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Norma Tanega – I’m the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings, 1964–1971

Jon Dale
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Norma Tanega – I’m the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings, 1964–1971

It’s been rewarding to observe, over the past half decade, blossoming interest in the songs and life of Norma Tanega. Raised in Long Beach, California, she found a small degree of infamy in the mid-’60s, when her “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog” single hit the Top 40 in the US and UK. After time...

It’s been rewarding to observe, over the past half decade, blossoming interest in the songs and life of Norma Tanega. Raised in Long Beach, California, she found a small degree of infamy in the mid-’60s, when her “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog” single hit the Top 40 in the US and UK. After time spent playing the coffee house circuit, this newfound visibility led to international travel, including a fated meeting with Dusty Springfield in London – the two would be lovers for a time, and Dusty would record some beautifully tender renditions of Tanega’s songs. There were only two albums to show for Tanega’s time in the industry, though (and a third unreleased set from the late ’60s); I’m The Sky contains a smart selection from those three song collections and a back half of unreleased demos.

If the sometimes elaborate arrangements of her solo albums remind of other singer-songwriters of her times, the demos that make up the second half of I’m The Sky offer another angle on Tanega’s voice and songwriting. There’s something in their sturdy ranginess that suggests Mimi Fariña, while the odd circularity and leaping, mysterious shifts in time signature have an internal logic that’s close to the songs of Linda Perhacs. Hearing Tanega strum out a jaunty instrumental like “No One” on autoharp makes the pellucid melancholy of the following “Time Becomes Gray”, her 12-string guitar as gently orchestral as Nick Drake’s six-string, all the more arresting. She’s an elliptical writer, with songs that mosey and meander, but her grasp of melody is effortless – nothing in these songs sounds awkward or forced.

The demos offer a glimpse of Tanega’s work-in-progress, her songs stripped of all but their fundamentals. It’s charming to hear them and they gift the listener intimacy, but Tanega’s songs truly blossomed when they reached the studio, and she and her producers experimented with the colours within their contours. “What More In This World Could Anyone Be Living For” patches together a chiming, lumbering rhythm with a rich chorus and a funky electric piano; “Magic Day” is a gorgeous acoustic reflection that benefits from sensitive arrangement with baroque-pop strings, woodwind and flute.

The tenderness with which Tanega performs material like “Magic Day”, from her hard-to-find second album I Don’t Think It Will Hurt You If You Smile, attests to their conception – apparently, they were written in the flourish of romance with Dusty. If anything, what we really need is a complete reissue of that album – this compilation, welcome though it is, can only feel partial. But it’s still a pleasure to listen to, and it displays Tanega’s vision in its full complexity, in all its poetry and motion.

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Endless Rooms

Sharon O'Connell
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Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Endless Rooms

As for so many musicians, 2020 was a time of stasis and uncertainty for Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. The title of their third album, with its suggestion of maze-like entrapment, is the stuff of literal nightmares but also, one imagines, of the psychological effect of the world’s longest lockdo...

As for so many musicians, 2020 was a time of stasis and uncertainty for Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. The title of their third album, with its suggestion of maze-like entrapment, is the stuff of literal nightmares but also, one imagines, of the psychological effect of the world’s longest lockdown in Australia’s mismanaged pandemic. This record was born out of that time: singer and guitarist Tom Russo, one of three songwriters in the band, has admitted that a lot of his ideas “came from endlessly walking around the same streets of [Melbourne neighbourhood] West Brunswick”. Fran Keaney spent his weekends “building stuff on Garageband, writing without having any sense anybody would listen to it”.

All of which makes the propulsive force and lungs-filling expansiveness of Endless Rooms even more striking. Enforced isolation meant the quintet wrote near complete songs separately and shared the demos around, rather than jamming them into existence together then building them up piece by piece, as they did with 2020’s Sideways To New Italy. Their debut, 2018’s Hope Downs, was characterised by its fusion of melancholic jangle-pop and mid-’80s US college rock. Just two years later, they bent their artful slight awkwardness in Television’s direction without sounding indecently in thrall. Both were unequivocally indie-pop records.

But their latest reveals Rolling Blackouts CF as guitar-rock classicists of the interpretive kind, with The War On Drugs and The Cribs their kindred spirits. Themes of claustrophobia and paranoia surface but rather than fold inward, the band have surged forward, to deliver a dozen songs significantly bigger than before, without a whiff of bombast. Guitar effects deliver extra texture and vigour, while an analogue synth, church organ and glockenspiel provide subtle but significant detail. There’s nothing here to spook the horses – RBCF have shifted ground, rather than adopting a scorched-earth policy, and there are still traces of The Chills, The Go-Betweens and a less psychedelic Church – but the dynamic thrust and dizzying reach are new. Both come naturally to the band.

The set opens with a sweet, one-minute instrumental, played on said synth and a drum machine, with the creaking of a door signalling entry to a particular space – the Basin, a mud-brick, lakeside house in rural Victoria where recording was done in December 2020, with engineer (and co-producer) Matt Duffy. After that intro the album busts right open with “Tidal River”: echoes of Tom Verlaine and The Edge in a chiming, urgent and exultant strings tangle that levels out into a terrific sheeting symphony with harmonised vocals and lyrics that address ecological disaster and Australian complacency. “Jetski over the pale reef/Chase the pill for some relief/As long as you don’t point out what’s underneath your feet”, sings Tom Russo.

Their compatriots’ national pride, sense of entitlement and attitude to refugees is challenged on tearaway single “The Way It Shatters”, where multiple guitar lines apply a golden sheen that belies the lyrical focus (“if you were in the boat, would you turn the other way?”). Most of the songs are romantically, rather than socio-politically inclined, but as Keaney admitted to Uncut, “it’s hard not to let the reality of what is a confusing and frustrating time seep into the songs. We as a group are hopeful people and try to stay away from cynicism but it has been a hard time for optimists. I feel like that lurks in the background of a lot of our songs.”

A balance between euphoria and forlornness is certainly in play on Endless Rooms. In that regard, “Dive Deep”, “Vanishing Dots” and “Bounce Off The Bottom” are instant winners: the former opens with a flurry of treated guitars which then gives way to Joe White’s heady, rippling solo, with a strong supporting rhythm line and an emotional tone that’s a little Forster/McLennan; the second gallops breathlessly out of the traps, its trebly lead reaching for the sky and almost overshooting it. Closer “Bounce Off The Bottom” is all heart and hopefulness wrapped in a chorus that has something of New Order and The Cribs’ “Never Thought I’d Feel Again” but capitulates to neither. Between those sit the hard-driving, love-smitten “Blue Eye Lake” and “Saw You At The Eastern Beach”, a touching vignette of a fading seaside town, soaked in reverb.

