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CORINNE BAILEY RAE – THE SEA

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CORINNE BAILEY RAE – THE SEA

Go into The Sea blind, without knowledge of Corinne Bailey Rae's recent biography, and what hits you is a mixture of emotions. Oddly, for a soul record, there's little sex, no preening, and none of the ritualised heartbreak you'd get from one of those production-line Dusty Springfields who dominate the charts. It's also a thousand miles away from Bailey Rae's four-million-selling debut, which placed the Leeds-based singer on the same commercial footing as Amy Winehouse in 2006. Something, clearly, has happened. Listen again, and what you hear is a sense of loss, sad love, and bruised regret; but the darkness is rendered oddly sweet by the softness of Bailey Rae's voice, and her habit of singing in a bird-like whisper. She has been listening, apparently, to Sly Stone and Curtis Mayfield, and has taken on board the way Nina Simone could flick a switch between absent-minded harmonising and entering the abyss. And, yes, there are jazzy flourishes in a sound that locates its inspiration in the mid-1970s, but it's not really a retro work; thankfully, there's none of the sense of pasted-on, post-modern pastiche that makes chart soul such a chore. So, what happened? The short explanation is that Bailey Rae's husband, jazz musician Jason Rae, died. In March 2008, when Bailey Rae was in the middle of writing her second album, Rae accidentally overdosed on methadone and alcohol. Understandably, Bailey Rae was suffused with grief, and did little work for a year. And when she returned, collaborating with a new band of Leeds-based musicians, under the direction of producers John Ellis and Steve Brown, the songs seemed to inhabit a different mood - mournfulness, underscored by resilience. Remarkably, the album also sounds optimistic. It's not, as the marketing shorthand would put it, Bjork doing Back To Black. It's a delicate, individual record, from the same neighbourhood as Paul Weller's recent excursions in rustic soul, but instead of Weller's creosotey vocals, the emotion is carried in a Minnie Riperton trill. The mood is established by "Are You Here", a gorgeously personal love song written in the midst of loss. The vocal is half-whispered and blurry, and the tune has a tidal feel, pulled along on a simple bass riff towards a swelling refrain. The words are only half-audible, but their meaning is not: it's a beautiful lament, in which the sense of loss is numbed by the power of fond memories. "He's a real live wire," Bailey Rae sings, "he's the best of his kind, wait till you see those eyes." The gentle "I'd Do It All Again" follows, with Bailey Rae sounding even more bereft. Here, a word of caution is required. The song may sound like a post-mortem, but it was actually written in January 2008, after Bailey Rae had a bad argument with her husband. Still, it's hard to believe that the song's mood - mournfulness, stretching into mellow acceptance - wasn't darkened by subsequent events. It ends on a heartbreaking note, as the tune falls away, and Bailey Rae addresses her lover directly. "Oh, you're searching for something, I know," she murmurs, "that will make you happy." There are lighter, more chart-friendly moments. "Paris Nights/New York Mornings" has an abundance of sass, "Paper Dolls" boasts a big pop chorus, and a wonky Joe Meek-style synth, and "Closer" is a straightforward cut of handbags-on-the-dancefloor bump-and-grind which bears no comparison to the Joy Division album of the same name. It's the only directly sexual song, but also the least emotionally affecting. Better by far is "I Would Like To Call It Beauty", a ballad so slow that the melody almost folds into itself, with one of Bailey Rae's most affecting vocals floating woozily upon a mournful organ. It's intimate and elegiac, but also sanguine. Finally, there is "The Sea", which sounds like Bailey Rae dispensing advice to herself. "Goodbye paradise," she sings, sounding only half-lost. Waving, not drowning, you might say. Alastair McKay

Go into The Sea blind, without knowledge of Corinne Bailey Rae’s recent biography, and what hits you is a mixture of emotions. Oddly, for a soul record, there’s little sex, no preening, and none of the ritualised heartbreak you’d get from one of those production-line Dusty Springfields who dominate the charts. It’s also a thousand miles away from Bailey Rae’s four-million-selling debut, which placed the Leeds-based singer on the same commercial footing as Amy Winehouse in 2006.

Something, clearly, has happened. Listen again, and what you hear is a sense of loss, sad love, and bruised regret; but the darkness is rendered oddly sweet by the softness of Bailey Rae’s voice, and her habit of singing in a bird-like whisper. She has been listening, apparently, to Sly Stone and Curtis Mayfield, and has taken on board the way Nina Simone could flick a switch between absent-minded harmonising and entering the abyss. And, yes, there are jazzy flourishes in a sound that locates its inspiration in the mid-1970s, but it’s not really a retro work; thankfully, there’s none of the sense of pasted-on, post-modern pastiche that makes chart soul such a chore.

So, what happened? The short explanation is that Bailey Rae’s husband, jazz musician Jason Rae, died. In March 2008, when Bailey Rae was in the middle of writing her second album, Rae accidentally overdosed on methadone and alcohol. Understandably, Bailey Rae was suffused with grief, and did little work for a year. And when she returned, collaborating with a new band of Leeds-based musicians, under the direction of producers John Ellis and Steve Brown, the songs seemed to inhabit a different mood – mournfulness, underscored by resilience. Remarkably, the album also sounds optimistic. It’s not, as the marketing shorthand would put it, Bjork doing Back To Black. It’s a delicate, individual record, from the same neighbourhood as Paul Weller‘s recent excursions in rustic soul, but instead of Weller’s creosotey vocals, the emotion is carried in a Minnie Riperton trill.

The mood is established by “Are You Here“, a gorgeously personal love song written in the midst of loss. The vocal is half-whispered and blurry, and the tune has a tidal feel, pulled along on a simple bass riff towards a swelling refrain. The words are only half-audible, but their meaning is not: it’s a beautiful lament, in which the sense of loss is numbed by the power of fond memories. “He’s a real live wire,” Bailey Rae sings, “he’s the best of his kind, wait till you see those eyes.”

The gentle “I’d Do It All Again” follows, with Bailey Rae sounding even more bereft. Here, a word of caution is required. The song may sound like a post-mortem, but it was actually written in January 2008, after Bailey Rae had a bad argument with her husband. Still, it’s hard to believe that the song’s mood – mournfulness, stretching into mellow acceptance – wasn’t darkened by subsequent events. It ends on a heartbreaking note, as the tune falls away, and Bailey Rae addresses her lover directly. “Oh, you’re searching for something, I know,” she murmurs, “that will make you happy.”

There are lighter, more chart-friendly moments. “Paris Nights/New York Mornings” has an abundance of sass, “Paper Dolls” boasts a big pop chorus, and a wonky Joe Meek-style synth, and “Closer” is a straightforward cut of handbags-on-the-dancefloor bump-and-grind which bears no comparison to the Joy Division album of the same name. It’s the only directly sexual song, but also the least emotionally affecting. Better by far is “I Would Like To Call It Beauty”, a ballad so slow that the melody almost folds into itself, with one of Bailey Rae’s most affecting vocals floating woozily upon a mournful organ. It’s intimate and elegiac, but also sanguine.

Finally, there is “The Sea”, which sounds like Bailey Rae dispensing advice to herself. “Goodbye paradise,” she sings, sounding only half-lost. Waving, not drowning, you might say.

Alastair McKay

HOT CHIP – ONE LIFE STAND

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HOT CHIP – ONE LIFE STAND

It cannot be said of Hot Chip's particular muse that she is a complacent, idle creature. In the decade that the London group have existed, they have done all of the following, mostly with considerable panache: become ardently beloved festival favourites, been the subject of widely celebrated music videos, acquired formidable reputations as DJs, collaborated with Robert Wyatt and Peter Gabriel, and remixed what feels like a substantial percentage of all the popular songs ever recorded. They've also now made four albums of their own, each at least interesting and at most astonishing. One Life Stand, by no means perfect is, at its best, their best yet. It says much about Hot Chip that their errors tend to be of enthusiastically overcooking good ideas, rather than desperately wringing out bad ones. The opening track here, "Thieves In The Night", is a case in point - a slow-building, multi-layered funky disco saunter, densely populated by ghosts of Visage's "Fade To Grey" too numerous not to have been deliberately summoned. It's an extraordinary confection, supporting a soaring vocal melody, but rather outstays its welcome at just over six minutes. Not for the last time here, Hot Chip sound like they're having too much fun to know quite when to stop. The upside of this is that for the first time, Hot Chip sound entirely relaxed about the idea that they're a pop group - One Life Stand contains little trace of the discordant outings or rather rigidly utilitarian dance grooves they seemed to feel obliged to deploy on previous albums. This is an album that sees Hot Chip freeing themselves of the surly bonds of their more orthodox dance and electronic influences and settling comfortably into the orbit of New Order and Pet Shop Boys (and possibly beyond, indeed - it is supremely undifficult to imagine "I Feel Better" as a globally ubiquitous hit for Madonna, and not just because of a passing resemblance to "La Isla Bonita"). There are several possible shots at the big time here, all the more impressive for their apparent insouciance. The supremely pretty, melancholy gospel affirmation "Brothers" reminds why it was a shame that mid-'80s synth-pop pathfinders Dream Academy and It's Immaterial didn't have a second hit each. "Slush" is a quietly epic piano ballad, not unrelated to REM's "Everybody Hurts", haunted by the ghostly babble of the positively Swingle Singers-style a cappella backdrop that loops behind it (a trope revisited on the album's most obvious dance track, "We Have Love"). The title track is a brilliantly orchestrated corralling of Hot Chip's riotously disparate influences: thunderous Daft Punk keyboard riffs, clamorous steelpan drum (contributed by Trinidadian legend Fimber Bravo), sounds which might well have been borrowed from a 1980s computer game, a warped vocal sample that might have wandered into the mix from Radiohead's Amnesiac, and a dash of Orange Juice-ish rhythm guitar. These fabulous mŽlanges are decorated further by the voices of core Hot Chip members Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard - the former fragile and feather-light, the latter mournful and mumbled, the both eerily complementary (as best demonstrated on the duet "Keep Quiet"). By accident or design, the lyrics repeatedly threaten to subside into the mindless positivity which makes so much electronic music feel like an aerobics lesson, only to reveal themselves as something darker, something deeper: for every "We have love, give it up, give it up", there's at least one "Heaven is nowhere..." It isn't a coincidence that this, Hot Chip's most focused album, is also their finest - more ruthless editing in future will doubtless yield even more spectacular results. The most emblematic track of One Life Stand is "Hand Me Down Your Love" - a disco song set to a four-square rock beat, which briefly promises to erupt into a hands-in-the-air-like-you-just-don't-care floor-filler before instead blooming into an expansive chorus and exquisite string arrangement. Like the album as a whole and the group who made it, it's intriguing, beguiling, occasionally too clever by half - but never, ever boring. Andrew Mueller Q&A Alexis Taylor Do you think of each LP as a progression from/reaction to its predecessor? There was a fair amount of reaction to the last record, in that for that one we made a virtue of stylistic and acoustic/spatial differences, in small tribute to some of my favourite sprawling double albums. For this one, we felt it would be nice to make something which was more coherent as a listening experience. With such a diverse array of influences - and band members - how torturous or otherwise is the process of deciding what's a good idea and what isn't? We lost some great songs for the sake of the 'whole' that is the record, but they will surface soon, I am sure. It worked well in terms of all of us contributing. People seemed to know when to go to sleep, or to the pub, or make up a brilliant keyboard part, depending on the circumstances. What do you learn from working with someone like Robert Wyatt? A lot about working quickly, and using what you have at your disposal to great effect - but I think I'm still taking it all in from that experience, to be honest. His wife, Alfie, made us great food, as well, while we worked, and it was really amazing to be in their company. INTERVIEW: ANDREW MUELLER

It cannot be said of Hot Chip’s particular muse that she is a complacent, idle creature.

In the decade that the London group have existed, they have done all of the following, mostly with considerable panache: become ardently beloved festival favourites, been the subject of widely celebrated music videos, acquired formidable reputations as DJs, collaborated with Robert Wyatt and Peter Gabriel, and remixed what feels like a substantial percentage of all the popular songs ever recorded. They’ve also now made four albums of their own, each at least interesting and at most astonishing. One Life Stand, by no means perfect is, at its best, their best yet.

