Home//UNCUT/October 2024/In This Issue
UNCUT|October 2024Editor’s Note“Lord, I feel the ocean swaying me/Washing away all my pain” NOT long before we started planning this Hendrix cover story, I found myself playing Running The Voodoo Down! Explorations In Psychrockfunksouljazz 1967–80, a great compilation from 2017 that explored black America’s response to the volume and possibilities of psychedelic rock. Along with George Clinton, Sly Stone and Miles Davis, Hendrix casts a sizable shadow over the proceedings – either in a very overt sense, like the way the Isley Brothers segue from CSNY’s “Ohio” into Hendrix’s “Machine Gun”, or else as a galvanising force, whose questing and progressive imperative encouraged others to follow his example. We visit some of the music Hendrix made in his final creative outpouring, as part of Peter Watts’ cover story that digs into his…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024“It’s going to be amazing”SAHRA HALGAN HER backstory is nuts. She’s a Somalian cultural activist who started singing at 13. During the Somalian civil war, she was a nurse on the frontline and only released her first album in her late thirties after becoming a refugee in France. To explain the music, it’s African psychrock with a strong female lead vocal. It’s a bit like Mdou Moctar mixed with King Gizzard – it’s got a real groove, but having a female lead singer really changes the feel. The album she just released, Hiddo Dhawr, is so good. WATER FROM YOUR EYES I wasn’t so sure until I saw them live, but they’re everything you want from a Brooklyn band: offbeat post-punk, distorted synth-pop, shoegaze textures… It’s very cool but they’re unique, and they’ve got…3 min
UNCUT|October 2024Uncut PlaylistCHRISTOPHER OWENS I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair TRUE PANTHER Loss, heartbreak, hospitalisation… the ex-Girls man has suffered a litany of personal tragedies over the last few years, but he’s emerged on the other side with a life-affirming new album. YASMIN WILLIAMS Acadia NONESUCH Folk guitar virtuoso sends her sound skyward with the occasional assistance of Rich Ruth, William Tyler and Aoife O’Donovan. THE HARD QUARTET The Hard Quartet MATADOR Stephen Malkmus sounds like he’s having an absolute blast piloting this new alt.supergroup through everything from powerpop to psych-folk to SST-style sludge-punk. GOAT Goat ROCKET RECORDINGS Masked Swedish marauders add block-rocking hip-hop beats to their psychedelic arsenal. HALEY HEYNDERICKX “Seed Of A Seed” MAMA BIRD First taste of the long-gestating follow-up to her stunning 2018 debut offers a hint…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024Plantoid“WE never intended to be labelled as a prog band,” insists Plantoid’s Louis Bradshaw. Glance at the fantastical sleeve of their 2024 debut Terrapath, or at guitarist Tom Coyne’s Zappa T-shirt, or listen to them in full flow as they zig-zag thrillingly between different styles and time signatures, and you wonder if they protest too much. But equally there is nothing grandiose about Plantoid, no conceptual gimmickry obscuring their candid lyrics. They can be technically dazzling but they also connect on a visceral level. The constant twists and turns in their songs are simply a result of their restless, inquisitive spirit. “There’s no bad ideas,” says singer and guitarist Chloe Spence. “If something comes up that’s a bit weird, we just try and go with it.” As teenagers, they bonded…3 min
UNCUT|October 2024THURSTON MOORE“There’ll always be people putting bands together” EVER since moving to the East Village in 1978 on the trail of Patti Smith and the Ramones, Thurston Moore has garnered a reputation for sniffing out the cool stuff – even when he’s not even trying. Relocating last year from Hackney to southwest London, Moore figured he was “leaving the rock’n’roll world”. But having lunch one day in a cafe in Barnes, “I turned around and was like, ‘Is this where Olympic Studios used to be?’” Moore couldn’t resist getting involved in the studio’s restoration, and now he’s gathering material for a book on the place where numerous Hendrix, Stones, Who and Zeppelin albums were made. “London reveals itself so personally to everybody, especially if you’re interested in culture or subcultures,” he…8 min
UNCUT|October 2024THE NEW TESTAMENTSkeleton Tree 2016 The bleak, resilient Skeleton Tree was begun before the tragic death of Cave’s son Arthur, and can be viewed as prophetic, though the singer’s preoccupation with dark matter was nothing new. The Bad Seeds sketch a backdrop to Cave’s emotional explorations, flitting between electronic soundscapes (“Rings Of Saturn”) and operatic exhalation (“Distant Sky”.) 8/10 Ghosteen 2019 The peak of Cave’s grief cycle is an extraordinary feat of imagination in which the singer inhabits a mythic land of fairytale and rock’n’roll while performing a microscopic examination of his grief. It’s nobody’s idea of a party album, but miraculously, Cave manages to conjure cathartic optimism from the process. 9/10 Seven Psalms 2022 Cave’s often-overlooked lockdown project, liaising with Warren Ellis to write a daily epistle, reflecting the involuntary torpor…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024AtoZBEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS Nova GHOST BOX 8/10 Guests assemble for Lisbon group’s phantasmagoric third The hole left by the late Trish Keenan’s hauntologic pop project Broadcast feels greater and more profound by the day. Unusually, the group who come closest to filling it is a band from Lisbon. On Nova, Beautify Junkyards lean further into the sampleadelic, accentuating their bleary psych with florid sound design and hallucinatory textures. Paul Weller brings a wistfully understated vocal to “Sister Moon”, while the closing “Turn The Tide” features the frail but still commanding voice of Dorothy Moskowitz, who as the vocalist for the ’60s psych troupe United States Of America, did much to spirit this sound into being in the first place. LOUIS PATTISON LOS BITCHOS Talkie Talkie CITY SLANG 7/10 London quartet let…29 min
