Innholdsfortegnelse for Sep-2018 i UNCUT

Take a load off! As Music From Big Pink turns 50, the latest Ultimate Music Guide covers the career of Bob Dylan & The Band. From the speedy and controversial thrills of their 1966 UK tour to the tranquil idylls of Woodstock, into the 1970s and beyond, this is the definitive story of one of music’s greatest partnerships. Includes: in-depth reviews, revealing archive features and rare photos, plus a special foreword by Robbie Robertson… Meanwhile, the next edition of our Ultimate Genre Guides focuses on Punk: from CBGBs to the Winterland Ballroom, situationism to gobbing, the sound, the look and the legacy. Features deep new writing and outrageous archive features on Patti Smith, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and more… Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH 9/10 THE first thing you hear, on a track called “Surf A”, sounds like the sea, where everything comes from, our watery genesis. Waves appear to crash on a beach somewhere. Seagulls squawk in circling overhead flight. It’s like a field recording from the beginning of time, or thereabouts. But the noise you’re listening to is made by a homemade synthesiser called The Mutant, a contraption probably built by a boffin with electrified hair and an obsession with obsolete technologies. Whatever, you are soon beguiled by the rhythm of surf hitting sand and its sucking retreat, even as it goes on longer than a typical Ramones song. Then a voice eventually appears, superimposed on the tidal splash and bird caw behind it. The singer is describing…

77:78 Jellies HEAVENLY 7/10 Quirky, genre-hopping side project from two members of TV-ad favourites The Bees After an eight-year furlough, two multi-instrumentalists from Isle Of Wight mavericks The Bees have launched a side project, minus frontman Paul Butler. Aaron Fletcher and Tim Parkin share vocal duties, sometimes singing in baroque harmonies (the woozy 6/8 ballad “Pour It Out”), sometimes an octave apart (the quirky ’60s beat pop of “Love Said (Let’s Go)”), sometimes doing gospel-style call-and-response (the jerky, horn-heavy “Compass Pass”). The Bees’ oddball genre-hopping is still evident: check out the morose Latin funk of “Copper Nail” or the jerky mariachi rock of “Chilli”; best of all is the drowsy krautrock of “If I’m Anything”. JOHN LEWIS DANIEL BACHMAN The Morning Star THREE LOBED 7/10 Virginia-born finger-style virtuoso drifts further…

1 Sentient Oona 2 Enrique El Cobrador 3 C 4 Overthrown 5 Last Peace 6 Moon Bog 7 Anthemic Aggressor 8 Abysmal Urn 9 Nail House Needle Boys 10 Flies Bump Against The Glass 11 Beat Quest Produced, recorded and mixed by John Dwyer, Eric Bauer and Enrique Tena Recorded at: The Sonic Ranch, Tornillo,Texas Personnel includes: John Dwyer (guitars, vocals, synths , samples, effects, mellotron, Wurlitzer electric piano, hand percussion and marching boots), Tim Hellman (bass), Dan Rincon (drums), Paul Quattrone (drums, samples, timbale and shakers), Brigid Dawson (vocals), Tomas Dolas (B3 organ, Wurlitzer, mellotron and synth), Mario Ramirez and Enrique Tena Padilla (marching boots). Heather Lockie’s viola was sampled for “Last Peace”…

1 Among The Ghosts 2 Bottom Of The Sea 3 Everything Has Changed 4 Always Been You 5 Cover Me 6 To My Dearest Wife 7 Long Way Back Home 8 Loving 9 Back To The Night 10 For The Lonely Ones Produced by: Lucero and Matt Ross-Spang Recorded at: Sam Phillips Recoding Service, Memphis Personnel: Ben Nichols (vocals, guitar, Mellotron, synthesiser), Brian Venable (guitar), John C. Stubblefield (bass), Roy Berry (drums, percussion), Rick Steff (piano, B3 organ), Michael Shannon (spoken word), Jim Spake (saxophone), Sam Shoup (string arrangement), Eugenio Figueroa (viola), Dara Hankins (cello), Gaylon Patterson (violin), Heather Trussell (violin)…

