Innholdsfortegnelse for Jun-2018 i UNCUT

Also from the Uncut family this month, our deluxe, updated Fleetwood Mac Ultimate Music Guide – featuring the usual wealth of archival interviews from Melody Maker and NME , a recent catch up with Buckingham and McVie and in-depth reviews of every album – is in shops now. Meanwhile, hot on the heels of our Glam special, our next Ultimate Genre Guide is devoted to all things Britpop and goes on sale from April 27. It’s 25 years since Suede’s debut album, with the Manics and Jarvis on tour, Noel and Liam both gearing up to play… so what better time, then, to recall the heady days of the ’90s? Rejoice! Cowboy Junkies’ return in July with their first…

NATALIE PRASS The Future And The Past ATO RECORDS The best Spacebomb LP yet? Prass’s mellifluous melodies gain a sleek disco pulse. GRUFF RHYS Babelsberg ROUGH TRADE So it’s not a new SFA record.... But only Gruff could spin tales of selfies and coughing up blood into a set of glorious, Lee Hazlewood-style orchestral pop. THE 4TH MOVEMENT The 4th Movement DRAG CITY You dig proto-punkers Death? Well now dig their other band: proselytising rock’n’soul from 1980, the missing link between Shuggie Otis and The Make-Up. BLOOD WINE OR HONEY Fear & Celebration PLASTIC PAGAN/ DO RIGHT! MUSIC Heady gumbo of post-punk, Afrodelic jazz and ersatz tribal chants from Hong Kong-based outfit – led by the ex-cellist from The Auteurs! DOCTOR OCTAGON Moosebumps: An Exploration Into Modern Day Horripilation BULK…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH 8/10 FOR two icons of American alternative rock’s golden age to unite for their first ever duet somehow feels like a more momentous occasion than it probably should. After all, it’s been a while since Gen Xers of a certain slack disposition were the pinnacle of cool. Nearly a quarter-century has passed since Stephen Malkmus and Kim Gordon – who trade the mic on “Refute”, a loopy highlight of the former Pavement frontman’s seventh album with his band the Jicks – shared stages on the same Lollapalooza tour, a rite of passage for any act that curried the favour of the flannel-clad masses. What with the many cultural revolutions (and one big digital one) that have taken place in the intervening years, those times ought to…

On the first play of Deafman Glance , I thought, ‘This is a Chicago record.’ How do you connect the city with the songs – what’s the psychogeography of Deafman Glance ? The whole city is a cracked sidewalk with weeds growing out of it. Sort of an off-blue hue to everything. I take long walks at night. There was a lot of inspiration drawn from the frozen-over cold nights. Chicago has everything to do with the tunes. The team on the album is a motley crew – Chicago jazz players, Cooper Crain... What kind of stew were you wanting to create? Old style, Malört, OxyContin, Xanax, cocaine, American Spirits, no sleep. Nowadays I prefer red wine and the occasional English breakfast tea. The…

What sound did you have in mind for Cosmic Wink ? I wanted it to be uplifting music… an album that would make people feel good, something that felt classic and that would be a lot of fun to play live – I had started touring more, and that was huge for me. Shane’s production was key to making this happen. You chose Nina Simone, Chan Marshall and Townes Van Zandt as spirit guides… They are some of my heroes: Nina Simone for her fierce, unapologetic passion and the power she has when she sings; Chan Marshall for her vulnerability and sensitivity married with strength; Townes Van Zandt for his ability to dive down to the darkest depths of humanity and always maintain a sense of…

ON June 7, 1968, the Stones took a break from recording “Sympathy For The Devil” to be photographed by Michael Joseph at Sarum Chase, a Mock Tudor mansion in Hampstead. The pictures of the band in dandified Victorian finery, projecting a state of post-prandial dissolution, were used – in treated form – on the inside gatefold sleeve. Capturing the cover image was more complex. Having stumbled across a particularly grotty toilet in Los Angeles, on July 26 Jagger and Richards dispatched photographer Barry Feinstein to shoot the scene. Feinstein added some choice scrawls of his own, including song titles and assorted credits. All was set for an August release, until Decca dismissed the cover on grounds of extreme poor taste. The Stones held firm, and the standoff delayed the album…