UNCUT|October 2024NUBYA GARCIADESPITE her accomplishments, Nubya Garcia admits to being anxious about writing for and arranging strings for the first time on Odyssey. “When you do anything new,” she reasons, “it’s like, ‘Should I be doing this? Is this even good?’ I’m just glad I had a strong community around me enough to know that difficult things are there to challenge you – it doesn’t mean they’re there to make you quit. For years, I’ve wanted to work with strings. I didn’t think I had the capacity to do it, but when I was younger I used to play classical music and stringed instruments and I’ve wondered if that made me feel like I know what it’s like to sit in an orchestra. So, maybe I could find my way through this.”…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024AMERICANA ROUND-UPWAKE The Dead(YEP ROC) is Chuck Prophet’s first album in four years and his first since being cleared of stage-four lymphoma. Due in late October, and as the title suggests, it’s very much a reckoning with mortality. It also reflects a newfound passion for cumbia music, heard at San Francisco clubs during his illness and subsequent recovery. Alongside his regular band The Mission Express, Prophet is joined by ¿Qiensave?, a band of brothers from the Central Coast farming community of Salinas. Expect a lively meeting of cultures and traditions, strafed with elements of punk, surf, soul and rock’n’roll. “This record doesn’t shy away from darkness,” he explains, “but it always feels hopeful.” Out around the same time is Slipping Away (BLOODSHOT), the eighth solo effort from US writer, director, comedian…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024THE THEEnsoulment CINEOLA / EARMUSIC 6/10 THE THE’S excellent 1983 album, Soul Mining, captured a feeling of deep, pronounced, soul searching like few other debuts have managed. Nearly 40 years on from that record Matt Johnson found himself engaging in a similar form of intense reflection and contemplation, as he navigated getting over a serious illness, grappling with the pandemic, dealing with grief and witnessing a rapidly changing world as AI boomed. It’s been 24 years since The The’s last studio album, with Johnson largely retreating into soundtrack work in the intervening years, but after a surprise return single in 2017 and the band’s first tour in 17 years, a full comeback was put into place. During the making of this album, Johnson found himself reflecting on the current state of…4 min
UNCUT|October 2024THE ROAD TO ROMANCEBOYS IN THE BETTER LAND (DOGREL, 2019) “If you’re a rockstar, p*rnstar, superstar, doesn’t matter what you are/Get yourself a good car, get outta here…” sings Grian, ventriloquising a bilious Brits-out cab driver, dreaming of escape from the rainy streets of Dublin to some better beyond. A HERO’S DEATH (A HERO’S DEATH, 2020) Recorded in London, and featuring a statue of the demigod Cú Chulainn on its sleeve, Fontaines’ second album saw their musical horizons expand to match the growth of their audience, notably on the title track, where the Strokesy garage-rock builds to a furious climax. I LOVE YOU (SKINTY FIA, 2022) Fontaines’ most ambitious and brilliantly achieved song yet, a bittersweet love song to a homeland hamstrung by corruption: “This island’s run by sharks with children’s bones stuck…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024EQUINE CITYTHE PLAYHOUSE BAR With a Gotham-esque cityscape stuck to the ceiling, this theatre pub and beer garden is the meeting point for Norwich’s arty-retro crowd, where everyone looks like a potential member of Brown Horse. THE ROSEBERY Brown Horse’s local, periodically playing host to their famous three-hour-long sets where they knock new material into shape or attempt weird and wonderful cover versions. NORWICH ARTS CENTRE One of the country’s best small venues, this is where Brown Horse played the show that got them signed to Loose Music. Naturally, they returned there earlier this year for their album launch party. THE WALNUT TREE SHADES Formerly the hub of Norwich’s open-mic scene, although it’s lost favour with Brown Horse since all the portraits of old rock’n’roll stars were replaced with a zany…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024TIME LINEMarch 1971 While touring Scotland to promote The Yes Album, Yes find themselves driving round a lot of roundabouts. A little bit stoned and bored, the idea for a new song takes root August 1971 Yes begin rehearsing Fragile in London’s Mayfair. After Rick Wakeman joins the sessions, “Roundabout” is recorded at Advision studios in September January 1972 A few months after the release of Fragile, an edited version of “Roundabout” is released in the US and eventually climbs to No 13 on the Billboard chart. “Roundabout” becomes the band’s encore song April 2017 Anderson, Wakeman and Howe briefly reunite at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, where they play two songs, including “Roundabout” with Geddy Lee from Rush on bass…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024THEY ARE THE COSMOSMIKE Mills remembers the sad start of The Big Star Quintet in 2010. “I was heading down to South By Southwest to see Big Star, but Alex had his heart attack 10 days before the show. Jody [Stephens, Big Star’s drummer] called me up and said, ‘We’re going to do a memorial if you want to join us.’ Of course I did. That’s when I had to actually learn the songs. I’d never really sat down and tried to figure them out before. But we had such a good time that we thought we’d keep doing it.” The band was the brainchild of Chris Stamey, who had worked with Chilton in the late ’70s. He was joined by Jon Auer from The Posies, producer Mitch Easter and a revolving cast…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024DETOURSWHILE Mercury Rev get pretty far out on the records issued under their own name, Donahue and Grasshopper shift into full interstellar overdrive for their long-running side project, Harmony Rockets. “Jonathan and I both played Harmony Rocket guitars, which is where we got the name,” says Grasshopper. “We were listening to Miles Davis’s electric stuff with Pete Cosey and Don Cherry’s Symphony For Improvisers, and we wanted to mix that with Terry Riley/Steve Reich kind of stuff – do drones and repetitive things, but also riff on it and go crazy. The key and some of the tempos were always set; it was almost modal in that sense. There were parameters, parts where we would improvise, and themes we would go back to.” The first LP, Paralyzed Mind Of The…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024The Last Rays Of SunWHEN Jimi Hendrix plugged in at Electric Lady for the very first time, his sense of relief was palpable. After over a year pouring funds into the construction of a studio on Eighth Street in New York City, his sanctuary in the heart of Greenwich Village was finally open for business. Building Electric Lady had been a long, fraught and costly process, but on June 15, 1970 – as Hendrix began to jam on “Valleys Of Neptune” accompanied by Steve Winwood and engineer Dave Palmer on drums – finally it all seemed worthwhile. “Jimi was so excited,” says Eddie Kramer, Hendrix’s engineer, who worked alongside Hendrix to finish the studio. “Traffic were in town, so he invited Steve to the studio because he wanted to get in there to play.…25 min
