Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2017 i UNCUT

This month’s new entry in our Ultimate Music Guide series is a volume dedicated to the legendary Bob Marley . The usual format: in-depth new reviews of every Marley and Wailers album, plus a load of incredible interviews from the NME and Melody Maker archives. On sale now! The latest band to receive the high culture treatment will be ABBA , when an “immersive” exhibition called ‘ABBA: Super Troupers’ opens at London’s Southbank Centre from December 14 to April 29. Promised highlights include a recreation of the Polar recording studio in Stockholm, which will be filled with the band’s original instruments and handwritten lyrics. For fans disappointed by merch at the recent UK Kraftwerk shows, consolation is at hand. Canyon have launched…

On the stereo this month... WAND Plum DRAG CITY The Ty Segall associates spread their wings – away from garage rock and towards an ornate and thrilling new take on psych. FILTHY FRIENDS Invitation KILL ROCK STARS An REM/Sleater Kinney/King Crimson supergroup? Unlikely but true, as Corin Tucker, Bill Rieflin and others join Peter Buck in the best post-REM project yet. VINCE STAPLES Big Fish Theory DEF JAM Excited enough by Kendrick Lamar to investigate more latterday rap? Try Staples’ bright, freaky and compelling second LP. Bon Iver and Damon Albarn guest, discreetly. MICHAEL HEAD & THE RED ELASTIC BAND Josephine VIOLETTE A first taste of the Shack/Pale Fountains legend’s first album in 11 years. The sensationally titled Adiós, Señor Pussycat is due, apparently, this autumn.…

Painted Ruins RCA ALBUM OF THE MONTH 9/10 IF recent history has taught us nothing else, it’s that democracy is messy business. Despite its high-minded ideals of representation and accountability, it can be slow and cumbersome, inhibiting good ideas while letting unfortunate ones occasionally slip through. Even its vaunted robustness can be undercut by a few bad actors, as we’re reminded almost hourly of late. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised about those political realities, given the poor performance of democracy in the microcosm of music. In the band structure, totalitarianism oftren rules, with groups organised around an undisputed leader typically showing the greatest longevity. Egalitarianism, on the other hand, can be band poison, as attested by the tombstones of many acts whose secondary songwriter sought greater authority. Grizzly Bear stand…

Texan maverick Micah P Hinson returns in September with …Presents The Holy Strangers , out on Full Time Hobby. A self-styled “modern folk opera”, it examines themes of love, betrayal and death as it charts the tale of a family during wartime. Also due in September is Spokeswoman Of The Bright Sun , the latest from  ex-Jayhawks man Mark Olson . In tandem with his Norwegian wife, Ingunn Ringvold , and joined by a small group of players, Olson taps into folk-rock tradition while recalling the bluegrass of his youth. And look out for two distinct releases that month from John McCauley’s mercurial Deer Tick . The Rhode Island quartet explore rootsy folk on Deer Tick Vol 1, contrasted with a set of punky…

Troy Van Leeuwen: “Musically we can do anything we want” When did you start work on Villains ? Around August last year we decided we were just going to be a band, sort it out old school in the rehearsal room. Mark [Ronson] came in near the end as a fresh set of ears. He’s always intrigued me. He also has great hair. Did he know about QOTSA? We heard he was a fan, but you never know what that means. But he was very respectful to our history and knows a lot about music in general. Guitar-wise he had some really interesting techniques. He helped us visualise our sonic future. How did he help with the groove element? One thing we wanted to do as…

Samba ’68 UNIVERSAL/VERVE, 1968 The culmination of Verve’s efforts to serve up Valle as a Brazilian singer that American listeners could love, Samba ’68 presents the young singer and songwriter as a suave, somewhat traditional-minded purveyor of bossa-flavoured, pan-American pop. Though he’d soon take off in more radical directions, there’s still much to savour in his smooth and swanky English-language renditions of many of his early hits in Brazil. 8/10 Marcos Valle ODEON/LIGHT IN THE ATTIC, 1970 Enlisting Som Imaginaro, Valle earned himself a place in Tropicália’s vanguard with the first in a series of daring fusions of bossa, rock, jazz and psych soul. Intoxicating and David Axelrod-sized on this self-titled outing, his music would grow even more fabulously baroque on 1971’s Garra…