It says much about Hot Chip that their errors tend to be of enthusiastically overcooking good ideas, rather than desperately wringing out bad ones. The opening track here, “Thieves In The Night”, is a case in point – a slow-building, multi-layered funky disco saunter, densely populated by ghosts of Visage‘s “Fade To Grey” too numerous not to have been deliberately summoned. It’s an extraordinary confection, supporting a soaring vocal melody, but rather outstays its welcome at just over six minutes. Not for the last time here, Hot Chip sound like they’re having too much fun to know quite when to stop.

The upside of this is that for the first time, Hot Chip sound entirely relaxed about the idea that they’re a pop group – One Life Stand contains little trace of the discordant outings or rather rigidly utilitarian dance grooves they seemed to feel obliged to deploy on previous albums. This is an album that sees Hot Chip freeing themselves of the surly bonds of their more orthodox dance and electronic influences and settling comfortably into the orbit of New Order and Pet Shop Boys (and possibly beyond, indeed – it is supremely undifficult to imagine “I Feel Better” as a globally ubiquitous hit for Madonna, and not just because of a passing resemblance to “La Isla Bonita”).

There are several possible shots at the big time here, all the more impressive for their apparent insouciance. The supremely pretty, melancholy gospel affirmation “Brothers” reminds why it was a shame that mid-’80s synth-pop pathfinders Dream Academy and It’s Immaterial didn’t have a second hit each. “Slush” is a quietly epic piano ballad, not unrelated to REM‘s “Everybody Hurts”, haunted by the ghostly babble of the positively Swingle Singers-style a cappella backdrop that loops behind it (a trope revisited on the album’s most obvious dance track, “We Have Love”). The title track is a brilliantly orchestrated corralling of Hot Chip’s riotously disparate influences: thunderous Daft Punk keyboard riffs, clamorous steelpan drum (contributed by Trinidadian legend Fimber Bravo), sounds which might well have been borrowed from a 1980s computer game, a warped vocal sample that might have wandered into the mix from Radiohead‘s Amnesiac, and a dash of Orange Juice-ish rhythm guitar.

These fabulous mŽlanges are decorated further by the voices of core Hot Chip members Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard – the former fragile and feather-light, the latter mournful and mumbled, the both eerily complementary (as best demonstrated on the duet “Keep Quiet”). By accident or design, the lyrics repeatedly threaten to subside into the mindless positivity which makes so much electronic music feel like an aerobics lesson, only to reveal themselves as something darker, something deeper: for every “We have love, give it up, give it up”, there’s at least one “Heaven is nowhere…”

It isn’t a coincidence that this, Hot Chip’s most focused album, is also their finest – more ruthless editing in future will doubtless yield even more spectacular results. The most emblematic track of One Life Stand is “Hand Me Down Your Love” – a disco song set to a four-square rock beat, which briefly promises to erupt into a hands-in-the-air-like-you-just-don’t-care floor-filler before instead blooming into an expansive chorus and exquisite string arrangement. Like the album as a whole and the group who made it, it’s intriguing, beguiling, occasionally too clever by half – but never, ever boring.

Andrew Mueller

Q&A

Alexis Taylor

Do you think of each LP as a progression from/reaction to its predecessor?

There was a fair amount of reaction to the last record, in that for that one we made a virtue of stylistic and acoustic/spatial differences, in small tribute to some of my favourite sprawling double albums. For this one, we felt it would be nice to make something which was more coherent as a listening experience.

With such a diverse array of influences – and band members – how torturous or otherwise is the process of deciding what’s a good idea and what isn’t?

We lost some great songs for the sake of the ‘whole’ that is the record, but they will surface soon, I am sure. It worked well in terms of all of us contributing. People seemed to know when to go to sleep, or to the pub, or make up a brilliant keyboard part, depending on the circumstances.

What do you learn from working with someone like Robert Wyatt?

A lot about working quickly, and using what you have at your disposal to great effect – but I think I’m still taking it all in from that experience, to be honest. His wife, Alfie, made us great food, as well, while we worked, and it was really amazing to be in their company.

INTERVIEW: ANDREW MUELLER

Noel Gallagher announces first post-Oasis gigs

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Noel Gallagher announces first post-Oasis gigs
Noel Gallagher has announced his first post-Oasis gigs, to take place in March for the Teenage Cancer Trust. He joins Arctic Monkeys, Them Crooked Vultures, a reformed Suede, The Who, Depeche Mode and JLS on the bill for the charity gigs at the London Royal Albert Hall from February 17. Gallagher ...

Noel Gallagher has announced his first post-Oasis gigs, to take place in March for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

He joins Arctic Monkeys, Them Crooked Vultures, a reformed Suede, The Who, Depeche Mode and JLS on the bill for the charity gigs at the London Royal Albert Hall from February 17.

Gallagher is to play two gigs at the venue, on March 25 and 26. The Who‘s Roger Daltrey, who is a patron for the Teenage Cancer Trust, told NME.COM that the shows would be the guitarist’s only live dates of 2010. The Who also play the event on March 30. In addition to the gigs a comedy night will take place at the venue on March 23.

Tickets for all the shows go on sale at 9am (GMT) on Friday (February 5). See Teenagecancertrust.com for more information.

The Teenage Cancer Trust gigs line-up at the London Royal Albert Hall is:

Depeche Mode (February 17)

Them Crooked Vultures (March 22)

Jimmy Carr, Noel Fielding and Rhod Gilbert (23)

Suede (24)

Noel Gallagher (25, 26)

Arctic Monkeys (27)

JLS (28)

The Who (30)

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

Various Artists: “Kompakt Pop Ambient 2010”

John Mulvey
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Some albums prove harder to write about than others, for reasons that aren’t always easy to fathom. Others, though, seem purposely designed as hard to pin down: a case in point being Kompakt’s latest “Pop Ambient 2010” comp, which I’ve been listening to a lot for a couple of months now. How do you articulate what music sounds like that exists in such a neutral, undemonstrative space? A lot of quasi-ambient music I’ve covered here has been of the vaguely kosmische kind: not least some of the Oneohtrix Point Never and Emeralds albums from last year, which I’ve also been playing a fair bit this past few weeks. With those sort of records, there’s always an easy – perhaps too easy – psychedelic gloss that can be applied, some easyish references to Klaus Schulze and so on. The ambience which Kompakt generally supports, though, is more slivery, environmental: the label co-founder Wolfgang Voigt’s own project was long called Gas, which describes much here rather well (though not Voigt’s own contribution, “Zither Und Horn”, curiously, which is more of a ghostly, lopsided refraction of a German folk song). The roots of a lot of this stuff are in that post-clubbing, early ‘90s school of ambient, and as if to reinforce the point there’s even a track from The Orb, “Glen Coe”, which has a familiar sense of exalted numbness (and dazed dialogue samples) that suggests Alex Paterson has been frozen in aspic for the best part of two decades. As with the best comps of this kind, however, it’s hard to pick out – or indeed remember - most of the individual tracks without unsuitably attentive study of the tracklisting. Then, the odd one stands out, like Jurgen Paape’s “864M”, which reminds me happily of the endphase of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” with its serenely looping waveforms. There appears to be a noisy clock in the distance here, too, and it’s a tribute to the artists on “Pop Ambient 2010” that they seem adept at making so much twinkling, enveloping music with such a time-honoured palette of what are, in many cases, total ambient clichés. Brock Van Wey/BVDub is another case in point, with two tracks here, the second of which – “Will You Know Where To Find Me” – ends up stretching out a wordlessly ecstatic female vocal into a cycling chorale; a deep house meditation disc, after a fashion. It lasts 17 minutes and, as is the traditional thing to say when finishing this sort of piece, it might as well go on forever.

Some albums prove harder to write about than others, for reasons that aren’t always easy to fathom. Others, though, seem purposely designed as hard to pin down: a case in point being Kompakt’s latest “Pop Ambient 2010” comp, which I’ve been listening to a lot for a couple of months now. How do you articulate what music sounds like that exists in such a neutral, undemonstrative space?

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Sly Stone sues former manager for $50m

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Sly Stone sues former manager for $50m
Sly Stone is suing his former manager Jerry Goldstein for $50m (£30.9m). The singer claims he is owed money because of fraud and stolen royalties. In a lawsuit filed to the Los Angeles Superior Court, Stone said that Goldstein kept the money himself over a 20-year period, as well as borrowing mon...

Sly Stone is suing his former manager Jerry Goldstein for $50m (£30.9m).

The singer claims he is owed money because of fraud and stolen royalties.

In a lawsuit filed to the Los Angeles Superior Court, Stone said that Goldstein kept the money himself over a 20-year period, as well as borrowing money in the band’s name, reports BBC News.

Stone‘s lawyer Robert Allen said the lawsuit highlighted the “dark side” of the music business.

No public statement on the lawsuit has been made by either Goldstein or his representatives.

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

Sigur Ros scrap new album

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Sigur Ros scrap new album
Sigur Ros' Jonsi Birgisson has said that the band have scrapped their new album. Birgisson revealed that contrary to reports that the band were on the verge of completing the follow-up to 2008 album 'Með Suð I Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust', they've in fact had to restart the entire project. "We h...

Sigur Ros‘ Jonsi Birgisson has said that the band have scrapped their new album.

Birgisson revealed that contrary to reports that the band were on the verge of completing the follow-up to 2008 album ‘Með Suð I Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust’, they’ve in fact had to restart the entire project.

“We haven’t got another [Sigur Ros] album ready – It was just a rumour,” Birgisson told Spinnermusic.co.uk. “We started to record something, but then we chucked it all away. So I think we are going to have to start it all again.”

Birgisson, who releases his new solo album ‘Go’ on March 22, went on to state that the rest of Sigur Ros are currently taking time out. “Yes we are on a break at the moment. Everybody in the band is having babies.”

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

White Hills, “White Hills” and Carlton Melton’s “Pass It On…”

John Mulvey
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A load of pretty heavy psych’s been accumulating over the last few weeks: new albums from Major Stars (what an amazing guitarist Wayne Rogers is); from both Wooden Shjips and Ripley’s other project, Moon Duo; a cool new (to me, at least) band on No Quarter called Coconuts. First off, though, I really should write about “Pass It On…” by Carlton Melton. I alluded to this Northern Californian band back in December, when I was tipped off about their MySpace. As far as I can tell, this is the Mendocino band’s second album, following their “Live At Point Arena” album – recorded in a geodesic dome, mythically, in a remote coastal town where I stayed with friends a good decade ago. “Pass It On…” currently comes from Mid-To-Late Records, with the vinyl in a shade of brown that purportedly matches the local redwoods, but looks more like shit to me. No matter: this is intense, sweet, headnodding psych, opening with a fabulous cover of Pink Floyd’s “When You’re In” that reminds me a little of Mudhoney’s Spacemen 3 appropriations. It’s fairly monolithic, but with a dronier, headier intensity than the Sabbath-indebted lurchers that usually get called stoner rock. After that, Carlton Melton drift off, appealingly: “Found Children” roughly resembles one of the more ambient tracks from “Neu! 75” recalibrated by a rock band who maybe learned their dirge chops from the Stooges’ “We Will Fall”. “Digging In (Fucking Funky Shite)”, meanwhile, is another great example of the band’s key strength, sustaining a meditative, groggy state just on the cusp of freak-out. Some of you might like it… Especially those of you who already are keen on the New York band, White Hills, further masters of the sort of enjoyably turgid, alternately trudging, surging and cycling psych that habitually gets compared with Hawkwind. Cope’s been all over this lot for a while now, and their latest self-titled album on Thrill Jockey kicks off with a tremendous spacerocker called “Dead”, which stands comparison with Loop (quite a big influence on a bunch of American bands these days, it seems, Wooden Shjips being very much on that trip). For all the cosmic vibes, there’s a grungy, punkish feel to White Hills, which gives dead-eyed seethers like “Three Quarters” an edginess far removed from hippy reverie. See what you think - www.myspace.com/whitehills - and I’ll get round to Major Stars and the Shjips/Moon Duo stuff sometime next week.