UNCUT|October 2024BUYER’S GUIDETHE CRY OF LOVE REPRISE/POLYDOR, 1971 The first posthumous Hendrix album focused on some of the tracks Kramer and Hendrix had completed and mixed before Hendrix left for Europe. It’s a valuable testimonial to his final recordings and future direction, including classics such as “Freedom” and “Angel”, but would have been improved if a couple of tracks hadn’t been held over for Rainbow Bridge. 9/10 RAINBOW BRIDGE REPRISE, 1971 Ostensibly a movie soundtrack, Rainbow Bridge doesn’t include any tracks recorded by Hendrix on Maui – for that, get 2020’s Live In Maui – but it does have some great songs that Hendrix had intended for his next studio album. “Dolly Dagger” and “Earth Blues” are the pick of these, while the set features songs from as far back as 1968,…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024ANOHNI AND THE JOHNSONSDR Koncerthuset, Copenhagen, July 13ANOHNI’S live shows have always been an intriguing tug-of-war between her background in experimental theatre and her urge to confront the evils of the world in the bluntest terms possible. Touring the bleeding-edge electronic pop of 2016’s Hopelessness, she hid her face beneath a cowl and allowed the album’s dire presentiments of remote warfare and environmental catastrophe to be lip-synced by a series of big-screen ciphers. There is no hiding tonight. Warmly spotlit in the centre of the Koncerthuset’s large, open auditorium, Anohni is encircled by a nine-piece chamber-jazz ensemble in white suits, as if it were a supper-club set: An Audience With Anohni. The aim is to reproduce the intimate, spontaneous atmosphere of last year’s terrific My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, with that album’s producer…3 min
UNCUT|October 2024REVIEWED THIS MONTHSTARVE ACRE Directed by Daniel Kokotajlo Starring Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark, Erin Richards Opens September 6 Cert 15 7/10 BLACK DOG Directed by Guan Hu Starring Eddie Peng, Tong Liya, Jia Zhangke Opens August 30 Cert 12a 8/10 PARADISE IS BURNING Directed by Mika Gustafson Starring Bianca Delbravo, Dilvin Asaad, Safira Mossberg Opens August 30 Cert To be confirmed 8/10 MY FAVOURITE CAKE Directed by Maryam Moqadam, Behtash Sanaeeha Starring Lily Farhadpour, Esmail Mehrabi Opens September 13 Cert 12a 8/10 THE GOLDMAN CASE Directed by Cédric Kahn Starring Arieh Worthalter, Arthur Harari, Stéphan Guérin-Tillié Opens September 20 Cert 12a 7/10…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024STEVIE VAN ZANDT: DISCIPLESKY/NOW 9/10 “THERE are no second acts in American lives,” said Scott Fitzgerald, but he obviously never met Stevie Van Zandt. As this intimate and epic HBO documentary makes clear, he’s currently on his fourth or fifth incarnation and showing no signs of stopping any time soon. Born Steven Joseph Malafronte, in Massachusetts in 1950, he became Stevie Van Zandt after his mother remarried when he was seven and the family moved to New Jersey. Growing up, like many Italian American self-mythologiser, he felt his options were the “priesthood or the Mob”, but found himself transformed by the mid-’60s revelations of The Beatles and then the Stones (the first made being in a band seem glorious, the second made it seem possible). Falling in with the Jersey Shore scene coalescing…3 min
UNCUT|October 2024Turning the tablesPRO-JECT T2 SUPER PHONO Price £559 PRO-JECT has never been one of those hairshirt turntable brands that believe you ought to suffer for your audio quality. It’s never considered convenience to be a dirty word, and its players are generally easy to set up, just as easy to use… and quite often equipped with a useful bonus feature or two. And that’s just what you get with the T2 Super Phono. It’s a belt-drive design with a classy glass platter beneath a felt mat, and an aluminium tonearm that’s pre-fitted with a very acceptable Sumiko Rainier moving-magnet cartridge that represents maybe 20 per cent of the total price. As its name implies, the T2 Super Phono is packing its own phono amplification – so it should be able to slot…3 min
UNCUT|October 2024FeedbackGLORY DAYS AGAIN Thank you, Uncut, for the Springsteen feature in the September issue [Take 329]. I was lucky enough to attend the Kilkenny show this summer. It had been 11 years since he last played this Irish town. I was apprehensive that this time around the same venom might not be in this performance. After all, the man is 74 years old now. Boy, was I wrong – it was every bit as spectacular. Two hours before showtime, Bruce appeared on stage with an acoustic guitar and harmonica and belted out a raw version of “This Hard Land”. What came later was an impeccable performance with the E Street band. It was thrilling to witness their back catalogue of greatness – “Adam Raised A Cain”, “Backstreets”, “Badlands” etc –…6 min
