roxy or Bowie. Flashy, and made for colour television, like Slade. Theatrical, like Alice Cooper or chaotic like the New York Dolls. For our cover star Brian Eno, it was the start of a 50-year career in experimental ideas – currently being celebrated in an excellent new documentary.
Perhaps more than anything else, glam could be a key to reinvention and self-discovery. Roy Wood was a joint-passing hippy before he became the glitter-bearded star of Wizzard. Mott The Hoople were longtime triers about to quit, given another shot when they performed Bowie’s “All The Young Dudes” – essentially glam’s national anthem. Elton John began the 1970s as an earnest balladeer, and was possibly more a glam rocker from expediency than anything else. Still, it allowed him to access elements of his showmanship, sexuality and general high-spirits than he had previously managed.
There was no one way to be glam. There were some recognizable features – the intersection of ambiguous sexuality and hard, often1950s-inspired rock; an emphasis on performance, posing and showmanship; great singles – but this was no straitjacket.
Some artists – like Lou Reed or Iggy Pop – drifted into glam, took what they wanted and moved on. The lesser talents had their brief moment basking in its reflective glow. All round, it offered freedom, not confinement. (Unless you were The Sweet, of course – for whom the whole experience turned into a struggle for independence from their production team.)
As the late David Cavanagh pointed out here in his writing about glam singles, not everyone could be as talented as David Bowie. Glam offered both the sublime and the ridiculous, whether that was the stellar run of albums Bowie made between 1970 and 1974, or a one-off exploitation single by one-hit wonders we’d now find filed under “junk shop glam”.
You can read about all versions of the glam experience here, in a range of hilarious archive features – just who were Hair, Nose & Teeth? – and insightful new commentary. There are thoughts on glam film, glam art and glam’s legacy. You’ll read how our artists, from Bowie, Bolan and Slade through to Eno, Queen and Sparks (in 2024, glam’s only real survivors) made, and were remade, by glam rock.
Melody Maker’s Richard Williams sets the scene: “While the rest of the band were mixing the B side of the new single Eno was sitting in the control booth with a set of logtables, a notebook and a rapidly blunting pencil. “I woke up this morning,” quoth he, “with a theory about prime numbers…’”
Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision, a new film from Experience Hendrix LLC, is due to open at The Quad in New York City on August 9. A global rollout will follow, distributed by Abramorama.
The documentary chronicles the building of what became the first ever artist-owned commercial recording studio, in the heart of Manhattan – although Hendrix had originally envisioned Electric Lady as a nightclub and jam space.
“Jimi loved jamming at The Generation nightclub in the Village and when it went bankrupt, he and [manager] Mike Jeffery purchased it with a view to making it a place for him and his friends to relax and possibly record their jams on an 8-track tape machine in the corner,” explains Hendrix’s engineer and long-time collaborator Eddie Kramer, a key contributor to the documentary.
“I knew at once that a club would be disastrous. I remember saying something like ‘You guys must be out your #$%^&ing minds! Do you have any idea of what Jimi spends in studio time in a year?’ Let’s build the best studio in the world for him so when he walks in, he can relax and record whenever he wants.
“The club idea was scratched, and Electric Lady Studios was born. By June of the next year [1970] Studio A was completed and after a few test sessions Jimi came in to record in his studio. Man, was he proud of it. He loved the way it sounded and its vibe. We recorded many tracks for a new album over the next four months, which became The Cry Of Love. The legacy of what Jimi wanted endures to this day: a place where one could create without being interrupted. Every artist who comes to Electric Lady Studios feels the spirit of Jimi Hendrix, a spirit that helps them create their own music!”
Among the many artists who have subsequently used Electric Lady Studios are Stevie Wonder, John Lennon, David Bowie, U2, Prince, Lana Del Rey, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, D’Angelo, The Clash, Chic, Taylor Swift and AC/DC.
The documentary is directed by Hendrix biographer John McDermott, who also helmed 2022’s Music, Money, Madness: Jimi Hendrix Live In Maui. It features interviews with Steve Winwood (who joined Hendrix on the first night of recording at the new studio), The Cry Of Love bassist Billy Cox and original Electric Lady staff members, plus never-before-seen footage and photos, as well as track breakdowns of “Freedom”, “Angel” and “Dolly Dagger” by Eddie Kramer.
The first time Thurston Moore ever sang into a microphone, it was to scream back the lyrics of “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” to Poly Styrene when X-Ray Spex played CBGB in 1978. It was a moment of teenage catharsis that he’s seemed to carry through his whole career, consistently advocating for noisy rock’n’roll and expressive free music of all kinds as the best vessel for transcending workaday existence and sticking it to the man.
After looking back over his storied career in last year’s memoir Sonic Life, Moore is once again facing forward on new solo album Flow Critical Lucidity – although devotees of the dazed guitars and jagged street poetry of Sonic Youth touchstones Sister and Daydream Nation will find plenty to love in this new material.
To celebrate its release in September, Moore has kindly consented to undergo a gentle grilling from you, the Uncut readers. So what do you want to ask the godfather of alternative rock? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Monday July 15 and Thurston will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.
Robyn Hitchcock’s first book, a memoir titled 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, is out now. In Uncut’s July issue, he spoke about the book and his memories of that pivotal year in his youth – from the strange customs of Winchester College to the mind-blowing new music he was hearing – and here Hitchcock exclusively takes us through a playlist of some of his favourite tracks from ’67.
Comprising 10 songs by British artists and another nine by Americans, the list has been curated by the singer-songwriter to best encapsulate the feel of that psychedelic period. He’s also kept away from the songs he covers on his accompanying album, 1967 – Vacations In The Past.
Take a listen here, and scroll down to read Robyn’s commentary…
ROBYN HITCHCOCK: These are not necessarily the best songs by those artists. Like “Hole In My Shoe” isn’t my favourite Traffic song from that period – I’d rather listen to “Mr Fantasy” or “Heaven Is In Your Mind”, and I cover “No Face, No Name, No Number” on my [1967] record – but “Hole In My Shoe”, with the sitar and those high harmonies at the end, is the most 1967 track, you know? And “Flying” by The Beatles, I’ve always felt that really encapsulated Magical Mystery Tour more than any of the other songs on it. Again, it’s not one of their better-known pieces. It’s a four-way co-write too!