A load of pretty heavy psych’s been accumulating over the last few weeks: new albums from Major Stars (what an amazing guitarist Wayne Rogers is); from both Wooden Shjips and Ripley’s other project, Moon Duo; a cool new (to me, at least) band on No Quarter called Coconuts.

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Muse filming Nirvana-inspired tour documentary

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Muse filming Nirvana-inspired tour documentary
Muse are set to make a warts and all tour documentary in the style of Nirvana's legendary 'Live! Tonight! Sold Out!' video. While their previous DVD's have focussed on the band's performances, bassist Chris Wolstenholme says the trio want something a little more relaxed this time round. "We'd like...

Muse are set to make a warts and all tour documentary in the style of Nirvana‘s legendary ‘Live! Tonight! Sold Out!’ video.

While their previous DVD’s have focussed on the band’s performances, bassist Chris Wolstenholme says the trio want something a little more relaxed this time round.

“We’d like to something a little bit more along the lines of a touring documentary as opposed to just a live gig this time,” Wolstenholme told Triple J.

He added: “Something a little bit more like Nirvana‘s ‘Live! Tonight! Sold Out!. I think that was one of the best tour documentaries I’ve ever watched; just life on the road and what it’s like, with obviously a bit of music here and there, and other loads of other random stuff as well.”

Muse are currently in Australia to play the Big Day Out festival.

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

Lou Reed to bring ‘Metal Machine Trio’ to the UK

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Lou Reed to bring ‘Metal Machine Trio’ to the UK
Lou Reed is to tour the UK with his Metal Machine Trio this April. Reed will be joined by musicians Ulrich Krieger and Sarth Calhoun for the gigs, which will take in a night of what he calls "deep noise" and improvised sounds. The gigs are influenced by Reed's 1975 album 'Metal Machine Music' – a...

Lou Reed is to tour the UK with his Metal Machine Trio this April.

Reed will be joined by musicians Ulrich Krieger and Sarth Calhoun for the gigs, which will take in a night of what he calls “deep noise” and improvised sounds. The gigs are influenced by Reed‘s 1975 album ‘Metal Machine Music’ – although the album itself will not be being played. No songs or vocals will feature either.

Lou Reed‘s Metal Machine Trio play:

Cambridge Junction (April 17)

Oxford O2 Academy (18)

London Royal Festival Hall (19)

Paris La Cigale (21)

Oslo Sentrum (26)

Mallorca Teatre Principal de Palma (30)

Tickets are available now.

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

Pavement: “Quarantine The Past”

John Mulvey
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It’s a dubious business, calling any band empirically ‘great’. But perhaps one indicator of greatness might be the amount of controversy and whingeing generated when a ‘Best Of’ tracklisting is announced. That’s certainly the case with “Quarantine The Past”, the Pavement Best Of whose tracklisting was unveiled the other day, around the same time the promo CD arrived in the office. Fairly soon after, the Duke Of Monmouth posted here, “What do you think of the tracklisting of ‘Quarantine The Past’? Can't believe there’s no ‘Father To A Sister Of Thought’!!!” Shocking, for sure. And what about “Carrot Rope”, “Fillmore Jive”, “Half A Canyon”, “Rattled By The Rush”, “The Hexx”, “Serpentine Pad”, “Silence Kit”, “We Are Underused”, “We Dance”, “Fame Throwa”, “Stop Breathin”, “Grave Architecture”, “Platform Blues”, “Give It A Day”, “Westie Can Drum”? And so on? What’s left for “Quarantine The Past” are still 23 generally superb tracks, beginning sentimentally enough – or as sentimental as Pavement could ever be - with “Gold Soundz”, and ending with the droll call-to-arms of “Fight This Generation”. It’s always tempting to make big claims for Pavement as one of the best and, ultimately, most influential bands of the ‘90s; the sort of pompous and sententious claims, tied up in canonical thinking among other things, that the band would probably disdain. Better then, perhaps, to talk about how happy and stimulating this music still sounds to me; a pleasure which definitely transcends mere nostalgia. One of Pavement’s many haphazard gifts was to engineer a rapprochement between brainy, snarky self-consciousness and daft, ramshackle abandon, and much of the best music here – not least “Unfair”, which might just be my favourite Pavement song - pulls off that trick again and again. “Unfair” sits in an especially stellar run through the middle of “Quarantine The Past”, also featuring “Here”, “Grounded”, “Summer Babe” and “Range Life”. It’s halted somewhat by “Date w/IKEA”: without stressing over every selection on the album, this seems the most puzzling, possibly necessitated by an obligation to include two Spiral Stairs songs (No complaints about the other, “Two States”). The thought occurs, actually, that Scott might have had a fair bit to do with this tracklisting, since it notably privileges the earlier phases of the band, finding room for “Mellow Jazz Docent” as well as “Frontwards”, “In The Mouth A Desert”, “Debris Slide”, “Shoot The Singer”, “Trigger Cut” and “Box Elder”. But then it’s hard to think of good reasons why any of the above shouldn’t have been included, either. Maybe the Best Of should have been an, oh, 6CD set? That’d cover it…

It’s a dubious business, calling any band empirically ‘great’. But perhaps one indicator of greatness might be the amount of controversy and whingeing generated when a ‘Best Of’ tracklisting is announced.

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LOVE – LOST LOVE

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LOVE – LOST LOVE

Love's 1967 masterstroke, Forever Changes, was a monster to live up to, and Arthur Lee knew it. An intoxicating mix of hope and hate, ebullience and paranoia, shifting perspectives and orchestral beauty, it sprang from the Summer Of Love with a mysterious elegance and wisdom all too rare in pop. It wasn't a commercial breakthrough, though, and instead of rallying the group behind its genius, the classic 1966-68 Love lineup (featuring crucial second songwriter Bryan MacLean) imploded in a haze of recrimination, drug abuse, and legal trouble. Lee retrenched, carrying on under the Love banner, but he could never have replicated the magic of Forever Changes, even if he'd been foolish enough to try. Thus began one of rock's more peculiar odysseys - Arthur Lee's downward spiral from shaman to burnout, from Sunset Strip's most resplendent hipster to just another lost hippy soul sleepwalking through the '70s. Beginning with Forever Changes' 1969 follow-up, Four Sail, Lee's recordings proffered ever-dwindling returns. Aided by a succession of musically adroit yet ininspired backing musicians, Love plummeted into hippy jams and anonymous hard rock, callow pop and perfunctory forays into R'n'B. Even the best of it wasn't traceable back to the man responsible for "The Red Telephone" and "Seven And Seven Is." Lee remained a powerful singer, though, and glimmers of the old magic occasionally surfaced. But the songwriting was half-baked and mundane. It was as if the maelstrom had stripped Arthur of his identity. One would be hard-pressed to find a more precipitous artistic drop-off in all rock'n'roll than 1967's Forever Changes to 1974's Reel To Real. Love Lost, Sundazed's surprise unearthing of all-but-forgotten 1971 session tapes (laid down during the band's brief alliance with Columbia Records), throws a fascinating wrinkle into Love's disintegration. Veering from captivating to frustrating, charming to maddening, it's a typically uneven set. Yet there are moments of sheer beauty, and Lee clearly poured his heart into the grooves. Reinventing himself in the image of his recently deceased friend Jimi Hendrix, interweaving blazing rock with sublime, fly-on-wall acoustic tracks, Dear You, as the Columbia album was to be called, had enough mojo to fuel a plausible comeback. Evidence that Hendrix's death hit Arthur Lee hard lurks everywhere - in his vocal phrasing and spoken asides, in guitarist Craig Tarwater's high-voltage riffs, in the souped-up bluesy arrangements. In fact, if imitation is the highest form of flattery, Love Lost could be interpreted as a Hendrix tribute album par excellence (although, to be fair, bits of Cream, Mountain, the Jeff Beck Group, and others percolate throughout). "I Can't Find It", which with a bit more work might have been the single, echoes "The Wind Cries Mary"; the stuttering strut of "Midnight Sun" is drenched in Electric Ladyland-isms. And on and on. These are fine efforts - vicarious pleasures to be sure - that nonetheless get under your skin. "Product Of The Times" even gets away from stock paeans to troubled love affairs for a bit of self-reflective commentary, a flicker of Lee's old songwriting spark. "Product," riding a gutbucket riff and some sizzling lead guitar, and everyman anthem "Everybody's Gotta Live", given a hair-raising Lee vocal, are impassioned, fully realised gems. Yet, for all the group's chutzpah, Arthur Lee's indulgences - a tendency to over-sing into a screech, some cringeworthy misogyny - blunt the impact. Curiously, Columbia assigned no producer for these sessions, terminating the band's contract without releasing a note. A clearheaded producer, one capable of adding some discipline, focus and editing, might well have crafted Dear You into a remarkable rebirth. For all Lee's bluster, though, the austere power of Love Lost's acoustic cuts suggest the hard-rock moves sabotaged his natural talent and melodic gifts. "He Said She Said", a springy shuffle with flashing Dylanesque imagery, sparkles with a spontaneity and freshness the electric cuts can't touch. Album opener "Love Jumped Through My Window", Lee's soulful tenor soaring over some choppy guitar runs, is pure joy. It's a tempered direction Lee should have explored more. Love Lost was, in effect, Arthur Lee's last true creative songwriting burst. Despite Columbia's abandonment of the project, Lee hardly gave up on this body of work, revisiting 12 of its 14 songs, on Vindicator (his 1972 hard-rock turn on A&M), 1973's Black Beauty (recorded for the short-lived Buffalo Records but never released), and Reel To Real (Love's last major-label fling, an R'n'B-flavoured set on Robert Stigwood's RSO Records in 1974). Lee's career truly unspooled thereafter: a few archival releases, an ill-fated 1978 reunion with Bryan MacLean, and only very occasional half-hearted rehabilitations. From 1996 to 2001, Lee served time in a California prison, just another troublemaker caught up in the state's controversial so-called "three strikes" law. But unlike, say, Syd Barrett or Skip Spence, Lee managed a hardly expected, entirely revelatory comeback, beginning in 2002. Making peace with the incandescence of Elektra-era Love, Lee raced the clock, making up for nearly three lost decades in five short years. Resuming his alliance with a hungry, young Love - LA garage band Baby Lemonade - Lee played Hollywood and criss-crossed Europe, sometimes adding string and horn sections in breathtaking recreations of Forever Changes. In a familiar echo of Lee's mercurial past, it was as if the hard-rock-and-Hendrix-obsessed Love circa 1968-74 - and Love Lost - had never existed. Luke Torn

Love’s 1967 masterstroke, Forever Changes, was a monster to live up to, and Arthur Lee knew it. An intoxicating mix of hope and hate, ebullience and paranoia, shifting perspectives and orchestral beauty, it sprang from the Summer Of Love with a mysterious elegance and wisdom all too rare in pop.

It wasn’t a commercial breakthrough, though, and instead of rallying the group behind its genius, the classic 1966-68 Love lineup (featuring crucial second songwriter Bryan MacLean) imploded in a haze of recrimination, drug abuse, and legal trouble. Lee retrenched, carrying on under the Love banner, but he could never have replicated the magic of Forever Changes, even if he’d been foolish enough to try.

Thus began one of rock’s more peculiar odysseys – Arthur Lee’s downward spiral from shaman to burnout, from Sunset Strip’s most resplendent hipster to just another lost hippy soul sleepwalking through the ’70s. Beginning with Forever Changes’ 1969 follow-up, Four Sail, Lee’s recordings proffered ever-dwindling returns.

Aided by a succession of musically adroit yet ininspired backing musicians, Love plummeted into hippy jams and anonymous hard rock, callow pop and perfunctory forays into R’n’B. Even the best of it wasn’t traceable back to the man responsible for “The Red Telephone” and “Seven And Seven Is.”

