Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2016 i UNCUT

DO ALL YEARS seem like this when you reach a certain age, or is the death toll of 2016 thus far just a terrible and weird anomaly? At some point in the past month, contemplating the losses of Merle Haggard, Tony Conrad, Phife Dawg, Keith Emerson, Dennis Davis and Steve Young, among too many others, I found myself asking that question rather forlornly on Twitter. There followed some discussion about the way social media creates clusters of bereavement, as forums collect and amplify overlapping expressions of grief. But people also pointed out the size of the baby boomer generation, now beginning to enter their seventies, and the vast contribution they have made to the culture of the last half-century. Here at Uncut , I hope we’re assiduous in celebrating that…

I’M YOUR FAN “Karl is a true treasure of the Pacific Northwest. He has an artist’s heart. His singing is soulful and more people will hear it now in the context of these gorgeous old songs”LAURA VEIRS “I WOULDN’T WISH my back catalogue on anyone,” says Karl Blau with a wry chuckle. The 42-year-old indie outlier from Anacortes, a fishing town north of Seattle, has by his own reckoning made at least one album for every year of his life. Though a handful were released officially on Knw-Yr-Own and K Records, around 30 have been issued via his own Kelp Lunacy Advanced Plagiarism Society subscription service. The styles range from folk to dub, electro to R&B and most points in between. Now Blau – perhaps honouring Hunter S Thompson’s maxim:…

“I had all the great writers of the ’60s writing my songs. It was an amazing time to be in rock’n’roll” “I HAD VERY humble beginnings,” explains Ronnie Spector. “So to have a No 1 record, to get in your car or whatever or go to a radio store and you hear your record, it was like, ‘What?!’ You’re in shock.” Spector is rightly proud of the peerless run of hit singles she recorded as a member of The Ronettes during the ’60s – “Be My Baby”, “Baby, I Love You” and “Walking In The Rain” among them. But Spector also speaks fondly about the other records to bear her name – recorded with a little help from the likes of George Harrison, the E Street Band and Joey Ramone.…

WHICH ALBUM DID George Martin consider to be the “most difficult... but also most rewarding” of his career? Revolver ? Sgt Pepper ? Abbey Road ? No… Apocalypse by jazz-fusion giants Mahavishnu Orchestra. And it presented some serious logistical problems, as guitarist John McLaughlin ( below ) explains: “The job was monumental. There was a full symphony orchestra and a loud electric band. We realised very quickly that it would be impossible to record all of us in the same studio. Within a day, George organised two-way video-and-sound between himself in the control room, Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, and Mahavishnu in another studio in the same building. This was 1973! I…

“OVER the years, I’ve been collecting examples of where intuition fails. I’ll give you just one. Suppose God decided to make you a gift of the Earth. Let’s imagine that the Earth is a perfect circle. He wraps it in a nice big ribbon to give it to you. But because he didn’t get the measurement quite right, he made the ribbon a yard too long. But because he’s God, he can make it hover above the surface of the Earth so it distributes the slack evenly. What would your intuition be about how far off the surface of the Earth that 25,000-mile long ribbon made one yard longer would be? “The answer is nearly six inches. The size of the object itself, whether it’s the Earth or a football,…

“It was amazing when Elvis covered it, especially because I had been doing his stuff for so long”TONY JOE WHITE KEY PLAYERS TONY JOE WHITE has come a long way from the cotton fields of northern Louisiana. Last year, he was flown out to Russia to play at a lavish private party frequented by supermodels and hosted by a man who refused to reveal his identity even to his musical hero. “It was probably one of the first times swamp music had ever been knocked out over in Russia like that,” White laughs, recalling his trip. “But they treated us like kings, anything you wanted was the best. “Twelve men kept the host surrounded at all times. We never did get to see his face or shake his hand, but…

“I WENT TO England in November, 1975. That’s when I first saw Dr Feelgood at Hammersmith Odeon. I brought the second LP, Malpractice , back to New York in the New Year of ’76. Chris and Debbie had a big party for my return in our loft on the Bowery. It consisted of anyone you can imagine that was on the New York scene at the time: Johnny Thunders, the Ramones, Richard Hell, Jerry Nolan of the Dolls. We played the Dr Feelgood record most of the night. No-one had heard of them much, so it was kind of inspiring. They were an influence in that they were a very successful band playing a minimal type of music in a basic way. How influential was the band’s…

