Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2016 i UNCUT

WITH EVERY DEATH of a hero now, there are new rituals to undertake. A trip to Youtube for a favourite song, a quick link across social media channels so that, as was the case with David Bowie a few short months ago, Twitter and Facebook become emotionally curated greatest hits streams. On April 21, a little stunned, I went on such a quest, ostensibly in pursuit of “The Ladder”, a song from my favourite Prince album (Around The World In A Day) which seemed sentimentally apposite for the moment. Like countless others, I was confounded: it was as if Prince had somehow erased his records from the internet’s sharing platforms, just as Radiohead made themselves disappear for a day or two at the start of May. The death of Prince…

I’M YOUR FAN “Whitney plays against every low-hanging-fruit move the music industry encourages. They’re tying their fate to their craft as a kind of protest against frills and bullshit” RUBAN NIELSON, UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA IT’S NO SECRET than many of country rock’s originators were urbane city boys who didn’t know one end of a horse from the other. But at least Whitney, the new rickety country-soul outfit led by former Chicago indie kids Max Kakacek and Julian Ehrlich, are making an effort to muddy their boots. “When we’re travelling across America we try to stay in National Parks,” reveals Ehrlich. “One night in Nebraska the wind was so crazy we had to tie our tent to the van so it didn’t blow away. We were in the middle of nowhere,…

“Bowiehelped meunderstand Lulu , Lou’s last work,which wasfilled withanger” “THESE DAYS, I’M the Artist Who Does Concerts For Dogs,” says Laurie Anderson. It is mid-morning in New York, and Anderson is considering this recent unexpected twist in her eventful career. Inspired by her latest project – an album and film called Heart Of A Dog – she has been performing a 20-minute piece specifically designed for the canine ear. “The only problem is it’s so much fun! People tell their dogs all week, ‘We’re going to a show just for you! You’re going to love it!’” She held the UK premiere in early May at this year’s Brighton Festival, where she was guest director. She also hosted another event there: Lou Reed Drones, an installation of her late husband’s guitar…

YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND – James Taylor ( MUD SLIDE SLIM , 1971): Taylor transposes King’s song of assurance from piano to acoustic guitar, smooths out every crease, and turns it into a fireside benediction. SMACKWATER JACK – Quincy Jones ( SMACKWATER JACK , 1971): The shuffling Old West storytelling of the bluesy original is transformed into taut, funky street soul, propelled by a monster bass groove. IT’S TOO LATE – The Isley Brothers ( BROTHER, BROTHER, BROTHER , 1972): A killer 10-minute reading. The slow, heavy, almost indecently funky verse yields to a tender chorus, with fluting falsetto and cascading piano. Great guitar, too. SO FAR AWAY – Rod Stewart ( IF WE FALL IN LOVE TONIGHT , 1996): The backing…

ON 7 APRIL 1978, a week before the release of the Grease soundtrack sent John Travoltamania spinning into its second phase, a debut album by a new artist on Warner Bros slipped quietly into American record stores. For You charted at 163 on the Billboard charts, a fair achievement for a 19-year-old who hadn’t yet done a national tour. But the startling thing about For You, even more impressive than the opening chorale of harmonised voices that all turned out to be the work of one person, was the amount of instruments he played. There were 27 of them. “Produced, Arranged, Composed and Performed by Prince,” the sleevenotes boasted. Alone, singlehandedly. Nobody else so much as rattled a tambourine. The young prodigy from the Mid-West was sold to black America…

FOR YOU 1978 For the first time the legend read, “Produced, arranged, composed, and performed by Prince”. For You was a typically bold statement from the then 19-year-old artist. He set out his stall on the debut single “Soft And Wet”: synth-y disco funk, introduced by the immortal line, “Hey, lover, I got a sugarcane/That I wanna lose in you.” His voice is largely a coy falsetto and the album’s prevailing mood is light soul, which doesn’t particularly indicate the musical accomplishments to come – though the one-man jam at the end of “Just As Long As We’re Together” is a clear highlight. PRINCE 1979 For You didn’t sell as well as hoped, so Prince’s second album foregrounds polished pop…

DIAMONDS AND PEARLS 1991 Prince’s 13th studio album was a welcome return after the gimmicky Batman and Graffiti Bridge (a bomb, though “the Question Of U” is excellent). The album introduced his latest backing band The New Power Generation – who upped the funk quotient considerably – and contained several Prince classics: “Cream” (his last US No 1), the soulful grooves of “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night”, the plush title song and “Thunder” – an uplifting, gospel-flecked one-man effort. Elsewhere, there’s the raw “Willing And Able”, apparently recorded in his dressing room on tour in Japan. LOVE SYMBOL ALBUM 1992 Introducing… the squiggle! The opening salvo in his dispute with Warners, this found Prince eschewing a conventional LP title – though he…