Far from a series of intimidatingly empty spaces, Endless Rooms is more like RBCF’s shared mind palace, a place rich with experiences and emotion in which they’re stretching their creative legs, throwing open door after door and rushing eagerly through, to play.

Arcade Fire – We

Jason Anderson
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Arcade Fire – We

Anyone harbouring the ambition to create a work that encapsulates the chaos and confusion of these times faces a fundamental obstacle: there’s rather a lot to cover. That’s certainly one of the reasons that We – Arcade Fire’s sixth album and first since 2017’s Everything Now – required t...

Anyone harbouring the ambition to create a work that encapsulates the chaos and confusion of these times faces a fundamental obstacle: there’s rather a lot to cover. That’s certainly one of the reasons that We – Arcade Fire’s sixth album and first since 2017’s Everything Now – required the most protracted birth process in their two-decade career. In a BBC interview in 2020, frontman Win Butler claimed to have written “records and records” of material while locked down at home. Nor did this torrent stop when they were able to re-enter the world and work on the album in studios in New Orleans, El Paso and Mount Desert Island, Maine, through 2020 and 2021.

Somehow, the band and producer Nigel Godrich honed down this mountain of material to seven songs and 40 minutes. The one song they debuted in the first year of the pandemic – “Generation A”, which they performed on the night of the US presidential election on Late Night With Stephen Colbert – was among those that didn’t make the cut. A 45-minute ambient track released via the meditation app Headspace suggests another of the creative paths not represented here.

It was a journey that wore out at least one Arcade Fire member: Will Butler announced his departure following the album’s completion earlier this year. Yet from We’s opening moments, it’s clear they’ve arrived somewhere remarkable. Not since The Suburbs in
2010 have they made a work that is so fully engaged and engaging.

Nor has the band ever reached their typically high ambitions with such confidence or aplomb. Introducing the theme of isolation that’s central to the album’s first half – subtitled “I” in contrast with “We”, its more collective-minded second part – “Age Of Anxiety I” and “Age Of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)” were inspired by “I Am Waiting”, a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti that’s long been one of Win Butler’s favourites. Even if the original was published in 1958, the feelings of despair and disorientation it contains seem equally applicable to our gruelling zeitgeist. Yet along with the “age of anxiety” Ferlinghetti describes, there’s another phrase that Butler does not repurpose but still goes straight to the heart of We’s tumultuous welter of emotions and ideas. That’s the poet’s call for “a rebirth of wonder”, words that Butler seems to have very much in mind as he describes his own drive to emerge from the darkness and be born anew.

While any expression of optimism risks sounding hopelessly naive amid our cascade of global crises, Arcade Fire have never been embarrassed about trying to shine that light. What makes it seem all the brighter on We is the sense of the band’s own revitalisation and re-embrace of the strengths that made them special. First fostered during their early years in Montreal, Arcade Fire’s checklist of quintessential qualities includes the match of widescreen sweep and breakneck velocity that manifests so vividly in “The Lightning I, II”, the marriage of the epic and the intimate in “End Of The Empire I–IV”, the penchant for campfire-ready singalongs in “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)”, and the interplay between Butler and partner Régine Chassagne on “Age Of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)”.

That’s not to suggest We qualifies as a leap back in time to the epiphanic indie-rock of Funeral or the Springsteen-ian fervour of The Suburbs. Instead, the album retains many of the electronic trappings adopted for 2013’s Reflektor as well as the densely layered aesthetic of Everything Now. But there’s also a shift away from those albums’ cynicism. As the songs demonstrate again and again, the surest place to find that potential for rebirth is in the bonds we form with each other. Butler expresses that idea in its starkest terms in the climactic moments of “The Lightning I, II”. “If you don’t quit on me, I won’t quit on you”, he sings, simple lines that help make the song as stirring and thrilling as any they’ve made.

Despite its philosophical bent and two-part structure – not to mention the high preponderance of songs with Roman numerals – We is spared the concept-album bloat that marred Everything Now thanks to its focus and concision. Even the album’s nine-minute, four-part centerpiece “End Of The Empire I–IV” feels as tight as it can be. In the band’s grandest acknowledgement of their debts to their late admirer David Bowie, Butler’s lamentations are initially cloaked in a Low-worthy cloud of gloom before it all builds into a choir-enhanced finale that evokes both “Five Years” and “Heroes” in its apocalyptic glory. Again leavening what might have been grim with energy and wit, Butler transforms the humble phrase “I unsubscribe” into a rallying cry of opposition in the face of the algorithms that oppress us.

And for all the heaviness that inspired We, the album is fuelled more by a spirit of joy, another hallmark of the band’s early days that faded as the years wore on. It’s here again in the celebrations of love and commitment in “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)” and “Unconditional II (Race And Religion)”, a Chassagne-sung highlight given another burst of gusto by guest vocalist Peter Gabriel.

Though this resurgence of positivity will hopefully not be hampered by the loss of Will Butler, Arcade Fire’s most reliable wild card, he leaves the band sounding healthier. Like Spoon with Lucifer On The Sofa and Animal Collective with Time Skiffs, Arcade Fire have delivered a triumphant restatement of purpose that 2022 probably doesn’t deserve but is brightened by all the same. So best enjoy this age of wonder while it lasts.

Bauhaus announce London Brixton Academy show

Erica Campbell
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Bauhaus announce London Brixton Academy show

Bauhaus have announced a show at London's O2 Academy Brixton. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Bauhaus on ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’: “It was the ‘Stairway To Heaven’ of the 1980s” The news follows the band releasing their track "Drin...

Bauhaus have announced a show at London’s O2 Academy Brixton.

The news follows the band releasing their track “Drink The New Wine” in March, which was the band’s first new music in 14 years.

Their upcoming London gig is set for August 19, with tickets available starting at 10am BST Friday (May 6). Tickets will be available here.

The band also recently announced their first US tour in more than 16 years, with headline shows in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, and New York.