BEFORE writing Head , Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafelson took The Monkees into the country for a weekend of stoned conversation. The plan was to tape everything, then turn the recordings into a script. “We went to Ojai, north of LA, smoked dope, drove golf carts and told each other funny stories,” says Nesmith. “We weren’t writing a movie, we were hanging out.” They began to write and Bob got pensive. Jack asked what the matter was. Bob says he was thinking of the darkest thing on the planet. Jack said, ‘What is the darkest thing on the planet?’ Bob said, ‘Victor Mature’s hair.’ Jack said, ‘That’s it, the whole movie takes place in Victor Mature’s hair’. It’s the sort of thing you say loaded at…

“WE PUT THE visual thing together before we’d recorded a note of music,” Rowland says. “I had the idea for the cover, that I’d wear those colours – ‘Ah, things’d be great in pink and blue.’ So I got that fabric made in them.” Sean Read tries to define the new Dexys look. “Broadly speaking it’s ’30s, ’40s swish American chic. It’s Hollywood, but parts of it are from working-class America: jeans, jean jackets, hunter and workwear.” Rowland worked closely with London stylist Jason Jules on the clothes that introduce Let The Record Show . “I said, ‘Jason, is it weird that we’re doing the cover before the music?’ And he said, ‘No, you’re just getting dressed for work.’ I didn’t want it to be an afterthought to the LP.”…

ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS I Am A Bird Now SECRETLY CANADIAN, 2005 An album about shedding one’s own skin, I Am A Bird Now remains a masterwork. The cover – of Warhol star Candy Darling on her deathbed – referenced an earlier New York scene, but luminous mini-operas “For Today I Am A Boy” and the Boy George-assisted “You Are My Sister” inhabited their own unique wavelength. ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS The Crying Light ROUGH TRADE, 2009 If I Am A Bird Now felt introspective, The Crying Light looks outwards, drawing associations between transgender identity and the natural world (notably on “Everglade”). With composer Nico Muhly onboard, the sound is broader, touching on Southern soul with “Aeon” and…

9BACH Anian REAL WORLD Third full-length from Welsh-language folk-rockers 9Bach’s Anian picks up where their award-winning second, Tincian, left off: Lisa Jên’s ethereal voice still swoops beguilingly over Martin Hoyland’s expansive arrangements, fusing harps, dulcimers and guitars with dub beats, loops and pounding bass. “Yr Olaf” sounds like Kate Bush conducting a Druidic ceremony, there’s an intriguing Middle-Eastern vibe to “Cyfaddefa”, and “Ifan” is a hauntingly lovely piano ballad. Unless you speak Welsh, you’ll have no idea what Jên is singing about so winningly; fortunately, there’s a second disc which finds the likes of Peter Gabriel, Maxine Peake and Rhys Ifans offering re-interpretations of the songs for a non-Welsh-speaking audience. NIGEL WILLIAMSON ARBEIT SCHICKERT SCHNEIDER ASS BUREAU B Inter-generational dronetronica fest from Germany They worked hard to get that acronym…

PETER BAUMANN Romance 76 VIRGIN, 1976 Setting out his stall as a romantic visionary, the 23-year-old Baumann released his debut solo album the same year as Tangerine Dream’s Stratosfear . The rippling arpeggios of “Phase By Phase” suggest he had most sway in TD at this time, while Side Two’s darker, quasi-classical “Meadow Of Infinity” blends voice, timpani, strings and synth to mesmeric effect. LEDA Welcome To Joyland METRONOME, 1978 This eccentric disco cash-in found Baumann assuming the alias of Hacoon Mail to produce an LP of glittery Europop that drew on the success of Moroder’s From Here To Eternity and his Donna Summer smash “I Feel Love”. No-one knows what became of Leda, but in “Endless Race” and the title track she…

Still Life Of Citrus And Slime is the arresting title of the solo debut by Charles Moothart (recording as CFM), otherwise best known as chief songwriter for power trio Fuzz and crucial collaborator for both Mikal Cronin and Ty Segall. Having worked with that talented duo, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Moothart was itching to go solo himself, but instead he insists that the record was more of a “personal challenge and a mental release. I needed to sort some things out in my head and in my life, and creation was the perfect way to do that. I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could complete a song and do all the singing.” Written at home alongside Fuzz’s II , Moothart…