“HOLY Man” dates to the time The Beach Boys’ spent with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968. “I have the original words, when it was called ‘O Holy Man’,” says Stephen Kalinich. “It wasn’t just about Maharishi, it was about a place you could go for sanctuary.” The song was attempted first with The Beach Boys, in 1974, then by Wilson alone. “It had a life of its own,” says Gregg Jakobson. “We cut an incredible track in the studio and it became legendary, as we couldn’t come up with a lyric. Everything we did was trite and clichéd. Eventually Dennis said, ‘Ah, don’t worry, sooner or later we’ll get it.’” John Hanlon heard “Holy Man” early in the Pacific Ocean Blue sessions. “The melody blew my…

IN 2016, Young unveiled his latest plans for Archives Volume 2. “It’ll be my entire archives on a website,” he told us. “You can listen to music, and you’ll see where albums are that are pencilled in, not finished. From throughout a 40- or 50-year span, you’ll see unfinished records behind you, in front of you, right now, way in the future.” According to Young’s manager Elliot Roberts, this latest, much-anticipated volume should “surface in 2017”. So far, this has yet to transpire – although the rumoured release of Hitchhiker suggests he is at least closing in on it. In fact, over the last few years, Young has steadily released music thought to feature in the period covered by Archives Volume 2 .…

“‘PEACE, Love And Understanding’ was the first original idea I had. Prior to that, I’d nicked bits and pieces from all over the place. Initially, it was a funny song. The times were a-changing. A lot of people who’d been hippies had seen through the hippy dream and were going back to their former interests. The song was from the point of view of an old hippy having a go at people who were leaving the faith. ‘Well, you think you’re hip now and you think I’m a washed-up idealist. But when it comes down to it, what is so funny about peace, love and understanding?’ I thought it was a bit of a mouthful, but it was also quite magnificent! I remember thinking, ‘Don’t fuck this up. Don’t make…

ELVIS PRESLEY 1956 Many people at RCA Victor thought Elvis would flop, but his first album for the label established him as more than just a fad, thanks to his excitable cover of “Blue Suede Shoes” and his atom-bomb vocals on “Heartbreak Hotel”. Twenty years later, The Clash would pay homage to that album cover on London Calling . ELVIS’ CHRISTMAS ALBUM 1957 Elvis didn’t want to record a holiday album, but it turned out to be one of his best sellers, thanks to an endearingly odd “Blue Christmas” and a version of “White Christmas” that earned scoffs from Bing Crosby. KING CREOLE OST 1958 Presley’s soundtracks are as hit-or-miss as the films they accompany, but this one, recorded as he was enlisting in the US Army,…

“AS two teenage kids,” explains Paul Humphreys, “we wanted to be Kraftwerk. They were our idols.” There was one obstacle: Humphreys and Andy McCluskey were working-class Liverpudlians with limited musical experience and even more limited equipment. “Kraftwerk had all these incredible machines and we had next to nothing. We couldn’t sound like them, so we ended up sounding like OMD!” “It was a complete pile of junk,” laughs McCluskey, recalling their gear. “All the instruments we owned, aside from a Korg synth, had cost us less than £100.” After their first gig at Eric’s club – also intended to be OMD’s last – the duo, almost named Margaret Thatcher’s Afterbirth, were tapped up to play Tony Wilson’s Factory night in Manchester. The enthusiasm of Wilson’s wife Lindsay Reade, and Factory…

VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS OPENS AUGUST 2 Luc Besson’s galaxy-spanning romp set in the 28th century. Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne co-star as the sci-fi police. MAUDIE OPENS AUGUST 4 Biographical drama with Sally Hawkins as Canadian folk singer Maud Lewis and Ethan Hawke as her beau. PRICK UP YOUR EARS OPENS AUGUST 4 Stephen Frears’ biopic of Joe Orton, reissued to mark the 50th anniversary of the playwright’s death. Alfred Molina and Gary Oldman co-star. LE DOULOS OPENS AUGUST 11 A chance to see Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1963 crime thriller with Jean-Paul Belmondo as an enigmatic gangster. TOM OF FINLAND OPENS AUGUST 11 Filmmaker Dome Karukoski brings to screen the life and work of Touko Valio Laaksonen, doyen of homoerotic art. AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL OPENS AUGUST…

KATE BUSH Hounds Of Love 1985 I’ve always looked up to Kate Bush. She’s been so inspirational in the way she’s gone about her career and created her own sound. A lot of these records I’ve chosen are simultaneously accessible, but also ambitious, there’s no sense of dumbing down to achieve accessibility. Hounds Of Love fits into that category – it’s about the only category it does fit into! “Running Up That Hill” had a very exciting sound, I’d never heard a pop record like that. So I was down my local Our Price on the day of release. PETER GABRIEL So 1986 Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel are associated in many respects – there’s a famous duet on So called “Don’t Give Up”. In a sense, what’s even more…

WHEN curators at the Victoria & Albert Museum began to sift through the 60 boxes of subversive material the museum recently acquired as part of Felix Dennis’ Oz archive, one item stood out. It related to the 1971 obscenity trial, when Oz, the ’60s counterculture’s most colourful and controversial magazine, got into trouble for publishing, among other things, a pornographic parody of Rupert The Bear. Dennis and fellow editors Jim Anderson and Richard Neville were charged with obscenity. While Yoko Ono and John Lennon recorded a benefit single, “God Save Oz”, and supporters paraded round the Old Bailey with a papier-mâché model of a naked schoolgirl, the editorial trio decided to make a showpiece of the occasion by dressing in costumes, which they promptly forgot to pay for. “We have…

Horn Of Plenty KANINE, 2004 Starting out as Edward Droste’s home recording project, Grizzly Bear’s debut is aeons away from the lush group sound they’d later develop. Raw and demo-like, layers of vocals compete with hisses, clicks and occasional distant drums overdubbed by Christopher Bear. Compare “Alligator” with the remake on 2007’s “Friend” EP for a time-lapse of the band’s early evolution. 8/10 Yellow House WARP, 2006 The now four-piece Grizzly Bear huddled in the Cape Cod house of Droste’s mother and drafted the blueprint for their mature sound. It’s saturated with domestic warmth – hymnal singing, dusty patches of piano, banjo and woodwinds, nocturnal “don’t wake the neighbours” percussion. Standout track “Knife” captured the early magic mixture of Droste and Rossen’s voices. 8/10 Veckatimest WARP, 2009 The band’s next…

Randy Newman : “I don’t think I’ve got any better as a songwriter in 50 years” Do you see this as your first full fusion of songs and film scores? Well, all these songs soak up an orchestra pretty well. It was what they needed. But in some ways, it’s similar to my first LP from 1968. At the time it seemed like there was just me, Van Dyke Parks, and maybe Ry Cooder, who made music like we’d never heard The Rolling Stones. We were the only guys not using a fucking drum! And part of me still thinks using a drum is cheating. There are other ways of making pop music. Do the film scores and the songs come from different parts of the brain? Definitely. I don’t…

A Deeper Understanding ATLANTIC 8/10 IN the songs of Adam Granduciel, it can feel like it’s always 3am. His lyrics contain just as many references to darkness – both literal and figurative – as they do to his desires to find a way out or maybe just get a little rest. But clearly The War On Drugs’ main man is used to the state of mind that typically accompanies the wee hours, which is not so surprising given his reputation for painstaking perfectionism. Among his other enemies of sleep are the feelings of anxiety and isolation that he expressed so starkly in the most dimly lit passages of Lost In The Dream, the Philadelphia band’s moving, mesmerising and much-lauded third album that hogged the top spot in best-of-year lists (including…