It was kind of obvious that Satanic Majesties was a response to, or slight rip-off of, Sgt Pepper. But the atmosphere of the music was so different. And I’m one of those Stones fans who actually really likes Satanic Majesties. I don’t know if Keith Richards disowned it or not, but I think they get the dark side of psychedelia. It’s still got that Stones pulse, but they are probably quite cynically just going, ‘Okay, psychedelia is what’s happening this year… come on, folks, let’s get the kaftans out… oh, we can use Brian on this, wake up Brian! Come on. Put that down, you can have it after the session…’ I do think “She’s A Rainbow” is a really beautiful piece, and that’s largely down to Nicky Hopkins playing the piano. There’s a point when Charlie Watts and everybody comes in at the end, and you’ve got that Stones thrash underneath, and you’ve got Jagger being sort of Prince Michael on the occasions he gets fey.
I think the Stones did their best stuff when Brian Jones was still in the band, before Keith became dominant. I think they did actually write some pretty good songs, but there’s just something about them that they didn’t get taken as seriously as Ray Davies and The Beatles. There’s some pretty good stuff on things like Aftermath and Between The Buttons.
Talking of The Kinks, Ray Davies has got that fabulous ambivalent smile, sort of crinkled… there’s an awful lot of doubt in him, but he also had written these appallingly catchy songs and he still was quite a showman. These days he’s one of those guys that will play his old songs just as they were, like McCartney does, like Donovan does, he doesn’t do a Dylan on them. You get “Dead End Street” and “Autumn Almanac” and “Waterloo Sunset” as they were, and that’s just beautiful.
It was hard to know what to pick from Forever Changes, but “The Red Telephone” is pretty creepy. Extraordinary chords as well. I play it from time to time, and I have to relearn them all every time. I don’t know how Arthur Lee came up with that. It’s quite amazing. He was an influence on Syd Barrett as well – Barrett was a big Arthur Lee fan.
Most people in the UK hadn’t heard The Velvet Underground in 1967, although probably Brian Eno had, seeing as he was doing that thing with the electric violin in the basement [a story told in Hitchcock’s book]… that makes me think that he had got a copy [of The Velvet Underground & Nico] from somewhere, and he was thinking of John Cale. We had kids at school from the States, and it was an American kid who brought in that first copy of Highway 61… that I heard, it was an American one with a red label. Somebody else had a copy of the first Byrds album, which I bought from them. I’ve still got it! And there were people who had the first Velvet Underground album, so I heard it – actually just over the border into 1968. The Velvet Underground is now seen as kind of what came after hippies. All the other songs on my playlist are sort of hippie music, and I deliberately put The Velvet Underground at the end to go, ‘And here’s the next chapter folks, this is where it gets really dark…’
he first time Joni Mitchell heard her voice in Dolby Atmos, she was thrilled by the way it sounded. “I can’t believe how good it sounds!” she said in June 2022 while listening to a playback of her classic Court And Spark album. That same Dolby Atmos experience can now be enjoyed through mobile phones and tablets, ensuring classic albums are available in unprecedented audio quality for those on the move using any brand of headphones or earbuds. A technology that was initially designed for the most cutting-edge cinemas in 2012, can now be enjoyed through a device that fits in your pocket, bringing studio-quality sound direct to your ears.
Dolby Atmos technology allows any single sound to be manipulated and moved around within an overall sonic landscape. For film, TV and games, this means the sound of a helicopter can appear to come from overheard or the noise of a car horn or gunfire can be moved around during the scene to create a wholly immersive experience. Dialogue might start behind you and then move to the front as a scene unfolds. Now imagine the potential of this when applied to music. A Dolby Atmos remix gives the artist, producer and mixer unprecedented control over individual aspects of any song, allowing them to overlay and manoeuvre constituent parts to create an astonishing, all-encompassing musical experience. No wonder it has been embraced with passion by bands like The Beatles, Kraftwerk and Pink Floyd, who have relished the opportunity to reimagine their classic albums in a new sonic environment.
Recreating immersive sound on a mobile device was a huge technical challenge. Dolby’s engineers needed to take a completely new approach to sound. Cinemas and home entertainment systems can be hugely complex, but headphones and built-in speakers generally are far simpler which means there can be problems of leakage and cross-talk. To get the same audio experience, Dolby had to imitate the way sounds from different places arrive at our ears at different times and from different places, placing the listener at the centre of a bubble of sound.
Now an album or film that’s played on any device enabled with Dolby Atmos over headphones or earbuds, can accurately simulate a three-dimensional audio experience. Even better, this can be done through a device’s built-in speakers thanks to some nifty additional processing that eliminates the issue of leakage or crosstalk. The tech supports newer mobile devices that have four speakers, and it provides a richer and more expansive sound.
What does this mean for the listener? It means astonishing clarity and detail in the listening experience, a punchier sound that delivers the richness of a high-end hi-fi or home entertainment system from a mobile or tablet. Whether walking, jogging or travelling by train or plane, enjoyment is enhanced through the breathtaking precision of sound.
It works for music, as well as dialogue when watching TV and films and in every situation, the overall audio experience is unforgettably enhanced. Play a favourite album, and you will hear something new. On quieter songs, there is no off-putting distortion or rattle and the listener can really immerse themselves in the intricacy of the musical atmosphere; when it comes to heavier rock, the sound is direct and earth-shakingly intense.
Dolby Atmos can be experienced on a range of iOS and Android devices, as well as through Windows 10 and Windows 11 via Microsoft. Visit Dolby.com to find out how you can experience entertainment in Dolby.
Whether listening to your favourite album, watching a great movie or settling back with a new box set, home entertainment has never looked or sounded better in Dolby. Playing a classic album mixed in Dolby Atmos on your stereo can be like rediscovering it all over again, reminding you of why you first fell in love with it in the first place, while Dolby Vision can turn every living room into a home cinema. You just need to bring the popcorn.
Before making its way into your home, Dolby Atmos has been elevating sound in cinemas since 2012. The revolutionary spatial audio technology was first introduced as an upgrade on the traditional 5.1 and 7.1 surround-sound setups, but has since rapidly been rolled out for Blu-ray film and music releases as well as video games. That’s because Dolby Atmos creates truly immersive, three-dimensional sound, using groundbreaking technology to place the listener at the centre of a bubble of sound. It gives sound engineers unprecedented elements to play with, safe in the knowledge most major brands are able to deliver this experience to the listener. Companies like Philips, Sony and Hisense have developed compatible devices and home entertainment equipment at a wide range of price points, using speakers that replicate the cinematic experience by incorporating upward-firing drivers to bounce sound off the ceiling.
You can enjoy Dolby Atmos in televisions, phones, computers and tablets, while soundbars are a versatile, affordable way of introducing Dolby Atmos into the home. Films and TV soundtracks are improved, it’s great for gamers and some of the world’s best-known albums have now been remixed for Dolby Atmos, including masterpieces by sonic pioneers such as Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd and The Beatles. The listening experience is like being in the studio with the legends, hearing the greatest albums of all time in a completely new way.