Lee remained a powerful singer, though, and glimmers of the old magic occasionally surfaced. But the songwriting was half-baked and mundane. It was as if the maelstrom had stripped Arthur of his identity. One would be hard-pressed to find a more precipitous artistic drop-off in all rock’n’roll than 1967’s Forever Changes to 1974’s Reel To Real.

Love Lost, Sundazed’s surprise unearthing of all-but-forgotten 1971 session tapes (laid down during the band’s brief alliance with Columbia Records), throws a fascinating wrinkle into Love’s disintegration. Veering from captivating to frustrating, charming to maddening, it’s a typically uneven set. Yet there are moments of sheer beauty, and Lee clearly poured his heart into the grooves. Reinventing himself in the image of his recently deceased friend Jimi Hendrix, interweaving blazing rock with sublime, fly-on-wall acoustic tracks, Dear You, as the Columbia album was to be called, had enough mojo to fuel a plausible comeback.

Evidence that Hendrix’s death hit Arthur Lee hard lurks everywhere – in his vocal phrasing and spoken asides, in guitarist Craig Tarwater’s high-voltage riffs, in the souped-up bluesy arrangements. In fact, if imitation is the highest form of flattery, Love Lost could be interpreted as a Hendrix tribute album par excellence (although, to be fair, bits of Cream, Mountain, the Jeff Beck Group, and others percolate throughout). “I Can’t Find It”, which with a bit more work might have been the single, echoes “The Wind Cries Mary”; the stuttering strut of “Midnight Sun” is drenched in Electric Ladyland-isms. And on and on.

These are fine efforts – vicarious pleasures to be sure – that nonetheless get under your skin. “Product Of The Times” even gets away from stock paeans to troubled love affairs for a bit of self-reflective commentary, a flicker of Lee’s old songwriting spark. “Product,” riding a gutbucket riff and some sizzling lead guitar, and everyman anthem “Everybody’s Gotta Live”, given a hair-raising Lee vocal, are impassioned, fully realised gems.

Yet, for all the group’s chutzpah, Arthur Lee‘s indulgences – a tendency to over-sing into a screech, some cringeworthy misogyny – blunt the impact. Curiously, Columbia assigned no producer for these sessions, terminating the band’s contract without releasing a note. A clearheaded producer, one capable of adding some discipline, focus and editing, might well have crafted Dear You into a remarkable rebirth.

For all Lee’s bluster, though, the austere power of Love Lost‘s acoustic cuts suggest the hard-rock moves sabotaged his natural talent and melodic gifts. “He Said She Said”, a springy shuffle with flashing Dylanesque imagery, sparkles with a spontaneity and freshness the electric cuts can’t touch. Album opener “Love Jumped Through My Window”, Lee’s soulful tenor soaring over some choppy guitar runs, is pure joy. It’s a tempered direction Lee should have explored more.

Love Lost was, in effect, Arthur Lee’s last true creative songwriting burst. Despite Columbia’s abandonment of the project, Lee hardly gave up on this body of work, revisiting 12 of its 14 songs, on Vindicator (his 1972 hard-rock turn on A&M), 1973’s Black Beauty (recorded for the short-lived Buffalo Records but never released), and Reel To Real (Love’s last major-label fling, an R’n’B-flavoured set on Robert Stigwood’s RSO Records in 1974). Lee’s career truly unspooled thereafter: a few archival releases, an ill-fated 1978 reunion with Bryan MacLean, and only very occasional half-hearted rehabilitations. From 1996 to 2001, Lee served time in a California prison, just another troublemaker caught up in the state’s controversial so-called “three strikes” law.

But unlike, say, Syd Barrett or Skip Spence, Lee managed a hardly expected, entirely revelatory comeback, beginning in 2002. Making peace with the incandescence of Elektra-era Love, Lee raced the clock, making up for nearly three lost decades in five short years. Resuming his alliance with a hungry, young Love – LA garage band Baby Lemonade – Lee played Hollywood and criss-crossed Europe, sometimes adding string and horn sections in breathtaking recreations of Forever Changes. In a familiar echo of Lee’s mercurial past, it was as if the hard-rock-and-Hendrix-obsessed Love circa 1968-74 – and Love Lost – had never existed.

Luke Torn

TINDERSTICKS – FALLING DOWN A MOUNTAIN

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TINDERSTICKS – FALLING DOWN A MOUNTAIN

Around the turn of the last decade, a lot of people - not least the band's own fans, perhaps - had started taking the Tindersticks for granted. A brand name guaranteeing sensitivity and class, sure, but also a force which was, if not spent, at least unlikely to surprise us again. The ingenuity of their early '90s releases, which saw them hailed as Scott Walker singing for John Barry, or Lee Hazlewood performing with The Bad Seeds, had settled into a rather predictable broodiness. They'd claimed their turf and stuck to it religiously. After 2003's Waiting For The Moon, there followed a five-year hiatus for the Nottingham-formed band. An ambivalence about what they were doing had lurked latently for some time: even 1997's Curtains had been made under the covert working title of "The Last Tindersticks Album". Now, baritone Stuart Staples released two solo albums while relocating his family to France. He set up Le Chien Chanceux studio, where a slimmed-down lineup convened for informal sessions resulting in 2008's The Hungry Saw. Live shows proved fruitful (not least a headline slot on Uncut's stage at the Latitude Festival, and top billing - above Big Star! - at London's Serpentine Sessions), and the group rediscovered their drive. It felt "great and worrying and frightening and exciting again," according to Staples. "Tindersticks now felt not like a conclusion, but like the start of something." Of course it helps when you're scoring films and are commissioned to create music for the Louis Vuitton summer collection in Paris, assignments unlikely to fall the way of many nervously reuniting bands any time soon. The new phase continues with this eighth studio album (not counting four soundtracks) of their 17-year career, again recorded in France and Brussels. Yes, they keep ploughing the sullen furrow they've made their own: mumbling, murky ballads that surge into majesty predominate. There's no room here for their spoken word tangents, or for the old-school soul tributes that once saw them cover Odyssey and pastiche The Chi-Lites so lovingly. Yet there is a major surprise, and it comes at once with the six-and-a-half-minute title track, which riffs on a jazz motif with much improvisation and hypnotic accumulative effect. If the backdrop isn't a mile away from Dave Brubeck, in the foreground the players (Terry Edwards' trumpet stars) weave in and out of each other's lines with poise and grace. "Falling Down A Mountain" always feels as if it's climbing, carrying you with it. Then the soft-shuffle ballads take up residency. Tindersticks remain masters of mood-setting, making songs that are lyrically odd ("She Rode Me Down" has something of the post-coital about its sighs) or potentially twee ("Harmony Around My Table" hints at domestic bliss) resonate with a cinematographer's sense of grandeur. The sparser, brittle "Factory Girls" swings the hardest emotional punch of all, with Staples singing, "It's the wine that makes me sad/Not the love I never had/Or the things I've never seen/Or the places I've never been." There's a crafty economy to the self-pity. Although the personnel has crept back up numerically (David Kitt joins on guitar and backing vocals), one visiting voice is a coup. "Peanuts" presents a rare sighting of Canadian chanteuse Mary Margaret O'Hara, who duets with Staples on a touching, country-tinged number so split between oddball eccentricity and quivering heartache that it's made for her unique gifts. Devotees take note: she doesn't just grunt a few noises She properly contributes, phrasing those falling, swooning notes as only she can. So, no startling change of pace, direction or feel, then. Instead, what Tindersticks sound like on this subtly strong album is a band with restored self-belief, again loving doing what they do better than anyone else. Chris Roberts Q&A Stuart Staples, Tindersticks How did the hiatus help you? It gave us a chance to redefine what we wanted from this. In 2003 we were pretty jaded as a group of people. With this album we were looking for something else; a collage of different ideas and approaches. Much of the time it felt like we were working out on a limb. How did you come to duet with Mary Margaret O'Hara? Actually I didn't know so much about Mary Margaret, then met her after a concert in Toronto. I was intrigued. I was trying to get to grips with "Peanuts", a song inspired by Fritz Lang's Fury. The two just came together. Does living in France influence the sound? The work in London started to feel as though it was defined by its surroundings. Here, especially in the studio, there isn't anything to define anything. It seems we arrived where we are now via a thousand little steps, although there has been the occasional leap. INTERVIEW: CHRIS ROBERTS

Around the turn of the last decade, a lot of people – not least the band’s own fans, perhaps – had started taking the Tindersticks for granted. A brand name guaranteeing sensitivity and class, sure, but also a force which was, if not spent, at least unlikely to surprise us again. The ingenuity of their early ’90s releases, which saw them hailed as Scott Walker singing for John Barry, or Lee Hazlewood performing with The Bad Seeds, had settled into a rather predictable broodiness. They’d claimed their turf and stuck to it religiously.

After 2003’s Waiting For The Moon, there followed a five-year hiatus for the Nottingham-formed band. An ambivalence about what they were doing had lurked latently for some time: even 1997’s Curtains had been made under the covert working title of “The Last Tindersticks Album”. Now, baritone Stuart Staples released two solo albums while relocating his family to France. He set up Le Chien Chanceux studio, where a slimmed-down lineup convened for informal sessions resulting in 2008’s The Hungry Saw. Live shows proved fruitful (not least a headline slot on Uncut’s stage at the Latitude Festival, and top billing – above Big Star! – at London’s Serpentine Sessions), and the group rediscovered their drive.

It felt “great and worrying and frightening and exciting again,” according to Staples. “Tindersticks now felt not like a conclusion, but like the start of something.” Of course it helps when you’re scoring films and are commissioned to create music for the Louis Vuitton summer collection in Paris, assignments unlikely to fall the way of many nervously reuniting bands any time soon.

The new phase continues with this eighth studio album (not counting four soundtracks) of their 17-year career, again recorded in France and Brussels. Yes, they keep ploughing the sullen furrow they’ve made their own: mumbling, murky ballads that surge into majesty predominate. There’s no room here for their spoken word tangents, or for the old-school soul tributes that once saw them cover Odyssey and pastiche The Chi-Lites so lovingly. Yet there is a major surprise, and it comes at once with the six-and-a-half-minute title track, which riffs on a jazz motif with much improvisation and hypnotic accumulative effect. If the backdrop isn’t a mile away from Dave Brubeck, in the foreground the players (Terry Edwards’ trumpet stars) weave in and out of each other’s lines with poise and grace. “Falling Down A Mountain” always feels as if it’s climbing, carrying you with it.

Then the soft-shuffle ballads take up residency. Tindersticks remain masters of mood-setting, making songs that are lyrically odd (“She Rode Me Down” has something of the post-coital about its sighs) or potentially twee (“Harmony Around My Table” hints at domestic bliss) resonate with a cinematographer’s sense of grandeur. The sparser, brittle “Factory Girls” swings the hardest emotional punch of all, with Staples singing, “It’s the wine that makes me sad/Not the love I never had/Or the things I’ve never seen/Or the places I’ve never been.” There’s a crafty economy to the self-pity.

Although the personnel has crept back up numerically (David Kitt joins on guitar and backing vocals), one visiting voice is a coup. “Peanuts” presents a rare sighting of Canadian chanteuse Mary Margaret O’Hara, who duets with Staples on a touching, country-tinged number so split between oddball eccentricity and quivering heartache that it’s made for her unique gifts. Devotees take note: she doesn’t just grunt a few noises She properly contributes, phrasing those falling, swooning notes as only she can.

So, no startling change of pace, direction or feel, then. Instead, what Tindersticks sound like on this subtly strong album is a band with restored self-belief, again loving doing what they do better than anyone else.

Chris Roberts

Q&A

Stuart Staples, Tindersticks

How did the hiatus help you?

It gave us a chance to redefine what we wanted from this. In 2003 we were pretty jaded as a group of people. With this album we were looking for something else; a collage of different ideas and approaches. Much of the time it felt like we were working out on a limb.

How did you come to duet with Mary Margaret O’Hara?