“I WAS HIRED IN mid 1984 as production coordinator on the Purple Rain tour. I’d been told, ‘Don’t look at him and don’t speak to him.’ So they sit me at a desk at the warehouse in Eden Prairie, Minnesota – where Prince has commercial office space and a rehearsal studio. Prince had to walk past me every morning to go to the rehearsal studio. I’d say, ‘Good morning.’ He’d look at me and eventually he’d say ‘Good morning.’ I progressed to ‘Good morning, how are you?’ and eventually he’d say, ‘Fine.’ One day he actually said, ‘Fine. How are you?’ “The tour was very intense – a lot of people, a lot of work. During preproduction we’d be in meetings with set designers and the lighting designer Roy Bennett.…

PAUL SIMON 1972 Simon’s first solo album found him embracing diverse musical styles – reggae, Latin and blues – in a variety of locations: Paris, San Francisco and Kingston, Jamaica. Highlights include “Mother And Child Reunion”, recorded with Jimmy Cliff’s backing band, and the playful “Paranoia Blues”. THERE GOES RHYMIN’ SIMON 1973 Backed on half the album by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, Simon’s second solo album featured nimble explorations of folk, gospel and Dixieland. A warm and engaging collection, it also contains “American Tune” – a powerful state of the nation survey written in the wake of Watergate, Vietnam et al. STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS 1975 Despite the headline collaboration with Art Garfunkel for “My Little Town”, Simon’s third is surprisingly low-key, addressing themes of lost love,…

EULOGISED IN case/lang/veirs’ “Song For Judee”, Judee Sill was perhaps the most tragic victim of the late ’60s Laurel Canyon scene, plummeting from abundant promise to ignominious death within just a few years. She was the first artist signed to David Geffen’s Asylum label, where her song “Jesus Was A Crossmaker” established her reputation as a songwriter of distinctive talents, but once the Eagles swept Geffen to commercial success, her umbrage at what she believed to be a lack of interest and promotion on his part led to their falling out after the appearance of her second album, Heart Food . Unlike most of the era’s hippy-chick or mother earth singer-songwriters, Sill’s talent was forged in harsh personal circumstances: both her parents died before she was out…

Hoagy Carmichael was a one-off, perhaps the most uniquely talented figure of his era THE ENGINE POWERING the Great American Songbook was the core of brilliant, prolific songwriters mostly operating out of New York and LA between the 1920s and 1950s, many of whom, including Irving Berlin and the Gershwin brothers, were scions of transplanted Eastern European Jewish immigrant families. Harold Arlen, the composer of “That Old Black Magic” and “Come Rain Or Come Shine” on Fallen Angels , was one such, changing his name in his early twenties from Hyman Arluck. His first significant composition was “Stormy Weather”, co-written at a party with Ted Koehler; but his biggest break came when he and EY ‘Yip’ Harburg were commissioned to write songs for The Wizard…

65 DAYS OF STATIC No Man’s Sky: Music For An Infinite Universe LACED Suitably colossal soundtrack for a computer-generated cosmos As post-rock has inched ever closer to the mainstream, so has its sound, with the riffage it rejected now embraced within its instrumental domain. 65daysofstatic’s soundtrack to the hugely anticipated No Man’s Sky game loads up on pile-driving guitar sequences reminiscent of Mogwai, but its industrial-sized programming (on the pummelling squall of “Monolith”), moments of tranquillity (the gravity-defying “Hypersleep”) and chilling electronica (“Pillars Of Frost”) confirm the Sheffield quartet’s visionary ambitions. A second disc of more textured soundscapes suggests their horizons are as expansive as the game is claimed to be. WYNDHAM WALLACE ABC The Lexicon Of Love II VIRGIN Lush yet jaded sequel to luxuriant ’80s smash In 1982,…

STEVE GUNN IS an understated guitar hero. He perpetuates none of the theatrics identified with the instrument for generations: no blistering solos, no thundering licks, no ostentatious noodling, and definitely no grimacing to let you know he’s really feeling that bent note. His bearing tends to be much more stoical, introverted rather than extroverted – which is refreshing since his chops are this pronounced and precise. Onstage, he tends to stand very still, as though lost in contemplation, his busy fingers deciphering his thoughts. Rather than a frontman, he comes across as just another member of his road-hardened band, a big cog in an even bigger machine. Occasionally, he does bust out a succinct solo, but Gunn seems like he’d rather lose himself in the music. Getting lost may be…