“I HAVE no musical training, and I could barely play the guitar,” says Eleanor Friedberger, thinking back to the beginning of her solo career. “It really forced me to learn how to write a song.” The singer and guitarist is perhaps being too humble, though: through her years as half of The Fiery Furnaces alongside her older brother Matt, Friedberger created some of the strangest, most labyrinthine and infectious indie-rock of this century. Since their split in 2010, she has embarked on an increasingly impressive solo career, with this year’s Rebound – led by drum machines and synths – the polar opposite of the Laurel Canyon lilt of 2016’s New View. If Friedberger’s solo career is going from strength to strength, though, she’s still proud of all the records she’s…

MICHAEL ROTHER Sterntaler (SKY) Having left Düsseldorf for the pastoral haven of Forst, Rother’s second solo album radiates a kind of soul-soothing bucolic beauty. Featuring Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit and legendary krautrock producer Conny Plank, Sterntaler blends Hawaiian guitar and sparse percussion with increasingly prominent electronic elements. LA DÜSSELDORF Viva (RADAR) Klaus Dinger’s post-Neu! grab for leftfield pop fame found its most lusty expression on this modest commercial hit, with its Eno-ish shimmers, punky chants, fuzzy guitars and fizzing synthesisers. David Bowie called La Düsseldorf “the soundtrack of the ’80s”. RIECHMANN Wunderbar (SKY) A Düsseldorf scene veteran who once played with both Wolfgang Flür and Michael Rother, Wolfgang Riechmann delved into synth-pop futurism on his first solo LP, a stylish electronic affair that predicts much of…

Stephen Malkmus MATADOR, 2001 Intended as a Jicks album but ultimately self-titled in the tradition of solo debuts since time immemorial, Malkmus’s first post-Pavement release is far sprightlier in spirit than his former band’s tense swansong, Terror Twilight . The Stockton native may have never sounded more quintessentially Californian than he does on “Phantasies”, a jaunty stab at beach-party pop. “Jenny & The Ess-Dog” adds a surprisingly poignant note with its tale of mismatched lovers who can’t make it last. 9/10 Pig Lib MATADOR, 2003 Malkmus’s second album introduces the looser, jammier tendencies that come to the fore on his releases and at his concerts for the rest of the decade. At nine minutes, “1% Of One” captures him in epic mode. But he keeps it relatively…

Why an album of religious songs? I fell in love with this stuff when I was a teenager – “In His Care”, for example, was on a Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee 10in album on Folkways. I snuck the odd one in on previous albums, like “How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times”. I am sick to death of politics so it was time for it. We have just been on tour with Ricky Scaggs playing this material and it got a tremendous response. You and Joachim have become a real team, playing and producing together. He’s developed his own musicality over time – he’s 40 now – and he likes ambient material as well as songs, which fed into this LP. He can take pieces of my material and sample…

SNUG in his robe, he relaxes in his suite. No longer an outsider but a welcome guest, he reflects how all the doors to this and other establishments, formerly closed, now open to welcome him. He endorses the place with his edgy celebrity; it endorses him with exclusivity. But just because he has arrived, doesn’t mean he is completely at ease. Now when he looks around, he does so a little more wryly – and writes his thoughts down at the piano. And of course that is very much Josh Tillman, who makes luxurious and ironic records as Father John Misty, locating his persona in some detailed and decadent modern LA. It’s odd, though, that within a month of the arrival of a succinct and amusing new Tillman single, we…

What has changed in your life in the five years since Immunity ? I spent a bit of time in California, had way more open space in my life. But also moving to Ableton from Logic changed very much my way of writing. I became very interested in more unusual song structures. In the past I’ve been bound to tracks working their way back to the beginning. But this time I wanted tracks to be like a story, a journey that ended up in a different place from where it began. After years as a session player and collaborator, how does it feel to become a cult star? This was always the plan, really. Collaborations and films scores came my way, and I was grateful to do…

REISSUE OF THE MONTH 9/10 IN 1993 Liz Phair seemed to come out of nowhere to upend indie rock. She had a deal with Matador Records, which was then home to Pavement and Superchunk, and she had a debut, Exile In Guyville, which was a hit before it was even released. The album was audacious in every way: musically, lyrically, emotionally, sexually, even visually. She appeared nearly topless on the cover, her left nipple half-cropped out of the frame, but she revealed even more of herself in songs like “Fuck And Run” and “Divorce Song”, her unrestrained confessionalism recalling Fleetwood Mac and her careerism at odds with a generation still highly sceptical of success. Billed as a song-for-song response to The Rolling Stones’ 1972 double epic Exile On Main Street,…

