Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2025 i UNCUT

“An important part of playing on records is to play the emotion of the song” A PRO ’til the very end, Jim Keltner still talks about his home neighbourhood of Los Feliz in terms of its proximity to his place of work for the past six decades. “It’s basically three or four minutes to any of the studios in Hollywood. Well, it used to be,” he adds, with reference to LA’s increasingly hellish traffic. “Now you’re lucky if you can get there in 25.” The recent wildfires have meant that sessions for “several really fun artists” have been put on hold, but “it looks like I’ll get busy in the summer again. It’s all young people now! A lot of young, very talented people, and I enjoy that. I love playing…

CAVERN OF ANTI-MATTER Hormone Lemonade DUOPHONIC UHF DISKS, 2018 Tim Gane flexes his motorik rave muscles in league with former Stereolab drummer Joe Dilworth and the cranky self-built “rhythm machines” of Instant Holograms… contributor Holger Zapf. “Outerzone Jazs” is their very own “What Time Is Love?”. 7/10 MODERN COSMOLOGY What Will You Grow Now? DUOPHONIC SUPER 45S, 2023 Stereolab have always drawn inspiration from Brazilian pop, so this collaboration between Laetitia Sadier and Recife quintet Mombojó made perfect sense. The album nods to Veloso, Gil and Gal at their most playful, while conjuring an appealing sound all of its own. 8/10 LAETITIA SADIER Rooting For Love DUOPHONIC SUPER 45S, 2024 The pick of Sadier’s five solo albums to date. Gently insidious songs, exquisitely arranged, with politics that veer more towards…

FRED ABONG Holy Hints MOOCHIN’ ABOUT 7/10 Former Throwing Muses and Belly bassist continues his searching solo career After abruptly quitting Belly following the recording of their debut album Star, Fred Abong left music to acquire a PhD and raise a family before returning in 2018, around the same time he got reacquainted with his old pal from Throwing Muses, Kristin Hersh. He’s been pretty prolific ever since, with more than half a dozen releases, and his latest sees his gentle croon accompany a dozen songs of quiet intensity. The yearning “Fences” and the beautifully delicate “Missing” showcase his vulnerability, while “Tango” and “The Valley” hint at a more passionate temperament hiding behind Abong’s serene façade. PETER WATTS JEFFREY ALEXANDER + THE HEAVY LIDDERS Synchronous Orbit FEEDING TUBE/CARDINAL FUZZ 8/10…

PETE SHELLEY Sky Yen GROOVY, 1980 Shelley’s earliest known recording is a series of shrill electronic pulses and piercing tones divined from a homemade oscillator, which he recorded in his front room one Saturday in 1974. Released six years later on his short-lived Groovy label, Sky Yen nods to Tangerine Dream and Can – in spirit and attitude, at least. 6/10 PETE SHELLEY Heaven & The Sea MERCURY, 1986 After the rough and tumble of Homosapien and XL-1, Shelley hooked up with Mercury and Stephen Hague for some slick pop-rock that pitched Pete as a cheerful version of New Order. There are some very good extended mixes of “Waiting For Love” and “On Your Own”, but it’s bittersweet watching Shelley become an ’80s journeyman. 7/10 PETE SHELLEY Cinema Music And…

1001 EST CREMAZIE 1001 Est Cremazie WE ARE BUSY BODIES 7/10 Canadian high-school band’s musical efforts repressed on vinyl 50 years later It would be unjust to attribute this unusual album’s alleged “cult” collectible status purely to its initial – and previously only – private pressing of 500 copies. Recorded in the wake of a 1975 concert at Montreal’s Collège André Grasset, it’s deserving of a wider audience for its rip-roaring finale alone: “Bright Moments” is a percussive jam whose notable conga-driven breakdown became popular with early-2000s Canadian club DJs. Its other original, the funky jazz instrumental “Le Roi Muffé”, is similarly impressive. “Coming Home Baby”, popularised by Mel Tormé a dozen years earlier, gets a frantic reworking, while a version of Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” is delivered with a…