The ideal complement to Dolby Atmos is Dolby Vision. This upgrades 4K resolution, adding more colours and increased contrast by allowing the brightness, contrast, detail and colour to be manipulated on a scene-by-scene – or even frame-by-frame – level. That provides more nuance and greater depth, allowing filmmakers, TV studios and games designers to bring more muscle to the overall viewing experience, particularly when combined with Dolby Atmos.
These technologies are recognised groundbreakers and are now an integral part of the entertainment industry. That means that great content is plentiful and easily found across a number of genres and categories including films, TV, games or music. It can be streamed as well as found on Blu-ray, accessed through TVs, stereos and even mobile devices. This is home entertainment as it was meant to be seen and heard, easy to access and impossible to ignore. With Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, you’re getting incredible immersive audio and the best colour, detail and brightness, delivered just as the creative artist intended. Look out for TVs, speakers, and soundbars bearing the Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos logos if you want to experience the best in visual and audio performance at home.
During the last 10 or so years of her life, while Margo Guryan was working as a piano teacher, she was given several opportunities to reflect on a career in which her brilliance went unnoticed. There was no bitterness in Guryan’s responses; if anything, she evinced a sense of mild amusement that her demo recordings were being excavated decades after the release of her 1968 album, Take A Picture (once obscure, now hailed as a baroque masterpiece).
If there was any blame to be attributed, it was Bob Dylan’s fault. Well, not Bob exactly, but his success. After Dylan, Guryan told one interviewer, the music industry changed from a model in which good singers could employ talented songwriters, to the situation in which the songwriter was supposed to be the singer too. This led to a glut of good singers with bad songs, and bad singers with good songs. For Guryan, a brilliant songwriter with limited confidence in the power of her voice, it was a recipe for obscurity.
Guryan’s telling of her own story allows for one moment of ironic disappointment. She always imagined that if she could produce one hit single, everything would change. And there was a hit. Guryan’s song “Sunday Mornin’” was taken to number 30 in the US charts by sunshine pop act Spanky And Our Gang, and was also covered by Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell. “Spanky” McFarlane and her gang make a decent stab at it, bringing cool orchestration and glassy harmonies to Guryan’s ode to suburban romance. Gentry and Campbell’s attempt is more restrained; Campbell can’t match the sultriness of Gentry’s vocal. Guryan’s version sounds tribal by comparison. It has funky drums, and – just below the surface – explosive guitar. Then there’s Guryan herself. That voice, halfway between a whisper and a sigh; shy, reluctant, dominant, forever flirting with contradiction.
It sounds smooth, but Guryan’s career had two distinct phases. There was before Brian Wilson, and after. The afterlife begins when Guryan hears “God Only Knows”. After Brian, she starts to understand how to write pop. “I had finally figured out how to connect with a larger world,” she said.
But before? Before pop became interesting, Guryan was a creature of jazz. Not in a trivial way. A fan of Bach, she studied composition at Boston University where she fell under the influence of George Wein, who ran the Storyville club. This led to her playing intermission music at a concert by the Miles Davis Quintet (“Yeah, baby!” was Miles’s instant review). While at college she auditioned for Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, and was signed as a writer and performer. She was encouraged to “sing out”, an instruction she was ill-equipped to obey. The main fruit of this liaison was the 1958 song “Moon Ride”, Guryan’s first commercial release, as recorded by Chris Connor. It’s an extraordinary song, a lunar escapade on “uneven cheese-coloured ground”. Guryan’s version has a sultry energy, but also displays her verbal skills, rhyming “law enforcers” with “flying saucers”.
Guryan attended a three-week summer school under the supervision of Max Roach. She was in an ensemble with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. From there, a career as a writer blossomed. The jazz influence on Guryan’s work isn’t hidden. It’s evident in the skittish drumming on “You Promised”, a song which pulls between Guryan’s playful piano and the understated vamping of her vocal. “The Morning After”, a bittersweet reflection on the moonbeams and daydreams of a mis-spent evening, goes further. The guilty footsteps of the tune clatter along; Guryan rhymes “sorrow” with “tomorrow”. But the power of Guryan’s recording comes from the absence of polish. Self-consciousness about the high notes, Guryan’s reluctance to sing out, adds uncertainty. This blue highway runs past Julie London towards Carole King, with the red taillights of Jane Birkin blinking mistily on the horizon.
As a songwriter, Guryan hoped that others would add their own seltzer. Jackie De Shannon’s playfully orchestrated version of “Think Of Rain” was her favourite, “because it was different”. The song was prompted by Guryan’s exposure to “God Only Knows” but the brilliance of her own version is its playful arrangement, a double-tracked vocal, and a lyric which exists in several different tenses at the same time. It’s a short song, a long sigh. Is it menacing, tender or guilty? All of that.
There is, over the course of these three LPs capturing Guryan’s entire career (including 16 previously unreleased demos), a hint of something you might call a formula. Guryan’s songs have jazz manners, riffing on romantic uncertainty. They flit between promise and regret, compliance and betrayal. Sunday mornings follow Saturday nights. She is a writer for all weathers. There is sunshine. There is rain. Is there menace in there too? Naturally. It is the peril of romance, the fear that follows hope, the verses that stalk vice. Listen to Margo Guryan on “It’s Alright Now” singing “everything will be OK tomorrow, when love is gone.” What sounds like a slow dance is actually a cobra hug of passive aggression. She means it, darling, but what does she mean?
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For those who’d been hankering after a Lou Barlow/John Davis status update, it came in 2022 with the (unannounced) release of “Feel It If You Feel It”. Hatched during pandemic isolation and featuring two tracks plus a remix of each, it was their first recording of new material in 23 years. This constituted a fair-sized tremor on the US indie-rock landscape, yet it landed without fanfare, its familiar mix of lo-fi synth-pop, heartfelt alt.rock and beats-based atmospherics packaged under a title both gnomic and diffident. It also arrived with the promise that a full album was on the way.
This 10-song set, then, is the follow-through, though last year there was a limited-edition EP, “It Just Goes With…”, which rather than a cautious edging forward suggests that after such a long lapse, the pair saw no reason to rush. However, they’ve also made it clear that Walk Thru Me is part of a continuum, by riffing on the title of their debut EP, 1993’s “Walk Through This World With The Folk Implosion”. That emphatic intent is underlined by the music, which pushes rhythm to the fore and expands Davis’s arsenal of non-traditional rock instruments. It also hits perhaps the sweetest spot yet between reflective soul with underground-rock roots and lithe art pop with intriguing detail. As always, there’s a deep emotional burn in play, whether songs examine the militarisation of sports culture (“Bobblehead Doll”) or what it means to be a father (“My Little Lamb”).