REISSUE OF THE MONTH 8/10 BY the time the Pretty Things’ psychedelic rock opera SF Sorrow limped its way into the new-release racks in December 1968, the Small Faces’ Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake – also featuring a lengthy parable about a boy obsessed with the moon – had been gently blowing the minds of flipped-out mods for six months. By the time SF Sorrow was picked up by Motown’s rock subsidiary Rare Earth and released in the United States, complete with ludicrous tombstone-shaped sleeve, the Pretty Things were being mocked for having ripped off The Who’s 1969 magnum opus Tommy, which also features a wronged man’s quest for spiritual enlightenment. Rolling Stone’s Lester Bangs shredded the Pretty Things’ labour of love memorably. “One looked forward to this one because they…

What were you doing at the start of 1967? We were trying to finish Emotions and Fontana were really fucking about with it. We could have dug our heels in, but we would have had to stay and finish it. They stuck brass all over it. We just cut and run because the idea for SF Sorrow was germinating and we had no illusion that we would be able to make it for Fontana. Pink Floyd producer Norman Smith was very important in the creation of SF Sorrow , yes? When our manager Bryan Morrison heard some of the demos – things like “Defecting Grey” – he said: “I told you if you kept smoking that fucking stuff you’d go divvy.” Norman got it straight away.…

HORRIBLE CROWES Elsie SIDEONEDUMMY, 2011 Debut and – thus far – only album by this collaboration between Gaslight Anthem singer Brian Fallon and Gaslight Anthem guitar tech Ian Perkins. Touted as a radical departure from rock’n’roll into soul, but really more a case of Fallon changing down a couple of gears. No bad thing: he shapes up well as a bleary balladeer, hoarse and heartfelt on the likes of “Mary Ann” and “Blood Loss”. THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM Handwritten MERCURY, 2012 Fallon told Uncut ahead of the release of TGA’s fourth album that it would sound like Tom Petty songs played by Pearl Jam or Foo Fighters: a description that proved difficult to improve upon. Erstwhile Springsteen producer Brendan O’Brien lends a pugnacious pop gloss to…

Next time around, we’ll be looking at new offerings from Low, back with the uncompromising Double Negative , Suede, returning with The Blue Hour , and Spiritualized, risen again with And Nothing Hurt ; Orbital’s Monsters Exist and Anna Calvi’s Hunter are also promised, while there are new LPs from Marissa Nadler, The Goon Sax and Swamp Dogg. In the gatefold world of archival releases, there’s a 10-disc box from Soft Cell, Keychains & Snowstorms , Prince’s Piano & A Microphone 1983 , and reissues from Nick Mason, The House Of Love, The Moldy Peaches, The Durutti Column and more. Until next time… TOM.PINNOCK@TIMEINC.COM…

“I DIDN’T learn it, I just have it. It’s physiological, basically, to do with your build. At least that’s how a vocal coach explained it to me, if you have the right chest size you can do it. I went to him partially to get more to my higher range a few years ago, so he taught me some techniques. The power isn’t there the way I want it to be every night, especially early on a tour. It’s almost like I have to blow it out a bit, then I can find a warmer tone that feels correct. The guy who taught me how to scream was our neighbour, I used to work for him sometimes. He was Thai, he played in Thai wedding bands, and he brought me…

FORMED at the tail end of 1966 by Sylvester Stewart, a musical prodigy and, at 23, already a veteran DJ, songwriter and producer in the Bay Area, Sly & The Family Stone were a unique proposition: a multicultural band of men and women playing a rainbow blend of musical styles. “It was a time of high racial tension,” says drummer Greg Errico. “There were riots and all that stuff going on, and here we were, mixed genre, black and white, breaking all the rules. It was a challenge, but we didn’t feel it. We had the music and we had each other.” If their 1967 debut album, A Whole New Thing, was too far ahead of the game to gain traction, the wildly exuberant and deceptively clever follow-up honed their…

LATER in the month, its patrons could enjoy a festive production of Puss In Boots, starring Frankie Vaughan and Jimmy Tarbuck. However, visitors to Liverpool’s Empire Theatre on Sunday, December 5, 1965 had something other than panto to look forward to. Inside the venue, for the princely sum of 15 shillings for a seat in the orchestra stalls, ticketholders were witnessing a rare homecoming gig by The Beatles. Although no-one knew it at the time, the two sets they played at the Empire that day were the last time the group played their hometown. Eight months later, they stopped touring altogether. The Beatles had left the building; what happened in the vacuum that remained? “Everybody hated The Beatles in Liverpool because they’d fucked off,” says Julian Cope, who arrived there…