Ophir Kutiel first earned rave reviews in the US for his 2007 self-titled debut, but it was his ThruYou projects – mash-ups built from snippets of amateur performances found on YouTube – that cemented his reputation. “I just love to find musicians and put them together,” he explains, and earlier this year he uploaded Off Grid , a new album boasting 96 different clips, to his website. “Most of the work took place on my couch in my living room,” he laughs. His second ‘official’ album, 6am , sounds like it was born of endless late-night studio jams, but is in fact a largely solo affair that follows the same principles. “I can always call a friend who is a much better drummer or…

The Blue Moods Of Spain RESTLESS, 1995 Their lovelorn debut was blue not only in mood, but also by association – the title is a nod both to Josh Haden’s jazz interests and his father Charlie’s heavyweight playing credentials. Top notes of narcotised psych helped make it an anti-grunge classic, while Johnny Cash’s cover of “Spiritual” hardly did the band any harm. She Haunts My Dreams RESTLESS, 1999 Haden’s smoky baritone conjures more deeply personal relationship dramas, with the first three song titles of Spain’s second – “I’m Leaving You”, “It’s All Over” and “Before It All Went Wrong” – mapping out the territory plainly. The gloom-lounge is now leavened by jazzy alt.country, and there’s a guest spot from Swedish pianist Esbjörn Svensson. The Soul Of Spain GLITTERHOUSE, 2012 Made…

“I had this realisation a couple of years ago that there’s something really similar in the feel of certain Waylon Jennings songs and certain Neu! songs,” William Tyler says, discussing the bizarre confluence of Americana and motorik on his new Modern Country LP, and especially its propulsive opening track “Highway Anxiety”. “You know, country music, especially in the ’70s, was totally truckdriver music, and Krautrock was also geared towards driving, but in a different way – it’s Autobahn music.” To work on the album, and connect these two styles, Tyler headed to Oxford, Mississippi, where he set up camp in a log cabin in a friend’s backyard. “My family’s all from Mississippi and I have a very strong connection to that state, so I think the…

Did your recent marriage break-up play into this album in some way? Whatever’s happening in your life inevitably ends up in your narrative songwriting, but I wouldn’t say it’s strictly autobiographical by any means. A lot of the stuff maybe started from a feeling, then sort of evolved as the characters took shape and the stories developed. I don’t necessarily find my life to be the most interesting story that one could tell. How conscious were you of escaping the folk/ country tag? When we were writing and arranging the songs I think we were far enough down the path of our own voice that I wasn’t consciously trying to make it not country. Certain things, like “Drivin’”, just came out sounding like country tunes. At…

“Elton John claimed Heartbreaker revived his career. I read that and glowed like the sun” How did you come to produce the Heartbreaker album? I first met Ryan at Ocean Way studios in Los Angeles in the mid-’90s. We were working down the hall from each other. I remember the Stones were in Studio One, which made for some memorable nights. He struck me as a wide-eyed child with more enthusiasm for songwriting and record-making than I’d come across in a while. He stank of hard liquor at any time of day and always seemed to be searching for something. Later, I produced Whiskeytown’s final record, Pneumonia. Then he called me up and asked me to work on Heartbreaker. Do you remember the first songs from…

“I had recorded at Columbia with The Magicians,” remembers Apostolic studio founder/musician John Townley. “We recorded with Roy Halee, who did Dylan, but you couldn’t touch the board. It was like being in a submarine!” When Townley inherited money at 21, he decided to fund his own studio vision: topflight recording facility in sociable Greenwich Village, more like a hip pad than submersible. “Columbia had eight tracks,” says John, “but it wasn’t enough. People wanted to use the studio as an improvisational instrument. The idea you were composing with a machine was brand new. Frank Zappa liked it and did Uncle Meat there.” Family Of Apostolic also recorded there, though, says John, “it’s been called something that never was – called ‘psychedelic folk’.” Although Apostolic, and…