FINDING some groundless, fleeting joy at the end of a very soggy rainbow, Mike Waterson concludes Bright Phoebus – the giddy 1972 ensemble piece he fronted with his younger sister, Lal – with a little rapture. “No more clouds, no more rain,” he burbles wistfully, accent broad and vowels flat as the Humber Estuary. The sun is shining. Despite all evidence to the contrary, there is hope. The long, troubled saga of Mike and Lal’s slow-burning tour de force perhaps vindicates that naïve belief. Neither Lal (who died in 1998) nor Mike (2011) have lived to see Bright Phoebus receive the honour of a dignified official reissue, but this crystal-clear, remastered version – complemented by the siblings’ weird and wobbly home demos – does belated justice to a record regarded…

The Cars ELEKTRA, 1978 The Cars may have seemed shiny when Elektra launched its new-wave flagship act, but years of toiling on the East Coast club circuit made the members ready to capitalise with a perfect set of honed powerpop that added synth-laden modernism to songs that might’ve been staples of sock hops 20 years before. Heartbeat City ELEKTRA, 1984 MTV peers like Duran Duran might’ve been prettier, but the Cars still made out well during the music video’s golden age thanks to the gimmicky clip for Ocasek’s bubblegum-y “You Might Think” and a more haunting one for Orr’s exquisite “Drive”. Their ubiquity ensured multi-platinum sales for Heartbeat City . Move Like This HEAR MUSIC/CONCORZ, 2011 Though Orr’s death in 2000 sadly deprived the band of its most mellifluous…

Purple Rain WARNER 9/10 IT’S an electric word, life, and it makes for an electric opening to Prince’s sixth album: His Royal Badness as preacher and pop star, gathering his flock around him for a sermon about the hardships of life and the lure of the afterworld beyond. “Let’s look for the purple banana ’til they put us in the truck!” The excitement of that invitation – or is it an invocation? – has not diminished in the 33 years since Prince Rogers Nelson released his magnum opus, and Purple Rain overflows with rousing hooks and musical ideas that remain thrilling even in their familiarity, from the unabashed arena rock of “Let’s Go Crazy” to the breezy chamber pop of “Take Me With U” to the gothic sexpunk of “Darling…

The National return with their seventh album, the reflective Sleep Well Beast , next month, while Sparks unleash their 25th record, the epic Hippopotamus . In the reunion corner, James Murphy releases the fourth LCD Soundsystem album American Dream , while The Dream Syndicate unveil How Did I Find Myself Here? , their first LP in 29 years. In the world of reissues, Frank Zappa’s Absolutely Free gets an expanded vinyl release, The Doors’ A- and B-sides are compiled and The Style Council’s six LPs have been remastered for coloured vinyl. TOM.PINNOCK@TIMEINC.COM…

How to buy the 21st-century Fall THE REAL NEW FALL LP (FORMERLY COUNTRY ON THE CLICK) FALL HEADS ROLL REFORMATION POST TLC YOUR FUTURE OUR CLUTTER A hard-hitting set of stomping glam-garage, the group’s NEW FACTS EMERGE SLOGAN, 2005 SLOGAN, 2007 DOMINO, 2010 Although the cover paid tribute to Van Der Graaf Generator, After being abandoned in Arizona by the titular “traitors, ACTION, 2003 CHERRY RED, 2017 Rejigged after an early mix appeared online, MES returns with a Powerful yet oblique, the group’s 32nd studio album relies on rock-hard riffs and hammering drums. Yet there’s also a winning experimental streak, with “Couples Vs Jobless Mid-30s” and “Nine Out Of Ten” equally funny and strange. 8/10 Fall Heads Roll saw a heavier rock sound, with the powerful Krautrock chug…

