Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2019 i UNCUT

“I THINK there used to be this inferiority complex among British jazz musicians, that we were never going to be as good as Americans,” says guitarist Shirley Tetteh. “We’ve stopped worrying about that now. We know we’re not American. We don’t have to worry about how legitimate we are. We are playing in our own accent, using our own influences.” From Hackney to Peckham, from Streatham to Camden, London is currently making some of the world’s most compelling jazz, featuring a young, diverse range of musicians. Nérija, a predominantly female seven-piece group, all in their twenties, are right at the centre of this musically promiscuous scene. All of its members play in multiple outfits: four of them are also members of the 10-piece Seed Ensemble, two play in the afrobeat…

When did you know there would be a follow-up to No Cities To Love ? The seeds were planted in terms of the awareness that us returning to music and touring again was something that felt relevant and necessary, not just externally, but internally as well – that there was a sense of urgency and necessity within each of us. And that had definitely been fulfilled, particularly with the touring; we looked out onto the audience and we saw both people who had clearly known about us and perhaps seen our shows in the first iteration of the band, but also younger fans who’d just discovered us with No Cities To Love . Obviously we appreciate fans across the spectrum, but that was so rewarding, to realise there was a…

INSPIRED by “family, friends and Tim Berners-Lee,” Suryakant Sawhney founded Delhi’s Peter Cat Recording Co, after time spent in San Francisco revealed that making films was more expensive than anticipated. “I changed course towards music,” he says, “which I found cathartic for how instantly it can be created and how inexpensive that can be, drugs and alcohol excluded. Considering I spent my adolescence in a suburb of Delhi, Gurgaon, which sucked my soul dry, I was thus saved.” Now a quintet – “There were others before, but I don’t think there will be more” – they’re part of a growing wave of Indian acts playing traditionally Western pop and rock, alongside, among others, Peacefrog’s Parekh & Singh and, he recommends, “all the artists on the Pagal Haina label”. His band…

MODERN NATURE How To Live BELLA UNION 8/10 Ultimate Painting’s Jack Cooper heads for the hills with like-minded pals. By Sam Richards ANYONE who lives within the cosseted confines of a big city will understand the fascination with those mysterious slivers of heath or woodland where nature seems to breach the dull, concrete hegemony. In 2017, Jack Cooper moved out of central-ish London to the edge of Epping Forest, near Hollow Ponds. Like many before him, from Jacob Epstein to Damon Albarn, he was inspired by the area’s strange dualities: an ancient woodland hemmed in by suburban sprawl, a Site Of Scientific Interest that’s also a notorious murder hotspot. Cooper was seeking to decompress after an intense period in which he released six albums in six years with his bands…

HOW did a nice boy from Canada end up in the Pink Fairies? I was playing part-time in a strip club in Vancouver. A friend from high school wrote to me from England telling me to come over to London. He was living with a band called the Deviants above the Shaftesbury Theatre and they were looking for a guitar player. I thought what the heck, and moved into Mick Farren’s flat above the theatre. We went on a tour that started in Vancover. The promoter claimed he didn’t have the money, so we had to work out how to get back to the UK. An old beatnik friend of mine was a friend of Chet Helms from the Family Dog, and he said to come down to California. Mick…

GOMEZ Liquid Skin UNIVERSAL 8/10 Fêted-then-forgotten Southport swamp bluesmen reappraised UNDERRATED? Overlooked? Hang on, you may say. Gomez’s 1998 debut Bring It On won the Mercury Prize, beating now-canonical albums by Massive Attack, Pulp and The Verve. The follow-up, 1999’s Liquid Skin, made No 2 and went platinum. The Southport-based quintet were no stranger to magazine covers and starred on the soundtrack of American Beauty. All true enough, but in the years since, seldom can a “major” act have been lost in action and wiped from collective memory so totally. We last heard new music from the band on 2011’s Whatever’s On Your Mind, but by then few were still paying attention, although the group had been steadily touring the US. There was never any formal announcement that Gomez had…

September might be the most exciting month in any year for new releases, and this one doesn’t disappoint. There’s Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, returning with solo album Jamie , Devendra Banhart back with Ma and Bat For Lashes following up The Bride with Lost Girls . Chrissie Hynde, Hiss Golden Messenger and Moon Duo are also promising new LPs. The archive schedule looks pretty fine too, with Miles Davis’s lost Rubberband seeing release, along with reissued and unearthed material from Stereolab, Stray Cats, Prefab Sprout and Manu Chao, whose global hit Clandestino celebrates its 21st anniversary. TOM.PINNOCK@UNCUT.CO.UK…