THE Meltdown Festival, to borrow a line from Orson Welles, might just be “the best electric train set a boy ever had”. What to do with three beautifully brutalist world-class auditoriums, overlooking the Thames, across 10 summer days and your choice of the world’s performers? If you’re Elvis Costello you might be inclined to show off the exquisite breadth of your taste, which quite naturally extends from Keith Tippett to Moondog via Jeff Buckley and the Brodsky Quartet. If you’re Morrissey you revel in the perverse aesthetic charisma that can create strange cultural bedfellows of Alan Bennett, Nancy Sinatra and the New York Dolls. Eclecticism has never been the point of The Cure, however, whose palette extends to a symphony of greys. So it’s no surprise that Robert Smith programmed…

ONCE you spend £23,000 on a musical instrument, it goes without saying that you need to find ways of making your money back as quickly as possible. For Mary Lattimore, freelance harpist to the stars and an acclaimed solo performer in her own right, this currently means lugging her 40kg Lyon & Healy harp around the US in a Volvo while she supports Danish art-rockers Iceage on tour – a billing that’s not as incongruous as it sounds. “The tour’s going great and the audiences are into the combination,” says Lattimore from her Seattle hotel room before she sets off on the five-hour drive to Spokane, Washington. Each night she loops and layers her instrument to mesmeric effect as she performs material from her third album, Hundreds Of Days. “Iceage…

ECHOER’S INTENT TIME-LAG RECORDS, 2010 There’s not much more to the most rustic-sounding of Elephant Micah’s last four albums than O’Connell’s voice, strummed or finger-picked guitar, fiddle, banjo, a homespun sound. The songs, though, rooted in nature and the Indiana outback, are full of shadow and mystery. Imagine a Sun Kil Moon album devoted entirely to songs about birdwatching and barking robots. 8/10 LOUDER THAN THOU PARADISE OF BACHELORS, 2012 After a decade of lo-fi minimalism, on most of these six tracks O’Connell engages with the brighter, crisper sounds you might associate with ’70s LA folk and country rock. Dulcimer, saxophone, keyboards, layered harmonies and electric guitars are added to the mix, spectacularly so on six-minute closer “Airline Living”, a brooding reverie about departure and separation. 9/10 GLOBE RUSH PROGRESSIONS…

The album is strongly thematic. How conscious was that? At this point, there has to be a reason for us to make a record. We didn’t start with the idea of heading in a specific direction, but as I was writing, themes began to emerge. It was a fairly tumultuous time in my life, in terms of my kids getting older, and my relationship with my partner of 26 years. We’re still together, but there was a particularly deep trough, and that’s in there. Then the world became a much more intense, less friendly and more destructive place. A lot of the assumptions we grew up with in our culture began to fall apart. So, there’s this weird meshing of the political, personal and social. It drove the writing forward.…

From When I Wake The Want Is ROCK ACTION 8/10 THERE is, with fragile, tough Kathryn Joseph, a contradiction. Actually, there is more than one. Her music is as powerful as it is introverted, as insistent as it is subtle. She makes her points quietly, but with neurotic force. She sounds hesitant and, on occasion, apologetic, yet her vision is raw and uncompromising, and as true as a diary. In Scotland, Joseph’s career took off – or at least solidified into a shape where playing music as a job became a plausible ambition – when she won the 2015 SAY award, for the best Scottish album, with her exquisite debut, Bones You Have Thrown Me And Blood I’ve Spilled. She beat off competition from more fancied contenders such as Young…

Why “With Animals”? If you listen closely you can hear my dogs and cats on almost every track, making some noise as Duke was recording. Duke played all the instruments. He was using the drum machine on my old Casio keyboard and there’s really only three settings, a waltz, a slow waltz and something in between. He’s a master at making a song that is easy to sing to… it’s tailor-made for a singer. It’s one of the reasons I love working with him. Why so bleak? What’s bleak to you might be Disneyland to me. I found it to be a healing process. We hadn’t planned to make it, but I left Duke at my home and when I came back he had all this music. He wrote the…