Actually I didn’t know so much about Mary Margaret, then met her after a concert in Toronto. I was intrigued. I was trying to get to grips with “Peanuts”, a song inspired by Fritz Lang’s Fury. The two just came together.

Does living in France influence the sound?

The work in London started to feel as though it was defined by its surroundings. Here, especially in the studio, there isn’t anything to define anything. It seems we arrived where we are now via a thousand little steps, although there has been the occasional leap.

INTERVIEW: CHRIS ROBERTS

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG – IRM

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CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG – IRM

In the last year, cinema audiences will have seen Charlotte Gainsbourg starring in Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, playing a woman who loses her child, tortures her husband, rampages around a German forest and then mutilates herself with a pair of scissors. But despite numerous awards and huge critical acclaim as an actress, she is still primarily remembered for two earlier screen appearances, both made with her father Serge Gainsbourg. One is home-movie footage of her aged about eight, playing a complicated exercise on the piano while her beaming father hums along in encouragement. The other is a rather less benign promotional video for her father's worst single, "Lemon Incest", in which the 13-year-old duets with the king of sleazy listening, lying beside him on a bed, wearing only a blouse and knickers. Perhaps mindful of the latter image, Charlotte Gainsbourg has been reluctant to pursue a career in music. It took around two decades before she got around to recording her first album as an adult, 2006's well-received 5:55, in which she was assisted by celebrity Serge-ophiles such as Air, Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon. Yet still she seemed awed by her father's shadow. "I might think in French, but I cannot sing in French," she said. "It's too heavy for me, because of my father." This follow-up is her most explicit embrace of her father's musical legacy. It pairs her with another Serge-ophile, Beck, whose 2002 album Sea Change saw him borrowing from Serge's seminal album, Histoire De Melody Nelson. Here Beck plays Serge to Charlotte's Jane Birkin, co-writing and producing the entire album and attempting to stamp it with his scruffy brand of futurist Americana. He even shares vocals on the lead single "Heaven Can Wait", a thing of ramshackle beauty that should, by rights, be Beck's biggest hit in more than a decade. Charlotte's whispery, well-enunciated, jolly-hockey-sticks voice is an obvious echo of her mother's, although there is a deadpan, newsreader-ish quality. It's immediately apparent that Charlotte Gainsbourg is no blank canvas, in the way that her father's ingenues (Birkin, Brigitte Bardot, France Gall, Franoise Hardy, Michle Arnaud) might have been. She had a pivotal role in the album's writing, particularly the title track, "IRM", the French translation of an MRI scan (that's Imagerie par Resonance Magnitique). Charlotte apparently had 20 such scans after suffering a brain haemorrhage in 2007. The lyrics serve as a poetic reportage of the incident ("leave my head unmagnetised/tell me where the trauma lies"), but the pulsating backing track - a barrage of pounding tom toms and jarring sound effects - genuinely sounds like an MRI scan, albeit one in which these orientating electronic noises have been processed into a thrilling slice of junkyard punk in the style of The Flying Lizards. Her other lyrics are nothing like the pun-heavy, ultra-literate couplets her father wrote, but the album certainly sees her and Beck explore Serge-ish musical textures. "Le Chat Du Cafe Des Artistes", a cover version of a 1970 song by Quebecois songwriter Jean-Pierre Ferland, sees Beck couch the melody in creepy minor-key strings that certainly recall Jean-Claude Vannier's arrangements for ...Melody Nelson. The eerie verse/jolly chorus of the lovely "Time Of The Assassins" recalls Serge's dreamy "69 AnnŽe ƒrotique", while the Bolan boogie of "Dandelion" has a touch of "Rock Around The Bunker" to it. "Voyage", with its mix of African drums and American trash-culture references, is a nod to Serge's early 1960s world music flirtations like "New York USA". Even the hints of Bjork-ish post-punk, like "IRM" and "Trick Pony" often recall Serge's more minimal experiments, such as "Requiem Por Un Con". Ever since her father's death in 1991, Charlotte has kept Serge's house on the Rue du Verneil as he left it, and has sought permission from authorities to turn it into a museum. In a way, this album serves as a fitting sonic museum to Serge, one that plunders from his past while maintaining his relentlessly forward-looking, hybridised pop vision. John Lewis

In the last year, cinema audiences will have seen Charlotte Gainsbourg starring in Lars Von Trier‘s Antichrist, playing a woman who loses her child, tortures her husband, rampages around a German forest and then mutilates herself with a pair of scissors. But despite numerous awards and huge critical acclaim as an actress, she is still primarily remembered for two earlier screen appearances, both made with her father Serge Gainsbourg. One is home-movie footage of her aged about eight, playing a complicated exercise on the piano while her beaming father hums along in encouragement. The other is a rather less benign promotional video for her father’s worst single, “Lemon Incest“, in which the 13-year-old duets with the king of sleazy listening, lying beside him on a bed, wearing only a blouse and knickers.

Perhaps mindful of the latter image, Charlotte Gainsbourg has been reluctant to pursue a career in music. It took around two decades before she got around to recording her first album as an adult, 2006’s well-received 5:55, in which she was assisted by celebrity Serge-ophiles such as Air, Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon. Yet still she seemed awed by her father’s shadow. “I might think in French, but I cannot sing in French,” she said. “It’s too heavy for me, because of my father.”

This follow-up is her most explicit embrace of her father’s musical legacy. It pairs her with another Serge-ophile, Beck, whose 2002 album Sea Change saw him borrowing from Serge’s seminal album, Histoire De Melody Nelson. Here Beck plays Serge to Charlotte’s Jane Birkin, co-writing and producing the entire album and attempting to stamp it with his scruffy brand of futurist Americana. He even shares vocals on the lead single “Heaven Can Wait”, a thing of ramshackle beauty that should, by rights, be Beck’s biggest hit in more than a decade.

Charlotte’s whispery, well-enunciated, jolly-hockey-sticks voice is an obvious echo of her mother’s, although there is a deadpan, newsreader-ish quality. It’s immediately apparent that Charlotte Gainsbourg is no blank canvas, in the way that her father’s ingenues (Birkin, Brigitte Bardot, France Gall, Franoise Hardy, Michle Arnaud) might have been. She had a pivotal role in the album’s writing, particularly the title track, “IRM”, the French translation of an MRI scan (that’s Imagerie par Resonance Magnitique). Charlotte apparently had 20 such scans after suffering a brain haemorrhage in 2007. The lyrics serve as a poetic reportage of the incident (“leave my head unmagnetised/tell me where the trauma lies”), but the pulsating backing track – a barrage of pounding tom toms and jarring sound effects – genuinely sounds like an MRI scan, albeit one in which these orientating electronic noises have been processed into a thrilling slice of junkyard punk in the style of The Flying Lizards.

Her other lyrics are nothing like the pun-heavy, ultra-literate couplets her father wrote, but the album certainly sees her and Beck explore Serge-ish musical textures. “Le Chat Du Cafe Des Artistes”, a cover version of a 1970 song by Quebecois songwriter Jean-Pierre Ferland, sees Beck couch the melody in creepy minor-key strings that certainly recall Jean-Claude Vannier’s arrangements for …Melody Nelson. The eerie verse/jolly chorus of the lovely “Time Of The Assassins” recalls Serge’s dreamy “69 AnnŽe ƒrotique”, while the Bolan boogie of “Dandelion” has a touch of “Rock Around The Bunker” to it. “Voyage”, with its mix of African drums and American trash-culture references, is a nod to Serge’s early 1960s world music flirtations like “New York USA”. Even the hints of Bjork-ish post-punk, like “IRM” and “Trick Pony” often recall Serge’s more minimal experiments, such as “Requiem Por Un Con”.

Ever since her father’s death in 1991, Charlotte has kept Serge’s house on the Rue du Verneil as he left it, and has sought permission from authorities to turn it into a museum. In a way, this album serves as a fitting sonic museum to Serge, one that plunders from his past while maintaining his relentlessly forward-looking, hybridised pop vision.

John Lewis

EELS – END TIMES

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EELS – END TIMES

Eels' Mark Everett, usually known as E, has not deployed an unconsidered word in seven previous albums, but the title of his eighth is exquisite even by his standards. End Times, to adherents of the Abrahamic faiths, are the tribulations that presage the apocalypse; an event which some 50 million of E's fellow Americans confidently expect to witness in their lifetime. While these people are wrong or, at least, will be unable to dispute that assertion if it turns out they're not, most of them, and most of the rest of us will at least have some appreciation of what it feels like when one's own world ends. Long story short: she's ditched him. While desolation and loneliness are hardly new subjects for E, he has never before explored and mapped them with this forensic exactitude: tellingly, the usually cheerfully confessional E is refusing interviews about End Times, apparently believing it too personal to discuss. It's doubtless no consolation, but this latest disappointment might well have prompted Eels' masterpiece. It starts, logically enough, with "The Beginning", a snapshot of the contented optimism of a man who believes he has found what, or, more precisely, who he was looking for. It's all downhill from there. Like other distinguished chroniclers of middle-aged heartbreak (Randy Newman, say) End Times understands that the grief, rage, and desperation that attend such calamity are ruthlessly magnified by the knowledge that the carousel has finite further rotations left in it. "In My Younger Days" notes that a man with less grey in his beard "would've just chalked it up/As part of my ongoing education/But I've had enough/Been through some stuff/And I don't need any more misery". Sonically, End Times contains no digressions from the template Eels established on their 1996 debut single "Novocaine For The Soul". This is no bad thing. Eels got it right the first time, and perceive no virtue in fooling untowardly with what works: they're the AC/DC of consumptive electro-indie. This album was recorded in E's basement studio, and produced and substantially played by him. As ever, the songs are insidiously melodic despite their simplicity, evocative despite their directness, and E's careworn growl reliably affecting, despite its limitations. The few eccentric excursions are perfectly judged. "High & Lonesome" is a minute-long collage of suitably portentous sounds thunder, rain, church bells, an engaged tone. "Apple Trees" is a wistful answerphone monologue over a pretty toytown backing (the wilful naivety of some of the instrumentation is one of several echoes of Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man). At the start of the Mark Eitzel-ish lament "Nowadays", a snippet of studio babble provides what might be a subtitle for the album: "Something's not right. I don't understand." For all its bleakness, End Times offers a few dimly glimmering, redemptive reprieves. E is not oblivious to the absurd humour of his situation: as a summation of domestic dischord, Tom Waits would applaud the opening of "A Line In The Dirt": "She locked herself in the bathroom again/So I am pissing in the yard." And though he has to contort himself painfully to perceive it, E can appreciate the haven of perspective ("I take small comfort in a dying world," he offers on "Gone Man", "I'm not the only one who is feeling this pain"). He finishes with the only song on the album that clears three and a half minutes. -The six-and-a-half minute elegy "On My Feet" is a dispatch from a man who has learnt the hard way that much of the energy we choose to expend is squandered on things that couldn't matter less: "So many thousands of days in my life that I don't remember/And a small handful of days that I do hold near to my heart." End Times is not merely Eels' best album yet, but in the highest rank of breakup albums, seething with the anguished fury of Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker, sighing with the stoic resignation of Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel Of Love. It's the sound of a man getting older, and wiser, but already wise enough only to marvel at how little you ever learn. It'll be the last thing E wishes to hear, but he should get divorced more often. Andrew Mueller

Eels’ Mark Everett, usually known as E, has not deployed an unconsidered word in seven previous albums, but the title of his eighth is exquisite even by his standards. End Times, to adherents of the Abrahamic faiths, are the tribulations that presage the apocalypse; an event which some 50 million of E’s fellow Americans confidently expect to witness in their lifetime. While these people are wrong or, at least, will be unable to dispute that assertion if it turns out they’re not, most of them, and most of the rest of us will at least have some appreciation of what it feels like when one’s own world ends.

Long story short: she’s ditched him. While desolation and loneliness are hardly new subjects for E, he has never before explored and mapped them with this forensic exactitude: tellingly, the usually cheerfully confessional E is refusing interviews about End Times, apparently believing it too personal to discuss. It’s doubtless no consolation, but this latest disappointment might well have prompted Eels’ masterpiece.