“WHEN I got asked to produce Mac, I didn’t hesitate. I just loved the combination of New Orleans smoke and funk, and this otherworldly voodoo stuff he brought to it. It was unique and special. The first time I ever met him, I arranged to pick him up at Toronto. The plane arrived, but there was no Mac. After a while, a man came out, showed me his Mounties badge, and said they were holding Mac out back. He was on the methadone programme at the time, and he’d brought his methadone with him. He had a prescription, but they couldn’t let him in. “They detained him for quite a while. Eventually, they brought him out of the customs hall in his full regalia, with his floppy hat and bandana,…

“THERE’S a heron who keeps shitting on my rock,” says Joan Shelley as she sweeps away white crumbles from the face of a large boulder. She’s standing on the banks of Harrods Creek, which runs through the singer-songwriter’s tree farm in rural Kentucky, just a few miles from Louisville. This particular rock is important: nearly every morning she makes the long hike from her house to this spot, which sits at the bend in the creek and affords beautiful views in either direction. It’s secluded, except for the occasional, impolite heron. It’s quiet, too, except for the persistent burble of water and the occasional birdsong in the trees. Sometimes Shelley brings her dog, Dwight Lightning, who resembles an Ewok and is good, patient company during her thoughtful sojourns. “There are…

IT is meant to be an auspicious night for The Who. Gathered on stage at New York’s cavernous Madison Square Garden, the band are playing the biggest show so far of the most significant Who tour this century. Alas, not for the last time this evening, things aren’t quite going according to plan. The intended tour debut of “I Can See For Miles” grinds to a halt after only a few bars, as rhythm guitarist Simon Townshend inexplicably finds himself without guitar. Roger Daltrey looks on nonplussed. Pete Townshend, meanwhile, is pointing meaningfully at Daltrey behind his back, and miming one of Stan Laurel’s head-scratching meltdowns. “Here, Roger,” he asks innocently. “Have you seen Stan & Ollie?” But perhaps such hiccups are only to be expected, even for staunch tour…

EVER since Kenney Jones’ post-Moon Who tenure, numerous musicians have passed through the band. Some, such as noted bassist Pino Palladino, who stepped in after John Entwistle’s 2002 death and stayed ’til 2016, have been all but full-time. All the same, they’ve existed in a sort of limbo, their names not quite above the door, though they can be found serving behind the bar most nights. “Yeah, that’s weird,” says Zak Starkey, when reminded that he’s been on the drumstool nine years longer than Moon. “But without Keith Moon it’s not really The Who, is it?” A thoughtful pause. “Yes, OK, it is still The Who now. But for me there’s only one Who and that’s them four guys. The real Who had John and Keith in it. That’s the…

MOST of Blue Note’s great albums were recorded by Rudy Van Gelder, an optometrist who loved jazz. Van Gelder originally built a control room in his parents’ living room in Hackensack, New Jersey, but in 1959 he moved to a high-ceilinged modernist space inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright at Englewood Cliffs. Although the romantic concept of jazz is of improvised sessions captured almost by chance, bands would actually rehearse for a few days before recordings, while Van Gelder was meticulous about his techniques. He was particularly gifted at capturing drum sounds and getting a warm, intimate vibe. “Rudy’s engineering appears very simple but is quite sophisticated, and he really created a sound that puts you right in the middle of the action,” says Don Was. “We are remastering for vinyl…

SKY ATLANTIC 10/10 SEASON 3 of Sky Italia’s sensational mafia drama ended with the death of the show’s most charismatic character. Fans were shocked, disraught, anxious. Since its 2014 premiere, Gomorra – based on Roberto Saviano’s “investigative novel” about Naples crime syndicate The Camorra – had been, in terms of performances, writing and direction, at least the equal of HBO groundbreakers like The Wire and The Sopranos. Where would it go from here? Would it even survive without one of its key players, much loved even if he was a cold-blooded killer, loyal only to his own ruthless ambition? So much happens so quickly in Season 4, however, the character is barely missed. The show effortlessly goes up a gear, discovering new levels of suspense, tension, paranoia, approaching calamities. It…