THE WHO The Who Sell Out TRACK, 1967 More pop-art playfulness than psychedelic japery, The Who’s third long-player saluted the pirate radio stations, its imaginary ‘Radio London’ interleaving fake adverts with killer pop songs, not least era-defining hit “I Can See For Miles”. Bits of closing mini-opera “Rael” were recycled for 1969’s Tommy . THE ROLLING STONES Their Satanic Majesties Request DECCA 1967 Much mocked as a hokey Sgt Pepper , the Stones’ ‘will this do?’ cosmic voyage is massively out of character. However, if their idea of a Soft Machine-style freakout is pretty tame, brilliant songs lurk in the patchouli fog: the moody “Citadel”, “The Lantern” and “2,000 Light Years From Home”. THE SMALL FACES Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake IMMEDIATE, 1968 Like the…

A 1 Quay Cur 2 Straight Street 3 My Dog Was Lost But Now He’s Found B 1 Blueberry Boat 2 Chris Michaels C 1 Paw Paw Tree 2 Mason City 3 Chief Inspector Blancheflower D 1 Spaniolated 2 1917 3 Birdie Brain 4 Turning Round 5 Wolf Notes Produced by: Matthew Friedberger Recorded at: Rare Book Room, Brooklyn, NY Personnel: Eleanor Friedberger (vocals, drums), Matthew Friedberger (vocals, guitar, synth, keys, piano, bass, double bass), David Muller (proper drum kit), Samara Lubelski (violin), Nicolas Vernhes (drum doubling)…

“SEE this?” says Rod Stewart, pointing towards a perfect scale model of a two-up two-down terraced house overlooking an impressive network of snaking railway lines. “This is like the house I grew up in on the Archway Road. We had train tracks running along the back there, too.” It is mid-morning and Rod Stewart is in the loft of his Beverly Hills residence playing with trains. His pride and joy, Stewart has spent 23 years building this 1,500 square-foot diorama, partly inspired by post-war New York, where mountains spill down towards towering skyscrapers and bustling street scenes. A discerning eye might spot the creator’s hand in the finer details. Celtic Coal And Steel is a reference to his beloved football team. There is a church complete with a gravedigger (“a…

“I WAS always terribly impressed with Rod as singer. I had a previous relationship with the Small Faces, but the Faces were nothing like them. Although they had Kenney, Mac and Ronnie Lane in the band, it was completely different – largely because of Woody and Rod. Like any chemistry set, if you add two different chemicals, it’s going to be different. I thought it quite wonderful: rock’n’roll with a twinkle in its eye. “The sessions were always very good fun; I enjoyed them enormously. A lot of the songs were written in the studio and performed in very good spirits. Woody and Ronnie Lane were largely responsible for that. Mac, too. I mustn’t leave anybody out! “They worked very collaboratively. It was very democratic – but then, that was…

THE ARTIST’S WAY JULIA CAMERON The bestseller was essential to Williamson’s productivity in the two months she focused exclusively on writing Cosmic Wink . She says an exercise called Morning Pages, the act of writing three pages of thoughts and reflections after each sunrise, was crucial. POLISHING THE MIRROR RAM DASS “It’s not any sort of new information, but it’s a nice handbook for how to live,” Williamson says. A HOMEMADE SHRINE Williamson also created an altar to her idols in her working space. She printed oversized images of Townes Van Zandt, Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, Chan Marshall and Bruce Springsteen, along with photos of her dog, Frankie, to watch over the room. ÉTHIOPIQUES 21 EMAHOY TSEGUÉ-MARYAM GUÈBROU The pentatonic solo piano works of the Ethiopian…

December 1966: Sly Stone (aka Sylvester Stewart) forms his multiracial, cross-genre band Sly & The Family Stone in San Francisco. Early 1967: Sign to Epic Records, a subsidiary of CBS. October 1967: Release their debut long-player, A Whole New Thing . It fails to chart. Late 1967: Record the Dance To The Music album at CBS studios in New York. The title track is earmarked as the opening song. February 3, 1968: “Dance To The Music” released as a single. April 20, 1968: It peaks at No 8 on the US Billboard chart, a week before the album is released. August 20, 1968: “Dance To The Music” peaks at No 7 in the UK singles chart.…