Bauhaus will also join Morrissey and Blondie on the line-up for Cruel World festival. It will take place on May 14 and 15 this year at Brookside at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. Other names on the bill include Devo, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Psychedelic Furs, Violent Femmes, Public Image Ltd and more.

Their latest track, “Drink The New Wine”, was recorded during lockdown with the band sharing audio files without hearing what their other bandmates had recorded, utilising the Surrealist “exquisite corpse” method to compose the song.

Back in 2018, Murphy and J hit the road in the UK for a string of shows celebrating 40 years of Bauhaus. The December run concluded with a performance at London’s O2 Forum in Kentish Town.

Following their 1980 debut record In The Flat Field, Bauhaus released a further four studio albums – Mask (1981), The Sky’s Gone Out (1982), Burning From The Inside (1983) and Go Away White (2008).

Eminem, Duran Duran, Dolly Parton and Lionel Richie to be inducted into Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame

Damian Jones
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Eminem, Duran Duran, Dolly Parton and Lionel Richie to be inducted into Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame

Eminem, Duran Duran, Dolly Parton and Lionel Richie are all set to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2022. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut Eurythmics, Carly Simon, Judas Priest and Pat Benatar will also be inducted into the Hall Of Fame...

Eminem, Duran Duran, Dolly Parton and Lionel Richie are all set to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2022.

Eurythmics, Carly Simon, Judas Priest and Pat Benatar will also be inducted into the Hall Of Fame this year.

Kate Bush, Beck, DEVO, Fela Kuti, MC5, New York Dolls, Rage Against The Machine and Dionne Warwick made the initial shortlist for 2022, but didn’t make the final cut.

The honourees – voted on by more than 1,000 artists, historians and music industry professionals – each “had a profound impact on the sound of youth culture and helped change the course of rock ’n’ roll,” said John Sykes, the chairman of the Rock Hall, in a statement.

The 2022 event, which will be the Hall’s 37th annual induction ceremony, will be held on November 5 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.

Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton. Image: Stacey Huckeba / Butterfly Records

The announcement comes after Parton initially refused the honour on the grounds that she didn’t feel that she had “earned the right”. But she reversed her stance last month to confirm she will accept the honour should she be voted in.

Parton continued to explain that, at the time she made her statement bowing out, she hadn’t realised that the institution already included numerous artists from other genres outside the world of rock. “When I said that, it was always my belief that the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame was for the people in rock music,” she said.

“And I have found out lately it’s not necessarily that. But if they can’t go there to be recognised, where do they go? And so I felt like I would be taking away from someone that maybe deserved it, certainly more than me since I never considered myself a rock artist. But obviously, there’s more to it than that.”

Eminem, Duran Duran and Pat Benatar were among the artists to recently top this year’s Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame fan ballot.

Last year’s inductees included Tina Turner, Carole King, The Go-Go’s, JAY-Z, Foo Fighters and Todd Rundgren in the Performers category; Kraftwerk, Charley Patton, Gil Scott-Heron, in the Early Influence category; LL Cool J, Billy Preston, Randy Rhoads, in the Musical Excellence category; and Clarence Avant received the Ahmet Ertegun Award.

Paul Weller and Suggs team up on stomping new single, “Ooh Do U Fink U R”

Tom Skinner
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Paul Weller and Suggs team up on stomping new single, “Ooh Do U Fink U R”

Paul Weller has teamed up with Suggs from Madness for a new collaborative single called "Ooh Do U Fink U R" – listen below. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Paul Weller: “Suddenly I was this star. I hated all the attention” The stomping...

Paul Weller has teamed up with Suggs from Madness for a new collaborative single called “Ooh Do U Fink U R” – listen below.

The stomping ’60s R&B-inspired number delves into Suggs and Weller’s upbringing in Britain’s ’70s comprehensive school system in London and Woking respectively, according to a press release.

“Me and Suggs have been talking about doing something together for the last few years so to see it finally happen is amazing! I love the tune and working with him,” Weller explained.

“He’s truly a man of many talents. We wanted to do something special and I really think this track is.”

Suggs added: “I think teachers are the best people in the world, I love them with all my heart. But you know all those great teachers you read about who dragged their pupils up, and encouraged them and made them into the best possible version of themselves they could be? Well, unfortunately, I didn’t have one of those!

“‘Ooh Do U Fink U R’ was a phrase I heard more often than I wished and sums up my school years – constantly being told to know my place and keep in my box, being given no encouragement but still never giving in, and never giving up.”

He continued: “Chatting to Paul reminded me of those experiences. We both found enthusiasm and a purpose in music, and that pulled us through.”

“Ooh Do U Fink UR” arrives with an animated montage-style official video by longtime Madness collaborator DNO – tune in above.

A limited edition numbered 7″ vinyl edition of the joint single will arrive on June 17 – you can pre-order it here.

Weller and Suggs have known each on-and-off for the last four decades but began speaking regularly about music and their other shared interests during the early days of lockdown in 2020.

Later, “Ooh Do U Fink U R” emerged after the pair started exchanging half-finished songs, demos and lyric ideas. The track was subsequently recorded at Weller’s Black Barn Studio in Surrey.

Weller appeared on Suggs’ BBC Radio Four radio series Love Letters To London in 2019.

Earlier this year, Paul Weller opened for Madness at their show at London’s Royal Albert Hall in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Bryan Ferry on Roxy Music: “We were all hungry to learn”

Sam Richards
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Bryan Ferry on Roxy Music: “We were all hungry to learn”

In the current issue of Uncut, Bryan Ferry writes exclusively for us about Roxy Music's eight studio albums - from their 1972 self-titled debut to Avalon, a decade later. To whet your appetite for Ferry's wry and insightful observations, here he is on the band's genre-bending debut... "I started ...

In the current issue of Uncut, Bryan Ferry writes exclusively for us about Roxy Music‘s eight studio albums – from their 1972 self-titled debut to Avalon, a decade later. To whet your appetite for Ferry’s wry and insightful observations, here he is on the band’s genre-bending debut…

“I started putting the band together in 1970 when I began working with Graham Simpson, who had played in my college band, The Gas Board. Later that year I met Andy Mackay and he joined us with his synthesiser and oboe, and later saxophone. At this point I was writing the songs on piano and at the same time trying to put together the band to play them. We didn’t have a tape recorder, so Andy suggested his friend Brian Eno could come and record us. Eno brought his huge reel-to-reel Ferrograph machine, and ended up staying on and becoming part of the band, using Andy’s VCS3 synthesiser to create sounds and treat the instruments we were playing. We hit it off, and by the time we started recording the album we had the complete band.