For most of us, it’s hard to envisage working your way across the United States with something as apparently unwieldy as a six-foot-tall harp. For Mary Lattimore, however, it’s become second nature. “It’s definitely an unusual thing to take on a road trip, like a giant pet,” admits the Philadelphia-based harpist, “but it’s just part of life now. My mom has been a professional harpist for years, so I’ve watched her move it around since I was a kid. “Recently, I got interviewed for a public TV show and they wanted to get a shot of me lugging the harp up the stairs, awkwardly, and I thought, shit, that’s totally not necessary, it’s just promoting a cliché that it’s a cumbersome, impractical classical instrument. It’s not flattering, that shot. It’s…

Where does your fascination with concept albums come from? It gives you a drive to make music. I wouldn’t want to make the same record over and over again. Before we’ve started every record we’ve always had a little idea or a little direction. That’s always been the motive, to figure out the pathway to get to that end point. With all the repeating refrains and cut-ups, how was it structuring the album? It was a nightmare, but we got there in the end. A lot of it was stitched together digitally, as it was the only way I could figure out how to do it. But there are quite a lot of tape edits in there. I think it’s my favourite album we’ve done. I kind of hate it…

In 25 years, this is your first solo album under your own name – what changed? It got to the point where I’ve had so many names over the years that I needed to simplify it. It’s hard enough trying to build one name in the current musical climate, but building up 20 names over the past 25 years has not been the best game plan – it’s confusing. At first the record was going to be quite avant-garde electronic and experimental, but it evolved into more melodic pieces with different emotions. How did “You Wash My Soul”, the collaboration with US folk singer Linda Perhacs, come about? I’d heard she was working on the follow-up to her 1970 album, Parallelograms , which is one of the…

IT’S REMARKABLE HOW TV themes can transform an artist’s fortunes, especially when it comes to True Detective. The acclaimed first season of the HBO drama took “Far From Any Road”, an obscure Handsome Family tune that was already over 10 years old by 2014, and hoisted the cult duo onto the international stage. Within months, and umpteen millions of social media hits later, the song had been co-opted by Guns N’ Roses as intro music for their world tour and, altogether more impressively, achieved the ultimate pop culture accolade by fetching up on an episode of The Simpsons. For a band who align themselves to the decidedly uncommercial world of Doc Boggs and Harry Smith, it wasn’t bad going at all. A similar fate befell Lera Lynn last year. She…

Schmoltz THE AFFECTIONATE PUNCH , DISC TWO A punky tune veers left when MacKenzie starts warbling about frankincense and myrrh and things he wishes he’d said. Michael Dempsey: “That was with Mel Gaynor, of Simple Minds, on drums. We waited all day in the studio for Mel to turn up. It was one of those quirky songs that Billy and Alan had written a long time earlier.” And Then I Read A Book SULK, DISC TWO A frenetic song which opens with a burp, while MacKenzie murmurs absentmindedly to himself about cleaning his shoes and the drawbacks of having a wooden leg. Intriguing, if unfocused. MD: “I’m sure we released that before. It was part of our live set – there are various versions of that. It’s on a Peel…

How did this whole process come about? Warners found out that all of the tapes [ for my albums ] were in lockers in London. My friend Matt Block flew to London, went to the lockers, looked up and there’s a row of tapes going across the room, all these two-inch tapes… He took them to a studio, played them, and voilà , came up with 24 different pieces. He called me and said, “Did you know about all this?” I said, “Well, I know we did a lot!” Do you remember recording the material? We were in the studios for a couple of months. It’s not until you hear it that it all comes rushing back. We were mixing country style, R’n’B, rock’n’roll, a…

Andy Partridge on his Fuzzy Warbles demos and dream career “I should have been an architect,” says Andy Partridge, comparing the detailed demos on his reissued Fuzzy Warbles series to scale models of buildings. “I like to find out as much as possible about a song before it gets near an expensive studio.” As a result, almost none of the demos on Warbles sound like scratchy workings; there are even some gems, such as “Wonder Annual”, that Partridge wishes had made it onto XTC albums proper, along with some songs rejected by other artists. “I’m thinking of putting out a series that the insensitive bastards haven’t done!” he laughs. “I’ve got four albums of those ready to go.”…