CREDIT Gram Parsons with taking The Byrds on a hard steer into Nashville for Sweetheart Of The Rodeo . But Parsons was also only in the group for half a year, and country music was very much in the DNA of The Byrds both before and after his stay. Here’s a (mostly) Gram-less timeline of how the band dabbled in country and stayed there after Parsons’ brief tour of duty. THE BYRDS “SATISFIED MIND” ( TURN! TURN! TURN! , 1965) On only their second record, The Byrds’ applied their still-fresh folk-rock template to this melancholy ballad first popularised by Porter Wagoner and later covered by Dylan, Cash, and many others. THE BYRDS “MR SPACEMAN” ( FIFTH DIMENSION , 1966) As the band…

1 Three Imaginary Boys 2 At Night 3 Other Voices 4 A Strange Day 5 Bananafishbones 6 A Night Like This 7 Like Cockatoos 8 Pictures Of You 9 High 10 Jupiter Crash 11 39 12 Us Or Them 13 It’s Over 14 It Can Never Be The Same 15 Step Into The Light 16 The Hungry Ghost 17 alt.end 18 The Last Day Of Summer 19 Want 20 From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea 21 Disintegration 22 If Only Tonight We Could Sleep 23 Sinking 24 Shake Dog Shake 25 One Hundred Years 26 Primary 27 A Forest 28 Boys Don’t Cry…

HEARTS BEAT LOUD Directed by: Brett Haley Starring: Nick Offerman, Kiersey Clemons Opens: Aug 3 Cert PG 6/10 THE NEGOTIATOR Directed by: Brad Anderson Starring: Jon Hamm, Rosamund Pike Opens: Aug 10 Cert: 15 7/10 A PRAYER BEFORE DAWN Directed by: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire Starring: Joe Cole, Vithaya Pansringarm Opens: July 20 Cert: 18 8/10 SICARIO 2: SOLDADO Directed by: Sergio Sollima Starring: Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro Opens: Out now Cert: 15 9/10 THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES Directed by: Mark Cousins Starring: Mark Cousins, Orson Welles Opens: August 17 Cert: 12A 6/10…

RICHARD SWIFT Singer-songwriter and producer (1977–2018) A talented songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Richard Swift rose to prominence in the mid-2000s with his albums The Novelist and Dressed Up For The Letdown. As a producer, he worked with the likes of Laetitia Sadier, Damien Jurado and Nathaniel Rateliff, establishing his own National Freedom studio in Oregon. In 2011 he joined The Shins, as well as touring with The Black Keys and The Arcs. He died in Tacoma, Washington, on July 3, a few weeks after being hospitalised for a “life-threatening condition”. JON HISEMAN Virtuoso rock/jazz drummer (1944-2018) Drummer Jon Hiseman and sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith passed through The Graham Bond Organisation and John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers before forming Colosseum in 1968. The band operated at the forefront…

ONCE described by fellow guitarist Peter Green as “a clever boy who got ideas by listening to all that old-fashioned Roaring Twenties big-band stuff”, Danny Kirwan’s tenure with Fleetwood Mac gave them a whole other dimension. Kirwan had been recruited in August 1968, after impressing as an 18-year-old prodigy in south London trio Boilerhouse. His arrival allowed Green to inch away from the restrictive blues purism of Fleetwood Mac’s early oeuvre, beginning with languid instrumental hit “Albatross”. His contributions to 1969’s Then Play On offered a more melodic, folk-rooted alternative to Green’s improvised blues lines, while the animated “Coming Your Way” saw his fluid phrasing tied to a semi-tribal rhythm. Despite a healthy appreciation of each other’s guitar capabilities, the temperamental Kirwan endured a difficult working relationship with Green. When…

BELIEF IN BEGGARS Thanks for the commemoration of Beggars Banquet’s 50th. The album is not only a powerful comeback from a band that sounds like it had faced greater hardships in 1967 than whether or not to buy a Greek Island, but is also more organically agile and alive than the Stones’ later, more rote masterpieces like Sticky Fingers and Exile. Mick Taylor-era worshippers aside, I put it down to the brief musical intersection of Jimmy Miller and Brian Jones, the former – as Graeme Thomson notes – bringing a fresh groove to the Stones’ sound, while the latter sprinkled the subtle instrumental magic that made the band much more than blues copyists one last time with his eerie Mellotron on “Jigsaw Puzzle”. Charlie’s fills dance between Nicky…

