Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i UNCUT

Jake Xerxes Fussell “I’ve always liked music that expresses optimism and sadness” How did you end up working with James Elkington for this record? We’ve become friendly in the past couple of years. I played a run of shows with him – maybe four or five around the Midwest. We enjoyed traveling and talking about music together. He puts out records on the same label I do, and I love his records – the production quality and the arrangements. I didn’t know if he was working with a really hotshot producer or something, but as we got to know each other, I realised that he’s the producer and arranger. He’s very self-deprecating, but he’s a really brilliant producer. What was the studio like? We worked at this little studio here…

Wilds PHOSPHONIC 8/10 IT’S unfortunate that The Soundcarriers are so identified with ‘hauntology’, the term coined by Simon Reynolds to describe what he referred to as “ghostified” music. While it’s unquestionably invited and warranted, this emphasis on the Nottingham band’s expertise at evoking a bygone era, as well as the technical manner in which they do so, focuses the spotlight on their historical influences. Prioritising style over their substance does the quartet few favours, however, because it makes it harder to think of them as a ‘living’ band. The reality is that while they may raise ghosts from the past – among them producers from the 1960s and early 1970s such as Joe Meek, David Axelrod and Serge Gainsbourg – The Soundcarriers are considerably more substantial than they are spectral.…

IT’S perhaps unsurprising that the debut from Uèle Lamore – who’s already earned a reputation in France, where she lives, as a composer, producer, conductor and arranger – should seem so stylistically wide-ranging. “I come from rock and jazz,” she explains, “and later I studied classical music, so my DNA will always be more indie, synth and guitar-driven music. The thing that classical has taught me is to write and think in a different way. It really gave me so much in terms of artistic openness.” Consequently, concepts of genre were of little concern when she entered the studio. “I just went with my ideas without any concessions,” she recalls. “It all felt pretty natural to me. One of the things that I kept thinking was, ‘Just trust your gut, give…

Optimism NO QUARTER 8/10 IT seems simple enough on the surface. “Baby, there ain’t no clouds,” Jana Horn sings blithely on the title track of her debut album, voice as clear as a mountain stream. “Baby, there ain’t no crying, or figuring this thing out”. However, for all of the promise of blue skies, sunshine and one-word answers, there’s something profoundly inscrutable about Optimism, a curious deep-fake ‘folk’ record which smacks of Broadcast, hippy Donovan, Julia Holter, Syd Barrett and the more wistful bits of The Cure while retaining an odd, metallic taste entirely of its own. By the time you’ve realised that her pond has no bottom, it’s already too late. Raised in a strict Baptist household in Glen Rose, not too far from Dallas, Horn tells Uncut that…

Antique Glow THIRD MAN 8/10 WHEN Kelley Stoltz moved to San Francisco at the start of the millennium, he intended to record an album with his flatmate, a drummer. But after his friend began to take more of an interest in the bars than his bass drum, Stoltz took matters into his own hands. He taught himself to drum and acquired a Tascam 388 eight-track reel-to-reel tape recorder. He wedged his mic into a half-open drawer for a mic-stand and when he needed bass, he detuned his guitar. But the coup de grace was a huge old two-deck keyboard loaded with effects that he found for $50 in a Salvation Army charity shop and wheeled home on a skateboard. He dubbed it his “granny organ”. Using this rudimentary gear he…

The Motown Anthology REAL GONE MUSIC 7/10 THE writing was on the wall for Mary Wilson long before “Reflections”, The Supremes’ 1967 hit, and 13th consecutive million-seller. It may have been the first single where the name of the group on the label was prefaced by the words “Diana Ross And…”, but lead vocal opportunities were already scarce – Wilson was afforded the middle-mic spotlight on just three tracks from the trio’s previous half-dozen albums. Yet, even when Motown founder Berry Gordy stepped back from overseeing the trio three years later to focus on the departing Ross’s solo career, Wilson continued, to a degree, playing second fiddle to Ross’s replacement, Jean Terrell. She’s front and centre for two big-hitters from the post-Diana era, trading verses with Terrell on 1971’s “Floy…

TITLE: Ants From Up There LABEL: Ninja Tune RELEASE DATE: February Free-ranging septet up the ante on successor to debut For The First Time TYLER HYDE: “The things we’d spoken about before making the album were the use of this repeated motif. That was created in the song ‘Basketball Shoes’, which we’ve been playing for a long time. Basically, we wanted to make something more conceptual, where every song seems like it exists in the same realm, which the first album didn’t have. There’s an attempt to make something that’s universally accessible and hopeful and uplifting. Even if at times it seems sad, there’s glimmers of hope in all of it, I think.” LEWIS EVANS: “A lot of Ants From Up There was written before we’d actually released the last…