I liked many kinds of music, so stylistically I was keen for the songs to be wide-ranging and not follow one particular channel. I was lucky with this band in that we had so many different sounds to play with and it was a great opportunity for me to write interesting stuff. Consequently, the first album was an exploration of many styles and so diverse that it indicated many different futures the band could follow. The first Roxy album is an unusual collage of musical elements, and the songs themselves, if you break them down, are just simple experiments in different genres.

This was the first album that any of us had made. We were all hungry to learn and new to the experience of being in a recording studio. It was a dream come true to be able to do this.

EG Management signed us up to Island Records, and they brought in Pete Sinfield from King Crimson to produce us. He seemed to be ideal, very enthusiastic and cheerful. The whole process was a delight. The record was made in a rather bizarre place called Command Studios on Piccadilly, an old movie theatre. How appropriate…”

A new Brian Eno documentary is in the works

Rhian Daly
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A new Brian Eno documentary is in the works

A new documentary about Brian Eno is in the works by director Gary Hustwit, it has been announced. Hustwit has previously worked on films about Mavis Staples (Mavis!) and Wilco (I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco). ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue ...

A new documentary about Brian Eno is in the works by director Gary Hustwit, it has been announced.

Hustwit has previously worked on films about Mavis Staples (Mavis!) and Wilco (I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco).

The filmmaker’s official website now features a page for a documentary called Eno, which is described as “the definitive career-spanning, multi-platform documentary about visionary musician and artist Brian Eno”.

Hustwit was given access to hundreds of hours of previously unseen footage and unreleased music from Eno’s archive to make the doc, which will be released in multiple versions and “will employ groundbreaking generative technology in its creation and exhibition”.

Brian Eno
Brian Eno. Credit: Cecily Eno

The director and his team have digitised and restored approximately 400 hours of material spanning 50 years, including interviews, early video art projects, lectures, performances, behind-the-scenes footage of recording sessions and more – most of which have not been released publicly before.

Eno represents the latest collaboration in the legendary musician and filmmakers’ creative relationship. Eno previously created the score for the documentary Rams in 2017, which explored the life of the German designer Dieter Rams.

The film will, according to Hustwit’s website, “offer a deep dive into subjects that Eno has been notably passionate about, such as sustainability, social equity, and the future of civilisation, while centring above all on the nature of creativity”.

“Much of Brian’s career has been about enabling creativity in himself and others, through his role as a producer but also through his collaborations on projects like the Oblique Strategies cards or the music app Bloom,” Hustwit said. “I think of Eno as an art film about creativity, with the output of Brian’s 50-year career as its raw material.

“You can’t make a conventional, by-the-numbers bio-doc about Brian Eno. That would be antithetical and a missed opportunity. What I’m trying to do is to create a cinematic experience that’s as innovative as Brian’s approach to music and art.”

Last year, Eno spoke out about his feelings on the current NFT craze, saying it allows artists to be “little capitalist assholes”. “I’ve been approached several times to ‘make an NFT,’” he said in an interview.

“So far nothing has convinced me that there is anything worth making in that arena. ‘Worth making’ for me implies bringing something into existence that adds value to the world, not just to a bank account.”

Watch Portishead perform live for the first time since 2015

Alex Gallagher
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Watch Portishead perform live for the first time since 2015

Portishead performed live on May 2 for the first time in seven years as part of a War Child UK benefit gig for Ukraine at O2 Academy in Bristol. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut Marking the first time the trio had played a show since their 2015 appearance ...

Portishead performed live on May 2 for the first time in seven years as part of a War Child UK benefit gig for Ukraine at O2 Academy in Bristol.

Marking the first time the trio had played a show since their 2015 appearance at Benicàssim Festival, Portishead performed five songs – “Mysterons”, “Wandering Star” and “Roads” from 1997’s Dummy, and “Magic Doors” and “The Rip” from 2008’s Third.

Elsewhere on the bill were headliners IDLES along with sets by Billy Nomates, Katy J Pearson, Heavy Lungs, Willie J Healy and Wilderman. Watch snippets of Portishead’s set below:

 

Tickets for the benefit gig, which was announced last month, were only made available through a £10 donation prize draw, with winners selected at random. All proceeds from the concert will go to War Child UK to assist with the crisis in Ukraine. Matched funding from the UK government will also go to humanitarian efforts in Yemen.

“We are really pleased to be able to support the people of Ukraine by performing a few songs at this event in collaboration with the amazing War Child charity,” Portishead commented upon the show’s announcement.

The show is one of many benefit concerts that have been organised to help the people of Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.

ITV’s Concert for Ukraine benefit show aired in support of Disasters Emergency Committee’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal in March, featuring performances from Ed Sheeran, Manic Street Preachers and more. The concert raised over £12million, with the figure expected to rise.

Arcade Fire, meanwhile, recently performed benefit concerts for Ukraine in New Orleans and New York. The latter, a series of four gigs in March, raised over $100,000 for the PLUS1 Ukraine Relief Fund.

The Afghan Whigs announce new album How Do You Burn? and share “The Getaway”

Sam Moore
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The Afghan Whigs announce new album How Do You Burn? and share “The Getaway”

The Afghan Whigs have announced How Do You Burn?, their first new album in five years, and shared their latest single "The Getaway" - you can hear the new song below. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut After returning with new music back in February, the fiv...

The Afghan Whigs have announced How Do You Burn?, their first new album in five years, and shared their latest single “The Getaway” – you can hear the new song below.

After returning with new music back in February, the five-piece are now set to release their ninth studio album, which will be the follow-up to 2017’s In Spades, on September 9 via Royal Cream/BMG. Pre-order is available here.

Work on How Do You Burn? started in September 2020, with recording largely taking place remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic. Speaking about the process, frontman/songwriter Greg Dulli said: “Once we got the system down, we started flying.”

The Afghan Whigs have previewed How Do You Burn? with “The Getaway” – you can watch the track’s Philip Harder and Patrick Pierson-directed video below.

How Do You Burn? was given its title by the late Mark Lanegan, who contributed backing vocals to two tracks on the record before his death in February.

Other guest contributors to the record include Susan Marshall (who previously sang on The Afghan Whigs’ 1998 album 1965), Van Hunt (a guest on 2014’s Do To The Beast) and Marcy Mays, who provided lead vocals on the Whigs’ “My Curse” off their 1993 album Gentleman.