PINK FLAG Vinyl/CD disc 1 As original album CD disc 2 (demo sessions) 1 The Commercial 2 Mr Suit 3 Pink Flag 4 Surgeon’s Girl 5 Field Day For The Sundays 6 106 Beats That 7 Fragile 8 Reuters 9 Different To Me 10 Ex Lion Tamer 11 Mannequin 12 Champs 13 Start To Move 14 Three Girl Rhumba (Alt) 15 Ex Lion Tamer (Alt Mix) 16 12XU (Mono Mix) 17 Mannequin (Mono Mix) 18 It’s So Obvious (Alt Mix) CHAIRS MISSING Vinyl/CD disc 1 original album CD Disc 2 1 I Am The Fly (single) 2 Dot Dash 3 Options R 4 Outdoor Miner (single) 5 Practice Makes Perfect (single) 6 Underwater Experiences (Advision version) CD Disc 3 (studio demos) 1 Practice Makes Perfect 2 Oh No Not So…

PERRY and Bob Marley became friendly in the late ’60s, meeting at Perry’s Upsetter record shop in Kingston. When The Wailers’ early success tailed off, Marley, impressed by the success of “Return Of Django” overseas, set his sights on Perry’s band, The Upsetters. After a standoff, Perry agreed to let Marley use the group, but only if he could produce the sessions. The results were two vibrant early Wailers albums, Soul Rebels (1970) and Soul Revolution (1971), mixed with typical daring by Perry, who placed the vocals in the right channel and the rhythms on the left. The albums featured original renditions of signature Marley songs like “Duppy Conqueror”, “Kaya”, “Mr Brown” and “Sun Is Shining”. The partnership between the two volatile…

“HAMBURGER TO GO” (AKA “STUCK OUT ALL ALONE”) Richards’ soulful, fluid electric guitar lines dominate this half-formed but beautiful ballad, with its echoes of “Sway” and “Wild Horses”. Jagger slurs the lyrics and stumbles around the edges of the melody, writing the song as he hears it. “HIGHWAY CHILD” Recorded at Redlands and featuring only Richards, Jagger and Watts, this terrific rocker boasts a scything electric guitar riff and the air of raw malevolence later perfected on Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street . “DOWNTOWN SUZIE” (AKA “SWEET LUCY”) An agreeable if slight nod towards The Small Faces’ Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake . Written by Wyman, with a jokey Greek chorus and a chirpy Cockney vocal from Jagger,…

KEY to the new music the Stones made in 1968 was the “grinding, dirty sound” Richards coaxed from his Gibson acoustic guitar. He had started using his new Philips cassette player as a mini studio, overloading its tiny speaker to create a ferocious, unruly tone, “with a little tingle on top”, as Richards wrote in Life . On “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Street Fighting Man”, his home recordings of their mighty origin riffs were woven into the finished track. On the latter, the Stones built an entire song around the demo, playing to the recording and adding layer after layer of distorted acoustics. “We copied things from one format to the other much more than people realise,” says Phill Brown. “This was early on in cassettes. The wow-and-flutter…

DURING the mid-to-late ’70s, Kraftwerk became accustomed to unexpected visits from unwelcome guests. During the political turmoil of the time, the group had their homes in Düsseldorf and even their Kling Klang studio searched on several occasions by the police. “They didn’t come and knock on the door,” Ralf Hütter told Uncut. “They’d be coming in with pulled guns: ‘Where are the weapons?’ It happened again in some houses; they would climb the walls to the third floor, where we were working on the artwork for Radioactivity. So you had the whole paranoia of the situation. We travelled late at night and we’d be stopped just for controls. Düsseldorf is a very controlled city, so they would stop your cars and ask for your papers and permits.” To the members…

“WE were using a bunch of elements that hadn’t been put together before,” contends Hank Shocklee of The Bomb Squad, Public Enemy’s production team. “It was socially relevant consciousness in rap form, combined with the artistry of all these different samples we loved. And that’s not easy to do. We didn’t care too much about artistic value; the key thing was that this thing had to have miles on the street.” Shocklee is reflecting on the gestation of ’88’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, the LP that took PE’s audacious hip-hop grooves and biting polemic into the pop charts. At its heart was a trio of uncompromising singles – “Rebel Without A Pause”, “Bring The Noise” and “Don’t Believe The Hype” – that brought their…