How easily did you all gel as a band for Warm Leatherette ? When we all realised we were not in for the regular assignment – ie, reggae musicians doing reggae, and pop/rock musicians doing pop/rock – we felt there was a challenge to be won, to gain mutual respect and not to disappoint those who had faith in our ability. Chris Blackwell’s huge charisma was key. He dreamed of the project, got us together, and let us go with no verbal explanation of what he was looking for. I guess he was as surprised as we were because he wouldn’t tire of telling us how the end results far exceeded his expectations. Had you met Grace before embarking on these sessions? No, we met in…

With so many surprise releases these days, it’s hard to predict what we’ll be listening to tomorrow, let alone next month. Still, here are some of the decidedly old-fashioned artists who’ve let us know about their albums in advance. Bat For Lashes unveils her fourth full-length, concept album The Bride , next month, while Band Of Horses return with their fifth LP, Why Are You OK . Tom Petty’s Mudcrutch are back with their second album, the aptly titled 2 , Jeff Beck releases a new album, title as yet unknown, Kathleen Hanna’s The Julie Ruin unleash Hit Reset , and The Chris Robinson Brotherhood promise their fourth record, Anyway You Love, We Know How You…

Fairly epochal live news this month, with the unveiling of the Desert Trip festival in Indio, California. October 7, 8 and 9 will see Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Roger Waters, The Who and Paul McCartney all play this de facto Boomerpalooza. Weekend passes range from $399 to $1599. Those for whom the Californian desert is out of reach may console themselves with a) a Who UK tour (Aug 29 to Sept 7); b) vinyl reissues of the entire Floyd catalogue (starting June 3); and c) an autumn release for Ron Howard’s long-awaited doc, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week (streaming on Hulu, date TBC). Double joy for Van Morrison fans. June 10 sees a mighty 3CD/1DVD package titled It’s Too Late…

RADIOHEAD A Moon Shaped Pool XL Old songs, new songs, ravishing orchestrations, innovative launch campaigns... The only thing missing from Radiohead’s masterful ninth, perhaps, was a hyphen in the title. NEIL YOUNG & THE PROMISE OF THE REAL Revolution Blues YOUTUBE Moving on from Earth , Neil and the Nelson boys arrive in Texas, April 2016, and dust down this vituperative classic for the first time in 29 years! THE CHRIS ROBINSON BROTHERHOOD Narcissus Soaking Wet SILVERARROW Optimum-strength psych-funk from Robinson’s fabulous freaks, recorded deep in the Grateful Dead’s Marin County domain. BEYONCE Don’t Hurt Yourself PARKWOOD One of the many highlights from the month’s other surprise album; a rockist’s entry point, complete with “When The Levee Breaks” samples and a full-blooded cameo…

Over 25 million copies sold worldwide. Won four Grammys in ’72: Album Of The Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Record Of The Year (“It’s Too Late”), and Song Of The Year (“You’ve Got A Friend”). King was the first solo female artist to win a Grammy for the last two categories. Holds the record for most consecutive weeks at No 1 in the US album chart (15) by a female solo artist. Held the record for the total number of weeks at No 1 (15) in the US album chart by a female solo artist for 22 years, until the release of Whitney Houston’s soundtrack to The Bodyguard in 1993. Holds the record for the most time spent in total on the US album chart…

IN FEBRUARY 1995 there were signs that Prince was no longer the force he’d been a decade earlier. He was in dispute with Warners, who wouldn’t let him own his master tapes. He played long live sets of hard funk, ignoring all but a few hits. He was mocked for a bizarre speech at the Brits. The word “slave” was written on his cheek. And for almost two years he’d been known by a symbol, having put the death notice ‘Prince 1958-1993’ on the sleeve of his album, Come . Rehearsing at Wembley Arena for his ‘Ultimate Live Experience’ tour, he met a few journalists one-to-one, to explain his stand-off with Warners. The rules were simple: no tape recorders, no notes. A bodyguard frisked me as I entered the dressing-room.…

“I WAS ASKED to bring in a stage monitor system. We set up the entire sound system in a day. At the end of the day, when we thought we were going to go home, guess who arrived? 11pm! He walked out to front of house, put in a cassette tape – this was 1980 – and listened to the sound system. Eventually, he made his way up to the stage and asked if he could play the drums. He sat down at the LinnDrum machine and programmed a beat. Then he started playing the Simmons drum kit along with the beat he’d just programmed. He moved to a keyboard rig, playing bass lines with his left hand and horn punches with his right. Then he put on the bass…