THE pictures on the front of the first two Big Thief LPs were poignant snaps from Lenker’s family album, while the next two featured contemporary photos of the band, huddling ever closer together. On Dragon…, the band are still there – but depicted as cartoon animals playing songs around a campfire. “It’s a drawing Adrianne made a long time ago when we couldn’t come up with a T-shirt,” explains Krivchenia. “We never used it but kinda loved it. It feels like a kid’s drawing. It’s coming from these covers which are photos of us looking like cool musicians… It’s still us, but we’re just these funny animals.” But who is who? “I’m probably the dinosaur,” reckons Meek, “because when I sleep on the bus, I’m infamous for making really weird…

A multitude of Bobs bemuse and beguile as the neverending troubadour gets back in the saddle “IT’S good to play at a university,” Bob Dylan practically yells to the crowd at IU Auditorium, “where people still think for themselves!” It’s a rare and startling bit of stage banter from the legendarily circumspect performer, but he seems genuinely excited to be back on the road and playing these songs. This is the fifth stop on his Rough And Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour, breaking his longest hiatus from live performance since the mid-’80s. Lit from beneath with white lights that make the floor of the stage look like the final scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, he sings and pounds the upright piano with renewed vigour, his voice sounding clearer on…

Email letters@uncut.co.uk. Or tweet us at twitter.com/uncutmagazine LET THE DEBATE BEGIN! Thank you, Uncut, for another exceptional end-of-year round-up. Your Top 30 reissues were spot on – Can, Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, Alice Coltrane and Laura Nyro! Who could argue with that lineup? I suppose the Top 75 new albums is more subjective. There were a lot of records absent from your list that I would have chosen – but what I appreciate, year in and year out, is the sense of discovery I get from your Top 75. Thanks to Uncut, I was up to speed with many of them – but I’ve spent a very happy few weeks since my subscriber copy landed not bothering too much with what wasn’t included but instead enjoying a load of new…

“IT starts in a leafy suburb in north London – and ends up going to hell and back!” Ray Davies is telling Uncut about his new project, the BBC radio musical Lola Versus Powerman, based on The Kinks’ 1970 LP. “When I made the album all those years ago,” he recalls, “I did a sketch storyline, and I wanted to write about the stories going through my head. Now it’s about a songwriter who’s made a pact with the Devil, partly inspired by a 15th-century morality play called Everyman. It’s about his struggles with demons. I steered away from The Kinks’ story – I wanted to make it a story that everybody could relate to. It describes how I was having a slight mental breakdown at the time.” Davies’ fragility…

“I robbed the Ku Klux Klan and went to jail” IT’S not every day you speak to somebody who was arrested for holding up the KKK at gunpoint, but there aren’t many people like Abiodun Oyewole. We’re ostensibly discussing his new record, Gratitude, but it isn’t long before he is recalling some of the hair-raising moments from his past. “People were calling me a revolutionary but I hadn’t done anything,” he says of his early days with The Last Poets. “I hadn’t shot anybody, I just wrote some damn poetry. I wanted to do more, so I began to get involved with social activity and that led me to North Carolina, where I robbed the Ku Klux Klan and went to jail.” It’s been that sort of life for Oyewole,…

1 ROB ALDRIDGE & THE PROPONENTS Mind Over Manners We begin this month with a slice of out-there Americana from Alabama’s Rob Aldridge and band. Jason Isbell is a fan, and former Drive-By Trucker Rob Malone is on lead guitar, but there’s also an air of Wilco circa Yankee Hotel Foxtrot about the title track of their new LP. 2 CAT POWER A Pair Of Brown Eyes On her latest selection of covers – reviewed at length on page 22 – Chan Marshall tackles songs by Frank Ocean, Jackson Browne, Bob Seger, Billie Holiday and more. Here’s her inventive, electronic version of a Pogues classic. 3 EELS The Magic Mark Everett’s latest album as Eels, Extreme Witchcraft, sees the songwriter reunite with producer John Parish for the first time since…