UNCUT|October 2024CrosswordHOW TO ENTER The letters in the shaded squares form an anagram of a song by Jimi Hendrix. When you’ve worked out what it is, email your answer to: competitions@uncut.co.uk. The first correct entry picked at random will win a prize. Closing date: Thursday, September 12, 2024. This competition is only open to European residents. CLUES ACROSS 1+1D I’ve got a job for you. Distribute this album by Primal Scream. No you can’t resign (4-3-3-4-4-2) 9 U2 getting dizzy up at No 1 in the charts with this single (7) 10 West Coast newspaper just delivered by Travis (1-1-5) 11 Point to an album by Elvis Costello (5) 12 Liz Phair is including a Goo Goo Dolls number (4) 13“I wonder to myself, could life ever be sane again?”, 1986…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024“He was something special” JOHN MAYALL 1933–2024“JOHN Mayall was so important within the British blues movement,” says former Bluesbreakers producer Mike Vernon. “A lot of purists were uncertain about what John was doing. He was definitely working within the blues framework, but he created a sound that was his. John was something very special, a formidable character. He just had this air about him.” Serially referred to as the godfather of British blues, Mayall was a pioneering polymath: musician, singer, songwriter, producer, mentor, bandleader. His Bluesbreakers served as a hothouse for some of the most important figures to emerge from the British music scene in the 1960s, from Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Mick Taylor to the Fleetwood Mac triumvirate of Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. In a moving and emotional tribute, Clapton thanked…6 min
UNCUT|October 2024Remember his nameCRITICALLY panned on release in 1971, David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name is now rightly acknowledged as a masterpiece, its hallucinatory psych-folk emblematic of the shifting West Coast spirit of the times. “I didn’t hear it until about 10 or 15 years ago,” admits The Waterboys’ Mike Scott. “But I loved its spontaneity. It captures a moment of freedom and stoned optimism.” This October, Scott will take his place alongside a number of artists – Hothouse Flowers’ Liam Ó Maonlaí, Kris Drever and The Staves – for the first ever live performance of Crosby’s signature solo album as part of Llais, Cardiff’s annual international arts festival. “If I Could Only Remember My Name holds a special place in my heart,” says musician and arranger Kate St John,…3 min
UNCUT|October 2024Lone Justice for all!“PEOPLE are saying it’s the first new Lone Justice record in 40 years, and I’m like… is it?” says Maria McKee, the band’s firebrand vocalist. The answer is both yes and no. While the group hasn’t released a proper full-length since 1986’s Shelter, upcoming album Viva Lone Justice isn’t technically new. McKee recorded the bulk of the material with ex-bandmates Marvin Etzioni and Don Heffington as demos for her 1992 solo effort You Gotta Sin To Get Saved. Dusting off those tapes in the wake of Heffington’s passing in 2021, Etzioni encouraged McKee to turn the sessions into a new solo album. Instead, she suggested they reach out to another former bandmate, guitarist Ryan Hedgeco*ck, to add overdubs and release it under the Lone Justice name. Viva Lone Justice is…3 min
UNCUT|October 2024BrightonTURN left under the road outside Brighton train station and you can’t miss the giant mural on the side of the Prince Albert pub, commemorating a phalanx of fallen musical heroes. Everybody from Bowie to Bob Marley and Alan Vega to Frank Sidebottom is immortalised in spraypaint; there’s even room for a touching pictorial tribute to Steve ‘Roadie’ Jones, the pub’s own soundman, who died in 2022. It’s a quintessentially Brighton landmark: an unashamed celebration of culture both international and hyper-local, rendered in a way that’s charmingly DIY, verging on the anarchic. The Albert is the perfect place to meet Plantoid, originally from Lincolnshire, who decided to relocate to Brighton following an epiphanic show in the pub’s upstairs room. After a few unsatisfying years toiling away in London, Brighton offered…4 min
UNCUT|October 2024SUBSCRIBE TODAY SAVE £55.90*+ GET A FREE GIFT!UNCUTis a place where readers the world over can share our passion for the finest sounds of the past 60 years – old and new, beloved and obscure. Each issue is packed full of revelatory encounters with our greatest heroes, trailblazers and newcomers from across a multitude of genres, lavishly illustrated with iconic photography, while our comprehensive reviews pages guide readers through the month’s best releases. Our free CD – available with every copy – is your guaranteed soundtrack to the month ahead. Join us where music matters and get these subscriber-only benefits. Michael Bonner, Editor, Uncut 5 REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE 1 Pay lower than the shop price 2 FREE CD with every issue 3 Receive an EXTRA EXCLUSIVE subscriber-only CD**** 4 Get every issue delivered to your door 5…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024BASICThis Is BASIC NO QUARTER 8/10 IT takes a relaxed ego, as well as confidence won through a consistently strong track record, to tether your project name to someone else’s work, regardless of how irrevocably it may bind you. Committed guitar adventurer Chris Forsyth, notably of The Solar Motel Band, has stepped up to that plate, unperturbed, with BASIC, a new trio named after the instrumental album by guitarist Robert Quine and drummer Fred Maher, and capitalised as a nod to the obsolete programming language. Abstract, airy and deceptively loose, 1984’s Basic summons the spectres of Scritti, Vini, Fripp and Cooder in its knitting together of poised string wobbles, warped, jazz-pop twanglings and soft harmonic explosions with (mostly loping) programmed beats, to entrancing, almost alchemical effect. It’s a work Forsyth…4 min
UNCUT|October 2024MANU CHAOViva Tu BECAUSE MUSIC 8/10 PEEL off towards the narrow backstreets of Barcelona’s Gothic quarter and there’s every chance you’ll hear La Mariatchi before you set eyes on it. On any given day or night, Mexican and Cuban folk or roots reggae might be heard emerging from the speakers. Because somewhere in the world a football match is always being televised, the TV is perpetually on. The colours of the Jamaican flag are prevalent. And when the music isn’t pre-recorded, you might see a couple of locals pick out sad, simple chords and turn them into songs when the chatter between them dries up. It might pay to look at those locals a little closer because Manu Chao – rumoured to be the owner of La Mariatchi – is frequently…5 min