ROB TYNER Blood Brothers R&A, 1990 Like all the MC5, Rob Tyner toiled in the shadows for years after their split, before finally resurfacing. Blood Brothers , cut just before his death in 1991, is a bit too generic hard rock, but its charms – many rabble-rousing testaments to the power of music, social unity and an unforgettable, heartfelt MC5 tribute (“Grande Days”) – still make it irresistible. WAYNE KRAMER The Hard Stuff EPITAPH, 1994 Of his many comeback LPs, this best signals Kramer’s eventual re-engagement with the MC5’s radical roots. Backed by Long Beach punks Claw Hammer, overflowing with slash-and-burn guitar, his musical approach is as if the Stones were still gutting it out for small change on the mean streets. SONIC’S RENDEZVOUS BAND City Slang…

FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS OPENS MAY 6 Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant star in Stephen Frears’ biopic of the American socialite and opera singer. Simply mahvellous, dahlings! JOHNNY GUITAR OPENS MAY 6 Welcome re-release for Nicholas Ray’s exemplary Western pitting Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden against the wrath of the town folk. GREEN ROOM OPENS MAY 13 Backwoods horror film, with a punk band under siege from neo-Nazis lead – of course – by Patrick Stewart. Reviewed in Take 227. WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT OPENS MAY 13 Tina Fey’s broadcast journalist takes up an assignment as a foreign correspondent in Kabul. Margot Robbie and Billy Bob Thornton co-star. X-MEN: APOCALYPSE OPENS MAY 18 Marvel’s X -franchise reaches its ninth film, as more guys in costumes beat up some…

My favourite live album The Red Devils King King 1992 Rick Rubin decided to record this album live, at a [Los Angeles] club called King King. It’s blues, but almost like blues played by Nirvana. It’s just raw! Lester Butler, the singer and harmonica player, is so underrated. The Red Devils were such a brilliant band, and this is my favourite live album, ever. John Leckie showed us it while we were making Butterfly House – he was just like, “This is the best live album, ever.” It blew me away, and I’ve listened to it ever since. A big influence on The Coral’s new album Hawkwind Warrior On The Edge Of Time 1975 I had these heavier tunes, but I was looking for a more original way to do…

BRIGID MAE POWER Brigid Mae Power TOMPKINS SQUARE A collection of ethereal showstoppers from a remarkable new Irish singer, pitched between Tim Buckley and Kate Bush. PAUL SIMON Stranger To Stranger VIRGINEMI Reunited with veteran producer Roy Hallee, Simon’s revelatory 13th solo album employs African woodwind, Peruvian drums, electronic rhythms and unusual bespoke instruments created by Harry Partch. BOB DYLAN Melancholy Mood COLUMBIA A beguiling first shuffle from Fallen Angels , as Bob delves into the Sinatra songbook once again. In wonderful voice, too. WILLIAM TYLER Modern Country MERGE The Nashville guitar explorer takes a turn into country motorik, with help from a new band that includes Wilco’s Glenn Kotche. VARIOUS ARTISTS Loma: A Soul Music Love Affair LIGHT IN THE ATTIC 4CD treasure trove of the…

HIGH ON A mountainside on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, overlooking a valley leading down to the ocean, stood a recording studio. George Martin, who’d built it, liked to let his hair down when he made albums there. Within reason, that is. The famously suave producer, renowned for his cut-glass accent, had a well-known distaste for rock’n’roll excess. His routine at AIR Montserrat was much more civilised: every evening at 6pm, a gin and tonic was brought to him by a butler in a white jacket. Martin, an immaculate dresser himself, would relax in shorts and flip-flops. “You could walk out of the studio, take three steps and you’d be in a swimming pool,” says Midge Ure, who recorded at AIR Montserrat in the ’80s. “It was a glamorous, luxurious…

TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN (BY STRATEGY) 1974 Like The Ship , Eno’s second solo album is a loosely themed concept album. Inspired by a book of postcards of a Chinese opera of the same name, Taking Tiger Mountain… found Eno mulling topics ranging from espionage to the Communist revolution in the company of former Roxy cohorts Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay. DISCREET MUSIC 1975 Eno’s contribution to the Obscure Records catalogue, this ambient classic began life as a project to provide backdrops for some Robert Fripp live shows. There were only 10 albums released in the Obscure series; Eno’s own Music For Airports was meant to be the 11th, but he started the Ambient series instead.…