Since they started work on what would become the new album 670 miles apart, Davis (in North Carolina) and Barlow (Massachusetts) took on different areas of responsibility – respectively, soundscaping and texture, and vocal melodies and lyrics, with remote support from producer Scott Solter. The pair were relaxed about allowing the songs to develop over time; in fact, both “Crepuscular” and “My Little Lamb” appeared on “It Just Goes With…” as works in progress. Working in fits and starts, by April 2022 the pair had 11 basic songs, which they spent the rest of the year finishing with Solter.
“Crepuscular” opens the set, reintroducing the unforced, grainy yearning of Barlow’s voice and the brooding, warmly melancholic melodic lines, tipped slightly off their axis by playful counterpoints, that have long been part of The Folk Implosion’s appeal. The song is aptly titled: around lyrics that express the sheer futility of being imprisoned by his own mindset (“Can’t fight the daylight/Gotta let it all in”), swirls a faintly wyrd-folk air of unsettlement. “The Day You Died” follows, sombre in a very different way, Davis’s distinctively reedy voice recalling the death of his father in straight-talking yet hugely touching detail. “Your mind once so acute, so strange and so astute/Couldn’t even tell your tongue what to do/Couldn’t swallow, couldn’t whistle, couldn’t chew,” he sing-speaks, to a strikingly upbeat tune, rippled with saz, tar and setar and carried by cantering beat patterns. After the title track, with its easy, faintly military swing and Barlow’s tender, Peter Gabriel-ish voice musing on the importance of self-love in a romantic partnership, comes “My Little Lamb”, with his reflections on fatherhood: “If they believe, that’s not up to me/They gotta wonder on their own”. Davis’s “Bobblehead Doll”, which opens with sweet saz trills and a light, Talking Heads-like energy, is the set’s midpoint; on the other side sits Barlow’s “The Fable And The Fact”, his musings on a dying relationship and the “classic”, urgently whining four-string electric guitar suggesting an older song. Then comes “Right Hand Over My Heart”, an irresistible number with moody Omnichord and synth motifs, and at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, the sinuous “Water Torture”, in which a disgusted Davis addresses his country’s barbarity practised in the name of world order. “Moonlit Kind” closes the set, an existential hymn with an agreeably lazy, Yeasayer-ish groove: “I’m the moonlit kind that can’t say no/I don’t unwind I just go high/And touch the sky,” croons Barlow, and later, “Always wanted to believe/That there’s a reason”, before the song drifts off into the ether as a light, psychedelic reel.
Life’s “reason” of course, lies in its living, and via dispatches, however fitful, sent from their individual frontlines across three decades now The Folk Implosion have done that to the creative full. During their time apart, Barlow carried the torch with two new Folkies; Davis may have quit at one point but in 2020, it was him who initiated the reconnection. They’re alt.rock solid, it would seem.
For the current issue of Uncut, I interviewed Rich Ruth at his home studio in Nashville, where we dug into the roots of his mind-expanding cosmic jazz-rock. For the feature, I asked Michael – his real name – to compile a list of five artists who’ve influenced his latest album, Water Still Flows, to provide some further anchors to his music. With typical generosity, he gave me a lot of thoughts on a bunch of great artists – too much for the issue, as it turned out. So below, you can read his insights in full…
Sometime during the pandemic I got really into Tim Hecker. Particularly his albums Harmony In Ultraviolet and Ravedeath 1972. He blurs the lines between experimental and ambient, creating extremely active and visceral soundscapes that are a huge inspiration, particularly on tracks of mine like God Won’t Speak. Hecker’s music also veers into quite heavy territory despite its abstract nature.
ASH RA TEMPEL / MANEL GOTTSCHING
Gottsching is one of my all time favourite guitarists. I constantly find inspiration in his playing and productions, as it always embodies a trance-like quality I find myself chasing. Ashra’s New Age Of Earthand Gottsching’s E2-E4 will always be huge touchstones for my musical palette, no matter what I am working on.
SUNN 0)))
Of all the drone / doom metal acts that inspired me while working on Water Still Flows, Sunn 0))) showcases the most primal, minimal version of the genre. The guitars and amps are recorded immaculately too – it feels like your head is pressed up against the amplifier. I got to see them perform as Jake Davis and I were mixing the record and it was unbelievable. Life Metal in particular really spoke to me alongside other artists in that zone like Earth, Sleep, Boris, Electric Wizard, High On Fire and The Melvins.
CRYPTOPSY
I was on tour throughout the course of late 2022 and most of 2023. I began to reach a point where a lot of music felt stale to me and found myself listening to either melancholy pop like Blue Nile and Richard Hawley, or extreme metal like Carcass, Darkthrone, Morbid Angel, Dying Fetus and Cryptopsy. I listened to Cryptopsy’s album None So Vile nonstop, which is a touchstone of technical death metal – brutal and intricate. Though I wouldn’t say you can hear the specific influence, Cryptopsy helped renew my relationship with metal, explore it from new angles, and feel inspired to find undiscovered pathways within my own music.
PHAROAH SANDERS
If you’ve heard my music, it may seem obvious that I love Pharoah Sanders. I’ll also include many of his collaborators (and their mesmerizing solo works) – McCoy Tyner, Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, Tisziji Munoz, and Elvin Jones specifically make up such a rich tapestry of American music that will always inspire me. Much like Can and Eno, there is such a spirit to Pharoah Sanders that I hope to channel. More so than specific sounds, I’d like for the essence and feeling of his influence to shine through in my work. The reissue of the Pharoah album and of course Promises have been in heavy rotation since they entered my orbit. Promises may have been what led me to incorporate violins on this record. Pharoah will always be the pillar of human expression for me – encapsulating immense joy, deep sorrow and ecstasy all in one saxophone solo.
Water Still Flows is available now from Third Man
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Five Dice, All Threes is released on September20 via Dead Oceans.
Of the track, Conor Oberst says, “This is a song about the many little details in life that can seem insignificant or frivolous or temporary at the time but eventually end up forming your destiny. And it’s also kind of a whistle while you work scenario.”
Comprised of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott, Five Dice, All Threes is the band’s 10th studio album and features guest performances from Cat Power, The National’s Matt Berninger and The So So Glos’ Alex Orange Drink.