UNCUT|October 2024MEMORIALSMEMORIALS’ genesis owes much to natural momentum, with a slight forced-hand element. The pair began working on soundtracks together in 2020 and, according to Verity Susman, had “no intention of starting a band”. That came in late 2022 after they were asked to perform one of their soundtracks live, and then to open for Stereolab: “We needed a name,” explains Matthew Simms. “We also needed a way to figure out how to play live and off the back of that there was some inspiration to be a regular band.” Fuelling that inspiration was the freedom to create away from a director’s brief, “not wanting to have any particular limits or to fit neatly into one genre”, as Susman has it. That’s quite the understatement regarding their wildly variegated debut LP,…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024NEIL YOUNG“Nothing is perfect in God’s perfect plan” Archives Vol III (1976-1987) REPRISE REISSUE OF THE MONTH 9/10 THE first two discs of Archives III – here at last! – are culled from concerts at the Budokan and Hammersmith Odeon on Neil Young’s 1976 world tour with Crazy Horse that make you wish you’d been witness to at least one of them. Then you remember you were. Hammersmith, March 31, four rows from the front, half-blinded by the grit being blown off the stage by a huge wind machine during an early outing for “Like A Hurricane”. It comes back to you in a rush. First, Neil solo and acoustic, the setlist a fan’s dream. Crazy Horse joining him for a second set that included “Down By The River”, “Like A…11 min
UNCUT|October 2024HAROLD BUDD, ELIZABETH FRASER, ROBIN GUTHRIE, SIMON RAYMONDEThe Moon And the Melodies (reissue, 1986) 4AD 8/10 THERE is something characteristically perverse about the fact that the Cocteau Twins’ greatest hits aren’t credited to them. In their lifetime, their biggest single was their uncanny, half-million selling, independent-chart-topping cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song To The Siren”, released under the aegis of 4AD boss Ivo Watts-Russell’s This Mortal Coil project. Since the group’s demise in 1997 the song that has risen to the top of the streaming stats is, remarkably, “Sea, Swallow Me”; never a single when it was released at the tail-end of 1986, yet currently racking over 100 millions plays on Spotify alone, and officially credited to Harold Budd, Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde. This collaboration was almost an afterthought. A production company had floated the…4 min
UNCUT|October 2024LIMBO DISTRICTLive Limbo CHUNKLET INDUSTRIES 8/10 ATHENS, Georgia, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was a free-for-all. Bands popped up for house parties and backyard shows in direct defiance of what constituted a band: The B-52s were all beehives and surf licks, Pylon started out backing a Teach Your Parrot To Talk record before hiring one of rock’s great frontwomen. Perhaps no band during that first wave embodied that why-the-hell-not sensibility or exploded the drums-bass-guitar lineup as gleefully as Limbo District, a short-lived group that featured Jeremy Ayers reciting poetry and playing percussion, his boyfriend Davey Stevenson playing bass, and Dominique Amet pounding out chords on the keyboard and howling wildly. Even before they played their first notes together, Ayers was well known in Athens, a misfit and artist instantly…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024TELEVISED MINDBLADE RUNNER (DIR: RIDLEY SCOTT, 1982) “Staying in Japan on our last tour was mindblowing,” says Chatten. “Tokyo in particular, all the neon and metal crowds – it felt like the future in Blade Runner and it still does. Akira was another big film for us all. We tried to capture some of that on the songs ‘In the Modern World’ and ‘Here’s The Thing’.” PUSHER TRILOGY (NICOLAS WINDING REFN, 1996-2005) “These films informed the grungier, heavier side of the record,” says Curley. “They’re like Trainspotting on steroids. Especially the chase scenes with the really hardcore punk stuff. Seeing the use of songs like that in a really gritty film really inspired a lot of our writing. Trying to create this fictional visual thing that you’re writing towards instead of…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024BROWN HORSE’S VAN JAMSWEDNESDAY RAT SAW GOD (DEAD OCEANS, 2023) Patrick Turner: “They’ve managed to blend rocking really hard with still having a clear country thing going on.” Phoebe Troup: “It’s good screaming-along music for when you’re driving at night and you’re trying to stay awake. But there are also really poignant, tender moments. It’s just beautiful and inspiring and gives you shivers.” FLORRY THE HOLEY BIBLE (DEAR LIFE, 2023) Emma Tovell: “It’s ramshackle, amazing, folky, rocky, crazy, energetic, lyrically really interesting songs… It just feels good.” Turner: “The priority is rocking out and having a good time, but the quality is there as well. The song ‘Drunk And High’ is one we play a lot in the van – it’s music that makes you happy to be in a band.” GREG FREEMAN…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024THERE WAS A LIGHTTO make an essential Memphis record, Chris Bell had to leave his hometown and cross the Atlantic. A power-pop visionary in a city not yet known for that style of music, he was disillusioned and despondent over the failure of #1 Record – his now legendary 1972 debut with Big Star – and Bell began acting erratically, lashing out at friends, drinking heavily and flirting with harder substances. “I really wanted to get Christopher away from that environment in Memphis,” says David Bell, his brother. “I was living in Italy and we had talked about him coming over. We went down to Rome and Torino, then up through Switzerland to France. At one point we had a falling out and he took off on his own. By hook or by…16 min
UNCUT|October 2024The Hudson LineIT’S 33 degrees Celsius and Sean Mackowiak – better-known as Grasshopper – steps across a smooth, extremely hot expanse of Catskill bluestone near a perilous-looking cliff edge. This is Opus 40 in Saugerties, New York, an upstate town just down the road from its more famous neighbour, Woodstock. This sculpture park occupies a sacred place in Mercury Rev lore: the name of one of their most beloved recordings, from 1998’s Deserter’s Songs, Grasshopper’s creative partner Jonathan Donahue visited this site when growing up in the area. Opus 40 always triggers flashbacks, like the time Grasshopper travelled west to visit Donahue. “I was on the bus from New York City to Oklahoma and met Goofy,” he explains. “He’d come up to New York, visited his family, and was going back south…14 min