“HE was a close friend, but I didn’t work very much with him, no. After he died, [ Gainsbourg’s partner ] Bambou told me, ‘Serge said sometimes that he didn’t understand why you never asked him to make a whole album with you.’ I was very flattered – but I had never asked him because I preferred to make my own album, even if it was not as good as an album written and produced by him – because when you were recording with Serge, it was his album, not yours. He was a very strong personality; he was absolutely charming, almost like a child sometimes when he had not drunk anything, but when he had drunk alcohol – he was very fond of cocktails, sweet liquor –…

“I MET Jimi in London, at Zoot Money’s apartment. There were just the two of us in the house. They dropped him off straight from the airport and I just happened to be there. I welcomed him with a cup of tea and a joint and we started talking. He was pretty scruffy, dishevelled, and tired from the transatlantic trip to London. “The one thing that really amazed me, to the point that I knew Jimi would make it no matter what, was that at some point, over the TV screen came The Black & White Minstrel Show on BBC. Any black person would rightfully look at this programme with horror or distain. I felt so embarrassed and I stepped up to switch off the TV,…

PARLIAMENT Motor Booty Affair (1978) I heard “Aqua Boogie” on the radio in my dad’s car when I was about seven. I was so excited whenever it came on the radio – strange to think it was a fairly popular radio song. My dad bought the record to have for parties – or maybe for me? – but I ’d sit and marvel at the artwork and the pop-up Atlantis painting that was so much like my kindergarten books. I didn’t know what acid was or “liquid sunshine”, but I knew it blew my mind and I was hooked. Funkadelic’s One Nation Under A Groove came out the same year and became a fast favourite, but something about “Aqua Boogie” and the bird calls at the start still occupies my…

JAMES Taylor’s former manager Peter Asher once remarked that the singer had been through so much by the age of 20 that he sang with the conviction of someone more than twice his age. Asher was referring to Taylor’s spell in a psychiatric institution, his ongoing heroin addiction, a debilitating motorcycle accident and the death of a close friend, struggles he poured into 1970 breakout hit “Fire And Rain”. The mellow vibe that made Taylor a superstar was particularly hard won. Having just celebrated his 70th birthday, Taylor now enjoys the tranquility he once found so hard to come by. Thirty-five years clean, he lives in the liberal western Massachusetts enclave known as The Berkshires with his wife Kim and their 17-year-old twin sons. He rehearses and records in his…

IDRIS ACKAMOOR & THE PYRAMIDS An Angel Fell STRUT 7/10 Reactivated Afro-American cosmic jazz veterans still blowing In 2012, Ackamoor & The Pyramids unleashed their first new music since the 1970s, and this third instalment in their reincarnation completes a striking comeback trilogy – and means the reborn collective has now made as many albums as in its original heyday. Recorded in London and sympathetically produced by Malcolm Catto of The Heliocentrics, Ackamoor’s vision of fusing free-jazz blowing, African tribal grooves and spiritual black-consciousness musings remains unwavering as his sax weaves phantasmagorically through the dense rhythmic undergrowth created by original Pyramids percussionist Bradie Speller on the title track, ventures into Fela Kuti territory on “Warrior Dance” and cries mournfully on “Soliloquy For Michael Brown”. NIGEL WILLIAMSON STEVEN ADAMS & THE…

“Hopefulessness” is a bold choice for an opening track… For so long it was going to be the last song. The tracklisting always gets me stuck. It can make or break the listening process, which is such a pity when you’ve put so much effort in. At the end of the Kurt Vile tour, Jen [Cloher] and I did this road trip across America and we listened to the album in 10 or 15 different orders until it felt right. Putting that song at the start seemed to make sense. It gave me the feeling of the orchestra tuning up and everything slowly falling into place. This feels like a much more direct album – there are fewer gags or puns. Are you becoming a grown-up singer-songwriter? I dunno –…

“Open Season” This harrowing song from her third Girly-Sound cassette has stuck with Phair over the years. “It’s really tough subject matter,” she says. “It’s about the exploitation of female sexuality in pop culture. It’s about someone getting raped on camera for a TV programme, and we’re letting it into our homes as if it’s just entertainment.” “Flower” With its nursery-rhyme melody, overlapping vocals and ejaculations of industrial noise, Phair’s most experimental tune was one of the most notorious tracks on Guyville . In its original incarnation, it was slower and more austere, with Phair playing a relentless one-note guitar theme as she lists all the things she wants to do to a particular guy. “Suckerfish” (aka “Go Speed Racer”) Phair frequently incorporated the lyrics and melodies…