You can see the tracklist and album artwork for The Afghan Whigs’ How Do You Burn? below:

“I’ll Make You See God”
“The Getaway”
“Catch A Colt”
“Jyja”
“Please, Baby, Please”
“A Line Of Shots”
“Domino and Jimmy”
“Take Me There”
“Concealer”
“In Flames”

The Afghan Whigs - 'How Do You Burn?'

The Afghan Whigs have also announced a trio of UK live dates for November in support of their new album. You can see the band’s upcoming UK gigs below.

July 2022
23 – Concorde 2, Brighton
24 – Latitude Festival, Suffolk

November 2022
4 – Cathedral, Manchester
5 – St. Lukes, Glasgow
6 – KOKO, London

An audience with Glen Matlock: “Music can be a release and it can be a rallying cry”

Sam Richards
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An audience with Glen Matlock: “Music can be a release and it can be a rallying cry”

Scroll through Glen Matlock’s Twitter feed and there are almost as many pictures of him holding placards as there are of him holding guitars. Whether it’s marching against Brexit or the Policing Bill, it seems that the man who once penned the nihilist anthem “Pretty Vacant” has lately become...

Scroll through Glen Matlock’s Twitter feed and there are almost as many pictures of him holding placards as there are of him holding guitars. Whether it’s marching against Brexit or the Policing Bill, it seems that the man who once penned the nihilist anthem “Pretty Vacant” has lately become a bit of an activist. “I’m totally disgusted with the way this country’s gone,” begins Matlock, perched outside a café near his home in Maida Vale. “I’m not the most political person in the world, but we can all stand up and be counted about the things that matter. And I think the only way you can do that is actually turn up and be there. It’s normally quite a laugh as well.”

This sense of jubilant protest energy fuels his new solo album, a collection of crisp rock’n’roll rabble-rousers featuring Earl Slick, Norman Watt-Roy and Clem Burke. The lead-off single is even called “Head On A Stick”. Anyone’s in particular, Glen? “Well, there’s many candidates!” He recounts having a “run-in” with Michael Gove at a recent QPR match: “I told him in no uncertain terms what I think about his stupid Brexit and what it’s done for touring musicians. I was bristling, I really had to hold myself back.”

Matlock is warier about revisiting old Sex Pistols spats, but with Danny Boyle’s miniseries about the band due to air in May, he looks back fondly on his pivotal role in the punk revolution, selling shoes to Mick Ronson and accidentally inventing the new romantics. Turns out there is a point in asking…

What is the difference in mindset from delivering a new solo record in 2022 versus a new record with the Rich Kids in 1978? Are the goals still the same?

Scott Zuppardo, via email

I don’t think there’s really any difference between what I do now and what I did back then. You go in the studio with all these grand ideas and it comes out how it comes out. I like Nick Lowe’s adage: slap it down and tart it up. The main thing I want to get out of it is that people think, ‘Ol’ Matlock, he still writes a pretty good song – and he’s not a one-trick pony from 1976.’ That’s what drives me. And I think I can back that up.

Introducing Sounds Of The New West – a very special, limited edition vinyl release

Michael Bonner
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Introducing Sounds Of The New West – a very special, limited edition vinyl release

To mark Uncut's 25th anniversary, we're delighted to unveil Sounds Of The New West - a bespoke, highly collectable vinyl companion to our long-running CD series. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut We've gathered together 18 of the finest tracks from the five...

To mark Uncut‘s 25th anniversary, we’re delighted to unveil Sounds Of The New West – a bespoke, highly collectable vinyl companion to our long-running CD series.

We’ve gathered together 18 of the finest tracks from the five existing Sounds Of The New West compilations – including songs from veteran favourites like Lambchop, The Handsome Family and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy alongside relative upstarts such as Courtney Marie Andrews, Frazey Ford and Joan Shelley.

Limited to only 1,000 copies, this album is housed in a beautifully designed gatefold sleeve, while the records themselves come in two striking colours: Disc 1 is pressed on Blue Suede Shoes vinyl, whilst Disc 2 is pressed on Purple Rain vinyl.

The album is only available direct from the Uncut store.

Pre-order opens today – May 1 – while finished copies will ship from late June 2022.

The full tracklisting and how to buy a copy can be found by clicking here.

Klaus Schulze, pioneering electronic composer, dead at 74

Alex Gallagher
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Klaus Schulze, pioneering electronic composer, dead at 74

German composer Klaus Schulze – who had a lasting impact on the worlds of electronic, ambient and techno music – has died at the age of 74. The news was confirmed by Schulze's family with a statement on his social media pages, sharing that the musician died "suddenly and unexpectedly" on Apri...

German composer Klaus Schulze – who had a lasting impact on the worlds of electronic, ambient and techno music – has died at the age of 74.

The news was confirmed by Schulze’s family with a statement on his social media pages, sharing that the musician died “suddenly and unexpectedly” on April 26, following a long illness.

“Not only does he leave a great musical legacy, but also a wife, two sons and four grandchildren,” the statement continues. “On behalf of him and the family, we would like to thank you for your loyalty and support throughout the years – it has meant a lot.

“His music will live on, and so will our memories. There was still so much to write about him as a human and artist, but he probably would have said by now: ‘Nuff said!’ The farewell will take place in the closest family circle, just as he wished. You know what he was like: his music matters, not his person.”

Born in Berlin in 1947, the pioneering musician’s career began in the 1970s with brief stints in bands including Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Temple before going solo. His first album, 1972’s Irrlicht, was a four-part composition that saw Schulze manipulating a broken organ and an orchestra recording to build a wall of sound.

Over the next five decades, Schulze would go on to have a prolific career that included the release of some 50 solo albums. Among the most significant were 1975’s Timewind, 1976’s Moondawn and 1979’s Dune, inspired by Frank Herbert’s book of the same name.

Among his many collaborations included the supergroup Go, formed in 1976 alongside Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta along with Al Di Meola, Steve Winwood and Michael Shrieve. They released two studio albums and one live record before dissolving. Other collaborators over the years included Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard and synth-pop group Alphaville.

Earlier this month, Schulze announced his latest album, Deus Arrakis – also inspired by Dune – would arrive on June 10, previewing it with lead single “Osiris – Pt. 1”.