The tracklisting for the album is:
Five Dice
Bells and Whistles
El Capitan
Bas Jan Ader
Tiny Suicides
All Threes
Rainbow Overpass
Hate
Real Feel 105°
Spun Out
Trains Still Run On Time
The Time I Have Left
Tin Soldier Boy
The band also tour the UK and EU:
10th November – Wolverhampton, UK – Wulfrun Hall
11th November – London, UK – O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
12th November – Nijmegen, Netherlands – Doornroosje
13th November – Ghent, Belgium – Ha Concerts
14th November – Cologne, Germany – Carlswerk Victoria
15th November – Berlin, Germany – Tempodrom
16th November – Weissenhauser Strand, Germany – Rolling Stone Beach
18th November – Stockholm, Sweden – Fållan
19th November – Oslo, Norway – Parkteatret
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First off, a gentle reminder that our excellent new issue of Uncut is in the shops now, featuring a free John Lennon CD and an Ultimate Music Guide sampler to all Lennon’s solo albums. Inside, there’s a ton of typically great stuff, including Blondie, Steve Marriott, Love, Linda Thompson, Irma Thomas, Rich Ruth and Joanna Newsom. Anyway full details about the new Uncut are here, in case you missed them.
As is tradition abound now, I rounded up my favourite albums from so far; specifically releases from January 1 until June 30. I’ve listed them here in order of release – just to be painfully clear, this is very much my personal choice and is in no way representative of the Uncut writers in general…
Bob Dylan changed the set list around for the second show at this year’s Outlaw Festival last night (June 22) at the PNC Music Pavilion, Charlotte, North Carolina.
The previous night (June 21) at Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, in Alpharetta, Georgia, Dylan played:
My Babe (Bob on piano) (Little Walter song)
Beyond Here Lies Nothin’ (Bob on piano)
Simple Twist Of Fate (Bob on piano)
Little Queenie (Bob on piano) (Chuck Berry song)
Mr Blue (Bob on piano) (DeWayne Blackwell song)
Pay In Blood (Bob on piano)
Cold Cold Heart (Bob on piano) (Hank Williams song)
Early Roman Kings (Bob on piano)
Under The Red Sky (Bob on piano)
Things Have Changed (Bob on piano)
The Fool (Bob on piano) (Naomi Ford and Lee Hazelwood song)
Scarlet Town (Bob on piano)
Long And Wasted Years (Bob on piano)
Night 2 saw a revised set list, with Dylan swapped out eight songs from the previous show, adding in three classics including “Highway 61 Revisited“, “Ballad Of A Thin Man” and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight“.
Stella Blue (Bob on piano) (Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia song)
Six Days On The Road (Bob on piano) (Dave Dudley song)
Soon After Midnight (Bob on piano and harp)
Ballad Of A Thin Man (Bob on piano and harp)
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (Bob on piano)
Band Members Bob Dylan – piano Tony Garnier – electric and standup bass Jim Keltner – drums Bob Britt – acoustic guitar, electric guitar Doug Lancio – acoustic guitar, electric guitar
When Willy Vlautin says The Horse is his most autobiographical book, it’s a cause for alarm. As a novelist and songwriter with The Delines and Richmond Fontaine, Vlautin has always mined a deep seam of melancholy. But The Horse’s embrace of bleakness is startling. The story centres on Al, a jobbing songwriter living alone in the high desert in winter, whose depressive isolation is punctured when a blind horse appears outside his shack.
It was inspired by the time Vlautin went camping in central Nevada. “My friend and I were driving out in the middle of nowhere, near a salt flat,” he explains. “There were no trees, not even sagebrush, no water for 20-50 miles, and suddenly there’s this blind horse. It stopped me in my tracks. A couple of days later we came across an old mining claim, and this old shack that you could tell somebody lived in for a while. I was feeling pretty rough anyway. I was like, ‘Man, I think I’m gonna stay here and call it a life.’ My friend laughed at me. That’s where the book started, with those two things, and my own problems with booze and songwriting.”
The underlying theme of the book is compulsion. “I was interested in that idea: what do you do when you can’t quit? You can’t quit writing songs. You can’t quit alcohol. Al’s idea was to hit escape and disappear, which you can do literally by running out into the middle of nowhere. It’s easy to connect the dots on me. I mean, for maybe 20 years, every day when I opened my eyes, I’d say: ‘Would you rather have a Denver omelette or French toast? Or would you rather have a tequila and ice cold beer? My answer would tell me how my day was going to be.”
The more obvious parallel between Vlautin and his troubled hero is the way the story evokes the hardscrabble life of a working musician, firstly around the casino circuit, then with younger musicians in a cowpunk band. Al’s emotional state is tracked in his lyrics, reflecting Vlautin’s unbending belief in the power of song. “My brother had a stereo that could shake our house, it was so loud, and he was always playing records. A friend of his, a really cool guy, came over. I was 11, he was 15. I was a beat-up kid, not the most stable little guy. He said, ‘If you find the right song, you can live inside that song. Just hum it, and you’ll never be alone.’ He didn’t say it quite as romantic as that, maybe. But that’s what I got out of it. When my life got bad, I disappeared into records.”
Around a dozen of the fictional song titles in The Horse have grown into actual songs, a couple of which will feature on the next Delines album, due next January. Vlautin says it’s the group’s most cinematic record, and it includes some upbeat material, at the insistence of singer Amy Boone. “Amy will grab me, and she’ll go, ‘Can you just write me a romantic song where no one gets killed, for fuck’s sake?’ She likes the romance. So it has a few of those.”
“With Fontaine,” he adds, “the only time that I’ve ever seen those guys pissed at me was when I’d bring in eight ballads in a row. They’re like, ‘Eight ballads with no chorus? Could you just write us something catchy and fast?’ But I’ve always loved the big country-soul ballad, so I got to lean into that.”
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If traditional music from Dublin seems to be having its moment in the spotlight – most notably as a result of Lankum’s recent critical and commercial success – it’s only because the world is starting to pay attention. Lily Power, Méabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch have been performing together as Landless for more than a decade, their paths crossing in college, through Dublin’s Sacred Harp traditional singing community and in the clubs that hosted the likes of Lankum and Lisa O’Neill in the early 2010s.
In 2018, they released their debut album Bleaching Bones, an extraordinary, entirely unaccompanied collection of traditional songs, helmed by False Lankum producer John “Spud” Murphy (you may have heard their stunning version of “The Well Below The Valley” on the recent Uncut covermount CD, The Planet That You’re On). Forthcoming follow-up Lúireach, again produced by Murphy, is no less extraordinary, with its careful use of instruments – pump organ, shruti box, fiddle and banjo from Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada, plus Alex Borwick’s trombone on album opener “The Newry Highwayman” – augmenting the four-part harmonies that remain the heart of the work.
“We recorded Bleaching Bones in churches and other interesting spaces, so we chose to leave it like that so that you could hear those acoustics,” says contralto singer Meir. “This one was recorded in the studio, and using other instruments gave it the depth those spaces gave the first album.”