It starts, logically enough, with “The Beginning”, a snapshot of the contented optimism of a man who believes he has found what, or, more precisely, who he was looking for. It’s all downhill from there. Like other distinguished chroniclers of middle-aged heartbreak (Randy Newman, say) End Times understands that the grief, rage, and desperation that attend such calamity are ruthlessly magnified by the knowledge that the carousel has finite further rotations left in it. “In My Younger Days” notes that a man with less grey in his beard “would’ve just chalked it up/As part of my ongoing education/But I’ve had enough/Been through some stuff/And I don’t need any more misery”.

Sonically, End Times contains no digressions from the template Eels established on their 1996 debut single “Novocaine For The Soul”. This is no bad thing. Eels got it right the first time, and perceive no virtue in fooling untowardly with what works: they’re the AC/DC of consumptive electro-indie. This album was recorded in E’s basement studio, and produced and substantially played by him.

As ever, the songs are insidiously melodic despite their simplicity, evocative despite their directness, and E’s careworn growl reliably affecting, despite its limitations.

The few eccentric excursions are perfectly judged. “High & Lonesome” is a minute-long collage of suitably portentous sounds thunder, rain, church bells, an engaged tone. “Apple Trees” is a wistful answerphone monologue over a pretty toytown backing (the wilful naivety of some of the instrumentation is one of several echoes of Leonard Cohen‘s I’m Your Man). At the start of the Mark Eitzel-ish lament “Nowadays”, a snippet of studio babble provides what might be a subtitle for the album: “Something’s not right. I don’t understand.”

For all its bleakness, End Times offers a few dimly glimmering, redemptive reprieves. E is not oblivious to the absurd humour of his situation: as a summation of domestic dischord, Tom Waits would applaud the opening of “A Line In The Dirt”: “She locked herself in the bathroom again/So I am pissing in the yard.” And though he has to contort himself painfully to perceive it, E can appreciate the haven of perspective (“I take small comfort in a dying world,” he offers on “Gone Man”, “I’m not the only one who is feeling this pain”). He finishes with the only song on the album that clears three and a half minutes. -The six-and-a-half minute elegy “On My Feet” is a dispatch from a man who has learnt the hard way that much of the energy we choose to expend is squandered on things that couldn’t matter less: “So many thousands of days in my life that I don’t remember/And a small handful of days that I do hold near to my heart.”

End Times is not merely Eels’ best album yet, but in the highest rank of breakup albums, seething with the anguished fury of Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker, sighing with the stoic resignation of Bruce Springsteen‘s Tunnel Of Love. It’s the sound of a man getting older, and wiser, but already wise enough only to marvel at how little you ever learn. It’ll be the last thing E wishes to hear, but he should get divorced more often.

Andrew Mueller

BUDDY HOLLY – NOT FADE AWAY

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BUDDY HOLLY – NOT FADE AWAY

In a 50-year recording career, Buddy Holly, who died last Christmas at the age of 74, influenced everyone from The Beatles to Bob Dylan, and worked with everyone from, well, The Beatles to Bob Dylan (he famously turned down Kanye West for "reasons of old age"). He leaves behind a legacy of more than 40 albums, all of which were both genre-defying and genre-defining. Inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame three times - as a solo artist, as one of The Crickets, and as a member of Holly, Diddy, Nash & Young - Buddy also made the headlines when he refused the chance to join the Traveling Wilburys, telling George Harrison, "That'll be the day...". We wish. In real life Buddy Holly made just three albums and released hardly enough singles to fill out one side of a Greatest Hits collection. Those few songs alone - and the ones remixed, buffed up and orchestrafied after his death, at 23, in a plane crash - were enough to literally save rock music from its oncoming novelty death as everyone from, yes, The Beatles to Bob Dylan, along with The Rolling Stones and a quarry of other lesser acts, realised that you could be melodic, witty, and intelligent, and still rock like a burning caveman. We can't ever really know if Holly's early brilliance would have sustained a long career (although I will always continue to have a slight fantasy about Holly not joining the Traveling Wilburys), but it's reasonable to suppose that he would have continued to be a very major figure in popular music. In the event what we have is literally this, 203 tracks which are apparently everything he ever recorded in a studio, or in several cases, an apartment. There are instrumentals here, there are early country and western numbers, there are fragments of conversation with his wife Maria Elena, there are tracks overdubbed for posthumous release from the 1960s and the 1980s, there are outtakes - goodness me, there are outtakes - but most of all, there are some of the most three-dimensional, living, enthusiasmic (it's a word now) songs in the history of popular music. These songs leap at you like jangling Labradors with their sheer joy in just existing. "That'll Be The Day", "Peggy Sue", "Maybe Baby", "Rocking With Ollie Vee", "Rave On"... songs that must have sounded like classic rock'n'roll the day they were released but also redefined what rock'n'roll was. Yes, you can hear someone who loved Elvis Presley and Hank Williams in these songs (and you can also hear tons of what the best Beatles songs would be in these songs), but you also hear an authentic new voice, someone who took the sounds of Texas, of R'n'B, of country and everything on the radio and made his own music. Even the lyrics sound like nothing else - there's a brilliant self -confidence even in potentially soupy ballads like "True Love Ways", while the sheer shagdaftness of "Oh Boy!" proves that girls do make passes at boys who wear glasses. The casual buyer - a phrase which always conjures up in Uncut terms someone who only buys two Lambchop albums a week and is wondering if they should get those Flaming Lips records where you need 10 CD players to play them - will point out that, musically, all of the above indicates that you and me and he and she should surely be perfectly well off with a decent Buddy Holly Greatest Hit s compilation. And I can only say yes to that: unlike other artists whose outtakes show massive leaps and experimentation before coming to a final, musically shattering, releasable conclusion, Holly tended to rework songs in not massively different ways and so the many, many outtakes of "Think It Over", "Have You Ever Been Lonely" and "Don't Come Back Knockin'" are very much for the completist. But if you want to hear, and maybe you should, everything recorded by the greatest popular songwriter never to have the career he deserved, this is very much the place. David Quantick

In a 50-year recording career, Buddy Holly, who died last Christmas at the age of 74, influenced everyone from The Beatles to Bob Dylan, and worked with everyone from, well, The Beatles to Bob Dylan (he famously turned down Kanye West for “reasons of old age”). He leaves behind a legacy of more than 40 albums, all of which were both genre-defying and genre-defining. Inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame three times – as a solo artist, as one of The Crickets, and as a member of Holly, Diddy, Nash & Young – Buddy also made the headlines when he refused the chance to join the Traveling Wilburys, telling George Harrison, “That’ll be the day…”.

We wish. In real life Buddy Holly made just three albums and released hardly enough singles to fill out one side of a Greatest Hits collection. Those few songs alone – and the ones remixed, buffed up and orchestrafied after his death, at 23, in a plane crash – were enough to literally save rock music from its oncoming novelty death as everyone from, yes, The Beatles to Bob Dylan, along with The Rolling Stones and a quarry of other lesser acts, realised that you could be melodic, witty, and intelligent, and still rock like a burning caveman. We can’t ever really know if Holly’s early brilliance would have sustained a long career (although I will always continue to have a slight fantasy about Holly not joining the Traveling Wilburys), but it’s reasonable to suppose that he would have continued to be a very major figure in popular music.

In the event what we have is literally this, 203 tracks which are apparently everything he ever recorded in a studio, or in several cases, an apartment. There are instrumentals here, there are early country and western numbers, there are fragments of conversation with his wife Maria Elena, there are tracks overdubbed for posthumous release from the 1960s and the 1980s, there are outtakes – goodness me, there are outtakes – but most of all, there are some of the most three-dimensional, living, enthusiasmic (it’s a word now) songs in the history of popular music. These songs leap at you like jangling Labradors with their sheer joy in just existing. “That’ll Be The Day“, “Peggy Sue”, “Maybe Baby”, “Rocking With Ollie Vee”, “Rave On”… songs that must have sounded like classic rock’n’roll the day they were released but also redefined what rock’n’roll was.

Yes, you can hear someone who loved Elvis Presley and Hank Williams in these songs (and you can also hear tons of what the best Beatles songs would be in these songs), but you also hear an authentic new voice, someone who took the sounds of Texas, of R’n’B, of country and everything on the radio and made his own music. Even the lyrics sound like nothing else – there’s a brilliant self -confidence even in potentially soupy ballads like “True Love Ways”, while the sheer shagdaftness of “Oh Boy!” proves that girls do make passes at boys who wear glasses.

The casual buyer – a phrase which always conjures up in Uncut terms someone who only buys two Lambchop albums a week and is wondering if they should get those Flaming Lips records where you need 10 CD players to play them – will point out that, musically, all of the above indicates that you and me and he and she should surely be perfectly well off with a decent Buddy Holly Greatest Hit s compilation. And I can only say yes to that: unlike other artists whose outtakes show massive leaps and experimentation before coming to a final, musically shattering, releasable conclusion, Holly tended to rework songs in not massively different ways and so the many, many outtakes of “Think It Over”, “Have You Ever Been Lonely” and “Don’t Come Back Knockin'” are very much for the completist. But if you want to hear, and maybe you should, everything recorded by the greatest popular songwriter never to have the career he deserved, this is very much the place.

David Quantick

Supergrass working on ‘drone rock’ album

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Supergrass working on ‘drone rock’ album
Supergrass have spoken about the recording of their new album, which the band say is now nearing completion. The fourpiece, whose last album 'Diamond Hoo Haa' was released in 2008, revealed that they've been listening to krautrock and drone music while making the album, with Can and The Beatles' 'T...

Supergrass have spoken about the recording of their new album, which the band say is now nearing completion.

The fourpiece, whose last album ‘Diamond Hoo Haa’ was released in 2008, revealed that they’ve been listening to krautrock and drone music while making the album, with Can and The Beatles‘ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ proving particularly inspirational.

Frontman Gaz Coombes added that they’ve been so influenced by drones that they’re thinking of calling the album ‘Release The Drones’.

“We’re using bits of drones through the tracks,” he told NME.COM, adding that the record has been “very collaborative”, with the bandmembers even swapping instruments on several tracks.

Supergrass are set to release the album this May on new label Cooking Vinyl. Coombes said they “mutually agreed to part ways” with Parlophone and EMI in 2008.

Meanwhile, Coombes and drummer Danny Goffey‘s sideproject The Hot Rats released their debut album ‘Turns Ons’ yesterday (January 25). The covers album, which also features Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, sees the band tackle tracks including Pink Floyd‘s ‘Bike’ and ‘E.M.I’ by The Sex Pistols.