“Pete would have loved seeing all the old Buzzcocks together on stage”STEVE DIGGLE WHEN Pete Shelley died at the end of last year, Buzzcocks had already sold half the tickets for a June headline show at London’s Albert Hall. Rather than cancel, the remaining band members decided to turn the event into a tribute to their late frontman, with a bevy of special guests filling in on vocals: Thurston Moore, Peter Perrett, Tim Burgess, Captain Sensible and Dave Vanian of The Damned, Richard Jobson of The Skids and Pauline Murray of Penetration. Behind them, original Buzzcocks John Maher and Steve Garvey tag-teamed with the band’s current incarnation in a touching link with the past. “It was quite a punky thing, with all the guests,” says Steve Diggle. “A lot of…

SLEATER-KINNEY The Center Won’t Hold MOM + POP ALBUM OF THE MONTH 8/10 Fury, love and St Vincent: the now drummerless band’s powerful ninth. By Sharon O’Connell SOMETHING of a survivalist drive has sustained Sleater-Kinney over their 25 years as a band. Together, Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss have braved the hardships of their early days in Olympia, Washington, as well as the inevitable stresses of growing fame in the 2000s. They even weathered a decade apart, returning triumphantly in 2015 with No Cities To Love , which showed that, despite approaching an age at which it’s often judged unseemly for women to still be making rock music and with multiple successful parallel careers, Sleater-Kinney had lost none of their focus, nor any of their righteous, feminist post-punk…

It borrows the qualities of its forebears and fuses them into something new Twelve Nudes BELLA UNION 8/10 A 26-minute blast of ‘passionate negativity’ proves highly therapeutic. IF self-help is often all about positive thinking, Ezra Furman has another idea: that there might instead be fulfilment in the opposite, in airing one’s worst thoughts. Indeed, Twelve Nudes, the songwriter’s eighth album, explores this with a blistering spin through anxiety, pain and socio-political ills du jour – from the insurance industrial complex (“My Teeth Hurt”) to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (“Rated R Crusaders”) and sexual assault (“Trauma”) – sung over scrappy rock anthems. When the world around us goes to shit, Furman suggests, screaming is sometimes the only sensible response. In many ways, the LP is the 32-year-old singer, songwriter and guitarist’s…

“I’m more confident in my ability now – musically, vocally and songwriting-wise,” Rosalie Cunningham says, discussing the end of her proggy, psych band Purson and her new career as a solo artist. “A couple of years into Purson I started thinking, ‘OK, anytime now I’m going to have to start again under my own name.’ Things came to a head at the end of 2016 – we were in a management deal that we weren’t happy with and the only way out, seemingly, was to break up the band.” She describes 2017 as “a real down year for me”, but the time out has resulted in the multi-instrumentalist’s finest work to date, with echoes of McCartney on “Butterflies” and The Man Who Sold The World -era Bowie on “Nobody Hears”.…

Losing their bassist and being reduced to a duo could have been unsettling for Follakzoid, a group who have always recorded live in single takes. However, guitarist Domingae Garcia-Huidobro says it was a welcome challenge: “We are all about losing the in-room excitement. Recording in one take was never as energetically dense as our live invocations.” With the kind of quasi-metaphysical reasoning you might expect from someone who’s aim is “darkening the light”, they add that “the sonic platform is designed to perceive gravitational frequencies and modulate them in order to activate the crypto-chromatic receptors in our eyes with the purpose of achieving a simultaneous state of matter and dissolution. In this era, the time machine travels through stillness.” It seems producer Uwe Schmidt was on board with this, although…

FERNANDO FALCÃO Memória Das Águas/Barracas Barrocas SELVA DISCOS 9/10, 8/10 Exiled Brazilian experimentalist finds his métier in France LIKE so many Brazilian artists and musicians of his era (and this one too, sadly), Fernando Falcão was deeply affected by the political turbulence in his country. Yet as Selva Discos’ enthralling reissues of two of his three little-known albums demonstrate, the circumstances and results in his case were quite different than they were for the heroes and heroines of Tropicália. In the eventful year of 1968, Falcão was a young poet and musician living in São Paulo who participated in actions against the military regime. When his role in a bombing made him a marked man in the eyes of the authorities, his older brother spirited him to France. There, Falcão…