“And sunk her in the low and lonesome water/And he sunk her in the lonesome sea” Good And Green Again PARADISE OF BACHELORS THE centrepiece of Good And Green Again, the ingenious and soulful new album by North Carolina-based folk musician Jake Xerxes Fussell, is “The Golden Willow Tree”, an epic story-song about the sinking of a ship. Combining lyrics and melodies from various folk tunes – including a song by The Carter Family and another by a North Georgia singer named Paralee McCloud – it’s an intricate tale of maritime espionage, of courage and conspiracy, betrayal and comeuppance, told over a dozen swashbuckling verses. Fussell recounts a sailor’s offer to scuttle his own ship to win the favour of a rival captain, depicting the event in grave detail: “He…

Mind Over Manners SELF-RELEASED 8/10 Potent second offering from rising Muscle Shoals quartet ROB ALDRIDGE isn’t familiar to most, but that’s no reflection on his talent. Having spent the last few years touring the American South and breaking onto the festival circuit, first as a solo artist and then heading up The Proponents, the Alabama native is finally starting to get noticed as a songwriting frontman capable of a gnawing hook and a finely weighted turn of phrase. Jason Isbell is a fan, having commandeered Aldridge and the band as the opening act on his recent swing through the state. And the connection to Drive-By Truckers is deepened by way of The Proponents’ lead guitarist Rob Malone, who left the former after 2001’s Southern Rock Opera, just prior to Isbell’s…

REISSUE OF THE MONTH 8/10 Music For Quiet Moments DISCIPLINE GLOBAL MOBILE/PANEGYRIC WHEN Robert Fripp’s Music For Quiet Moments started to appear with relatively little fanfare in May 2020, as a series of weekly uploads to YouTube and streaming services, their overall effect was one of balm. Moving through the digital ether, Fripp’s ambient soundscapes slowly drifted their way through a collective psychological environment grappling with the uncertainty of pandemic times. The series unfolded over a year, 52 weekly entries, each offering another aspect of an ever-changing same: Fripp performing live in various contexts, quietly testing out the possibilities afforded to him by music that drops the pretense of narrative and lets itself just be. He has, of course, been exploring this terrain for some time now, going way back…

Carambolage (reissue 1980), Eilzustellung-Exprès (1982), Bon Voyage (1984) TAPETE 8/10, 7/10, 5/10 “EVERYTHING changes when you change it,” as ’70s agit-punk band and North Frisia communards Ton Steine Scherben once advised. Frustrated drummer/percussionist Britta Neander took that to heart and left to form her own band in 1979, recruiting fellow resident Elfie-Esther Steitz as singer, guitarist and keyboardist, and Berlin émigrée Angie Olbrich as bass player. Carambolage – the French word for a pile-up – were part of the Neue Deutsche Welle and one of the scene’s very few all-female bands, building themselves a practice space inside an old grain silo, which was off-limits to the rest of the (largely male) community and pushing forward with their post-punk vision across three albums. The simultaneous, rather than staggered release of these reissues…

TITLE: To be confirmed LABEL: Fat Possum RELEASE DATE: To be confirmed Rejuvenation and a sonic reinvention of sorts COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS: “Last year, during the pandemic, I quarantined with a friend on the Cape, in Massachusetts. Spending time together in her seaside shack made me feel so inspired. I knew I needed to keep writing, so I asked my manager if there were any writing residencies nearby and we found one in Nantucket. I ended up living in this cottage for two months, finishing my poetry collection [Old Monarch] and writing new songs. It was such a mental saviour, to be somewhere new but also to be somewhere safe on this island. I wrote a song a day for 30 days, then decided to make a record with my friend,…

“WHAT I miss most about Moebi,” explains Hans-Joachim Roedelius, “is his weird kind of humour. Our partnership was very special, and based on the same roots as my solo work: curiosity, interest, friendship, love.” Across 40 years, multiple albums and collaborations with the likes of Michael Rother, Conrad Schnitzler and Brian Eno, Roedelius and his creative partner Dieter Moebius crafted the music of Cluster and helped define the sound and aesthetic of kosmische synth music. Moebius passed away in 2015, but Roedelius, now 87 and still prolifically composing and releasing music, is the eager guardian of the duo’s legacy, answering Uncut’s questions from his home in Austria. “The last year or so has been rather exhausting because of all the bad and difficult circumstances within the Covid situation – but…

Damon Albarn leads a tribute to the Afrobeat great as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival DAMONALBARN promised Tony Allen that he would hold a party at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate the drummer’s 80th birthday. Sadly, Allen died of a heart attack in April 2020, some 81 days short of attaining his four score years. This sprawling, warm-hearted tribute night is, in effect, that belated birthday party. Albarn called Allen “maybe the greatest musical influence of my life because of the simple depth of what he was teaching”. The Nigerian-born drummer was Albarn’s mentor in his transition from brattish Britpop urchin to the David Bowie of his generation, his subtle, polyrhythmic drumming underpinning Albarn’s restlessly cosmopolitan projects from Gorillaz to The Good, The Bad & The Queen.…