UNCUT|October 2024Cass McCombs“IT’S dangerous having these kind of moments where you’re reflecting on all this work,” muses Cass McCombs. “Is the temptation to rely on it? But I don’t want to rely on the past, there’s nothing to rely on. It really is dangerous…” Nevertheless, this most hermetic and enigmatic of modern songwriters is game to take a look at his back catalogue, in celebration of 4AD’s vinyl reissues of his early work, 2002’s “Not The Way” EP, the following year’s A and 2005’s PREfection. “I squatted in the 4AD office back then, basically,” he recalls. “That alarm at the end of PREfection and the start of [2007’s] Dropping The Writ, that’s the building’s alarm.” The reissues have also sparked off a creative reunion with producer and multi-instrumentalist Jason Quever, and the…13 min
UNCUT|October 2024“THERE FOR THE VIBE”“A LOT of people want to see Electric Lady because it is a special place and we wanted to make a film to show how this studio came about and all the highs and the lows of putting it together,” says Janie Hendrix about the documentary Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision. “We also wanted to highlight the great music that came out of it.” Director John McDermott previously made the Grammy-nominated Music, Money, Madness… Jimi Hendrix In Maui, about the Rainbow Bridge film and concert. Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision combines archive footage with fresh interviews from studio personnel such as Eddie Kramer, architect John Storyk and musicians Steve Winwood, Buddy Guy and Billy Cox to focus on the story of the studio until Hendrix’s death.…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024“HE WASUPSET”One of Hendrix’s final shows was headlining the Isle Of Wight Festival on August 31. A close witness was Bob Adco*ck, Cream’s road manager and old friend of Mitch Mitchell. “Mitch phoned and woke me up at 10am,” he recalls. “He said he needed a lift to the airport as his car wouldn’t start. I didn’t know the festival was on, but I picked him up. I asked where we were going, expecting him to say Heathrow or Gatwick, and he said he had a map reference.” The destination was a field near Southend, where Adco*ck and Mitchell discovered a little Cessna airplane waiting for them. “Mitch said to me, ‘Are you coming?’ So I left my car in the field and jumped in the plane,” says Adco*ck. “There was…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024Paul HeatonDAVID BOWIE The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars RCA, 1972 I shared a room with my middle brother growing up, and this is one of the records that seeped through the walls of my oldest brother’s room into ours. It was just really different – it was on the edge of glam rock, I suppose, but it was also totally by itself. I had no idea what “Suffragette City” was, or “Moonage Daydream”, and Ziggy Stardust sounded like the name of a wrestler. But it was really exciting to watch it have influence over ordinary people. You could see quite hard lads in Sheffield trying to have their hair cut like Bowie and wearing these big stack heels. Some of the songs make no…5 min
UNCUT|October 2024STORY OF THE BLUESBLUES BREAKERS WITH ERIC CLAPTON (DECCA, 1966) Post-Yardbirds, Eric Clapton joins Mayall, John McVie and Hughie Flint on a blues boom classic, highlighted by Otis Rush’s scorching “All Your Love” and Mayall originals like “Have You Heard”. A HARD ROAD (DECCA, 1967) Twenty-year-old hotshot Peter Green takes up where Clapton let off, with another newcomer, Aynsley Dunbar, on drums. Mayall’s title track feeds into roadworn blues mythology, while Green excels on ravishing instrumental “The Supernatural”. CRUSADE (DECCA, 1967) Green had departed for Fleetwood Mac, but Mayall finds teenage wonderkid Mick Taylor to replace him, the pair dovetailing on co-write “Snowy Wood”. Elsewhere, Mayall salutes a hero on “The Death Of JB Lenoir”. BARE WIRES (DECCA, 1968) Mayall makes an incremental shift into jazz territory, enlisting Dick Heckstall-Smith, Tony Reeves and…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024ON THIS MONTH’S CD“ROCK’N’ROLL,” sang Alex Chilton on 1972’s “Thirteen”, “is here to stay…” We couldn’t agree more, so it’s a real honour to present this compilation of hand-picked tracks from one of the greatest bands of all time. With this CD, we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of Big Star’s Radio City, along with the live tribute shows later this year, and marking a half-century since Chris Bell set out on his solo career with I Am The Cosmos – but really, there’s no need for an excuse to immerse yourself in Big Star. You can read more about Chris Bell and that incredible, harrowing solo record in our feature on page 80, but in the meantime spin these 10 tracks and chart Big Star’s journey from power-pop perfection on 1972’s #1 Record…5 min
UNCUT|October 2024NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS“I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head” Wild God BAD SEED ALBUM OF THE MONTH 9/10 FOR a man who deals in certainties – exaggerated realities populated by flying men and flame-haired boys; tales of death, destruction, damnation and salvation; purgatory, zombies, vampires, all manner of explosive devilry – Nick Cave can be surprisingly elastic in his understanding of his own work. Towards the end of a day of promotion for Wild God, he suggests to Uncut that the record is masculine, while its predecessor, 2019’s melancholy Ghosteen, was feminine. The example he gives is the song “Joy”, a cinematic thing which explodes like an after-party for Ghosteen. Lyrically, it’s a blues. The first line is “I woke up this morning with the blues all…6 min
UNCUT|October 2024JACK WHITENo Name THIRD MAN 9/10 WHEN Jack White dropped No Name on July 19, the shock didn’t just come from the manner of the release. That was drama in itself – the record, an anonymous white label, was handed to customers for free at White’s Third Man stores and posted to some Vault subscribers. But every bit as surprising was the music, which saw White revisit the ferocious garage blues with which he first made his name in The White Stripes. This was a pounding set of 13 songs that were as raw, fresh and fierce as anything he’d done for years, with some of White’s best riffs since Blunderbuss and his most unapologetic, red-(and-white) blooded rock album since Elephant. In fact, has White ever released an album that’s quite…5 min