“I FIRST MET Prince back in July 1984, for a project called The Family. He had four or five tracks ready he wanted me to play on. He asked if I wanted to have a cassette of them to listen to for a couple of days, to get familiar with them. I told him, ‘If that’s what you want me to do, that’s fine. But I’m here, I’ve got my horn, I’m ready to go. If you want to start recording, I’m cool.’ He smiled at me and said, ‘Well, then, let’s go.’ Two or three hours later, we were done. “After The Family fell apart, he asked me to join The Revolution. He asked me if I knew any good trumpet players. I did, a close friend of mine,…

IN 1964, PAUL SIMON visited the UK for the first time. “It was exciting,” he says. “The Beatles, Carnaby Street. Mods and rockers. It was the centre of… well, you know exactly what it was. It was incredible.” Back then, he was an unknown folk singer, plying his trade in small, smoky pubs and clubs. Fifty-two years on, however, and his circumstances have changed considerably. Today, aged 74, he has taken up temporary residence in a series of interconnected suites in Claridge’s. “Don’t mind me, I’m just wandering,” he says as he pads softly along the corridors, peering into rooms whose furniture has been removed to accommodate TV crews or to house a makeshift office for his management team. His clothes are unprepossessing – navy jumper, jeans, black shoes –…

September sees the return of Wovenhand, the band led by former 16 Horsepower founder David Eugene Edwards (left). Details of Star Treatment , the follow-up to 2014’s well-received Refractory Obdurate , are still thin on the ground, but they’ve already announced a slew of European dates for the autumn. Hollywood actor Kiefer Sutherland has been busy too. “Not Enough Whiskey”, all rootsy reverb, pedal-steel and sandpaper vocals, is the lead-off single for upcoming debut, Down In A Hole . “It’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a journal or diary,” he explains. “All of these songs are pulled from my own personal experiences.” On the live front, US songstress Lera Lynn undergoes a substantial UK tour, beginning in…

You’ve stated that “Conditions Wild” was based on Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide To Getting Lost . What about that book grabbed your attention? I was working with my own ideas on the subject of getting lost, and when I discovered this book, it really helped me further understand the concept of embracing the unknown, or the simple idea of being directionless. She puts these ideas in context by citing specific historic examples and conveys that walking that verge of uncertainty is important to embrace for a creative person in any field. At what point did you realise that getting lost was an overarching theme on the album? This idea was something that I was aware of while writing a lot of the lyrics, but it really…

Offramp ECM, 1982 After 1981’s ghostly ambient album, As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls , Offramp sees Metheny master the art of writing a killer pop hook. “Are You Going With Me” remains his best known anthem, where he alternates between liquid guitar solos and synth guitar explorations. But other melodies, like “Au Lait” and “Eighteen”, also hit home. Song X GEFFEN, 1986 A surprise collaboration with free-honking jazz heavyweight Ornette Coleman. On snappy, rinky-dink tunes like “Police People” and “Mob Job”, the two play in unison and then solo concurrently, while the violent squall of “Endangered Species” sounds like a room full of killer wasps. Noiseniks might also enjoy the multi-layered solo thrash performances on 1994’s No Tolerance For…

THE WHITE STRIPES Under Great White Northern Lights WARNERS, 2009 Also the soundtrack to the doc of the same name, chronicling Jack and Meg’s 2007 tour of Canada. The set mixes cuts from The White Stripes’ then-current Icky Thump , with older faves (“Black Math”, “Seven Nation Army”) and their much-loved cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. THE RACONTEURS Live At The Ryman Auditorium THIRD MAN, 2013 The Jack White/ Brendan Benson gang caught in epic fettle at Nashville’s country cathedral in 2011. It would be an easy room to become intimidated by, but in common with White’s career, The Raconteurs negotiate a balance between confident iconoclasm and heartfelt respect. Only out on vinyl or DVD. THE DEAD WEATHER Live At Third Man Records West REPRISE, 2009 A…

Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One PYE/REPRISE, 1970 The wealthy rock star whining about the music biz is rarely an edifying spectacle, but The Kinks’ first LP of the ’70s turns these gripes into a wonderfully splenetic concept album. From the “Louie Louie” parody “Top Of The Pops” to the vaudevillian parody “Denmark Street”, Ray is bang on target. Muswell Hillbillies RCA, 1971 With help from a Dixie-style trumpet/trombone/reeds trio, The Kinks mutate into a country-rock act who are rather more hillbilly than N10. With tracks like “Have A Cuppa Tea”, Ray describes this as “a comedy album”, but the funky, Southern-fried blues of “Complicated Life”, “Mountain Woman” and “Holloway Jail” all give the Stones and The Band a run for their money. Misfits ARISTA, 1978 Ray finally…