AARON Neville is attempting to describe the vacuum left by the passing of Dr John. In the end, he resorts to the language of the elements. “We’ve lost one of New Orleans’ natural resources,” says Neville, a fellow Crescent City legend. “He’s irreplaceable. He could outplay just about anybody on the piano. He took it to another level, much further than New Orleans. I don’t care where you were from, he was going to hit your soul. It was natural, effortless, like he wasn’t even trying. He drew pictures with his music. You could see it, not just hear it, and you could taste the gumbo! I can’t explain it. Mac was the man – and he’s irreplaceable.” Rarely has any musician been so inextricably entwined with the sound, the…

“IT was a genius idea of Kit Lambert’s to get Pete to write a rock opera,” Roger Daltrey recalls, “’cos he was from a classical background. His father was a founder of Sadler’s Wells, and he said, ‘Rock could be much more than three-minute singles.’ And Pete writes in a classical form. He writes like Purcell. He works on the drone, an orchestral way of doing things. And the chord structures he uses and his melodies are just a perfect backdrop for adding an orchestra to it. It’s an arranger’s dream. David Campbell adored doing Tommy Orchestral.” The Who’s current tour conductor Keith Levenson (right), who did the same work on Tommy Classical, is certainly impressed by Townshend’s amateur classical credentials, which he traces back through many of The Who’s…

IT’S been five years since Ride reformed, and according to guitarist and vocalist Mark Gardener, the creative energies sparked by this momentous event are as strong as ever. “When you still have the creative magic, you can just come back and create good music, and I think that’s what’s happened,” he explains. “We could just enjoy the Ride thing again, which is a hell of a thing to be inside.” The quartet have met up to discuss the brand-new This Is Not A Safe Place LP – their very fine follow-up to 2017’s reunion album, Weather Diaries. They’re also taking Uncut through all the records they’ve produced during their career, including 1990’s shoegaze classic Nowhere, which gave their engineer a nervous breakdown and angered a Del Amitri-loving next-door neighbour, and…

VARDA BY AGNÈS OPENS JULY 19 The French auteur reflects on her life behind the camera. HORRIBLE HISTORIES: THE MOVIE – ROTTEN ROMANS OPENS JULY 26 Derek Jacobi reprises his role from I, Claudius . Scenes! THE CURRENT WAR OPENS JULY 26 Prestige electrical drama with the Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison. FAST & FURIOUS: HOBBS & SHAW OPENS AUGUST 1 Spin-off from the series about car chases. At this point, presumably you’re either in or you’re not. THE CANDIDATE OPENS AUGUST 2 Spanish thriller about a local politician embroiled in a corruption scandal. OLDBOY OPENS AUGUST 2 Chan-Wook Park’s big guy! Back in cinemas with his hammer. GAZA OPENS AUGUST 9 Amazing doc about the residents trying to lead normal lives in the inhospitable Gaza Strip. NOTORIOUS OPENS AUGUST 9…

ROKY ERICKSON Psych-rock avatar (1947–2019) “IT’S almost unfathomable to contemplate a world without Roky Erickson,” declared superfan and fellow Texan Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. “He created his own musical galaxy.” As frontman of the 13th Floor Elevators, the Austin renegades he co-founded in 1965, Erickson was the untamed proto-punk with the howling voice who embodied the raw essence of the first wave of psychedelia. The band issued three studio albums, though debut single “You’re Gonna Miss Me” remains Erickson’s defining moment. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in the late ’60s, Erickson’s subsequent recording career was hampered by bouts of mental illness. He became more visible in later years, collaborating with Mogwai, The Black Angels and Okkervil River (who backed him on 2010’s True Love Cast Out All Evil).…

RORY REMEMBERED Your recent Rory Gallagher feature [July issue] was a poignant take on a fundamentally shy and perhaps lonely musician. However, it awakened fond memories of the many times I saw him live in the ’70s around northern venues such as Leeds Uni and Newcastle City Hall. Endlessly on tour, he would take to the stage armed with his battered Strat and a full bottle of Southern Comfort to deliver a two-hour set of dynamic blues rock. It was always an exciting event, including the coach trips to get there and the pre-gig drinks with mates. As soon as you entered the venue you could feel the love between Rory and his bedenimed and check-shirted army, and the delight would soon start to show all over his sweat-soaked face…

WHEN Stash De Rola first met Brian Jones at the Paris Olympia in 1965, there was an immediate rapport. De Rola, a Swiss-born aristocrat with a love of rock, was playing with Vince Taylor’s group and he remembers the Stone watching their set from the wings. After the show, the pair went partying, with De Rola introducing Jones to both Anita Pallenberg and Donald Cammell. “We discovered we shared the same defiant outlook,” says De Rola. “We both had this reckless, never-reach-25 attitude.” De Rola remained close to Jones until the latter’s death in July 1969. The anniversary is marked by a new book, Butterfly In The Park, featuring photographs by Michael Cooper selected by his son, Adam. De Rola and Donovan are among those contributing memories of Brian Jones…