NEIL Young laid low in 1977, especially when it came to playing live. But he bobbed to the surface briefly that summer with the Ducks. Gigging almost entirely within the city limits of Santa Cruz, California, the band was made up of former Moby Grape bassist Bob Mosley, singer-songwriter Jeff Blackburn (co-writer with Young on “My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)”), and drummer Johnny Craviotto, who had previously played with Ry Cooder and Buffy Sainte-Marie. The Ducks weren’t just Young and a backing band, however; not unlike Buffalo Springfield, band members traded off on lead vocals and Mosley and Blackburn both contributed originals to the repertoire. They even lived communally for a time. Predictably, it’s Neil’s showcases that stand out the most on Ducks bootlegs – a ricocheting…

“IF ‘Nick Lowe’ was just a credit line on a stack of dusty, gold waxings, then it might be easier for people to see him as a songwriter who walks in the rare company of Charlie Rich, Dan Penn, Hank Cochran or even Kris Kristofferson. His geniality may have been at the cost of his legend. Perhaps that’s the way he wanted it. Then I think Nick was originally writing a musical satire when he penned ‘(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding’. It is time and events that have lent the song its power and melancholy. “Since I was 17, I’ve wanted to write songs as good as Nick Lowe. ‘Alison’ was the result of the chemistry experiment involving Nick’s ‘Don’t Lose Your Grip On Love’ and a…

WHEN Shawn Klush was in LA filming episodes of Martin Scorsese’s HBO series Vinyl, he made a pilgrimage to 1174 Hillcrest Drive in Beverly Hills, where Elvis Presley once lived. It’s a sprawling, L-shaped house, a mash-up of modern and French Regency styles, built in 1957 and set low on the hill for privacy, with a geometrically complex swimming pool in the backyard and a clear view of the city below. Among the three houses he owned in California – another in Beverly Hills and one in Palm Springs – it was Elvis’ favourite, and he would often greet fans at the gate, shaking hands and signing autographs, occasionally even practising karate moves. For Klush, it was both a personal and a professional journey. In addition to being an enormous…

RECENTLY, KD Lang listened to Ingénue for the first time since finishing work on it early in 1992, as preparation for its 25th-anniversary reissue. It was, to put it mildly, an uncomfortable 41 minutes. “The first listen was skin-crawling,” she says. “Ugh! It contained a lot of complex ingredients: the time of the initial writing and touring; the success it brought; thinking it would be better than it was. It was just a flood of stuff. On the second and third listen, thankfully, I began to hear the music, beyond personal memories.” Ingénue changed Lang’s life. Ten tracks of unclassifiable “post-nuclear cabaret”, on her fifth album she left behind her Canadian country roots for more cosmopolitan destinations, and in the process became a pop star. Written and recorded with her…

IT’S early morning at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam has taken time out from the July 4 holiday celebrations to speak to Uncut. “I’ve brought the kids to visit my folks,” he says. It transpires that Beam has five daughters. “Most of the day is pretty free now that they’re in school,” he explains. “I used to have to carve out time to work, now I can treat the time a little more frivolously. I’m always working. I used to be more focused, now it’s notebooks all over the place. I don’t push it any more. There’s a lot of hours in the day to do other things.” Over the past 15 years since Iron & Wine’s debut, The Creek Drank The Cradle, Beam has…

 Why did this record take so long to come together? “There’s a lot of ideas and perspective, and we all have different tastes and vibes”CHRISTOPHER BEAR DROSTE: I think it was partially in response to the stop-start thing that happened on the last record, where we were kind of pushing ourselves to do it, and as a result, most of the songs that we did during that period ended up being B-sides or not making the cut. We really learned from that experience and said, ‘Let’s wait until everyone’s all on the same page and everyone’s feeling recharged and ready,’ and it just ended up taking a little longer this time. BEAR: At that point, we still kept it pretty loose and just started passing demo ideas and small little…