Oumou Sangaré – Timbuktu

Nigel Williamson
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Oumou Sangaré – Timbuktu

If you’re ever in downtown Bamako, you might encounter the Hotel Wassoulou. Owned and run by Oumou Sangaré, the place takes its name from the region in southern Mali from where she originates, as well as its unique style of West African dance music based on the earthy, scratchy, mesmerising sound...

If you’re ever in downtown Bamako, you might encounter the Hotel Wassoulou. Owned and run by Oumou Sangaré, the place takes its name from the region in southern Mali from where she originates, as well as its unique style of West African dance music based on the earthy, scratchy, mesmerising sound of the hunter’s harp known as the kamele n’goni.

During your stay, if you’re lucky, Sangaré may even serenade you in the bar with her Wassoulou songs, in a soulful, wailing voice and a sound that is distinctively different from other Malian styles, such as the desert blues of Ali Farka Touré or the elegant Manding kora arpeggios of Toumani Diabaté.

Sangaré burst on to the African music scene more than 30 years ago with her debut cassette release Moussolou (“the women” in Bambara) and became a feminist icon in what is still a highly patriarchal society, singing out against polygamy, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and other indignities enforced on West African women.

A series of brilliant albums followed for the World Circuit label, all in predominantly traditional vein. Yet she was growing increasingly restless to fuse her Wassoulou dance rhythms with other styles, and her ability to do so without compromising her authenticity was evident when Alicia Keys invited Sangaré to duet with her, and Beyoncé sampled her song “Diaraby Néné” for the soundtrack to The Lion King remake. It led to Sangaré leaving World Circuit to record 2017’s Mogoya, a more experimental record that mixed traditional instruments such as n’goni and calabash with synths and electronica and on which the dynamic Wassoulou dance sound embraced the rest of the world. Timbuktu, which finds her back on World Circuit but which was independently produced by the French duo of Pascal Danaë and Nicolas Quéré, continues the journey.

Like so many records in recent times, Timbuktu was a product of lockdown. After organising her annual International Wassoulou Festival in Mali in early 2020, Sangaré arrived in the United States in March of that year for a short stay but almost immediately found herself stranded. Unable to get home and with time itself on hold, she bought a house in Baltimore where she spent her time writing material for her next album with Mamadou Sidibé, her long-time kamele n’goni player. With the exception of the traditional Wassoulou tune “Sabou Dogoné”, all of the songs on Timbuktu were written during that period of enforced isolation.

Fusing West African tradition with blues, folk and rock, the result is Sangaré’s boldest and most ambitious album to date. The opener “Wassulu Don” sets the tone. Sonically, it rides on a John Lee Hooker boogie rhythm, the n’goni meshing thrillingly with its distant cousin, the dobro, and Danaë’s stinging electric guitar lines. Lyrically it’s a proud hymn to the resourcefulness of the Wassoulou people, long regarded as “miserable n’goni players, singers, dancers only interested in partying and enjoying life”, Sangaré tells us, but who have made the region “a shelter for peace” while the rest of Mali faces violence and political chaos.

There’s melodic Afro-pop (“Sira”) and gentle folk-rock (“Degui N’Kelena”), the latter featuring a gorgeous conversation between the n’goni and Danaë’s slide guitar. Even better is “Kanou”, a multi-stringed mini-symphony in which n’goni and slide are joined by dobro and banjo. The title track is a plaintive plea to her fellow Malians to “wake up from this deep sleep” and respect Africa’s nobler traditions, Sangaré’s heartfelt vocal in Bambara underpinned again by mournful slide guitar. “Kêlê Magni” addresses a similar theme in fiercer fashion, a forthright attack on the violence that has plagued Mali in recent years over wigged-out electric guitar pyrotechnics.

It’s followed by Sangaré at her most gentle on “Dily Oumou”, as she sings a keening melody over washes of synths and call-and-response backing vocals – although the lyric packs a sharper message of self-help as she tells her compatriots, “instead of envying me, pull your socks up and get to work”. She ends on a spiritual note, praying “May Allah give us all a meaningful source of knowledge” over church-like organ.

For all the record’s sonic invention, though, its Sangaré’s voice that commands attention, a rich, textured instrument that has only grown more nuanced and subtle with age. As we continue to hope that the pandemic is coming to an end, the time will soon come to compile the definitive list of great lockdown records, shaped by the unique circumstances of 2020-21, and which would not have been made had normal life prevailed. Timbuktu will deserve a prominent place on that list.

Wilco share “Falling Apart (Right Now)”, from their new album Cruel Country

Michael Bonner
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Wilco share “Falling Apart (Right Now)”, from their new album Cruel Country

Wilco return with Cruel Country - their 12th studio album, released on May 27 with their own dBpm Records. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut The news comes hot on the heels of their plans to release a series of Special Editions to mark the 20th anniversary ...

Wilco return with Cruel Country – their 12th studio album, released on May 27 with their own dBpm Records.

The news comes hot on the heels of their plans to release a series of Special Editions to mark the 20th anniversary of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

You can hear Cruel Country track “Falling Apart (Right Now)” below.

Cruel Country is a two-disc set, which is released the same weekend as the band’s Solid Sound Festival takes place in North Adams, Massachusetts – where the band will perform the album for the first time.

“There have been elements of Country music in everything we’ve ever done,” says Jeff Tweedy. “We’ve never been particularly comfortable with accepting that definition, the idea that I was making country music. But now, having been around the block a few times, we’re finding it exhilarating to free ourselves within the form, and embrace the simple limitation of calling the music we’re making Country.”

The usual Wilco line-up – Tweedy along with John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Pat Sansone and Nels Cline – recorded the album live at The Loft in Chicago. “It’s a style of recording that forces a band to surrender control and learn to trust each other, along with each others’ imperfections, musical and otherwise. ” says Tweedy. “But when it’s working the way it’s supposed to, it feels like gathering around some wild collective instrument, one that requires six sets of hands to play.”

Continues Tweedy, “More than any other genre, Country music, to me, a white kid from middle-class middle America, has always been the ideal place to comment on what most troubles my mind—which for more than a little while now has been the country where I was born, these United States. And because it is the country I love, and because it’s Country music that I love, I feel a responsibility to investigate their mirrored problematic natures. I believe it’s important to challenge our affections for things that are flawed.”

