How to find a way through the arcane catalogue of the Sun City Girls? Last time I tried to count, there seemed to be around 60-odd releases, mostly rare as hen’s teeth, compounding the mythology of the band as among the most challenging and elusive of the past 20 or 30 years. Now, some three years after the death of Charles Gocher, there’s one last unexpected SCG album, and with characteristically perverse logic, expert word is that it may be their most accessible.
Sad news reached us last night of the death of Arthur Penn, aged 88. Penn, of course, was the director of many great films including Bonnie And Clyde, Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks.
Here, by way of a tribute, I thought we'd run the transcript of an interview Damien Love did with Penn for Uncut. The interview took place in 2004, while Penn, then 81, was directing a Broadway revival of the play Sly Fox. Speaking in detail about his career, he shared his memories of working with Beatty, Brando, Newman and Hackman, as well as discussing the enduring legacy of his masterpiece, Bonnie And Clyde.
Mentioning Forest Swords the other week, the brilliantly named Soren Lorenson posted to say how much they reminded him of Matt Elliott’s Third Eye Foundation.
Just looking back through my archives, I found something on Sharon Van Etten’s “Because I Was In Love”, a mighty hushed album of folkish singer-songwritery which was produced by Greg Weeks of Espers, and certainly sounded like it was part of Espers’ fairly spectral world.
To be honest, a few alarm bells went off when I read this quote. “I wanted [Neil Young] to understand that I’ve spent years dedicated to the sonics in my home and that I wanted to give him something he’d never heard before,” said Daniel Lanois the other week.