STEVE ADEY Do Me A Kindness GRAND HARMONIUM 7/10 Left-field chamber-pop arrangements of Dylan, Bowie, Cave and more Edinburgh-based post-rocker Steve Adey is not exactly a fast worker. This collection of lightly experimental chamber-pop covers is only his third full album since 2006. But there is classy craftsmanship and wry wit at play here, when Adey interweaves “An Unsigned Painting” by Rickie Lee Jones into the descending doom chords of Bowie’s “Sense Of Doubt”, or undercuts the arch sarcasm in Nick Cave’s “God Is In The House” by amplifying the song’s torrid religious fervour. Only a plodding choral take on Morrissey’s glum seaside postcard “Every Day Is Like Sunday” strikes a bum note between worthy reworkings of Bob Dylan, PJ Harvey, Portishead and more. STEPHEN DALTON AVEY TARE Eucalyptus DOMINO…

Win Butler: “We tried to find our own musical language for this modern moment” Reflektor was influenced by Haiti; what places made their mark this time? New Orleans has a huge influence on the overall atmosphere the record was created in. It was mixed in the middle of carnival season, with Mardi Gras raging around us. Things were so crazy in the US politically, but New Orleans seems to exist out of time. You can feel all the trauma the city has survived, and it made it feel like the current crisis we face is possible to overcome. What were the primary musical inspirations? It felt like a similar soup to early punk and new wave movements in London and New York in the late ’70s, where punk…

Chris Schlarb: “Bands and cults are very similar…” Psychic Temple seems from the outside to be a kind of sprawling collective in constant flux: is that how you envisage it? At a certain point I just started calling it a cult, because of the way any band works under a leader with a vision. Bands and cults are very similar. When you go on tour, you’re driving from city to city proselytising and trying to gain a fanbase… followers, if you will. Most bands are serving one vision at a time. Psychic Temple is definitely my vision, my aesthetic. However, all I care about is the music and serving the song, not my ego. I’m not trying to play every instrument on the record. I’m trying to find the best…

SHIRLEY COLLINS & THE ALBION COUNTRY BAND No Roses PEGASUS, 1971 Fairport alumnus Ashley Hutchings lined up 27 moderately heavy friends for his new wife’s entry into the world of folk rock, but Collins altered her MO not a jot, “Banks Of The Bann” and “Poor Murdered Woman” killer fusions of chalk-cliff dynamics and Liege & Lief heft. ANNE BRIGGS Sing A Song For You FLEDG’LING, 1997 Pregnant with her second child, the Bardot of the folk revival showed her enthusiasm for this mildly electrified solo LP by disappearing to the Hebrides in 1973 before it could even be released. Her backing band, Ragged Robin, get credit for gently rocking up “Summer’s In” and a moody remake of “Sullivan’s John”. DRANSFIELD The Fiddler’s Dream TRANSATLANTIC, 1976…

10cc Before, During, After UNIVERSAL 7/10 Four-disc set ventures deeper into the other careers of the ’70s pop eccentrics Surely this is the first collection that connects dots as diverse as British Invasion also-rans the Mindbenders, US bubblegum-popsters Ohio Express, The Art Of Noise, Neil Sedaka and the mercifully brief recording career of Manchester City FC. Then again, little about 10cc ever made much sense. These four discs are divvied up between a single-disc best-of, with another covering pre-10cc endeavours, and two more for solo works and collaborations. Underneath their shimmering surfaces, 10cc’s songs benefited from a tension born from the sometimes clashing commercial and artistic imperatives of the Gouldman/Stewart and Godley/Creme teams, respectively. With the members free to indulge their tendencies, the music on either side of 10cc’s imperial…

ORLANDO CACHAITO LOPEZ Cachaito WORLD CIRCUIT, 2001 The most experimental album in the series found double bass-player Cachaito López thrillingly fusing dub, reggae, jazz improv and DJ culture with Afro-Cuban rhythms. Flute, sax and muted trumpet weave through the spacious mambo grooves. Guests include Hugh Masekela, Pee Wee Ellis, turntablist Dee Nasty and Aswad keyboardist Bigga Morrison. 9/10 IBRAHIM FERRER Buenos Hermanos WORLD CIRCUIT, 2003 Ry Cooder co-produced the second solo album by the sweet-voiced septuagenarian bolero singer and declared, “I don’t think anybody other than Ibrahim could make a record like this. It has every kind of nuance and subtlety, as well as muscle.” The guitars of Cooder and Manuel Galbán combine sinuously and a team of BVSC veterans lend immaculate support. 8/10 OMARA PORTUONDO…