BARK PSYCHOSIS ///Codename: Dustsucker (reissue, 2004) FIRE 8/10 Neglected, belated follow-up to genre-defining debut When Graham Sutton swapped Bark Psychosis for Boymerang’s drum’n’ bass in 1994, he wasn’t to know that purveyors of post-rock were about to flourish. It took him a decade to revive the band – now ostensibly a solo project, though samples of former drummer Mark Simnett were employed alongside further assistance from Talk Talk’s Lee Harris – but the muted reception afforded ///Codename: Dustsucker suggested he’d missed his own boat. The musical universe in which they operated nonetheless remained distinctly theirs, its melancholy nebulous, its grace uplifting, not least on the subdued, liminal “From What Is Said To When It’s Read”. Furthermore, Sutton, whose own vocals tended towards a mumbled whisper, at points handed the mic…

ULTRAVOX Systems of Romance ISLAND, 1978 Torn between the post-glam New Wave signifiers of the first two Ultravox albums and his cinematic electro-futurist vision, Foxx called time on the band’s original lineup with this transitional collection, co-produced by Conny Plank. With synths and drum machines prominent in the mix, “Slow Motion” and “Dislocation” anticipate the Ballardian psy-fi alienation that Foxx would perfect on later solo releases. 8/10 JOHN FOXX The Golden Section VIRGIN, 1983 This glossy stab at mainstream commercialism is nevertheless a fascinating example of an art-rock outsider being groomed for major-label synth-pop stardom. Drawing on his love of vintage psych, church music and old-school crooners, Foxx reveals a manicured tremolo warble to rival Bryan Ferry on lustrous Europop anthems like “Endlessly” and “Like a Miracle”. Dated and stilted…

“Nobody fuck the Upsetter’s batty-hole for silver and gold” TWO weeks shy of his 82nd birthday, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry pokes and potters around the tiny dressing room of an Edinburgh club. Moments ago, backed by the most recent iteration of his band, The Upsetters, he finished an hour-long set with a pounding version of Bob Marley’s “Exodus”, exhorting the audience to “get crazy”. The man himself requires no such encouragement. His beard and hair are dyed a garish chemical red. His hat is festooned with badges, sphinxes and mirrors, while his multi-patterned jacket has a cartoon alien on the front and a huge psychedelic sunflower on the back. The epaulettes are the colours of the Ethiopian flag. His fingers are ringed with massive rocks, his neck adorned with beads and…

THE CLASH COMPLETE CONTROL (1977) Impressed by The Clash’s cover of “Police And Thieves” on their debut album (he reportedly hung up a picture of them in Black Ark), Perry agreed to work with the band. The anti-corporate “Complete Control” echoes Perry’s anti-establishment ethos, although reportedly many of his more spaced-out production flourishes were culled from the final version. ADRIAN SHERWOOD & DUB SYNDICATE SECRET LABORATORY (1986) Perry’s two albums with the On-U Sound maestro – Secret Laboratory and 1990’s Time Boom X De Devil Dead – rejuvenated his post-Black Ark career. The former is one of his greatest discs, with loving echoes of his ’70s work in the dark, heady rhythms and eccentric lyrics of “I Got The Groove” and “Vibrate…

“We’re working on new stuff right now…”KEITH RICHARDS START ’em up! On May 17, The Rolling Stones play Dublin’s Croke Park – the first of nine UK shows that include stop-offs for the Tongue & Lips in London, Southampton, Coventry, Manchester, Edinburgh and Cardiff A continuation of the No Filter tour that ran on mainland Europe last autumn, this latest leg also marks the first time the Stones have played the UK since their Glastonbury/Hyde Park triumphs of 2013. As ardent Stones watchers will know, the band have revised their touring practices since 2007’s A Bigger Bang. Out are the gargantuan, continent straddling treks of old and in are sharp, localised bursts of activity – like the América Latina Olé tour and the Fall 2016 US tour. Around that time,…

