Bob Dylan’s fantastic new album opens with a train song. Given the wrath to come and the often elemental ire that accompanies it, not to mention all the bloodshed, madness, death, chaos and assorted disasters that will shortly be forthcoming, you may be surprised that what’s clattering along the tracks here isn’t the ominous engine of a slow train coming, a locomotive of doom and retribution, souls wailing in a caboose crowded with the forlorn damned and other people like them.
It's the last day of summer, as Van Dyke Parks tells us, repeatedly. He's right, of course, but it's also true that there are still two days left of End Of The Road, pretty much the last festival of 2012.
The Rolling Stones have announced details of a new documentary titled Crossfire Hurricane.
Directed by Brett Morgen, the film documents the band's career from their early road trips and gigs in the 1960s, via the release of 1972's Exile On Main Street right up to present day.
To be honest, I’ve not previously had much time for the music of Dan Deacon; for what struck me, perhaps erroneously, as an odd but not quite combustible mix of process, theory, audience participation, electronica and a certain imperishable indie tweeness.
As she releases her new album, The Devil You Know, singular LA singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular Audience With… feature.
So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask her?
What was it like working with musicians as diverse as Dr John and Mike Watt?
Just how hard was the protracted writing and recording of Pirates?
What happened to all those berets and spandex suits?
Send your questions to us by noon, Wednesday August 29 to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com.
We’ve just had our copies of the new issue dropped off in the office, ahead of it going on sale later this week. Nick Cave’s on the cover, glowering menacingly. John Robinson went down to Brighton, where, as John memorably tells us, Nick lives in a house that’s ‘large and white, much as Russia in winter is large and white’. The occasion for Uncut dropping in on Cave was the release of Lawless, the terrific – and terrifically violent - new movie directed by Nick’s long-time collaborator, John Hillcoat, for which Cave has written the snappy screenplay.
Lou Reed at 70 arrives onstage at the Festival Hall to do his bit for Antony Hegarty’s Meltdown programme dressed like a stroppy teenager in a baggy black basketball vest, gold medallions around his neck and what looks like a pair of tracksuit bottoms. He looks frail these days, though tonight slightly less so than last year at the Hammersmith Apollo, and perhaps no wonder when you consider what he’s put his body through over the years before he embraced his current sobriety.
The star of the new acclaimed documentary Searching For Sugar Man, singer songwriter Rodriguez, is set to play a one-off show in London.
Rodriguez will perform at the Royal Festival Hall on November 17. The 70 year old cult musician will be backed by a full band.
Searching For Sugar Man is in selected cinemas now and will be released on DVD in November. The soundtrack is out now.
Elvis Costello has announced an extensive UK tour for next summer.
The singer, who released his 24th studio album National Ransom in 2010, will play 16 dates across the UK in May and June next year.
The tour will once again feature Costello and his band asking members of the audience to spin a huge wheel and select the next song in the set.
Costello's original wheel tour took place in 1986, opening at the Los Angeles Beverly Theatre, before a three night residency at London's Royal Albert Hall.
Elvis Costello will play:
