Calexico’s new album, Algiers, is reviewed in the current issue of Uncut (October 2012, Take 185) – so we thought we’d take a trip back to April 2003 (Take 71), when Uncut’s John Mulvey flew out to Tucson, Arizona to discover more about the duo’s redrawing of the alt.country map.
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OK I’m going to try and be relatively brief with this – or at least as brief as one can hope to be when dealing with the longest studio album that Neil Young’s ever made. I’ve written what I hope is an exhaustive review of “Psychedelic Pill” for the next issue of Uncut, and don’t really want to repeat myself too much.
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.
Interesting news this morning, as you might have seen here: Poncho Sampedro has claimed that the forthcoming Neil Young & Crazy Horse album will be called “Psychedelic Pill”.
John Murry first entered Uncut airspace in 2006 with World Without End, the bleakly brilliant album of country death songs he wrote and recorded with Bob Frank. Six years on, Murry has just released his first solo album, The Graceless Age, an album of almost symphonic emotional turmoil, co-produced by late American Music Club drummer Tim Mooney. The songs on the record deal sometimes explicitly with Murry’s heroin addiction, specifically the 10-minute ‘Little Coloured Balloons’, a harrowing account of a near-fatal OD. I reviewed The Graceless Age for the current issue of Uncut and emailed Murry some questions, to which he replied in detail and at illuminating length, as you will see from the fascinating transcript that follows.