BIRMINGHAM Town Hall in March 1972, early in the Ziggy Stardust Tour. Commissioned by Men Only, Rock had pitched an interview after hearing “Life On Mars”. “David wasn’t very well known at the time, but I was completely fascinated with him,” Rock told Uncut in 2009. “We bonded immediately. All that happened afterwards came in the wake of that relationship. It changed my life.” Rock became his official photographer, documenting Ziggy’s meteoric rise, sealed by Melody Maker’s infamous shot of Bowie simulating fellatio on Mick Ronson’s guitar. He also served as his videographer, directing striking promos for “The Jean Genie”, “John, I’m Only Dancing”, “Space Oddity” and “Life On Mars”. The summer of ’72 brought Rock into contact with Lou Reed at London’s King’s Cross Cinema, his overexposed live portrait…

FOR as long as she can remember, Eve Adams has been drawn to the darkness on the edge of town. In her tender torch songs and fatalistic folk-noir ballads, the singer-songwriter inhabits an intoxicating twilight zone of romantic ruin and dreamy despair. Love is tortuous and fleeting, bluesy heartache just around the corner, and death forever lurking in the shadows. Growing up between her mother’s family farm in Oklahoma and her father’s LA base, Adams came to music young. “I’ve always loved to sing, since I was a little girl,” she says. “The first song I wrote was when I was around 12 and it was called ‘I’ve Seen It All’, which I find pretty funny. It’s so incredibly sad and I don’t know where the hell it came from!…

PLUS! NEXT MONTH, SUBSCRIBERS WILL RECEIVE A SPECIAL GIFT… Available exclusively with the March 2022 issue of Uncut, a five-track Hurray For The Riff Raff CD including two tracks from her forthcoming album Life On Earth SUBSCRIBE ONLINE AT MAGAZINES.NMENETWORKS.COM OR CALL 01371 851882 AND QUOTE CODE UCPRXMS21 LINES ARE OPEN MONDAY–FRIDAY 9AM–5.30PM NEW SUBSCRIBERS WILL RECEIVE THE CD WHILE STOCKS LAST - MAKE SURE YOU ORDER BY DECEMBER 21, 2021 TO GUARANTEE YOUR MARCH 2022 ISSUE. The CD is only available to print subscribers. Direct Debit offer is available to UK subscribers only. £20.99 payable by six monthly Direct Debit. This price is guaranteed for the first 12 months and we will notify you in advance of any price changes. Please allow up to six weeks for delivery of…

Aboogi CITY SLANG 8/10 IMARHAN have long been anointed as official heirs to Tinariwen’s desert-rock throne. Frontman Iyad Moussa Ben Abderahmane (aka Sadam) is the cousin of Tinariwen’s bassist Eyadou Ag Leche and has joined them as a touring member on occasion. The bond between the two bands continues on this album, with Tinariwen’s Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni and Mohammed Ag Itlale (aka Japonais) contributing guest vocals – the latter, poignantly, in his final recording session before his death in February. While the music Imarhan make draws from the same well, combining blues and rock with Tuareg folksong and its distinct flavour of “assouf” (which broadly translates as longing or solitude), they always set out to distinguish themselves from their forebears by incorporating poppier influences and appealing to a younger generation.…

Magma SDBAN 8/10 BELGIUM has been the butt of jokes from the Anglophone pop world for decades – Technotronic, the Singing Nun and some hilariously hi-NRG gabba acts being the country’s prime pop exports – but the Belgian jazz scene has a long and noble history. Artists as diverse as Django Reinhardt, Toots Thielemans, Philip Catherine and Marc Moulin have created varieties of jazz quite distinct from anything that was happening in the United States. Now in the Belgian vanguard are Black Flower, fronted by Nathan Daems, a multi-instrumentalist who started out on the violin and trained to a high level on several reed instruments at the Ghent Conservatory. But he was always looking for music outside the US jazz canon: playing guitar in avant-rock groups, playing various saxophones in…