Everything on this boxset is united by attitude, anger and irreverence, a jabbing intensity of style and an explosion of ideas SCORING: 10 A true classic 9 Essential 8 Excellent 7 Very good 6 Good 4-5 Mediocre 1-3 Poor ON 2 MARCH, 1982, just after The Nine O’Clock News ended, viewers to BBC One were greeted with this continuity announcement. “On BBC One now, a star vehicle for a Big Star – Bertolt Brecht’s first character creation, the anarchic genius Baal, is portrayed in tonight’s television presentation by David Bowie…” If it’s difficult to believe there was once a time when Bowie could turn up on BBC One at 9.25pm on a Tuesday night in a bleak, abrasive adaptation of a difficult 1918 play by Brecht, well, get used to…

A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING Director Tom Tykwer Starring Tom Hanks, Sarita Choudhury Opened May 20 Cert 12A ELVIS & NIXON Director Liza Johnson Starring Michael Shannon, Kevin Spacey Opens June 24 Cert 15 ALL THINGS MUST PASS Director Colin Hanks Starring Russ Solomon, Bruce Springsteen Opened May 9 Cert 15 WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT Directors Glenn Ficarra/John Requa Starring Tina Fey, Martin Freeman Opened May 13 Cert 15 HEART OF A DOG Director Laurie Anderson Starring Lolabelle Opened May 20 Cert PG…

1COLVIN & EARLE Tell Moses Roots aficionados rejoice! The pairing of mutual fans Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle, who toured the US together a couple of years ago, has finally been consummated on record. Produced by Buddy Miller, there are echoes of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss in this harmony-rich, mandolin-driven pilgrimage to a promised land where milk and honey lie in wait. 2ROBERT ELLIS How I Love You Mutable singer-songwriter Robert Ellis is fast becoming one of America’s keenest talents. Having largely dispensed with the overt country stylings of his earlier work, his latest album finds a roof for R’n’B, baroque pop, Randy Newman-ish reflection and even some avant-jazz. This yearning tune, written by Delta Spirit’s Matthew Vasquez, sees Ellis picking up the pieces of a broken heart. 3JACKIE…

DURING THE FIRST few minutes of King’s debut show as a solo artist, there was a bomb scare and the MC announced that the Troubadour had to be evacuated. “From the stage, Carole made a joke about there being a bomb, ‘but as long as it’s not me,’” recalls Peter Asher. “She was nervous, but by the time she got back, she was brimming with confidence. I think it put things in perspective! She did a great show.” David Campbell was playing with her that night. “Actually, I think it happened more than once during the run. It was a lark! The whole audience would leave the club and stand in the grass island on Santa Monica Blvd. It served to chill out the start of the evening, as the…

“I’D BEEN WORKING for CSN in LA when I heard Prince was looking for a new audio technician. I thought I’d be perfect for him. He liked working with women. I knew all his material and had been a fan since the start. “The first time I ever saw Prince in the flesh, he was wearing a towel and a shower cap. He was taking delivery of some new studio equipment at his house in Chanhassen, Minnesota. I’d flown out from LA to help with the installation of this console and I asked to use the facilities. ‘Go into the house then go down the stairs – it’s on the right.’ Just as I opened the front door, this small figure came flying past me in a towel and a…

1999 1982 Released just as the Cold War reached terrible new heights, 1999 found Prince mulling the apocalypse and deciding to kick back until the bomb drops – “Party over, oops!” . The first album to feature the Revolution, 1999 is also Prince’s first masterpiece. But Prince hasn’t entirely abandoned his old ways. On “Let’s Pretend We’re Married”, he tells the object of his affection, “I sincerely wanna fuck the taste out of your mouth” . Elsewhere, “Little Red Corvette” is a compelling mix of rock swagger and funk swing, “Something In The Water (Does Not Compute)” is strange and claustrophobic, while the 10-minute “Automatic” features icy synth washes. PURPLE RAIN 1984 By now, Prince was…

MUSICOLOGY 2004 The regal sparkle of his ’80s heyday returns, thanks to some strong support from the likes of Sheila E, Candy Dulfer and Maceo Parker. Best songs are “Illusion, Pimp And Circumstance” (sparse funk), “What Do U Want Me 2 Do?” (slow jam) and “Call My Name” (loverman soul). The album also finds Prince exploring alternative release strategies: concertgoers received a copy of Musicology with the album cost included in the ticket prince for the accompanying tour. His next two albums would be download-only; while three years later, he released Planet Earth free with The Mail On Sunday . 3121 2006 “Drink champagne from a glass with chocolate handles,” urges Prince on this, his 31st studio…