THE MONKEES COLGEMS, OCTOBER 1966 Recorded in July 1966, this was mainly written by Boyce and Hart, plus Brill Building stalwarts Goffin and King. Boyce and Hart’s template was a typical Beatles album. “Last Train To Clarksville” was their first US No 1. HEADQUARTERS COLGEMS, MAY 1967 The Monkees doing it for themselves, stripped down and full of energy. Essentially a period garage rock album, thanks to ravers like “No Time” and “Band 6”, though Nesmith’s “You Just May Be The One” brings a touch of country and Dolenz’s “Randy Scouse Git” is a minor classic. PISCES, AQUARIUS, CAPRICORN AND JONES LTD COLGEMS, NOVEMBER 1967 Fine psych-pop, with Dolenz’s Moog enlivening “Daily Nightly” and “Star Collector”. These experimental moments sit well beside pop classics “Words” and “Pleasant Valley Sunday”, while…

MOST SATURDAY AFTERNOONS, Kevin Rowland travels from London to St Albans to visit his elderly Irish parents. He has learned a lot about music during these trips, he explains. “I’ll bring an iPad with me,” he says. “I’ll put YouTube on and say, ‘Anything you wanna hear?’ They’ll say, ‘Oh, can you put that song on there?’ ‘Yeah, I got it.’ “It’s so easy to fuck things up,” he considers. “To ruin a beautiful song with one little thing, like a drum beat that’s too busy. My parents are great for that. Sometimes I’ve played them different versions of old Irish songs and they’re very fussy about what versions they like. My dad goes, ‘I can hear that.’ He means there’s too much going on. My mum’ll go, ‘I don’t…

COVERING DERRY SONGWRITER Phil Coulter’s “The Town I Loved So Well” – a proud, nostalgic lament for a hometown which became a major military outpost during the Troubles – Rowland drew on his own upbringing. “I thought about Derry, and I thought about my own town I loved so well – Wolverhampton when I was eight or nine – through the early part of the song. And then later on, I felt and thought about the Troubles.” It transpires Rowland has been working with a singing teacher since 2010, who also shares his interest in “feel and groove”. On the folk song “Curragh Of Kildare”, she questioned the “repetitive” melancholic melody. “I like to talk to someone about it, then figure it out on my own, walking around the park.…

“The record is multifaceted and at times embodies more conflict than solution” THIS IS A very different-sounding album to much of your previous work with Antony & The Johnsons. Can you explain about how and when you came across your collaborators Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never, and why you decided to work with them on Hopelessness ? I collaborated with Dan [Lopatin, Oneohtrix Point Never] on a remix for “Swanlights”. Then I did a vocal for his remix of [Oneohtrix Point Never track] “Returnal”. We became friends and decided to make a record together. We did a few of the tracks before I met Hudson, who I also began collaborating with. Hudson sent me some amazing demos, which formed more than half the songs on Hopelessness,…

HALF A CENTURY ago, Eric Clapton’s instrumental prowess was forged in the fiery cauldron of Cream, the guitarist forced to battle for space with two equally gifted, ferociously combative egos. The result was that when he grasped the spotlight, he held onto it for dear life, pursuing improvisational threads with the delirious focus of a Coltrane, drilling deeper and deeper into a solo until the actual song was left far behind. It was a mode which, executed with formidable technique, acquired him the unwelcome nickname “God”, and it became a reliable backbone of live performances through subsequent decades. But look back at Clapton’s solo career and you’ll notice that virtually from the start, he was drawing back from that kind of excessive, egotistical approach, keener instead to serve the song.…

Matt Ashton, The Leaf Library’s mastermind, happily admits Nightlight Versions wasn’t an obvious direction for his band to pursue following last year’s acclaimed Daylight Versions . “Put me in a rehearsal room with a guitar,” the former member of Peel favourites Saloon confesses, “and I’ll always come back to Stereolab, The Smiths and Radiohead.” But though he adds that he’s constantly on the lookout for fresh musical avenues, Nightlight Versions ’ genesis was nevertheless somewhat fortuitous. “Some tracks on the original were built from guitar loops I’d recorded at home,” he explains. “We re-recorded them through a lovely big amp, and it was while listening to these echoing around the room that I decided I wanted to hear them as…

“‘It’s a very complete opinion’ is my favourite expression about this record,” Beth Orton tells Uncut cryptically, the 45-year-old a past master of the art of baring her soul while giving remarkably little away. Pieced together slowly over a chassis of keyboard loops manipulated by Fuck Buttons’ Andrew Hung, Kidsticks is a reinvention of sorts for Orton, who rested her acoustic guitar and rediscovered something of her old self. ”I loved Blondie, Japan, punk and Talking Heads,” she says, recalling re-engaging with the sounds of her childhood, and creating “without the baggage, without the sense of who you should be”. While the title evokes “making music in the most rudimentary fashion, having fun, hitting things”, Kidsticks is very…