FROM alien abductions to tennis dynasties, from Italian revolutionaries to integrated public transport systems, Gruff Rhys has proved he can write a stirring anthem about more or less anything. So it comes as no surprise that, on the morning we speak, he’s putting the finishing touches to “No Profit In Pain”, a song celebrating the 70th anniversary of the NHS, as commissioned by the National Theatre Of Wales. “I couldn’t say no,” he reasons. “I was born in an NHS hospital and every aspect of my life and family has been deeply connected to the NHS. It’s a personal tribute.” Yet as with many Gruff Rhys songs, its whimsical approach and sunny melody carries a strident political point. As you’d expect from its title – and choice couplets such as…

1 All That Reckoning, Pt 1 2 When We Arrive 3 The Things We Do To Each Other 4 Wooden Stairs 5 Sing Me A Song 6 Mountain Stream 7 Missing Children 8 Shining Teeth 9 Nose Before Ear 10 All That Reckoning, Pt 2 11 The Possessed Produced by: Michael Timmins, with Alan Anton Recorded at: The Hangar, Toronto Personnel: Margo Timmins (vocals), Michael Timmins (guitar, ukulele), Peter Timmins (drums, percussion), Alan Anton (bass, keys), Bill Dillon (guitar), Aaron Goldstein (guitar), Jesse O’Brien (organ, piano), James Mackie (fiddle)…

The pick of September’s releases is Meet Me At The River , the first in four years from US songwriter, Dawn Landes (pictured). Issued on YEP ROC, it pairs her with Nashville vet Fred Foster, producer of Roy Orbison and Dolly Parton, among others. Foster brought in a crack team of session greats – Charlie McCoy, Bobby Wood, Eddie Bayers – to augment Landes’ country-shaded songs. Bobby Bare also crops up on the lovely duet, “I Don’t Dance”. Meanwhile, the late Roger Miller – the first man to record “Me And Bobby McGee”, Foster’s co-write with Kris Kristofferson – gets an all-star salute on BMG’s King Of The Road: A Tribute To Roger Miller . The two-disc set includes covers by Parton, Loretta Lynn,…

What was it like playing at Robert Smith’s Meltdown? The show was so lovely. I had extreme imposter syndrome. It feels ridiculous that I’m getting to do any of these things. And it was very odd to meet Nana Mouskouri while being hungover afterwards. It was a strange night and day in my life. She’s so beautiful. Her skin’s better than mine. She’s 83. Has lack of self-confidence been a problem for you? That’s been my biggest problem. But then weirdly when I play I don’t have it. That’s the only time I don’t care about what I look like, or what people think of me. How did your singing style develop? When I was writing at first I was living in a tiny wee bothy house. That was the…

Why did you want to make this album at Sam Phillips Recording Service? We recorded our last three albums at Ardent, another legendary Memphis studio. I loved those records, but it was time for a change. Plenty of great records have been made at Phillips, but mainly it was the room itself that made us want to record there. The way he had the building designed and built makes it a unique place with unique sounds. Did the place change the songs at all? We approached this record differently from the get-go. No preproduction. We just set up and I started playing guitar lines I’d written. We went with whatever seemed to work. Then I’d go home at night and put the pieces together and write lyrics. A lot of…

How did you move from not writing songs to writing an LP? I’ve been making up songs since I was a kid. Then I started writing them down, but couldn’t play any instruments well enough to tie them together. I kind of gave up on the idea I could record them. Then I wrote “Tornado” and was pretty much instantly happy with it. Was the record more about process or end result? At the time I didn’t view it as working through my issues, I just wanted to be a better songwriter. I didn’t think I was writing a record. It just came to be that there was enough material for a record and it was coherent. How did you develop your sound? I’ve never sat down and thought about…