“Country music is simply designed to aim squarely at the low-hanging fruit of the truth,” says Tweedy. “If someone can sing it, and it’s given a voice… well, then it becomes very hard not to see. We’re looking at it. It’s a cruel country, and it’s also beautiful. Love it or leave it. Or if you can’t love it, maybe you’ve already left.”

The album is available to pre-order by clicking here.

The tracklisting for Cruel Country is:

I Am My Mother
Cruel Country
Hints
Ambulance
The Empty Condor
Tonight’s The Day
All Across The World
Darkness Is Cheap
Bird Without A Tail / Base Of My Skull
Tired Of Taking It Out On You
The Universe
Many Worlds
Hearts Hard To Find
Falling Apart (Right Now)
Please Be Wrong
Story To Tell
A Lifetime To Find
Country Song Upside-down
Mystery Binds
Sad Kind Of Way
The Plains

The band also have upcoming tour dates, including Black Deer Festival in the UK in June:

Friday, May 27 – Sun. May 29 – North Adams, MA @ Solid Sound Festival
Saturday, June 11 – Oslo, NE @ Loaded Festival
Monday, June 13 – Copenhagen, DK @ Amager Bio
Friday, June 17 – Zeebrugge, BE @ Zeebrugge Beach Festival
Saturday, June 18 – Kent, UK @ Black Deer Festival
Wednesday, June 22 – Barcelona, ES @ Poble Espanyol
Saturday, June 25 – Murcia, ES @ Plaza De Toros Murcia
Monday, June 27 – Madrid, ES @ Noches Del Botanico
Monday, August 28 – Martha’s Vineyard, MA @ Beach Road Weekend

The B-52’s announce North American farewell tour

Will Richards
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The B-52’s announce North American farewell tour

The B-52’s have announced details of a North American farewell tour – see the full list of dates below. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: The B-52s on ‘Rock Lobster’: “There’s not any songs like it!” The band, best known for the...

The B-52’s have announced details of a North American farewell tour – see the full list of dates below.

The band, best known for their hits “Love Shack” and “Rock Lobster”, formed in October 1976 over a shared flaming volcano cocktail at the Hunan Chinese Restaurant. They released their self-titled debut album in 1979, produced by Chris Blackwell via Island Records.

Back in 2019, they played a summer farewell tour in the UK, after celebrating their 40th anniversary the year prior by co-headlining a North American tour with Boy George & Culture Club and Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey.

The new tour dates begin in Seattle in August and will see The B-52’s supported by The Tubes and KC & The Sunshine Band.

Check out the full list of dates below, and buy tickets here.

AUGUST 2022
22 – Seattle, McCaw Hall *

SEPTEMBER 2022
29 – Mashantucket, Foxwoods Casino ^
30 – Boston, MGM Music Hall ^

OCTOBER 2022
1 – Washington DC, The Anthem ^
7 – Chicago, Chicago Theatre ^
13 – New York, Beacon Theatre ^
14 – New York, Beacon Theatre ^
15 – Atlantic City, Ovation Hall – Ocean Casino ^
19 – Las Vegas, The Venetian Theatre
21 – Las Vegas, The Venetian Theatre
22 – Las Vegas, The Venetian Theatre
28 – San Francisco, The Masonic Auditorium *
29 – San Francisco, The Masonic Auditorium *

NOVEMBER
4 – Los Angeles, YouTube Theater ^
11 – Atlanta, The Fox Theatre ^

*with The Tubes
^with KC & The Sunshine Band

Back in 2015, The B-52’s Kate Pierson released a debut solo album featuring a song co-written by The Strokes‘ Nick Valensi and Sia.

The new wave icons released their last studio album, Funplex, in 2008. Their self-titled debut came out in 1979.

Listen to Arcade Fire’s hopeful new single “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)”

Arusa Qureshi
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Listen to Arcade Fire’s hopeful new single “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)”

Arcade Fire have released "Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)", the latest single to be taken from their forthcoming album WE. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Arcade Fire – Everything Now review The track was initially teased by the band on Apr...

Arcade Fire have released “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)”, the latest single to be taken from their forthcoming album WE.

The track was initially teased by the band on April 12, when frontman Win Butler posted a video on Instagram of a vinyl version of the album playing. “Next single is,” he is heard saying before a slow strumming song kicks off with the lyrics “Lookout kid trust your heart / you don’t have to play the part.”

“Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)” has now been shared by the band on their social media, with a caption on Instagram reading: “There’s nothing saccharine about unconditional love in a world that is coming apart at the seams. WE need each other, in all of our imperfection.

“‘Lookout Kid’ is a reminder, a lullaby for the end times, sung to my son, but for everyone… Trust your heart, trust your mind, trust your body, trust your soul. Shit is going to get worse before it gets better, but it always gets better, and no one’s perfect.”

The track is the follow-up to “The Lightning I, II”, which arrived in March. It’s a hopeful and optimistic ode to future generations in the face of uncertainties facing the world –listen below.

Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Win Butler explained how he was singing to his son in the future on the track. “So I was really just sort of thinking about my son and the world that he’s facing and how like, I was a very, very, very depressed kid, particularly in high school,” he said.

“I was trying to imagine the way that I’m wired just chemically and the shit that I’ve dealt with in my life, having to deal with that now in this era of like … and not to mention now, but like 10 years from now, whenever the fuck he’s going to be dealing with it. And it was just like, ‘Man, he’s going to need to have the thick skin and to just really be able to take a hit and have some just fortitude.'”

The band previewed the new single earlier this month during a surprise performance at the first weekend of Coachella 2022. Butler had to restart the song at the festival after being overcome with emotion.

The group make their return to the UK this Friday (April 29) to play an intimate concert at London’s KOKO to mark the long-awaited reopening of the venue. Tickets are now sold out.

Bob Dylan re-recording classic songs from his catalogue with T Bone Burnett

Will Richards
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Bob Dylan re-recording classic songs from his catalogue with T Bone Burnett

Bob Dylan is currently in the process of re-recording some of his classic songs in high fidelity audio, producer T Bone Burnett has revealed. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: A look back at Bob Dylan’s landmark debut album According to Burn...

Bob Dylan is currently in the process of re-recording some of his classic songs in high fidelity audio, producer T Bone Burnett has revealed.

According to Burnett, he and Dylan have been in the studio to record the new songs as part of the launch for Burnett’s new high fidelity medium Ionic Originals.