“After years of making records, I’ve finally made one people might like” KAVUS TORABI DESPITE displaying the nerves of steel required to bag six world championship snooker titles in the 1980s, Steve Davis is petrified by the prospect of his live debut with psychedelic prog outfit The Utopia Strong. “I’ll be as nervous as a kitten,” confesses the 61-year-old, who’ll play synthesisers at the London show in September alongside bandmates Kavus Torabi (Cardiacs/Knifeworld/ Gong) and Michael York (Téléplasmiste/Coil). “It’s like the dentist’s waiting room for me – a journey into the unknown. But I’m with two pros, so I’ll go with the flow.” For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to the recent antics of the veteran snooker star, this might sound fairly ridiculous. But Davis is a serious head…

1 MODERN NATURE Footsteps The second track on How To Live, the debut from the collective led by Jack Cooper of Mazes and Ultimate Painting, is a propulsive delight. Mixing krautrock with a pastoral air and jazz sax, it’s as if prime Talk Talk have gone motorik. 2 JOAN SHELLEY Cycle The latest from one of American folk’s finest talents is a worthy follow-up to 2017’s self-titled album. “Cycle”, co-produced by the skilful James Elkington, is a highlight. 3 SLEATER-KINNEY Hurry On Home Their lineup might have been shaky, as we’ve now discovered, but there’s no wobble in this ferocious track from Sleater-Kinney’s new The Center Won’t Hold. “You know I’m… unlovable, unlistenable,” spits Carrie Brownstein. Full review on p18. 4 NÉRIJA Unbound Strong stuff from…

TYLER CHILDERS Country Squire HICKMAN HOLLER/RCA 8/10 Kentucky’s latest emergent star proves his worth IT’S been a steep ascent for Tyler Childers over these past couple of years. Co-produced by Sturgill Simpson and David Ferguson, 2017’s official debut Purgatory brought him to the attention of Nashville’s country community, not least for its vivid depictions of common struggle in rural America. It led to an invitation from the Grand Ole Opry, a concerted run of live dates supporting the likes of Simpson, Margo Price and John Prine, plus the Emerging Artist Of The Year gong at 2018’s Americana Awards. Childers’ appeal is easy to understand. His background in Eastern Kentucky (he hails from the same neck of the woods as Simpson, Loretta Lynn and Chris Stapleton) allows him to reframe the…

The multi-instrumentalist and producer on hooking up with reggae greats THREE years ago, Zak Starkey and his singing partner Sshh recorded an electro version of “Get Up Stand Up”. It set in train an improbable sequence of events. “The track led to us being invited to play at the opening of the Peter Tosh museum in Jamaica,” Starkey says. “We stayed on with the idea of doing a blues record, Jamaican style. It all added up, because the early ska artists covered American R&B tunes.” After recording Red Gold Green & Blue with a string of reggae greats, Starkey and Sshh found they were “having so much fun we couldn’t stop”. They recorded a second blues record, cut an album with Rasta singer Jesse Royal, then another with veteran toaster…

“We wanted to bring out whatever its natural characteristics were, and make those sound as good as possible,” says Andy Zax, the LA-based co-producer of Woodstock 50 . Zax and engineer Brian Kehew acted as sonic midwives when giving the old sounds new life, utilising cutting-edge restoration techniques. “James Clark at Abbey Road had developed a really interesting new process called de-mixing,” Zax explains. “It lets you take a mono recording and pull multi-tracks out of it. It’s crazy, magic-level stuff.” The process was key to restoring a mediocre-sounding  mono reel tape of Ravi Shankar’s performance. “James was able to extract the sitar, the tabla and the tambura in three distinct tracks, which we used for the new mix,” Zax says. Though the details of reviving 34 performances and a…

“I FIRST heard ‘Gilded Splinters’ when I was a teenage runaway, and it had a big impact on me. Now, on his last album, I sing it with Mac, doing a lot of weird sounds. So it has come full circle. We first met in 1978, the year before I was signed. [ Producer ] Tommy LiPuma sent Mac to hear what I was all about, and he and I became friends and hung out. That first day, we went directly round back of A&M Records, to a piano in a bungalow, and I sang ‘Since I Fell For You’ and ‘My Funny Valentine’. We were pretty intertwined. He came to my dad’s for Mardi Gras gumbo, with Tom Waits and Chuck E Weiss. We drove around that summer in…