“We’ve found ourselves singing in churches a lot over the years, because it really suits the music,” adds Clinton. “And if there’s an organ there, because I’m a pipe organist, it’s hard to resist playing it.” She uses the instrument to haunting effect on “Death And The Lady”, a supernatural 17th century folk song popularised by Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy.
Another evolution in the quartet’s sound comes from the inclusion of more recent commissions alongside more traditional fare. Of these, “Lúireach Bhríde” (“St Brigid’s Breastplate”) stands out: the lyrics, set to music by Clinton, come from a poem by the Donegal poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin, which was commissioned for the inaugural RTÉ Folk Awards in 2018 and is dedicated to the children born at the Bon Secours Mother And Baby Home for unmarried mothers at Tuam, Galway “The invitation was to reflect on 100 years since women had gotten the vote in Ireland, and the poem is about Brigid and her various powers of healing, smithcraft and poetry,” says Clinton. “The word lúireach by itself can also mean a protective song, or hymn, so it also worked as a standalone album title.”
“We’ve all been singing different traditional songs for a long time, and sometimes what we’ll do is bring one of those to Landless and write harmonies for it,” continues Meir. “‘My Lagan Love’ is one of those for me – a really well-known song I’ve been singing since I was a child, that sounds so different with the harmonies added.”
A particular favourite of the band is another song based on a poem, “The Wounded Hussar” by 18th century Scottish poet Thomas Campbell. “It’s what we call a ‘big’ song in traditional music, it has everything you want from a folk song,” says Power. “We first heard it performed by Rita Gallagher, who’s a big influence on us, and it’s one of the first songs I ever heard Maeve sing.”
Having recorded the album in February 2020 – with babies, house moves and the small matter of a global pandemic getting in the way of their original release plans – the band are taking some time to figure out their next steps after signing to world music label Glitterbeat (Gaye Su Akyol, Altın Gün). “Those guys are super cool,” says Lynch, “and we’re really excited to see what might come up outside of Ireland.”
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“It’s miraculous that we’ve lasted 60 years,” says Mike Love at the start of Disney +’s new Beach Boys documentary. “But the reason we’ve lasted so long is because we’re family.” By my estimation this is the eighth or ninth attempt to bring the group’s story to the screen. It’s hard to say that any of them have been entirely successful. But you possibly need some unholy combination of Paul and Wes Anderson, David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino to really capture the innocence, glee, wonder, grandeur, goofiness, trauma, madness, horror, squalor and grief of this particular peculiar American saga.
With the best of intentions, most recent attempts have joined in the construction of The Holy Cathedral of Brian Wilson. I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times (1995), Endless Harmony (1998), Beautiful Dreamer (2004), Love & Mercy (2014) and Long Promised Road (2021) have each in their own way been dedicated to the sainted psychedelic savant. As Don Was (one of the few insightful talking heads lined up here) says: Phil Spector’s productions felt like they were in black and white, but Brian took pop production into Technicolor.
These stories find some charm in the early home recordings but generally can’t wait to move on to the moment Brian hooks up with LA’s session musician royalty the Wrecking Crew and real writers (lyricists Tony Asher and Van Dyke Parks), as if the Wilsons were faintly embarrassing hangers on, not worthy of the sainted elder brother. For all its flaws, The Beach Boys does remind you that there were at various points at least eight other guys in the band, whose voices, talents and personalities contributed to making this weird, dysfunctional, transcendent band more than the sum of its parts.
In particular, in case you had forgotten, it reminds you of the contribution of one Michael Edward Love. Though his litigiousness, self importance and support of Donald Trump haven’t endeared him to everyone, he did after all write the lyrics to “Good Vibrations”, “The Warmth Of The Sun” and “Help Me Rhonda” and his baritone was a key part of the 1960s’ greatest singles run.
In a very wholesome way it reminds you of the similarly significant contributions of Al (for his perfect pitch and suggestion they record “Sloop John B”- though as he admits, if he had produced it, it would have sounded like The Kingston Trio), Carl (the only one of the boys who could hold his own with the Wrecking Crew), Dennis (for embodying the Californian myth, and becoming a significant writer in his own right), Bruce (for gamely stepping in when Glen Campbell took off), and even finds time for the eternally overlooked Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin. Hovering over the family is the domineering, abusive patriarch Murry, heard on eerie studio recordings, attempting to interfere with Brian’s production.
Though some of the guest talking heads are baffling, there are fine contributions from Hal Blaine and Carol Kay on Brian’s growing mastery of the studio. And there are some genuine laugh out loud moments (Al’s deadpan, Ken-like early 1970s realisation: “We were no longer Beach Boys, we were Beach… Men”).
But the omissions are legion: apart from his troubles composing SMILE, Brian’s mental health problems are skirted over and he’s present mostly through archive interviews. Meanwhile Dennis’s involvement with Charles Manson is hurried by and his death isn’t even acknowledged.
Just as he now has the license to the Beach Boys name, this ultimately feels like the Mike Love version of the Beach Boys story. At one point he’s asked about his relationship with Brian. “These days we don’t talk much but if I did I’d tell him that I love him.” His voices cracks, there’s a hint of a tear. “Nothing can erase that.” The film ends with an eerie shot of the surviving members meeting on the beach at Paradise Cove, where they were once photographed for the cover of Surfer Girl. But we don’t get to hear the conversation, don’t get a chance to experience all those voices together one last time. The credits rolls and the final song is, of course, the deathless Mike Love composition “Kokomo”.
Big Wave starts with a big bang. A track called “The Cord” that in a little over three pummelling minutes upends most available notions of what to expect from a Joana Serrat record, the song ending with its chorus repeated by a voice like something lifted from the soundtrack of a low-budget ’80s horror film involving demonic possession or a field recording of a voodoo exorcism. Disconcerting isn’t quite the word, but it will have to do.
The precocious Catalan singer-songwriter’s first couple of albums – The Relief Sessions (2012) and Dear Grand Canyon (2014) – mostly mixed handsome fingerpicking folk and country rock. Tracks like “Flowers On The Hillside”, “The Blizzard” and “So Clear” meanwhile essayed a kind of dreampop that recalled quintessential shoegazers Slowdive, whose Neil Halstead was a guest on 2016’s Cross The Verge, produced like Dear Grand Canyon by early Arcade Fire member Howard Bilerman, who’d been impressed by a demo tape Serrat sent him.