RELEASED 40 years ago this month, The Man-Machine is Kraftwerk’s most fully realised pop-art statement, a succinct and melodious road map for the 1980s synth-pop boom. With Karl Bartos sharing full songwriter credit for the first time alongside Hütter and Schneider, it features the timeless techno-utopian anthem “The Robots”, droll satirical vignettes like future UK chart-topper “The Model”, and the sublimely romantic ballad “Neon Lights”, later covered by OMD and U2. The Man-Machine is also Kraftwerk’s most disco-era creation, nodding to Giorgio Moroder’s Eurodisco throb on the rippling, gleaming synthscapes “Spacelab” and “Metropolis”. The silky production was partly engineered by Leanard Jackson, renowned for his work with Rose Royce, Smokey Robinson and George Clinton. Featuring the four band members in matching militaristic…

1986: Formed in Long Island, New York, Public Enemy sign to Def Jam Recordings. February 1987: Debut album Yo! Bum Rush The Show is released, produced by The Bomb Squad. November 1987: Following a European tour supporting LL Cool J, UK debut “Rebel Without A Pause” enters the Top 40. April 1988: “Don’t Believe The Hype” is issued as a single, backed by “Prophets Of Rage” and “The Rhythm The Rebel”. It peaks at No 18 in the UK in July. July 1988: Def Jam release parent album It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back , which makes the UK Top 10 and becomes Public Enemy’s first platinum disc in the United States.…

TOUS LES GARÇONS ET LES FILLES VOGUE, 1962 As primitive as it sounds, Hardy’s debut is packed full of rock’n’roll and yé-yé songs as infectious as her favourite tracks on Radio Luxembourg, chief among them the sashaying “Ton Meilleur Ami”. 7/10 L’AMITIÉ VOGUE, 1965 Accompanied by the Charles Blackwell Orchestra, Hardy was perhaps at the peak of her pop powers on this lush, varied LP. The title track is sublime, and Hardy’s own “Tu Peux Bien” reaches Morricone levels of melancholy. 8/10 MA JEUNESSE FOUT LE CAMP... VOGUE, 1967 Hardy begins to embrace subtler, folkier textures on her sixth album proper, with the title track (‘My Youth Is Flying Away’) and the grand torch song “Voilà” especially devastating. 8/10 LA QUESTION SONOPRESSE, 1971 The masterpiece, an otherworldly mix of French…

THE ANIMALS THE ANIMALS (COLUMBIA, 1964) The band’s first long-player caught them at full-tilt R&B, documenting their live repertoire – covers by John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. A snapshot of the original Animals at their best, their sound coalescing around Alan Price’s distinctive keyboards, John Steel’s dextrous timekeeping and Burdon’s ragged vocals. ERIC BURDON & THE ANIMALS WINDS OF CHANGE (MGM, 1967) Full-blown psych with “San Franciscan Nights” and an acid-soaked “Paint It, Black” reflected the spirit of the times. “Yes I Am Experienced” was Burdon’s ‘answer’ to Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?”. The evocative spoken-word allegory “The Black Plague” featured Gregorian chants, Hammond lines and funeral bells. ERIC BURDON DECLARES “WAR” (MGM, 1970) The first of Burdon’s two albums with War was a wild, free-roaming excursion into…

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR OPENS APRIL 26 “The most ambitious crossover event in history”, claim Marvel of their superhero team-up, ignoring that time a coalition of Rome, Rhodes, the Achaean League and Pergamum took on Sparta in 195BC. THE OLD DARK HOUSE OPENS APRIL 27 James Whale assembles a team of real-life cinematic superheroes – including Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton – in this 1930s horror comedy, now restored to its full glory. ANON OPENS MAY 4 Gattaca director Andrew Niccol is back with another sci-fi on surveillance in the future, with Clive Owen. LEAN ON PETE OPENS MAY 4 Coming-of-age drama about a boy and his horse, based on the novel by Richmond Fontaine’s Willy Vlautin. Costars Steve Buscemi and Chloë Sevigny. MARY AND THE WITCH’S FLOWER OPENS…

MIKE HARRISON Spooky Tooth and solo singer (1945-2018) DESPITE being blessed with inordinate talent, Spooky Tooth never enjoyed great commercial success, instead achieving cult status as an album-oriented band and formidable live draw. Singer Mike Harrison, who shared vocals and keyboard duties with Gary Wright, led them through a series of mostly fine recordings from 1967 to ’74, before his disillusionment with the record industry prompted him to quit for two decades. Carlisle-born Harrison began with local outfits The Dakotas and The Ramrods prior to forming R&B combo The VIPs in late 1963. “My earliest influence was hearing Elvis Presley do ‘Don’t Be Cruel’,” he told this writer in 2015. “That’s what made me want to sing. But my main people were Ray Charles and Etta James.” The…