Teho Teardo (pictured, above right) and Blixa Bargeld (left) are in their respective workspaces, beaming into the same virtuality via Skype, talking about Luis Buñuel and cinematic structure. Once you hear their second collaboration, the seductively dark Nerissimo , these metaphors make sense, but not in any glib, ‘soundtrack to a non-existent film’ way: here, the interest in cinema goes to the music’s core. “You’ve just noticed something that is not quite unimportant in this collaboration,” Bargeld says. “When we work with music, we talk very often about film. When we talk of editing, we very often refer to camera movements. It’s a typical theme in our collaboration.” “Especially when it comes to song structure,” Teardo continues. “This is absolutely connected because of the way we…

What made you go for a more experimental approach this time around? The plan was to just try different things, which meant that the record ended up taking on a style and sound of its own. Joshua and I had a clear vision of the production style and the approach to the instruments. For example, we didn’t want to use a drummer because we didn’t want the muscle memory of it. We wanted something that was very simple instead. So that was me in a lot of instances. I’m not a drummer, but I can lay down a beat. There seems to be a lot of break-up songs with hard metaphors of guns and arrows… I was thinking of the double-edged sword of love, these gifts that are meant to…

Bob Dylan continues to pretend he never existed, delving into the Great American Songbook on his follow-up to Sinatra covers set Shadows In The Night – featuring pre-rock standards such as “Melancholy Mood”, Fallen Angels is reviewed in the next issue. Paul Simon returns with his first album in five years, Stranger To Stranger , while Martin Fry follows up ABC’s solid-gold-lamé debut with The Lexicon Of Love II . Dexys’ covers set, Let The Record Show , is also imminent, along with the unsurprisingly epic new album from Swans, The Glowing Man – the last for this lineup, says Michael Gira. As intriguing, though significantly younger, Steve Gunn…

Tom Waits [ below ] returns to the fray, starring in a new TV series, Citizen , on the streaming service Hulu. Waits is set to play a priest named Cesar. At his church in Boyle Heights in east LA, he runs a guerrilla humanitarian operation, which is described as “legally dubious”. Robin Pecknold’s studies at Columbia University, and the solo success of Josh Tillman as Father John Misty, seemed to have put an end to Fleet Foxes. However, it seems they may be planning a return. Guitarist Christian Wargo revealed that he and Pecknold talked about getting the band back together while at Joanna Newsom’s recent LA show. “None of us really knew it was coming, but it’s happening,” he told…

1 DEXYS Curragh Of Kildare “The winter has passed and the summer’s here at last,” begins Kevin Rowland on the suitably seasonal intro to a taster from Dexys’ first album in four years. Alas, even the merry chirp of birds in trees can’t lift Rowland’s sunken heart on this soulful update of the traditional Irish tune that’s perhaps best associated with Christy Moore. 2 DANIEL ROMANO Valerie Leon The Canadian polymath rings the changes on his new LP, ditching the most recent countrypolitan stuff for hyperreal psych-pop and orchestral cinerama. This homage to the age of the pin-up – named after the actress of Hammer Horror, Carry On and Bond movie fame – feels like a brassy union of Lee Hazlewood and vintage Morricone. 3 BEN WATT Gradually Pentangle-meets-Crazy Horse…

“I STARTED WORK at EMI in January 1964 when I was 16. A month later, The Beatles came in to record the music for A Hard Day’s Night . I harangued the engineer, Norman Smith, to let me watch. They were my favourite band. They were everyone’s favourite band. Norman told me to keep to the back of the wall, because they don’t like strangers, so be cool. I go in there, and I start taking pictures with my camera. I can’t remember which song they were doing, but Paul said, ‘Everyone come down [ into the studio ] to clap.’ There were quite a lot of Hard Day’s Night film crew there, and they all went…

“One thing that I learned when we read about Brian back in the ’70s was the games he’d play in the studio. They became fundamental to my philosophy in the studio. Brian tried that a few times and I flipped out. Everyone else was going, ‘Oh, yeah. This is fantastic. I know exactly what to do.’ It’s like I was dyslexic. He gave everybody a card. It was on the second album we did together [ High Life ], when we were writing in the studio. He said, ‘Everyone take one of these and we’ll see what happens next.’ I was seething. We went to this café to have something to eat and I was going, ‘Oblique fucking Strategies? I don’t fucking know what the fuck this is…