For her next album, she wanted a more expansive sound and found it in Texas, at Israel Nash’s Plum Creek Studios, where she recorded 2017’s Dripping Springs. Nash produced with suitably symphonic panache and plenty of reverb. She was backed by the amazing band Israel had then, and they often sounded like a windswept Crazy Horse behind Serrat’s numinous voice. Guitarist Joey McLellan, now with Midlake, became an important collaborator, providing Serrat’s songs with a sweeping widescreen vivacity and co-producing 2021’s Hardcore From The Heart with Sonic Youth and Kurt Vile engineer Ted Young and Midlake drummer McKenzie Smith at their Redwood studios in Denton, Texas. His swirling soundscapes are essential components of both records that basically were albums of unfettered cosmic Americana, the kind that takes psychedelic flight, an often soaring starlit noise that reminded listeners variously of Crazy Horse, Mazzy Star and Cocteau Twins.
Big Wave, meanwhile, returns Serrat to the solo career she took a detour from on last year’s collaborative Riders Of The Canyon venture with Irish songwriter Matthew McDaid and Catalan musicians Roger Usart and Victor Partido. She went back to Denton to record it at Matt Pence’s Echo Lab studio, Pence producing, with assistance from McClellan, whose signature guitar is again all over the album. Pence has worked previously as a drummer, engineer and producer with Jason Isbell, Centro-Matic, American Music Club and John Grant. There’s much that he brings to the album that’s new to Serrat’s music. He starts by tethering it, harnessing its previous inclination to take off at every opportunity, basically reversing its gravity. A track called “Feathers” on an earlier Serrat album would have been a suitably fluttering thing, a song carried by a sweet melodic breeze or caught by a ruffling thermal; a rising current of air, possibly weightless. The track here called “Feathers” is an otherwise different kind of noise. Brutal, almost. An event horizon of boiling synths, drums going off like artillery in a canyon, writhing guitars. Where once her music was in almost constant ascent, here it plummets, sensationally. The last few minutes of “Freewheel” are like falling down a lift shaft with something very loud by My Bloody Valentine roaring in your ear buds.
There’s distortion and a swarming turbulence to nearly everything here, as unsettling as it is unforgettable. “Sufferer”, “Tight To You” and “The Ocean” are full of submarinal currents, brooding drifts. “Big Lagoons” is one long crescendo. Only “A Dream That Can Last”, the unbearably pretty “Are You Still Here?” and “This House”, Serrat’s bereaved voice set against Jesse Chandler’s grand piano, offer asylum from the general upheaval.
This is a sound largely dictated by the new tone of Serrat’s songs. She’s previously written a lot about love – finding it, enduring it, losing it, whatever – and is clearly no stranger to romantic disappointment. There was something almost ecstatic, however, about songs like “You’re With Me Wherever I Go” and “Take Me Back Where I Belong”, a kind of rapture in the voltage of love gone wrong that you’re tempted to describe as transcendent. These new songs are on the other hand often quite violently distressed, seething at times, angry and accusatory. It’s as if she’s giving voice to a previously muted inner darkness, some deep unhappiness. There are references everywhere to voids, absences, erasures, vanishings, the feeling that every new beginning is merely the prelude to the nothingness around the next corner, dark premonitions that have inspired Serrat’s boldest, most singular album. This is brilliant stuff.
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The August 2024 issue of Uncut is packed full of goodies for the discerning John Lennon fan. As well as our cover story – a deep dive into Lennon’s creative but turbulent 1973/’74 – there’s a stunning Collector’s Cover, a mini Ultimate Music Guide to all Lennon’s solo albums and a unique, ultra-collective CD featuring new mixes, outtakes and more from the upcoming Mind Games deluxe edition box set. Now read on…
This month’s Uncut CD is rather special. Compiled exclusively for us by the John Lennon estate, it features nine songs taken from the deluxe Mind Games boxset. Why nine, you may ask? Nine was Lennon’s favourite number – present in songs like “One After 909” to “Revolution 9” and “#9 Dream” – and Mind Games was recorded during a period when Lennon and Yoko Ono were re-engaging with their interests in esoteric subjects, exploring everything from palmistry to numerology.
The deluxe Mind Games boxset includes brand new mixes, outtakes and audio documentaries that explore the evolution of each song, from piano demos recorded at Lennon’s home in Surrey through recording sessions at New York’s Record Plant to the final master. Before we reveal the tracklisting for our CD, here’s a few words from Mind Games’ producer and creative director Sean Ono Lennon… “Our Uncut CD shows examples of the types of mixes we’ve included. I think listening to these mixes will give you a sense of the broad scope you can expect from the boxsets. From very polished and what I would consider ‘ultimate’ mixes, to raw elements and outtakes.
“We’ve really tried to include everything we possibly can and we’re really looking forward to hearing people’s feedback. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done on an album that has always meant a lot to me personally.”
The Evolution Documentary mixes tell the story of a track from demo to completion. “Mind Games” began as a piano-and-voice demo recorded at Lennon’s home in Ascot, Surrey in 1970, before he returned to the unfinished song ahead of the Mind Games sessions in summer 1973. The Evolution Documentary follows the song from this initial demo and into the studio, where Lennon gives instructions to the band, and Yoko Ono offers observations from the control room. Then we hear the final mix, starting with guitar, piano and vocal as the other familiar elements are finally introduced. “Mind Games” was the sole single from the album, reaching No 18 in America.
2 I’M THE GREATEST
(Ultimate Mix)
Originally written in 1970, Lennon took the title of “I’m The Greatest” from a quote by Muhammad Ali – but wasn’t sure he could get away with singing the phrase himself. He felt it made much better sense, however, when it came from the mouth of Ringo Starr, who was looking for songs for his 1973 album, Ringo. “I’m The Greatest” became the opening track. Lennon’s original reading was a little maudlin and sarcastic, but by May 1973 he was in upbeat mood as he recorded it in LA with Ringo, George Harrison and Klaus Voormann. This Ultimate mix features John’s original guide vocal.
3 AISUMASEN I’M SORRY
(Ultimate Mix)
One of the hidden gems on Mind Games, “Aisumasen (I’m Sorry)” was Lennon’s apology to Yoko Ono for some of his recent bad behaviour. It’s a tranquil, hypnotic song, with excellent overdubbed pedal steel by Sneaky Pete Kleinow. This Ultimate mix of “Aisumasen” highlights the craft of the Plastic U.F.Ono Band through Ken Ascher’s subtle piano and a stunning onetake guitar solo from David Spinozza. This underscores Lennon’s pained and plaintive vocal, which is given renewed prominence in the new mix.
4 YOU ARE HERE
(Outtake, Take 5)
The lilting “You Are Here” was another Mind Games song written by Lennon for Yoko Ono. It saw him pursue a theme of two people who are born 3,000 miles apart but defy chance to find each other and fall in love. Possibly one of the finest love songs Lennon ever wrote, this outtake is a stunning 10-minute journey with additional lyrics. It finds the Plastic U.F.Ono Band locked into a slow and steady Latin groove. It feels like a song that never needs to end, something to be played as John and Yoko waltz off together into the sunset.