“I FIRST MET Paul when Simon & Garfunkel did that audition at Columbia. That was almost 50 years ago. They came in and played what ended up being the Wednesday Morning, 3AM, album. “We were in a very fine Columbia Studio. There were couple of mics and they just went through the audition. Tom Wilson was the producer at the time. “I’m a classically trained guy and I was bowled over by the sound of those two boys. Very classical, yet pop. Catchy, hooky, but a beautiful, classical sound. “I remember, having a very, very favourable impression of Paul, that’s for sure. I loved his writing. He’s smart. He’s fun to be around. “I was on stamp at Columbia. I worked with a lot of different…

NEKO CASE FOX CONFESSOR BRINGS THE FLOOD 2006 Case’s intriguing, engaging animal metaphors are delivered here with a clarity which doesn’t entirely dispel their mystery. Garth Hudson and Calexico duo Joey Burns & John Convertino furnish a range of quirky accompaniments ,while Case’s own hammer dulcimer illuminates the concluding “The Needle Has Landed”. MIDDLE CYCLONE 2009 Sketched in earthy roots-music tones of banjo, 12-string and fiddle, and employing an emotional timescale measured in glaciers and tornadoes, Case mines an elemental image-bank here, which lends a sinister aspect to her countrified cover of Sparks’ “Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth”. THE WORSE THINGS GET, THE HARDER I FIGHT, THE HARDER I FIGHT, THE MORE I LOVE YOU 2013 The result of a three-year bout of bereavement-induced grief and depression, this…

RINGO STARR Sentimental Journey APPLE, 1970 The first notable Great American Songbook comp by a pop performer, and the first non-avant-garde solo LP by a Beatle, preceding Macca by three weeks. But its coherence was damaged by having each song arranged by different arrangers. Lingering Beatle momentum gave it a Top 10 placing. WILLIE NELSON Stardust COLUMBIA, 1977 Produced by Booker T Jones, Stardust was an unexpected turn for Nelson after a string of outlaw country albums, but despite reservations it remains his biggest-selling album. Delivered in his inimitable languid manner, it provides the clearest precedent for Dylan’s countrified treatment of classic songs. ROD STEWART It Had To Be You: The Great American Songbook J, 2002 Though critically savaged, this salvaged Rod’s career, so popular it…

What music influenced you? Do you come from a folk background? Yeah, I grew up playing traditional music from quite a young age, I played the accordion and was exposed to a lot of different types of music. I was always trying to find my own way of singing, but when I heard Tim Buckley it was like a light went off. It allowed me to sing how I wanted to. Can you explain what “Looking At You In A Photo” is about? I’ve been a single mum for five years and it’s given me lot of stuff to write about. A lot of tough times happened, and you don’t really get that many people writing about motherhood. But it’s such a huge thing to be responsible for someone, there’s…

When Annelotte de Graaf was pondering who would produce her new album, she turned to her record collection for inspiration. “I was making a list of some of my favourite records and who had produced them. I found out Ben Greenberg had produced the second Beach Fossils album and worked with a lot of really loud kind of hardcore bands,” explains the singer, who recorded the resulting album, Fading Lines , as Amber Arcades. “I emailed him some demos. He got back to me the next day, saying he really loved them. That was it!” De Graaf headed to New York, entering the studio with a band consisting of members of Quilt and Real Estate. “I always get inspired when temporarily living in other cities where no-one…

For the launch of their new album, Treasure House , Cat’s Eyes – the duo of Horrors frontman Faris Badwan and Canadian soprano Rachel Zeffira – were thinking bigger than a free bar and a few trays of sandwiches. Instead, the pair gatecrashed an event at Buckingham Palace, where they somehow convinced a party of guests that a woodwind rendition of their song “We’ll Be Waiting” was ancient Renaissance music. “We thought of the least rebellious instrument possible, the recorder, and rearranged our song for other authentic instruments of that era,” says Zeffira. “No-one knew anything was up until we released the footage weeks later.” It’s just one example of the way the group digs a challenge, says Badwan. “As soon as anyone tells Rachel she…