ON “Teal”, a standout on Like The River Loves The Sea, a bouquet of voices bursts out on the bridge, their harmonies so tight it almost sounds psychedelic. That moment represents a mini-reunion of what in retrospect looks like a Louisville supergroup. Shelley formed Maiden Radio with local singer-songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Julia Purcell and Cheyenne Marie Mize 10 years ago, as a means to explore traditional Kentucky and Appalachian music. Together, they released three albums, including a collection of songs with no known writers and a collection of lullabies. Their third – and to date final  – album, Wolvering, was recorded during a blizzard in Michigan. “Maiden Radio,” says Purcell, “was born out of a mutual love for singing harmonies and a fascination with Appalachian traditional music. It was always…

BLUE Note’s glorious cover art was the work of designer Reid Miles, who spent nine years at the label between 1958 and 1967. Miles was a designer at Esquire and had worked for Prestige but had no great love for jazz. He was hired when the label began to produce 12” albums, something that required an update on the 10” sleeves designed by Paul Bacon, a jazz lover and book designer whose Blue Note albums included Monk’s The Genius Of Modern Music. Both Bacon and Miles used photo by Francis Wolff. “Reid Miles did most of those great covers with Francis, who shot those great images of the artists and blank walls, great clothes and cigarette smoke,” says current Blue Note president Don Was. “That’s also responsible for a lot…

IT’S a chilly night in late October, and the drive-in cinema in Paramount, California, is deserted. Security guards patrol the entrance, but there are no cars in sight and the movie showing – a Frank Sinatra thriller from 1968 – is hardly a Marvel blockbuster. Just over the wall, out of sight, Quentin Tarantino is at work on a quiet scene from Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, his ninth film. He’s been shooting for four months now but has only just started to relax into the process. Logistically, the film has been a stressful undertaking, closing down stretches of Hollywood Boulevard and taking swathes of Westwood back into a bygone era. Today’s date in the movie’s world, he explains, is February 9, 1969. “We might be the last production…

No longer so alternative, the festival behemoth still conjures moments of strange magic IT’S simple cultural physics: when something reaches critical mass, it naturally starts to fragment. Take Glastonbury. Once the ravers had to hang with the blanket stall browsers to get their kicks; now they’re sequestered into their own dance village. The folk-punks and country strummers used to command the odd Pyramid Stage afternoon slot, now they’re kettled in Avalon. The dreamers stick to The Park, and the freaks cram into Block9 so tight that the curious can’t get a look in. They’ve even given Billy Bragg his own stage to avoid him popping up all over the shop. This multitude of choice is what makes Glastonbury great, but inevitably, as it grows, its spirit of interlacing communities and…

MARIANNE & LEONARD: WORDS OF LOVE In 1968, Nick Broomfield, holidaying on the Greek island of Hydra, met Marianne Ihlen – the on-off lover of Leonard Cohen and the subject of his then-recent song “So Long Marianne”. The pair kept in touch – she encouraged his attempts at documentary-making – and it is this long-distance friendship that forms the basis for the director’s latest project. As anyone who’s seen Broomfield’s films on, say, Kurt Cobain or serial killer Aileen Wuornos will know, this kind of poignant story is not normally Broomfield’s joint. As a consequence, Marianne & Leonard: Words Of Love feels like a very different film. Most evidently, Broomfield does not himself appear, as is customary in his films, with a boom mic and a set of headphones round…

LIVE IN MONTREUX 1973 EAGLE ROCK 7/10 CAROLE KING was already well established as a songwriter and solo artist before she finally played her first overseas gig. This was in 1973 – when, flushed from the success of Tapestry, King released her follow-up, Fantasy. A concept album, the record finds King imagining herself as a number of different characters as they navigate both urban and suburban living. In “Haywood”, for instance, the narrator warns of the trappings of heroin addiction, while another stands on the side of civil rights activists in “You’ve Been Around Too Long”. Elsewhere, “A Quiet Place To Live” outlines the domestic goal of an impoverished city denizen, while “Corazón” reflects the vibrancy of US Latino populations. Backed by an all-star cast of jazz players, who formed…