UNCUT|October 2024Q&AQuine/Maher reference aside, why BASIC? We like all the connotations to the word BASIC – the early computer language, a generic, utilitarian brand, the simplicity. The group’s development has been a very efficient, no-bullsh*t process and when we sit down to play together, it feels very fundamental, very “just the facts”. No noodling. Everybody is all in; it’s not exploratory – the aim is for the music to hit hard right out of the gate. What’s the relationship between the two albums? The Quine/Maher record was a useful kernel of an idea to mess around with – drum machine plus clean guitar sounds – but there’s no intentional mimicry. I’m trying to de-emphasise lead guitar heroics and focus on rhythm, but the crucial ingredients are not what we’re referencing. It’s…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024WILLIE WATSONWillie Watson LITTLE OPERATION RECORDS AND MORE/THIRTY TIGERS 9/10 SINCE quitting Old Crow Medicine Show in 2011, Willie Watson has enjoyed a varied existence, forming part of Dave Rawlings Machine, appearing as The Kid in the Coen brothers’ 2018 western anthology film The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, and releasing two acoustic-driven volumes of old-time covers under the title Folk Singer. Three decades on from turning pro, however, he views this self-titled gem as his first album proper. It’s taken him this long to release a set of originals, he says, because he’s had to live it to make it. Willie Watson reflects on joy, pain, self-destruction, childhood trauma and, ultimately, personal salvation, processing the emotional weight of his years like a man sifting through wreckage. Recorded in LA with members…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024NALA SINEPHROEndlessness WARP 8/10 SPEAKING around the release of her debut album Space 1.8, Nala Sinephro recalled her first encounter with a harp, silently coveting a classmate’s instrument in the jazz department of her high school. “It felt like my language,” said Sinephro of the instrument. “Strong, but with a quiet voice.” Strong, with a quiet voice: frankly, it’s hard to think of better words to encapsulate the essence of Sinephro’s music. Like its predecessor, Endlessness is a so. and serene listen, a glowing nimbus of sound that feels somehow restorative; when listening to it, it feels like your breathing deepens, your vision brightens. But there is nothing lightweight or fragile about this music. Quite the contrary: Endlessness feels like an expression of something grand and deep, as if it’s drawing…4 min
UNCUT|October 2024OASISDefinitely Maybe (30th Anniversary Reissue) BIG BROTHER RECORDINGS 9/10 OASIS emerged out of a Manchester music scene that couldn’t have cared less. ‘Madchester’ had fizzled out and the city’s music scene had fragmented in an attempt to move on from the legacy left by The Smiths, Joy Division and Factory. Formed by Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, Paul McGuigan and Tony McCarroll, The Rain, as they were originally called, began to take shape when they recruited mercurially charismatic singer Liam Gallagher. Something about them attracted the attention of Liam’s brother Noel, a bedroom guitarist who, after years of study and practice, was on the verge of unlocking some kind of songwriting ark of the covenant. This early lineup was a touchpaper – the first time he recognised a potential in his younger…4 min
UNCUT|October 2024THE WAY IT GOESON the night of March 3, 2020, Gillian Welch frantically gathered up her favourite belongings and found the safest spot in the house she shares with David Rawlings. “I was in the bathtub with our main guitars when the tornado hit,” she says. “We don’t have a basem*nt, so that seemed like the place to huddle down.” The twister – which she has taken to calling “that ol’ March Third tornado” – passed her over and left their beloved guitars untouched, but down at the couple’s Woodland Studios, things didn’t look so good. “Our road manager called immediately and said he was at Woodland, but something was wrong,” she continues. “There was water coming in, because there was basically no longer a roof. Had he not been there, or had…15 min
UNCUT|October 2024LAST OF THE NEW ROMANTICSIT’S a muggy July morning in north London, the day after the UK general election. A new government has swept to power, but there’s precious little sense of a fresh dawn. The day feels sullen, hungover, unresolved, as though everyone’s still mulling over what just happened and what’s yet to come… Grian Chatten has good reason to feel delicate. He’s just back from Glastonbury where his band, Fontaines DC, headlined Friday night on the Park Stage, the latest rung on a seemingly unstoppable rise. He stuck around the whole weekend to witness his countrymen Lankum – “they were brilliant” – and appear on stage, late night in Shangri La, with Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap: “I’m immensely proud of them… the spirit of Sinéad O’Connor is alive in those lads.” He…15 min
UNCUT|October 2024COLT HEROES“FROM 1999 to 2004 / I was stealing horses…” It’s quite a claim to make as the opening line of your debut album, particularly when it’s demonstrably untrue. Seated around a picnic table in the beer garden of Norwich’s Playhouse Bar, the youthful members of Brown Horse were evidently still playing with Fisher-Price farm sets at the turn of the millennium. They don’t look like hardened horse rustlers either, although a couple of ’taches and a fair amount of denim and battered suede hints at their true calling as Norfolk’s premier country-rock band. Their startlingly assured debut album Reservoir, released earlier this year on Loose Music, has drawn comparisons to Lone Justice, Lucinda Williams, Uncle Tupelo, Purple Mountains and Songs: Ohia. Inevitably, it’s also stirred up thorny questions of ownership…13 min