5 TIGHT A$
(Raw Studio Mix)
One of the two rockers on Mind Games, “Tight A$” is presented in Raw Studio Mix form. This mix provides the chance to hear songs as they were recorded live in the studio, without any effects such as echo and delay. And thus it gives us an idea of what the Plastic U.F.Ono band might have sounded like if they had gone on the road. “Would I have liked to play live?” says bassist Gordon Edwards. “It would have been a smash. Can you imagine how good we would have sounded playing these songs together for a period of weeks? Wow.”
6 BRING ON THE LUCIE FREDA PEEPLE
(Elemental Mix)
The Elemental Mix was conceived by Sean Ono Lennon to provide a more stripped-back, acoustic-style version of the album, with some of the more intense features – notably that of the rhythm section – toned down. These were created at the request of fans, who said they wanted to hear tracks they could listen to when at work without getting too distracted. This funky mix of one of the album’s few political songs puts more focus on the guitar and backing vocals alongside Lennon’s own excellent lead vocal.
7 YOU ARE HERE
(Elements Mix)
This second version of “You Are Here” offers a different way into the song. The Elements Mixes isolate a single musical element from each song – perhaps the bass part from “Intuition”, Ken Ascher’s wild piano on “Out The Blue” or the organ from “Mind Games”. In the case of “You Are Here”, it is Sneaky Pete Kleinow’s pedal steel, which brings much of the exotic vibe to this song about distance and travel. “Sneaky Pete had all these tricks to make strange sounds and John loved Sneaky Pete,” says engineer Dan Barbiero. “He would get all excited when he was coming into the studio.” A mystical, magical ride.
8 OUT THE BLUE
(Elemental Mix)
“Out The Blue” was another song on Mind Games where Lennon expressed wonder and gratitude for finding his wife and soulmate. “Two minds, one destiny”, he sings in a similar line to one from “You Are Here”, before likening Ono to a “UFO” – Lennon would claim to have seen a flying saucer in the sky above New York in 1974. This Elemental Mix cuts to the emotional heart of the song, with Lennon’s raw vocal underwritten by minimal musical backing until Ken Ascher’s piano and David Spinozza’s guitar are introduced for the stellar outro.
9 MEAT CITY
(Evolution Documentary)
At nearly eight minutes long, this Evolution mix of “Meat City” tells a fantastic story. It begins with Lennon’s fumbling home demo, as he hits some fat chords and searches for lyrics, seemingly unaware he is even recording. The mix then drops us into the studio, where the song has already evolved a chunky groove, although the twin drummers – Jim Keltner and Rick Marotta – are still struggling to work out how to play together. Come for the groove, stay for the backing vocalists, who deliver great studio banter before the mix takes us into the finished version of one of the album’s most unrestrained moments.
Decades before Beyoncé, Fleetwood Mac were taking relationship lemons, and serving them up to the world as lemonade. Whether it was maintaining continuity against unlikely odds after the departure of their original guiding light Peter Green or turning their personal intrigues into melodic gold with Rumours, the band’s coping strategy became a key marketing point – as the band crested each vicissitude with an outpouring of new songs.
Still, even a band which doesn’t shy away from motivational affirmations (see: “Don’t Stop!” “On With The Show”) might have to acknowledge that the passing of Christine McVie in 2022 likely spells an end to any subsequent reformations of Fleetwood Mac, a band that created spellbinding music for its reliably enormous audiences for over 50 years. Even Mr Resilient himself, Mick Fleetwood, admits these days it would be “a tall order” to do anything as Fleetwood Mac. “…But stranger things have happened.”
It’s the band’s incredible legacy that we celebrate in this 172-page definitive edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to Fleetwood Mac. From our curated selection of classic interviews, you can enjoy a vivid inside track on the band’s saga, its key players and the drama that unfolded around them. As we dive deep into the music, our team of expert writers reveal the evolving Mac sound: from the melancholy blues tones of their earliest triumphs through to the sophisticated pop rock that brought them their greatest successes. In our foldout timeline we take a – literally – sideways journey through the band’s career.
Fleetwood Mac always fought hard to field a winning team, but there was life for its members outside it and we have taken the opportunity in this edition to dig deeper into the solo careers of its members in reviews and interviews. In 2020, Christine McVie looks back humbly on her achievements and decides she’ll soon be shutting up shop, songs-wise. We review the erratic solo work of Peter Green while Rob Hughes tracks down the close associates who would meet him once a month to jam in his front room. We have tea on Lindsey Buckingham’s patio.
Excitingly, we also discover a long-lost conversation with Stevie Nicks. She and her dog Shulamith are being driven to a Fleetwood Mac rehearsal, while we sit rather in awe of her candour and insight. It’s bittersweet conversation to look back on from the viewpoint of 2024. On the one hand, Stevie is out there now playing a well-received solo tour, where she hits her Mac songbook hard. On the other, her tender recollections of Christine McVie’s return to Fleetwood Mac in 2013 only remind us more acutely of her absence now.
“The second people saw she was coming back, the tickets just sold,” Stevie tells us. “I tell her, Chris, it’s all about you – everyone wants to see you. And we’re thrilled. It’s kinda fun to see it through her eyes…”
A new album of unheard recordings by the Pakistani music icon Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan will be released on September 20, 34 years after they were recorded.
The ‘lost album’ — named Chain Of Light — was discovered in the tape archives of Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records, the label that signed Khan in 1989 and released a series of universally acclaimed albums with him throughout the 1990s.
The album is available on CD, standard LP and limited edition LP. You can pre-order the album here.
A feature-length documentary film Ustad will premiere in late 2025
Joined by his eight-strong party of singers and musicians, Chain of Light presents four traditional qawwals (Sufi Islamic devotional songs) — including one which has never been heard before. The recording was made at Real World Studios in April 1990, during the same time he worked on Mustt Mustt with Canadian producer Michael Brook.
Flow Critical Lucidity will be released on Moore’s Daydream Library Series record label on September 20.
The album was arranged at La Becque in Switzerland and recorded at Total Refreshment Studios in London in 2022, and mixed at Hermitage Studios in London with Margo Broom in 2023.
The musicians are:
Vocals, Guitar: Thurston Moore Bass: Deb Googe Electronics: Jon Leidecker Piano, organ, guitar, glockenspiel: James Sedwards Percussion: Jem Doulton Backing vocals: Laetitia Sadier on “Sans Limites” Lyrics: Radieux Radio, except “Shadow”
The tracklisting is:
New In Town Sans Limites Shadow Hypnogram We Get High Rewilding The Diver (Bonus Track Included On A Clear Flexi Disc) – “Isadora (Bedazzled Mix)”
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