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

VAMPIRE WEEKEND – CONTRA

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VAMPIRE WEEKEND – CONTRA

Ahead of the release of Vampire Weekend's second album, singer Ezra Koenig has taken, a little improbably, to protesting his band's punk authenticity: "When people try to frame us as spoiled rich kids, I want to say, 'Well, hold up. You don't know anything about my family...' I mean, I grew up in New Jersey listening to the Ramones, The Clash, Elvis Costello..." And, unlikely as it might seem, you really can hear echoes of The Clash on the new Vampire Weekend album. In response to Sandinista!, the Clash's sprawling 1980 triple album of international rebel songs named in honour of the Nicaraguan socialist party, Ezra and his pals have released a discreetly globe-trotting 37-minute album of diffident haute bourgeoisie synth pop named after the Contras, the CIA-backed Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary insurgents. What's more, the longest song on the album is called "Diplomat's Son", a bittersweet tale of a failed fling in 1981, backed by the kind of reggae you might associate with the theme tune to QI. It reminds you that Joe Strummer first got his taste for world music as the son of a British diplomat based in Turkey, Egypt and Mexico. Complicating things even further, "Diplomat's Son" mischievously samples a snatch of MIA, the Hounslow-born, St Martins-educated, would-be queen of international shanty-House. Authenticity, once you get down to it, is never as simple as it seems. And Contra, in Vampire Weekend's case, might just be short for "contrary". Despite their well-heeled poise and sense of diligent historical revision (What if one of those jangling UK indie bands who shared Peel playlists with the Bhundu Boys back in 1987 had tried to emulate Zimbabwean Jit or Congolese Soukous?), the sheer infectiousness and impeccable craft of Vampire Weekend's debut overwhelmed its contrivance. Eventually, it seduced even the most suspicious listeners. But as with so many immaculately conceived, fully-formed groups in the noughties, you wondered whether would they be able to repeat the trick for a second album. What's immediately striking about Contra is how little guitar there is on it. It's almost as though, having made the most moreish electric guitar pop album since the Strokes' debut, sheer chutzpah has led them to banish the instrument and prove they can make tunes just as absurdly infectious from digital bass, kalimbas, sequencers, synth pads and drum machines . And yet - with its melodic beauty, orchestral invention, rhythmic subtlety and metaphysical wit - it's still unmistakeably Vampire Weekend. The opening track, "Horchata", suggests the band might look to continue in the diamond-soled footsteps of Paul Simon, following an album of African-inspired pop with one based in Latin America - horchata being a Mexican rice drink. But the song's not so easy to place: they go on to rhyme it with "Aranciata" (the orangeade variety of San Pellegrino) and "Masada" (the ancient Israeli fortified mesa). The track is largely played on an African thumb piano, and the chorus brings in a massed choir. With wistful lyrics about how "years go by and hearts start to harden", altogether the effect is something curiously like the opening section of TS Eliot's The Waste Land adapted for the score of a Dora The Explorer movie. The first single, "Cousins", is more familiar and more urgent: a frantic yet still somehow dainty two-minute dash that suggests the Penguin Cafe Orchestra having a bash at "Miserlou". But the lyrics, when you can make them out above the subterranean homesick rush, seem to hint at generational belatedness: "Your dad was a risk-taker, his was a shoe-maker, you're a 2006 greatest hits little list-maker." This little hint, on the album's most irrepressibly upbeat number, pervades Contra as a whole. On a couple of tracks, the terrific "Giving Up The Gun" and the teasingly titled "Run", the band seem to have channelled some of the spirit of New Order, where irresistably huge synthetic rhythms glide by with a melancholy undertow. The slowest, saddest songs on the album, "Taxi Cab" and "I Think Ur A Contra", are the best, Koenig singing of romantic might-have-beens and never-weres amid swirling synth pads, his voice drifting free into an affecting falsetto . Typically contrary, the most suggestive line on the album might be on the most apparently throwaway song. "Holiday" is another upbeat almost-ska number, the kind that might be cynically written to get a sluggish festival crowd moving. Koenig sings of a girl who's been "a vegetarian since the invasion/She'd never seen the word BOMBS blown up to 96 pt Futura". (Futura, of course, is Vampire Weekend's typeface of choice.) The image of the churning world of terror and destruction erupting so graphically into the aesthetic cocoon of hipster typophilia is ironic and incisive. It's not The Clash or MIA, but neither is it simply concerned with Oxford commas. "You wanted rock and roll/ You wanted complete control," croons Koenig on the closing "I Think Ur A Contra". There is very little in the way of rock'n'roll on Contra - and in truth it's all the better for it. But, bold, beautiful and carefully contrary, it's an album by a band in complete control. Stephen Trousse

Ahead of the release of Vampire Weekend‘s second album, singer Ezra Koenig has taken, a little improbably, to protesting his band’s punk authenticity: “When people try to frame us as spoiled rich kids, I want to say, ‘Well, hold up. You don’t know anything about my family…’ I mean, I grew up in New Jersey listening to the Ramones, The Clash, Elvis Costello…”

And, unlikely as it might seem, you really can hear echoes of The Clash on the new Vampire Weekend album. In response to Sandinista!, the Clash’s sprawling 1980 triple album of international rebel songs named in honour of the Nicaraguan socialist party, Ezra and his pals have released a discreetly globe-trotting 37-minute album of diffident haute bourgeoisie synth pop named after the Contras, the CIA-backed Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary insurgents.

What’s more, the longest song on the album is called “Diplomat’s Son”, a bittersweet tale of a failed fling in 1981, backed by the kind of reggae you might associate with the theme tune to QI. It reminds you that Joe Strummer first got his taste for world music as the son of a British diplomat based in Turkey, Egypt and Mexico. Complicating things even further, “Diplomat’s Son” mischievously samples a snatch of MIA, the Hounslow-born, St Martins-educated, would-be queen of international shanty-House. Authenticity, once you get down to it, is never as simple as it seems. And Contra, in Vampire Weekend’s case, might just be short for “contrary”.

Despite their well-heeled poise and sense of diligent historical revision (What if one of those jangling UK indie bands who shared Peel playlists with the Bhundu Boys back in 1987 had tried to emulate Zimbabwean Jit or Congolese Soukous?), the sheer infectiousness and impeccable craft of Vampire Weekend’s debut overwhelmed its contrivance. Eventually, it seduced even the most suspicious listeners. But as with so many immaculately conceived, fully-formed groups in the noughties, you wondered whether would they be able to repeat the trick for a second album.

What’s immediately striking about Contra is how little guitar there is on it. It’s almost as though, having made the most moreish electric guitar pop album since the Strokes’ debut, sheer chutzpah has led them to banish the instrument and prove they can make tunes just as absurdly infectious from digital bass, kalimbas, sequencers, synth pads and drum machines . And yet – with its melodic beauty, orchestral invention, rhythmic subtlety and metaphysical wit – it’s still unmistakeably Vampire Weekend.

The opening track, “Horchata”, suggests the band might look to continue in the diamond-soled footsteps of Paul Simon, following an album of African-inspired pop with one based in Latin America – horchata being a Mexican rice drink. But the song’s not so easy to place: they go on to rhyme it with “Aranciata” (the orangeade variety of San Pellegrino) and “Masada” (the ancient Israeli fortified mesa). The track is largely played on an African thumb piano, and the chorus brings in a massed choir. With wistful lyrics about how “years go by and hearts start to harden”, altogether the effect is something curiously like the opening section of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land adapted for the score of a Dora The Explorer movie.

The first single, “Cousins”, is more familiar and more urgent: a frantic yet still somehow dainty two-minute dash that suggests the Penguin Cafe Orchestra having a bash at “Miserlou”. But the lyrics, when you can make them out above the subterranean homesick rush, seem to hint at generational belatedness: “Your dad was a risk-taker, his was a shoe-maker, you’re a 2006 greatest hits little list-maker.”

This little hint, on the album’s most irrepressibly upbeat number, pervades Contra as a whole. On a couple of tracks, the terrific “Giving Up The Gun” and the teasingly titled “Run”, the band seem to have channelled some of the spirit of New Order, where irresistably huge synthetic rhythms glide by with a melancholy undertow. The slowest, saddest songs on the album, “Taxi Cab” and “I Think Ur A Contra”, are the best, Koenig singing of romantic might-have-beens and never-weres amid swirling synth pads, his voice drifting free into an affecting falsetto .

Typically contrary, the most suggestive line on the album might be on the most apparently throwaway song. “Holiday” is another upbeat almost-ska number, the kind that might be cynically written to get a sluggish festival crowd moving. Koenig sings of a girl who’s been “a vegetarian since the invasion/She’d never seen the word BOMBS blown up to 96 pt Futura”. (Futura, of course, is Vampire Weekend’s typeface of choice.) The image of the churning world of terror and destruction erupting so graphically into the aesthetic cocoon of hipster typophilia is ironic and incisive. It’s not The Clash or MIA, but neither is it simply concerned with Oxford commas.

“You wanted rock and roll/ You wanted complete control,” croons Koenig on the closing “I Think Ur A Contra”. There is very little in the way of rock’n’roll on Contra – and in truth it’s all the better for it. But, bold, beautiful and carefully contrary, it’s an album by a band in complete control.

Stephen Trousse

Muse, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys lead Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 nominations

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Muse, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys lead Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 nominations

The nominations for the Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 have been announced, with Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian leading the way. Muse, Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective and Biffy Clyro have also received nominations for the awards, while Oasis – who split up in August 2009 – bagged several nods too. The awards themselves take place at London's O2 Academy Brixton on February 24, and you can vote for who you want to win by heading to NME.COM/awards now. The Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 nominations are: Best British Band (sponsored by Shockwaves) Arctic Monkeys Biffy Clyro Kasabian Muse Oasis Best International Band (sponsored by 4music/T4) Green Day Kings Of Leon Paramore Vampire Weekend Yeah Yeah Yeahs Best Solo Artist Dizzee Rascal Florence And The Machine Jamie T Julian Casablancas Lady Gaga Best New Band (sponsored by USC) The Big Pink Bombay Bicycle Club Mumford & Sons The xx La Roux Best Live Band (sponsored by Tuborg) Arctic Monkeys Kasabian Muse Radiohead Them Crooked Vultures Best Album (sponsored by HMV) Arctic Monkeys – 'Humbug' Kasabian – 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum' Muse – 'The Resistance' The Cribs – 'Ignore The Ignorant' The Horrors – 'Primary Colours' Best Track (sponsored by NME Radio) Animal Collective – 'My Girls' Arctic Monkeys – 'Crying Lightning' Florence And The Machine – 'Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)' Jamie T – 'Sticks N' Stones' The Big Pink – 'Dominos' Best Video (sponsored by NME TV) Arctic Monkeys – 'Cornerstone ' Biffy Clyro – 'The Captain' Kasabian – 'Fire' The Maccabees – 'Can You Give It' Oasis – 'Falling Down' Best Live Event Blur at Hyde Park Jay-Z at Alexandra Palace Muse at Teignmouth Oasis at Heaton Park The Dead Weather at Shoreditch Church Best Festival Download Glastonbury Reading And Leeds Festivals T In The Park V Festival Best Dancefloor Filler Dizzee Rascal And Armand Van Helden – 'Bonkers' Florence And The Machine – 'You've Got The Love' La Roux – 'In For The Kill' (Skream Remix) Lady Gaga – 'Poker Face' Yeah Yeah Yeahs – 'Zero' Best TV Show The Inbetweeners Never Mind The Buzzcocks Peep Show Skins True Blood Best Film (500) Days Of Summer In The Loop Inglourious Basterds The Twilight Saga: New Moon Where The Wild Things Are Best DVD Kings Of Leon – Live At The The O2 Arena Flight Of The Conchords – Complete HBO Second Season The Killers – Live From The Royal Albert Hall The Mighty Boosh – Future Sailors Nirvana – Live At Reading Giving It Back Fan Award Kasabian and Noel Fielding for free 'Vlad The Impaler' video Danger Mouse for leaking 'Dark Night Of The Soul' Lily Allen for her Twitter ticket treasure hunt Arctic Monkeys for their Oxfam golden tickets Vampire Weekend for giving away 'Horchata' from the album 'Contra' Hero Of The Year Beyoncé Knowles Noel Gallagher Rage Against The Machine Matt Bellamy Alex Turner Villain Of The Year Noel Gallagher Liam Gallagher Simon Cowell Kanye West Lady Gaga Best Dressed Lady Gaga Liam Gallagher Noel Fielding Florence Welch Karen O Worst Dressed Lady Gaga Matt Bellamy Katy Perry Liam Gallagher Elly Jackson, La Roux Worst Album Green Day – '21st Century Breakdown' Lady Gaga – 'The Fame' The Jonas Brothers – 'Lines Vines Trying Times' U2 – 'No Line On The Horizon' Arctic Monkeys – 'Humbug' Worst Band Green Day Oasis Jonas Brothers Paramore JLS Hottest Man Head to NME.COM now to rate possibles including Alex Turner, Liam Gallagher, Peter Doherty, Matt Bellamy, Brandon Flowers and Julian Casablancas Hottest Woman Head to NME.COM now to rate possibles including Lily Allen, Alison Mosshart, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Florence Welch and Karen O Best Website (excluding NME.COM) Muse.mu YouTube Facebook Twitter Greenday.com Best Album Artwork Muse – 'The Resistance' Green Day – '21st Century Breakdown' Kasabian – 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum' The Cribs – 'Ignore The Ignorant' Manic Street Preachers – 'Journal For Plague Lovers ' Best Band Blog Muse (Muse.mu and Twitter.com/muse) Radiohead (Radiohead.com/deadairspace) Noel Gallagher (Oasisinet.com) Los Campesinos! (Loscampesinos.com) Paramore (Paramore.net) Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

The nominations for the Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 have been announced, with Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian leading the way.