BETWEEN 1974 AND 1976, Blondie played over 30 shows with Da Bruddas, including 17 at CBGB’s. “We had a shared sensibility,” says Chris Stein. “There was different camps in the CB’s scene. There was the art rock camp – Television and Patti Smith and maybe later the Talking Heads – but there was this pop rock crowd that was us and the Ramones and The Fast. We just fitted in with those guys.” Both bands had shared influences – Phil Spector girl groups, comic books and science fiction among them. “It’s a sociological thing,” explains Debbie Harry. “You grow up, all these influences sink into you. Then you come out with a statement, or series of statements, of how you’re interpreted all this into your life. I loved the Ramones!”…

“I DIDN’T REALLY know Debbie until we made Polyester . The title song is Debbie singing with Tab Hunter. I remember the day they recorded together; it was old wave meets new wave. Debbie and Chris really helped me when I was doing the music, and that’s probably why Bill Murray joined up and sang a vocal when I didn’t know him. Debbie and Blondie’s name certainly attracted people to us. Michael Kamen did one of his first scores for that movie. “I knew Debbie totally got what we were doing. She always seemed to be on the right side of everything I believed in. But she could appeal way outside of whatever musical or sexual minority; Debbie was as far as I know straight, but she…

JIMI HENDRIX WAS the opening act for The Monkees’ 1967 tour. This, it transpires, was Micky Dolenz’s idea. He’d seen Hendrix play and welcomed the chance to introduce him to the Monkees audience. “It was very strange and wonderfully ironic when Hendrix opened for us,” says Nesmith. “Micky hired him. I’d seen him, but it never occurred to me to hire him, but I was thrilled we did, because I got to watch him every night. I’d put on a disguise and go down the front. Our crowds didn’t have any idea what he was doing. They were obsessed with the TV show. Hendrix, one of the greatest live performers of all time, was over their head.” “It was a train wreck,” confirms Bobby Dick of support band The Sundowners.…

WITH A NEW album, This Path Tonight, and a new partner, Graham Nash is happier at 74 than he has been in years. “I’m in a very good place now,” he tells Uncut. “I am totally in love with this woman, and I’m [creatively] on fire, and I hope the album shows it.” Here, looking back over his half century in music, Nash recalls other good times with his many illustrious collaborators – from cutting beat hits with The Hollies in London, to revelatory singing sessions with David Crosby and Stephen Stills in Joni Mitchell’s Californian living room. However, Nash has found himself newly energised by This Path Tonight, only his sixth solo album, and is clearly looking forward to future work on his own. “There won’t be any more…

IN 2003, DEXYS Midnight Runners – yet to shorten their name – reformed for ecstatically received shows built around a Best Of album, Let’s Make This Precious . But Don’t Stand Me Down’s follow-up took nine more years. “I was like, ‘You know what – I need some money’,” Rowland says of the reunion’s initial impetus. “I went to this guy and said, ‘Remind me this is about money, if I start getting ideas...’ But when we got everyone together and I started to get to the music, I was thinking, ‘OK, keep it simple, just do it.’ Then I thought, ‘No, no. The music shouldn’t go that way, it should go this way. No, that’s not right.’ It completely re-ignited my passion. The thing I needed the money for…

TRACKLIST THUNDER (VOL. 1) 1 The War On Drugs – Touch Of Grey 2 Phosphorescent, Jenny Lewis & Friends – Sugaree 3 Jim James & Friends – Candyman 4 Moses Sumney, Jenny Lewis & Friends – Cassidy 5 Bruce Hornsby & DeYarmond Edison – Black Muddy River 6 Ed Droste, Binki Shapiro & Friends – Loser 7 The National – Peggy-O 8 Kurt Vile & The Violators (feat:J Mascis) – Box Of Rain 9 Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Friends – Rubin And Cherise 10 Perfume Genius, Sharon Van Etten & Friends – To Lay Me Down 11 Courtney Barnett – New Speedway Boogie 12 Mumford & Sons – Friend Of The Devil 13 Lucius – Uncle John’s…

You used the Dadaist cut-up technique on the first song. How does that work? After writing mainly about relationships and heartbreak, I wanted to try a new approach, to look outward into the world, rather than inward. I put together collages, using pages from history books, newspapers and old National Geographics . I’d literally cut them up and look for words that were beautiful and inspiring, and then find relationships between the words, and create stories based on those relationships. The lyrics here seem to be less personal, less about heartbreak – is that right? Yes and no. I’ve realised that your personal life doesn’t have to be in a shambles to have material for lyrics – that’s not a sustainable songwriting model! But a lot of…