UNCUT|October 2024“Roundabout” by YesWHEN Yes began rehearsals for 1971’s Fragile album in a small room in Mayfair, they were – according to drummer Bill Bruford – “barely hanging on financially as a functioning outfit”. But there was hope. The Yes Album, their third, was starting to sell in North America and the band had a new keyboard player, Rick Wakeman, to replace Tony Kaye. Wakeman had played on David Bowie’s Hunky Dory and been invited to join the Spiders From Mars, but decided to join Yes after rehearsing “Roundabout” – a brilliant ensemble piece that became Yes’s biggest hit of the decade. Recorded at Advision, it was picked as the lead track on Fragile. “The experience we’d had together with The Yes Album had been good but with Fragile we wanted to up…12 min
UNCUT|October 2024TRY (THESE) AGAINBIG STAR #1 RECORD ARDENT, 1972 Big Star was the culmination of Bell’s work at Ardent, with former Box Tops frontman Alex Chilton rounding out the quartet. Their debut is an explosion of Southern power pop, taking cues from across-the-Atlantic bands like The Beatles and The Kinks but filtering it through a Memphis mindset. Chris Bell was devastated by the album’s commercial failure, but it helped establish Big Star as a cult act decades later. 10/10 CHRIS BELL I AM THE COSMOS RYKODISC, 1992 Chris Bell’s first and only solo album was assembled from recordings he made around Memphis and in France, as he recovered from the disappointment of Big Star. He emerges as an artist who could express deep existential confusion and crippling emotional pain through plainspoken lyrics (“All…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024MAGNUM OPUSYERSELF IS STEAM COLUMBIA, 1991 Fresh off psych-punk-noise boot camp with The Flaming Lips, Donahue launches Rev with college sidekick Grasshopper, vocalist Dave Baker, flautist Suzanne Thorpe and Lips producer Dave Fridmann. With a major-label deal secured the year grunge broke, they set their controls for the heart of the sun. 9/10 SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE BEGGARS BANQUET, 1995 Baker jumps ship and the guitar noise recedes, as horns and strings colour songs hinting at the radiant pop to come. 8/10 BOCES COLUMBIA, 1993 Named for the upstate-New York slang term for an under-achiever, this is Rev v1.0 in over-achiever mode. The 10+ minute opener “Meth Of A Rockette’s Kick” is a hallucinatory nod to the famed Radio City Music Hall dancers with raging guitar, chanting gnomes and…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024SUBSCRIBE TODAYEASY WAYS TO SUBSCRIBE Order at shop.kelsey.co.uk/UCP1024S Call 01959 543 747*** and quote ref: UCP1024S SCAN ME TERMS AND CONDITIONS UK Direct Debit and Continuous Card Payment offer only. *You will pay £67.60 once a year, saving £55.90 in your first full year (13 issues). Savings based on the standard Basic Annual Rate of £123.50 which includes the cover price (£6.75) plus Kelsey Media’s standard packing and postage price per single issue (£2.75) for one full year (13 issues). Offer ends 31st October 2024. Your subscription will start with the next available issue and you will receive 13 issues in a year plus a free weekly e-newsletter from which you may unsubscribe. Prices correct at time of print and subject to change. **Free gift while stocks last and for UK…1 min
UNCUT|October 2024“IT'S FASCINATING”“PUTTING together this album was so much fun, but there was some sadness too. Hearing his voice is always a chill for me since he passed – there’s the man I deeply respected and worked with so closely. We know what most of these songs are, but what’s fun for the listener is the way they grow and change. It’s fascinating for Hendrix fans to see how he got there. Some of the riffs are completely different to the final versions. I feel that anybody who is into Jimi, when they hear this music and how happy he sounds, will love it. It’s all a slower tempo, the groove is relaxed. “Some of these songs have a lot of different parts, so these sessions are them rehearsing but I would…2 min
UNCUT|October 2024PATTI SMITH QUARTETSomerset House, London, July 21“DON’T mind me, I’m just lookin’ for the moon,” says Patti Smith, taking a moment to peer out over the crowd and into the balmy London twilight. It’s the buck moon, she warns us – the full moon of high summer when, according to the old Algonquin tribes, new antlers bud on the brow of stags, and the wild pagan spirit is renewed. But the summer night is too young and the moon is still too low in the sky to be visible above the pale towers of Somerset House. Nevertheless there is a rare wildness to Patti Smith tonight. Over the last decade or so, ever since Just Kids fixed her forever in some eternal Chelsea Hotel of 20th century iconography, there’s been a hint that the whirling dervish…5 min
UNCUT|October 2024SCREENSTARVE ACRE In an era of fillers, veneers and “smartphone faces”, both Matt Smith (his brow surely hewn from Pennine karst) and Morfydd Clark (as creamy and pale as a fresh churn of Glamorgan milk) are gloriously out of time. As such they’re perfect for Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre, the latest attempt to reanimate the dusty old bones of 1970s British folk horror. They play Richard and Juliette Willoughby, an earnest young couple who move out to Richard’s family farm on the Yorkshire Dales, in the hope that the fresh air and country life will help their young son’s asthma. They reckon without the driving gales that batter their isolated farmhouse, Richard’s barely repressed memories of childhood abuse at the hands of his father and – spoilers! – the hellmouth…7 min
UNCUT|October 2024Not Fade AwayTOUMANI DIABATÉ Malian kora master (1965–2024) “IT’S an education for western people to know how far the kora can go,” Toumani Diabaté told Uncut in 2011. “When you say ‘African music’ in western countries, they think about percussion and dance, they don’t understand that there’s more to learn than this.” The Malian virtuoso did more to advance the role of the kora – an ancient 21-string West African instrument, built from a gourd and covered with cow skin – than anyone of his generation. Diabaté’s elegant style, firmly rooted in his ancestral heritage, preserved griot tradition while also introducing modern influences, reflected in his love of jazz, blues, soul and flamenco. Having learned by watching his father, renowned kora player Sidiki Diabaté, Toumani broke through internationally with 1988’s solo debut…8 min