Disc 1: Mono 1 SF Sorrow Is Born 2 Bracelets Of Fingers 3 She Says Good Morning 4 Private Sorrow 5 Balloon Burning 6 Death 7 Baron Saturday 8 The Journey 9 I See You 10 Well Of Destiny 11 Trust 12 Old Man Going 13 Loneliest Person Disc 2: Stereo Disc 3 & 4: Live at Abbey Road, 1998 Disc 5: Defecting Grey Mr Evasion Disc 6: Talkin’ About The Good Times Walking Through My Dreams Disc 7: Private Sorrow (single version) Balloon Burning (single version) Disc 8: Baron Saturday (stereo) Loneliest Person (stereo) Produced by: Norman Smith Recorded at: Abbey Road…

THE BEACH BOYS The Beach Boys With The Royal Philharmonic UNIVERSAL 6/10 Brian and co get the orchestral treatment No matter your skill with a brush, it wouldn’t be advisable to, say, touch up a Titian. And so it might be with Brian Wilson’s finest work: were his meticulously crafted teenage symphonies to God really lacking the sweet touch of the RPO? Well, clearly not, but this combination of the Beach Boys’ original recordings and an orchestra does hold interest for the fan. Wilson is the perfect artist for this treatment, being heavily influenced by classical music and more recent orchestral forms – it’s fitting, then, that the opening, tastefully done “California Suite” begins with a nod to Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue”. Elsewhere, there are, comfortingly, plenty of bass harmonicas,…

What were the inspirations behind Blueberry Boat ? MATTHEW FRIEDBERGER: The excuse for the songs was The Who Sell Out , the lightness of it compared to The Who live. The trick was that it was going to be complicated songs, but sounding as spontaneous, as loose, as lazy as possible. I was 30, but I felt like a teenager, like the first time I made tape recordings of playing the guitar. I wanted the record to sound like that. How much was composed before you went in the studio? MF: There wasn’t too much that was made up in the studio. The songs were written. It was pretty planned. ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER: He didn’t make demos, so what, he just had it in his…

“I GOT inspired by just talking to Charles, and hearing how he’d lived in Puerto Rico and picked up the Spanish. Not understanding the language, the songs he’d written in Spanish had this amazing phonetic resonation, and I started to think about Spanish icons, simply because of the two songs with Spanish lyrics. So I thought, ‘How can we take the Spanish tradition and debase it?’ I thought of flamenco… but having the dancer topless. Simon [ Larbalestier ] came in, he was my Pixies man. We didn’t have a studio, so we hired a room above the pub opposite 4AD, and took in these backdrops. I dressed it, styled it, and it’s one of the more complete projects that I’ve worked on from scratch with…

“I FIRST met Rod in The Wrestlers pub in Highgate. He’d seen me play in Cockney Rebel at the Roxy in LA, near where he lived. He liked my headgear – one of those corduroy poor boy caps, like John Lennon used to wear. I got a message asking if I wanted to play with him. We arranged to meet back in The Wrestlers. We had a couple of pints and we got on really well. He’s easy to talk to. Apart from the rare occasions when he wakes up in the morning and thinks he’s ‘Rod Stewart’, he’s just another nice bloke! “Our friendship is important. If there’s one thing that connects all his long-term collaborators – Ron Wood, Martin Quittenton, me, Gary Grainger, Kevin Savigar – we’re all…

AMONG the many changes Williamson has experienced in the last two years is a marked shift in drinking culture: from Austin where imbibing is central to socialisation, to Los Angeles where meeting with friends often means a hike and a shared bottle of kombucha. “Coming here I’ve realised that there’s nothing wrong with drinking in moderation, but it doesn’t always have to be a companion to a good time,” she says. “I would rather drink sparkling water and microdose on mushrooms, if we’re being super honest.” Williamson’s passion for fungi extends beyond psychotropics, and she has been self-studying their many purported health benefits. A staple of ancient Chinese medicine, “mushrooms are these magical little gifts from the earth”, she says. On her most recent tour with Loma, a band that…

IN June, 50 years and two months after their first calamitous appearance at the Grand Ole Opry, Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman stepped back on the storied stage of Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. In 1968, the audience at country music’s preeminent showcase considered The Byrds hostile invaders, hippies condescending to their culture. This time around, backed by the Music City regulars Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives at Stuart’s annual Late Night Jam, the reception was much warmer. “We got a standing ovation, which is the first time we ever got that at the Ryman,” McGuinn says with a chuckle. McGuinn and Hillman’s five-song appearance was the beta launch for a broader slate of American shows this summer and autumn celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, the slow-burn…