The new medium is hailed as the first major breakthrough in the reproduction of analogue sound in over 70 years, and Burnett said: “An Ionic Original is the pinnacle of recorded sound. It is archival quality. It is future-proof. It is one of one. Not only is an Ionic Original the equivalent of a painting, it is a painting.

“It is lacquer painted onto an aluminum disc, with a spiral etched into it by music. This painting, however, has the additional quality of containing that music, which can be heard by putting a stylus into the spiral and spinning it.”

It’s not clear what form an Ionic Original will take, when we might hear Dylan’s newly re-recorded tracks, or which songs have been redeveloped, but a press release says Burnett’s creation aims to “reset the valuation of recorded music.”

Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan performs on stage in Hyde Park on July 12, 2019 in London. Image: Matthew Baker / Getty Images

Elsewhere, Bob Dylan recently announced a number of new West Coast tour dates in North America this summer – see the full list of tour dates below.

The dates, an extension of the Never Ending Tour that Dylan is currently out on the road for, come behind his lauded 2020 album Rough And Rowdy Ways.

MAY 2022
28 – Spokane, First Interstate Center for the Arts
29 – Kennewick, Toyota Center
31 – Portland, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

JUNE 2022
01 – Seattle, Paramount Theatre
02 – Seattle, Paramount Theatre
05 – Eugene, Hult Performing Arts Center
07 – Redding, Civic Auditorium
09 – Oakland, Fox Theater
10 – Oakland, Fox Theater
11 – Oakland, Fox Theater
14 – Los Angeles, Pantages Theatre
15 – Los Angeles, Pantages Theatre
16 – Los Angeles, Pantages Theatre
17 – San Diego, Civic Theatre

Watch Angel Olsen’s binary-smashing new video for “Big Time”

Will Richards
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Watch Angel Olsen’s binary-smashing new video for “Big Time”

Angel Olsen has shared a new video for the title track of her upcoming album Big Time – check it out below. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Angel Olsen: “I wanted to come out of the gates swinging” Big Time, which follows 2020’s Who...

Angel Olsen has shared a new video for the title track of her upcoming album Big Time – check it out below.

Big Time, which follows 2020’s Whole New Mess and the previous year’s All Mirrors, is set for release on June 3 via Jagjaguwar. It was announced last month with first single “All The Good Ones”.

Like “All The Good Ones”, the “Big Time” video was directed by Kimberly Stuckwisch, who said in a statement: “‘For ‘Big Time’, we set out to celebrate how humans identify and to subvert the old-fashioned gender binary and societal/internalised gender roles of the past through choreography, colour, and wardrobe. To exist outside strict definitions is powerful and often not given a place in cinema.

“This was our chance to hold a positive reflection in the space and to shout to the world that you are more than who you are told to be. ‘Big Time’ is what happens when we do not express our true identity but find freedom when we step out of the shadows into our most authentic selves. In the first rotation, the lighting is drab, the clothes are monochromatic, the dance is monotonous… gender-conforming roles present.

“However, with each rotation, something magical happens, both our cast and Angel begin to come alive, to feel free. We see the clothes brighten, the dance heightens, and the bar that was once devoid of emotion can barely contain the joy bursting out of each individual.

Stuckwisch added: “I am proud to say that over 80 per cent of our cast and 50 per cent of our crew identified as nonbinary and non-gender conforming.”

Watch the “Big Time” video below.

A press release notes that “Big Time” “is about the expansive power of new love, written during the time she was coming out as queer, and having her first experience of queer love and heartbreak”.

The new LP was also recorded following the death of Olsen’s parents, who the US artist came out to during the making of “Big Time”.

“Some experiences just make you feel as though you’re five years old, no matter how wise or adult you think you are”, she wrote of that “tearful but relieving conversation” with her parents. “Finally, at the ripe age of 34, I was free to be me.”

Olsen will head out on a UK and Ireland tour in support of Big Time in October. You can see her upcoming tour dates below, and find tickets here.

OCTOBER 2022
18 – O2 Academy Brixton, London
19 – The Forum, Bath
20 – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
21 – Albert Hall, Manchester
24 – Vicar Street, Dublin

Michael Head on making his glorious comeback album Dear Scott: “Just keep fuckin’ going”

Rob Hughes
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Michael Head on making his glorious comeback album Dear Scott: “Just keep fuckin’ going”

St George’s Hall’s stylish new eaterie celebrates the Liverpool that everybody knows. Pencil portraits line the exposed brickwork walls: Lennon, McCartney, Cilla and Doddy alongside honorary local Bill Shankly, the Scotsman who reversed Liverpool FC’s fortunes back in the ’60s. Michael Head ...

St George’s Hall’s stylish new eaterie celebrates the Liverpool that everybody knows. Pencil portraits line the exposed brickwork walls: Lennon, McCartney, Cilla and Doddy alongside honorary local Bill Shankly, the Scotsman who reversed Liverpool FC’s fortunes back in the ’60s. Michael Head is tucked into a quiet corner nook, directly beneath this gallery of fame. But you have to look deeper to find him in this great city.

Head has performed at St George’s Hall itself on numerous occasions, most recently with the Red Elastic Band. His manor, however, lies a mile or so east, a short hop down London Road and up into Kensington. This is where he spent his formative years during the ’70s. “It’s been an important route through town for centuries,” says Head, nursing a cappuccino and settling into the subject. “For me, personally, it’s a ley line of some kind.”

His creative life can be measured along this thoroughfare. It’s where he learned to become a singer and musician. As a shy 17-year-old, Head rehearsed with his first band in Kensington’s Prospect Vale. He’s written songs on the No 10 bus – first as leader of The Pale Fountains, then journeying through Shack, The Strands and onward into the Red Elastic Band.

The latest example is “The Ten”, a droll, expertly drawn slice of youthful nostalgia that recounts regular trips to Kensington market, where Head’s dad worked. Younger brother John (who joined Head in The Pale Fountains, Shack and The Strands) is along for the ride, as is troublesome mate Badger, eliciting a precious lyric: “Badger threw a peach and it all went pear-shaped”. “He did start throwing fruit!” Head chuckles. “So from then on, my dad would only let one of us go with him to the market.”

It’s one of a dozen songs on Dear Scott, Head’s first album in five years and debut for new label Modern Sky UK. Produced by Bill Ryder-Jones, formerly of The Coral, Dear Scott carries all the hallmarks of Head’s greatest moments: unfaltering melodies, a beautiful sense of forward motion, lyrics that conjure entire worlds.

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