Plenty of good stuff on the way, not least an eponymous fourth album from much-admired Texan, Robert Ellis (pictured left). Self-produced in Houston, its June release is presaged by the aching, bluegrass-scented single “Drivin’”, co-written with Angaleena Presley. Also due that month, on Yep Roc, is Life In The Dark , the latest from The Felice Brothers. Details are still a little sketchy, though James Felice has told Delaware Online that “we recorded it ourselves in a garage, so it’s completely live. It’s probably a little more rough around the edges, but it’s a little, beautiful, personal record of songs that Ian [ Felice ] wrote.” Meanwhile, look out for June albums from The Avett Brothers (the Rick Rubin-produced…

“It felt like we were recording someone else’s songs,” admits Dr Dog’s Toby Leaman of the intriguing decision to revisit the material from a never-officially-released cassette recorded by the band as young pups back in 2001. “You’re treating your own songs like they’re covers and 15 years later, everything looks different. You have carte blanche to do whatever you want with them.” The original Psychedelic Swamp had its roots in an experimental, neophyte recording between Leaman and Scott McMicken, plus Doug O’Donnell, who left in 2004, but rejoined for the project in order to consummate the sense of having turned full circle. McMicken describes the 2001 version as a “janky, lo-fi incoherent presentation” that was not so much an album as “a statement about the band’s…

New York singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright’s new album, Take All My Loves , a series of interpretations of Shakespeare’s sonnets, was recorded last year, but has really been 14 years in the making. The seed was planted in 2002 when the late composer Michael Kamen asked him to contribute to a compilation album of sonnets, and sprouted shoots in 2009 when theatre director Robert Wilson requested songs for a staging of the sonnets at the Berliner Ensemble. Three of these appeared on Wainwright’s 2010 LP, Songs For Lulu . “I thought that these were off-the-cuff projects,” he says. “I didn’t expect them to turn into anything bigger. But at concerts, people just kept wanting to hear them.” Wainwright got his first taste of the Bard…

SCORING: THE ORIGINAL ALBUM 10 Masterpiece 1 Poor! SCORING: EXTRA MATERIAL 10 Untold riches 1 Barrel-scrapings TRACKLIST THE AFFECTIONATE PUNCH CD1 1 The Affectionate Punch 2 Amused As Always 3 Logan Time 4 Paper House 5 Transport To Central 6 A Matter Of Gender 7 Even Dogs In The Wild 8 Would I… Bounce Back 9 Deeply Concerned 10 A CD2 1 Boys Keep Swinging 2 Mona Property Girl 3 Schmoltz* 4 Green For Grief 5 Geese 6 Saline Drips 7 Galaxy Of Memories 8 Double Hipness 9 Big Waltz (aka Paper House) 10 Janice (aka Deeply Concerned) 11 You Were Young 12 Bounce Back (Remix) 13 A (Remix) 14 Amused As Always (Remix) 15 The Affectionate Punch (Remix) 16 The End *PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED FOURTH DRAWER…

“It keeps coming back to community,” Vivien Goldman reflects, talking about her 1979 single “Launderette”, now compiled, alongside her Flying Lizards and Chantage collaborations, on Resolutionary (Songs 1979-1982) . “Back then, I went out in the street, there was a village, you’d see loads of people you knew, go off and have a coffee. But I’ve seen this in London and New York, the gentrification and the one-per-centification of everything, it’s harder to create those communities for artists coming up now.” The community around Goldman was a who’s-who of post-punk London, with dub, punk and prog figures all in on the fun – from members of PiL and The Raincoats to Robert Wyatt. “It was just a sound I wanted to hear,” she continues. “On ‘Launderette’, I…

I SAW THE LIGHT Director Marc Abraham Starring Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen Opens May 6 Cert 15 EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! Director Richard Linklater Starring Blake Jenner, Glen Powell Opens May 13 Cert 15 KNIGHT OF CUPS Director Terrence Malick Starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett Opens May 6 Cert 15 OUR KIND OF TRAITOR Director Susanna White Starring Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgård Opens May 13 Cert 15 SUBURRA Director Stefano Sollima Starring Pierfrancesco Favino, Greta Scarano Opens May 13 Cert 18…