“I’VE developed expensive taste,” laments James Petralli, “working with all these eccentric weirdos and really established music people. That kind of thinking has led to a pretty impressive pile of semi-functioning vintage equipment here, though, for sure.” Singer and guitarist Petralli is talking to Uncut from his new Radio Milk studio in Austin, Texas, White Denim’s recording location for their upcoming Performance LP. Over their decade-long career, the band have been incredibly productive, and highly experimental in their methods, trying out vintage Neve desks and Dell laptops, in high-quality studios and remote 1940s caravans. “What was there to do in the caravan?” says bassist Steve Terebecki. “Just drink. We would drink, eat peanut butter sandwiches, occasionally we would walk through the cedar forest. That’s it, not a lot…” The two…

EVEN within the context of Eric’s, which prided itself as a haven for outsiders, there were some who seemed like perennial misfits. Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys emerged from unwieldy prog outfit The Id to form the electronica-driven Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. “We did and didn’t feel part of it,” McCluskey recalls of their experience at Eric’s. “There was the element of us being from the other side of the river - weirdos from the Wirral - and using synthesisers when everyone else played traditional instruments. “But Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark wouldn’t have existed without Eric’s. They might not have liked us , but it was our own little universe. Paul and I told Roger Eagle and Pete Fulwell that we had this mad…

FIRST REFORMED OPENS JULY 13 Reviewed last issue. In Paul Schrader’s diary of a suburban priest, Ethan Hawke asks: “You prayin’ to me?” VERTIGO OPENS JULY 13 60th-anniversary reissue for Hitchcock’s dizzy masterpiece. GENERATION WEALTH OPENS JULY 20 You say austerity; but documentarian Lauren Greenfield asks why we still desire to be wealthy at any cost. MAMMA MIA: HERE WE GO AGAIN OPENS JULY 20 My my! Cher joins Streep, Brosnan, Firth and co for more frothy domestics bolted onto the ABBA catalogue. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT OPENS JULY 25 Tom Cruise continues to make the world safe from dastardly villains. ANT-MAN AND THE WASP OPENS AUGUST 2 Expect less declamation and meta-human fighting in this follow-up to the smaller, more agile superhero film. A SICILIAN GHOST STORY OPENS AUGUST…

ROY CARR was already a legendary NME byline when I met him just after joining Melody Maker in 1974, his name attached weekly to stories that took him to glamorous locations in the company of the biggest rock acts of the time, most of whom he knew from his own days in the mid-’60s as a musician on the northern club circuit. Roy cut a dashing figure in those days, prone to buckskin jackets, dramatic hats, belt buckles like hubcaps, a look that was only a little shy of Elvis-in-Vegas. You’d see him everywhere enjoying record-company hospitality, regaling everyone with outlandish tales. I remember once walking in on a story about bumping into Rod Stewart and the Faces in Los Angeles and persuading them to fly to Las Vegas on…

JALAL Mansur Nuriddin’s 1973 album Hustlers Convention – recorded under the alias Lightnin’ Rod – is considered a keystone of rap and hip-hop, its assimilation of funk, jazz and street poetry hugely influential on subsequent generations of artists, from Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel to Chuck D and Wu-Tang Clan. It follows the story of two brothers (Sport and Spoon) and their attempts to survive in inner-city New York, serving as a wider commentary on the black experience in ’70s America. Hampered by legal issues and bad management, the album stiffed on release, its reputation growing over time thanks to word of mouth and the patronage of famous admirers. Nuriddin never received the wider acclaim he deserved as a result, although Mike Todd’s Hustlers Convention documentary (executive produced by Chuck…

ROXY MUSIC Avalon (1982) It’s the first record I paid for with my own money, aged 11. I knew about Roxy Music from watching Top Of The Pops, which was a ritual each week – sitting having teas on knees and suddenly something pulls you out of the room into another world. From the opening chords of this record I was transported. It wasn’t a record to dance to exactly, but I wanted to move to it. There is a sadness too. My father had just died and I felt comforted by the sound of Brian Ferry’s voice, maybe. I guess I found it evocative and hopeful in an unknowable way. It’s a feeling that I’ve been looking for ever since. SUFJAN STEVENS Carrie & Lowell (2015) Sufjan’s songwriting is…