“I’m about to go to a cat café,” says Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich. “Today is the release day for another record [ The Coral Casino, recorded with A Hawk And A Hacksaw’s Jeremy Barnes ], and we’re going to do a live stream of kittens listening to it.” In the midst of this feline festival, Deerhoof are preparing to release their 13th full-length, The Magic , recorded during a week in a bare rented office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the guitarist lives. Detailing influences on the typically diverse record, Dieterich explains that HBO’s Vinyl led to them writing The Magic’s three grimy punk songs. “We were asked to write something [ for the show…

The reactivation of Swans has clearly been artistically fulfilling for you. Why break up the band? I love working with these guys – they’re my friends, and we’ve come to know each other’s scent quite well. However, it’s reached its apex, and all the things we could discover in one another are played out. It’s necessary for me, if I’m going to continue the name Swans, to shake things up. I don’t really want a band any more, and the responsibility it entails. I don’t know the future route. I have some vague colours in my mind, but I don’t know what I’m going to pursue stylistically. I’m looking forward to being utterly adrift. What is the story behind “When Will I Return”? I wrote that for my wife to…

FOR ALL ITS offshoots and mutations, there remains the suspicion that country music has pretty strict border controls. Recent years have seen a number of artists, evidently mindful of being typecast, break out into more inclusive territory. Sturgill Simpson is a keen example, forgoing the traditional slant of his early work for amorphous albums that embrace gospel, psychedelia and cosmology; while the likes of Justin Townes Earle, Daniel Romano and Israel Nash have all ditched their prior formalism for a more expansive type of music whose relationship to country has become increasingly tenuous. Much the same can be said of Robert Ellis. Reared in the Southern Texas enclave of Lake Jackson, Ellis emerged from a religious community where there were just two types of music: country and bluegrass. By the…

Petal In A Snowstorm “Everybody play for your lives. Let’s just beat the shit out of this thing,” Ryan Adams exhorts whoever’s in the studio with him at the start of this ragged outtake. “ Goddamn it,” he’s shouting moments later, frustrated as the thing breaks down around him almost immediately. Particularly wheezy harmonica then leads them back into the song, a half-written lyric delivered with Dylanesque insouciance over a riff unexpectedly reminiscent of The Velvet Underground’s “What Goes On” that never quite finds the intensity it’s looking for. When The Rope Gets Tight Some of the Heartbreaker outtakes – the 49-second “Punk Jam”, for instance – were clearly never under serious consideration for the album. The eerie graveyard blues of “When The…

SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET The Prime Of Sir Douglas Quintet WESTSIDE, 2004 The SDQ’s back catalogue is hopelessly messy – their 1966 debut was jokingly titled Best Of… and was soon competing with similarly titled sets of dubious provenance. This two-disc is as reliable a guide to their Tex-Mex mangling of British Invasion influences as you’ll find and includes early hits “She’s About A Mover” and “The Rains Came”. DOUG SAHM Doug Sahm And Band ATLANTIC, 1973 Sahm’s solo debut featured Bob Dylan on four tracks – including shared lead vocals on his own composition, “Wallflower”. Dr John adds keyboards, and cracking covers of Texan heroes Bob Wills and T-Bone Walker round out an Americana classic. TEXAS TORNADOS Texas Tornados REPRISE, 1990 Together with Sir Douglas Quintet…

TOP CAT BEGINS OPENS MAY 27 Orphaned kitten swears an oath to rid his city of evil in this brooding cartoon reboot directed by Christopher Nolan, we wish… WARCRAFT: THE BEGINNING OPENS MAY 30 Duncan Jones’ adapts fantasy video game, pitting puny humans against the mighty Orcish Horde. Vikings star Travis Fimmel has a big hammer. THE NICE GUYS OPENS JUNE 3 LA, 1977. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe team up to investigate a missing girl in Shane Black’s latest. Sweary bants and killings follow. VERSUS: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF KEN LOACH OPENS JUNE 3 Coinciding with the director’s 80th birthday, this career-spanning doc follows Loach as he preps his final major film, I, Daniel Blake . BLOOD ORANGE OPENS JUNE 7…

A conflicted classic Brian Eno Another Green World 1975 I’m a huge fan of Eno and all the worlds he went into. This LP to me is particularly interesting because it’s the first that combines his more ambient instrumental stuff with his weird attempts at pop songwriting – the conflict between those worlds is fascinating. [Filmmaker] Adam Curtis uses a lot from Another Green World in The Power Of Nightmares – I knew the album already, but when I saw the films I was like, “Oh my God, I need to go check this record out again.” An innovative gateway album Sun City Girls Torch Of The Mystics 1990 This is a timeless document of the way those guys were trying to distil influences from world music, psych and punk…