Muse, Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective and Biffy Clyro have also received nominations for the awards, while Oasis – who split up in August 2009 – bagged several nods too.

The awards themselves take place at London‘s O2 Academy Brixton on February 24, and you can vote for who you want to win by heading to NME.COM/awards now.

The Shockwaves NME Awards 2010 nominations are:

Best British Band (sponsored by Shockwaves)

Arctic Monkeys

Biffy Clyro

Kasabian

Muse

Oasis

Best International Band (sponsored by 4music/T4)

Green Day

Kings Of Leon

Paramore

Vampire Weekend

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Best Solo Artist

Dizzee Rascal

Florence And The Machine

Jamie T

Julian Casablancas

Lady Gaga

Best New Band (sponsored by USC)

The Big Pink

Bombay Bicycle Club

Mumford & Sons

The xx

La Roux

Best Live Band (sponsored by Tuborg)

Arctic Monkeys

Kasabian

Muse

Radiohead

Them Crooked Vultures

Best Album (sponsored by HMV)

Arctic Monkeys – ‘Humbug’

Kasabian – ‘West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum’

Muse – ‘The Resistance’

The Cribs – ‘Ignore The Ignorant’

The Horrors – ‘Primary Colours’

Best Track (sponsored by NME Radio)

Animal Collective – ‘My Girls’

Arctic Monkeys – ‘Crying Lightning’

Florence And The Machine – ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’

Jamie T – ‘Sticks N’ Stones’

The Big Pink – ‘Dominos’

Best Video (sponsored by NME TV)

Arctic Monkeys – ‘Cornerstone ‘

Biffy Clyro – ‘The Captain’

Kasabian – ‘Fire’

The Maccabees – ‘Can You Give It’

Oasis – ‘Falling Down’

Best Live Event

Blur at Hyde Park

Jay-Z at Alexandra Palace

Muse at Teignmouth

Oasis at Heaton Park

The Dead Weather at Shoreditch Church

Best Festival

Download

Glastonbury

Reading And Leeds Festivals

T In The Park

V Festival

Best Dancefloor Filler

Dizzee Rascal And Armand Van Helden – ‘Bonkers’

Florence And The Machine – ‘You’ve Got The Love’

La Roux – ‘In For The Kill’ (Skream Remix)

Lady Gaga – ‘Poker Face’

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘Zero’

Best TV Show

The Inbetweeners

Never Mind The Buzzcocks

Peep Show

Skins

True Blood

Best Film

(500) Days Of Summer

In The Loop

Inglourious Basterds

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Where The Wild Things Are

Best DVD

Kings Of Leon – Live At The The O2 Arena

Flight Of The Conchords – Complete HBO Second Season

The Killers – Live From The Royal Albert Hall

The Mighty Boosh – Future Sailors

Nirvana – Live At Reading

Giving It Back Fan Award

Kasabian and Noel Fielding for free ‘Vlad The Impaler’ video

Danger Mouse for leaking ‘Dark Night Of The Soul’

Lily Allen for her Twitter ticket treasure hunt

Arctic Monkeys for their Oxfam golden tickets

Vampire Weekend for giving away ‘Horchata’ from the album ‘Contra’

Hero Of The Year

Beyoncé Knowles

Noel Gallagher

Rage Against The Machine

Matt Bellamy

Alex Turner

Villain Of The Year

Noel Gallagher

Liam Gallagher

Simon Cowell

Kanye West

Lady Gaga

Best Dressed

Lady Gaga

Liam Gallagher

Noel Fielding

Florence Welch

Karen O

Worst Dressed

Lady Gaga

Matt Bellamy

Katy Perry

Liam Gallagher

Elly Jackson, La Roux

Worst Album

Green Day – ’21st Century Breakdown’

Lady Gaga – ‘The Fame’

The Jonas Brothers – ‘Lines Vines Trying Times’

U2 – ‘No Line On The Horizon’

Arctic Monkeys – ‘Humbug’

Worst Band

Green Day

Oasis

Jonas Brothers

Paramore

JLS

Hottest Man

Head to NME.COM now to rate possibles including Alex Turner, Liam Gallagher, Peter Doherty, Matt Bellamy, Brandon Flowers and Julian Casablancas

Hottest Woman

Head to NME.COM now to rate possibles including Lily Allen, Alison Mosshart, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Florence Welch and Karen O

Best Website (excluding NME.COM)

Muse.mu

YouTube

Facebook

Twitter

Greenday.com

Best Album Artwork

Muse – ‘The Resistance’

Green Day – ’21st Century Breakdown’

Kasabian – ‘West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum’

The Cribs – ‘Ignore The Ignorant’

Manic Street Preachers – ‘Journal For Plague Lovers ‘

Best Band Blog

Muse (Muse.mu and Twitter.com/muse)

Radiohead (Radiohead.com/deadairspace)

Noel Gallagher (Oasisinet.com)

Los Campesinos! (Loscampesinos.com)

Paramore (Paramore.net)

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

Pavement announce Best Of album tracklisting

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Pavement announce Best Of album tracklisting
Pavement have revealed the tracklisting of their new Best Of album 'Quarantine The Past'. Released on March 8, the 23-track album spans the band's entire career. The tracklisting of 'Quarantine The Past' is: 'Gold Soundz' 'Frontwards' 'Mellow Jazz Docent' 'Stereo' 'In The Mouth A Desert' ...

Pavement have revealed the tracklisting of their new Best Of album ‘Quarantine The Past’.

Released on March 8, the 23-track album spans the band’s entire career.

The tracklisting of ‘Quarantine The Past’ is:

‘Gold Soundz’

‘Frontwards’

‘Mellow Jazz Docent’

‘Stereo’

‘In The Mouth A Desert’

‘Two States’

‘Cut Your Hair’

‘Shady Lane’/’J vs. S’

‘Here’

‘Unfair’

‘Grounded’

‘Summer Babe (Winter Version)’

‘Range Life’

‘Date With IKEA’

‘Debris Slide’

‘Shoot The Singer (1 Sick Verse)’

‘Spit On A Stranger’

‘Heaven Is A Truck’

‘Trigger Cut’/’Wounded-Kite At :17’

‘Embassy Row’

‘Box Elder’

‘Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence’

‘Fight This Generation’

The band are scheduled to visit the UK in May as part of their reunion tour.

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

Invictus

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Invictus
Directed by Clint Eastwood Starring Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon The 1995 Rugby World Cup final was, to most viewers around the world, just a pretty good game. To South Africa, who beat New Zealand 15-12, it was a momentous historical occasion, helping to heal deep wounds and invest blacks and white...

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon

The 1995 Rugby World Cup final was, to most viewers around the world, just a pretty good game. To South Africa, who beat New Zealand 15-12, it was a momentous historical occasion, helping to heal deep wounds and invest blacks and whites alike with a spirit of hope. A great big symbolic handshake, if you like. Nelson Mandela had invested a lot of his political capital – unwisely, many thought – in urging his country to get behind their team, the Springboks, previously loathed by black South Africans as a potent symbol of apartheid. “Forgiveness liberates the soul,” declared Mandela. He was fortunate, you might argue, that the team, led by Francois Pienaar, improved beyond recognition in the months leading up to the event, providing the story with a classic against-the-odds climax and the kind of ending that makes sports movies so disarmingly uplifting.

Eastwood will have borne this in mind: there are few directors who could have got the green light from a US studio to make a major film about a foreign leader and a foreign sport in a foreign country. Yet if the final third of Invictus is (extremely well shot and choreographed) gung-ho jock action, the first two thirds are a thoughtful examination of Mandela’s early years in power and the problems he faced in appeasing both sides of an argument. It’s possible that Eastwood saw parallels between Mandela’s struggles and those of Obama in the US today: matching unrealistic expectations while avoiding alienating half the country (though this is kept implicit.) He bravely displayed with Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima that he’s aware that most issues have two sides. Here, he makes his first “political” film (albeit one that resolutely refuses to question received history), and revisits the sporting world for the first time since Million Dollar Baby.

The strange marriage is conservatively boxed – as a director Eastwood is a master craftsman, but no visionary – but oddly effective. The opening scenes suggest something more incendiary. As Mandela’s motorcade passes in 1990, a white South African grumbles to his son, “This is the day our country went to the dogs.” Civil war remains just a shot away. Mandela has a tough job “balancing black aspirations and white fears”. Facing flak for spending too much time overseas, he learns about the scale of the forthcoming World Cup, which South Africa is to host, and his eyes light up. “A billion people watching us? This is a great opportunity!”

Morgan Freeman, who bought the screenplay rights, was Mandela’s choice to play him, and persuaded Eastwood to direct. His performance is not ideal, however. Maybe he has the accent, mannerisms and speech-patterns spot-on, but he never convincingly becomes a physically smaller man. Indeed, even at 72, he seems too proud, too perky. Moments that should resonate, revealing Mandela’s dislike of bright light after 27 years of incarceration, or of others subserviently pouring his tea, are laid rather thick. Winnie Mandela is sidelined completely. And some of Mandela’s glee at the timely sporting fillip makes him seem like a keen-eyed PR guru on a charm offensive, rather than one of the greatest martyrs of the 20th century.

Nonetheless, the build-up holds. Mandela invites Pienaar to meet him and impresses him with his desire for a uniting cause. It’s unclear how this chat led to a team that were used to being roundly beaten suddenly improving into fearless world-beaters, but, despite a script laden with clunky extrapolation, Eastwood maintains momentum. Eschewing, in the main, “inspirational” montages, he has Mandela send the team to the townships, where, in coaching black boys, they develop morale and togetherness. Matt Damon is a strange piece of casting – Pienaar was a blond hulk of a man, several inches taller – but the actor’s innate likeability helps, as does the knack he’s shown in several recent films for shrewd understatement. Pienaar’s family, like the media, retain doubts, yet as the team start winning on the pitch these are cast aside. The one black player is lionised. Even in England we know this is plausible – in Sport World, zeroes become heroes overnight (and vice versa). Yet it’s also why the film, for all its merits, leaves you unfulfilled. Is the giddy, fleeting, escapist euphoria of sport a viable symbol for a watershed in politics and race?

Two key decisions by Eastwood lend the tale gravitas. Mandela presents Pienaar with his favourite poem, “Invictus” (which roughly translates as “unconquered”) by Victorian poet William Ernest Henley. It was the poem that Mandela said helped to get him through his years in jail, and the film’s best off-the-pitch scene sends the team on a boat to Robben Island to visit his old cell. It’s a very moving, quiet sequence, and Damon plays it brilliantly, almost involuntarily stretching his arms out in awe at how small the cell is.

It’s contrasted with the size of the rugby stadium, which now becomes our arena for the run of games that see South Africa’s team grow from underdogs to finalists. The population, swept up, gets behind them. The atmosphere is as good as any sports movie ever made. For obvious reasons, rugby’s faint similarities with American football are amplified when possible. And after Pienaar has uttered cringe-worthy pep talks like “This is it, our destiny” and even “Not on our watch”, it’s a small irreverent joy when, facing the “unstoppable” All-Blacks and star player Jonah Lomu, he gathers the players into a huddle and growls, “Just hit the fucking guy.”

That the team’s triumph bonded a populace more swiftly than years of diplomacy is undeniable. Equally indisputable is that South Africa today is again a mess of corruption and distrust, and this isn’t addressed. Eastwood has opted for the “greater good” theory. Showing men at their best, be it the saintly Mandela or the victorious players, he smuggles a compressed take on “the Nelson Mandela story” into being. And perhaps encourages many to want to learn more about what happened either side of this glorious moment, expertly brought to life again.

Chris Roberts

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