“My dad thought I was fucking mentally ill when I formed The Fall”MARK E SMITH “THERE are some fucking weird people around, aren’t there?” says Mark E Smith, taking a sip of his double Jameson’s in Manchester’s Crown & Kettle public house. He’s talking about musicians, a group of people he famously detests. “I suppose you meet a lot of ’em. I’m not one to talk, but a lot of them can’t give it up, can they?” As he admits, few artists have doggedly pursued such a singular, and lengthy, mission as that of the only constant member of The Fall. With the departure of synth player – and former Mrs Smith – Elena Poulou, The Fall have been reduced to their core of guitarist Pete Greenway, drummer Kieron Melling…

HOMEGROWN 1 Homegrown (appeared on American Stars ’n Bars ) 2 Star Of Bethlehem ( American Stars ’n Bars ) 3 The Old Homestead ( Hawks & Doves ) 4 Love Is A Rose ( Decade ) 5 Love Art Blues ( CSNY 1974 ) 6 Homefires (unreleased) 7 Give Me Strength (unreleased) 8 Deep Forbidden Lake ( Decade ) 9 Try (unreleased) 10 Pardon My Heart ( Zuma ) 11 Kansas (unreleased) 12 White Line ( Ragged Glory ) ODEON-BUDOKAN 1 Country Home (Ragged Glory ) 2 Don’t Cry No Tears ( Zuma ) 3 Down By The River ( Everybody Knows This Is…

“PEOPLE often ask, ‘What about Nick Lowe, anyway?’ If I’m pressed for time, I simply say, ‘Born to play bass.’ Uncomprehending looks from the folks. ‘What I mean is, Nick is a natural musical man, unobstructed by methods, tablatures, rules and regulations.’ Ladies sometimes ask, ‘But is he a nice man?’ I say, ‘Lady, one of the absolute nicest, I should judge.’ Which comes through his musical writings, his lyrics. Things we all can understand. The common touch, they used to call it, but distinctive and original. OK? ‘And one thing’s for certain, you always catch a groove with Nick.’ Uncomprehending looks from the folks.”…

There’s no ‘right way’ to be this band,” says Jónsi Birgisson, the singer and guitarist in Sigur Rós. “For our own sanity, we like to change things up, and you go through different stages of how you feel about things you’ve done. Sometimes you can’t face certain elements of your music, then you’ll hear them in a new context and realise that maybe it was OK.” Formed in Reykjavik in 1994 and named in honour of Jónsi’s little sister, Sigurros, for two decades Sigur Rós have been making big, beautiful, unashamedly elemental music. Their catalogue encompasses relatively conventional rock songs, celestial choral pieces, art-house concert films and ambient soundscapes, rendered by Jónsi in a crystalline falsetto that mixes Icelandic, English and his own “gobbledygook” vocalese, Hopelandic. A trio since the…

ENGLAND IS MINE Directed by: Mark Gill Starring: Jack Lowden, Jessica Brown Findlay Opens: August 4 Cert: 15 7/ 10 A GHOST STORY Directed by: David Lowery Starring: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara Opens: August 11 Cert: 12A 8/10 THE GHOUL Directed by: Gareth Tunley Starring: Tom Meeten, Geoffrey McGivern Opens: August 4 Cert: 15 8/10 THE BIG SICK Directed by: Michael Showalter Starring: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan Opens: July 28 Cert: 15 8/10 QUEST Directed by: Jonathan Olshefski Starring: Christopher Rainey, Christine Rainey Opens: Aug 18 Cert: 12A 9/10…