“OUT Of The Grey was always the runt of the litter,” Steve Wynn tells Uncut. Released in 1986, the third album by the band Wynn founded in LA five years before was “the record of ours that got the least attention and love – sadly and unfairly from us as well!” But thanks to a remaster and three-disc expansion spearheaded by the group’s archivist Pat Thomas, Out Of The Grey may now get its due as another high point in the band’s tumultuous original run. At the very least, the new set counters the perception they were on the wane after getting dropped by A&M in 1985. “We were pretty fired up when we were coming up with these songs and felt determined to keep the band alive after nearly breaking up…

Chronicles: 60 Years Of The Chieftains CLADDAGH 8/10 PERHAPS it’s only now, with the passing of founder Paddy Moloney, that we can appreciate the enormity of The Chieftains’ achievement. Their longevity and profuse output (44 albums) are cause for celebration, but their real legacy is the transformation of Irish music from a backwater interest to a world-conquering force. It’s hard to understand, in an age when all things “Celtic” are a powerful strand in popular music, but when the Chieftains formed in 1962 – a collection of enthusiastic part-timers – Irish folk had little respect even at home. Inspired by the short-lived composer Sean O’Riada, who aspired to ally the beauty and mystery of folk with classical tradition, and with whom Moloney started his career, The Chieftains re-purposed their native…

TITLE: To be confirmed LABEL: Reprise RELEASE DATE: To be confirmed A veritable gold rush, spanning Neil’s entire career IT takes a certain amount of dedication to keep up with Neil Young’s activities these days, especially with the recent addition of the Official Bootleg Series to his already voluminous Archives. A post on Young’s website suggested that Early Daze, a collection of Crazy Horse-abetted outtakes and alternate mixes from the late ’60s and early ’70s, may finally be upon us sometime in 2022. Young has also slated Toast, a ‘lost’ album from 2000/2001, for release next year. Recorded with Crazy Horse and named after the San Francisco studio in which it was cut, Toast was, in Young’s words, “so sad that I couldn’t put it out”. Writing on neilyoungarchives.com this…

FLYING CLOUD RECORDINGS, WEST SHOKAN, NEW YORK STATE BUCK MEEK: “We wanted to be in an environment that felt like home, with old friends. The studio is in Sam [Owens, aka Sam Evian] and Hannah [Cohen]’s house in the Catskills, it’s built out of the upper living area. It’s very cosy. And Jan their puppy was there with us. The songs that we chose for there were the more down-to-earth songs.” SAM EVIAN: “Our place is simple, and that’s the beauty of it. It’s easy to focus on making art – and in the in-between moments, we cook, hike and swim.” JAMES KRIVCHENIA: “We were jumping in this freezing-cold mountain creek. Sam had built a little dam so you could plunge. Whenever it was remotely starting to feel a little…

FEBRUARY 1972. For these four Americans more used to the temperate Californian climate, London in the depths of winter was not the most propitious place to be. But the intense cold was not the only thing the Eagles had to contend with while they recorded their debut album at Olympic Studios. As guitarist Bernie Leadon recalls, “We’re really close to getting this one cut – ‘Just one more, come on guys!’ We get it, the final note is struck, and right as that ring-out decayed into nothing, the power went off. The machines all stopped. We went into the control room, because the talkback had cut out. Our producer Glyn Johns said, ‘Well, we’ll just have to listen to it tomorrow…’ It was a blackout, due to the strikes.” Viewed…

TITANE Truly deranged films don’t often come along these days – and when they do, you don’t expect them to win the exalted Palme d’Or in Cannes. That’s why Julia Ducournau’s Titane stands out as a wild exception; she’s also only the second woman to win the prize, 28 years after Jane Campion’s The Piano. Titane is the French director’s follow-up to her acclaimed, all-out feral Raw, a cannibal coming-of-age story. Heroine Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) has had a titanium plate in her head since childhood and now works as an erotic dancer at motor shows, while exploring a sideline in casual homicide. On the run after a sexual encounter with a car (this is all making perfect sense so far, right?), she disguises herself as a boy and forms a…

THE BEATLES: GET BACK DISNEY + 9/10 Three-part harmony: Peter Jackson docu-series tells a widescreen story of the Let It Be sessions. By John Robinson PETERJACKSON is a transformative film director. He’s turned New Zealand into Tolkien’s Middle Earth and (in his exceptional documentary They Shall Not Grow Old), remade the jerky, unrelatable figures in murky newsreel footage into the very real human combatants in the First World War. If we were to have believed the teaser trailer for his Beatles documentary, which arrived to cheer the world in high pandemic times, his latest project had done something similar: turned notoriously fraught Beatles sessions into a feelgood movie, their rapport undimmed, the band still essentially – save the long moustaches and the new girlfriends – the same loveable moptops they…