THE SAVAGE RADLEY KUDZU SLOUGH WATER, 2017 Goodman’s sole full-length under the name The Savage Radley introduces a musical equation that would evolve over the course of her subsequent records. Songs like “Gone” and “Worm (On Hot Pavement)” marry big heartland rock choruses with grinding post-punk guitars, sung by an artist just realising the power of her own voice. 8/10 SG GOODMAN OLD TIME FEELING VERVE, 2020 Produced by My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Goodman’s first album under her own initials reveals an artist examining her Kentucky roots with a keenly observant eye and an ear for unexpected musical flourishes, like the cosmic waltz rhythm of “Space And Time” and the scribbly guitar solo that disrupts “The Way I Talk”. 9/10 TEETH MARKS VERVE, 2022 Goodman refines her storytelling on…

FOR EMMA, FOREVER AGO (2007, JAGJAGUWAR) For Emma… helped set the sonic tone for at least the decade that followed – its combination of guitar, layered falsetto, autotune and sparse production are still echoed to this day. Few can replicate its emotional heft – its unflinching account of heartbreak and rebuild. 10/10 BON IVER, BON IVER (2011, JAGJAGUWAR) More experimental than its predecessor, Bon Iver revealed Vernon’s jazz chops, his love for Bruce Hornsby, his broad spread of musical collaborators. It surprised some, but delighted many, standing as confirmation that Vernon was no one-trick pony but an expansive and unpredictable talent. 10/10 I, I (2019, JAGJAGUWAR) 2016’s 22, A Million documented Vernon’s uncomfortable relationship with fame in a sonic push-pull of beauty and distortion. Its successor captured some of the…

SHACK WATERPISTOL MARINA, 1995 Their second album might have been ignored at the time, but 30 years after its release it sounds incredible: “Time Machine” and “Undecided” are hazy anthems, while songs like “Hey Mama” position them as Liverpool’s answer to Pentangle. 9/10 MICHAEL HEAD & THE STRANDS THE MAGICAL WORLD OF THE STRANDS MEGAPHONE MUSIC, 1998 Truly magical, the only record by Michael and John’s Strands almost matches their beloved Forever Changes. In the throes of heroin addiction, the elder Head still manages to weave an otherworldly spell: “Queen Matilda” and “Something Like You” are unbeatable. 9/10 SHACK HMS FABLE LONDON, 1999 Muscular and glossy, …Fable is a triumph because of the quality songs, from the sublime “Comedy” and “Natalie’s Party” to the narcotic reverie of “Streets Of Kenny”…

AS John Densmore scrutinises the list of Doors songs Uncut has asked him to talk about to mark the band’s 60th anniversary, the drummer smiles at the variety of music they produced in such a short time. “The Doors were an American melting pot,” he says. “Ray Manzarek had blues and classical, Robby Krieger was flamenco, I brought the jazz; then we had Jim’s literary and cinematic approach. We made a delicious gumbo from all these diverse ingredients.” Their music is indeed a rich stew, from baroque pop to heavy rock and epic psychodramas like “The End” and “When The Music’s Over”. The band recorded six albums on Jac Holzman’s Elektra label during a tumultuous period that ended with Morrison’s death in July 1971. We are speaking just days after…

“I RECALL going to an art show at a museum in London while we were there recording, and I saw all these Victorian-era, I think, illustrations using sprayed dye techniques. That’s what I recreated for the cover of Fables…. It’s one of the only drawings or illustrations I’ve ever allowed out because I don’t like my drawings, I don’t like my paintings. But I was so inspired by what I saw that I went to an art supply store, bought everything I needed and commenced to do it. Then, when we got back to Georgia, I took portraits of the band using a Polaroid camera and, for some reason, wrapped my head with a towel, I don’t know why. Then I built the little swinging block of wood with a tin…

SHANNON and Narducy have already committed to touring R.E.M.’s 1986 album Lifes Rich Pageant in 2026, but how deep into the band’s discography are they willing to go? “Document seems like a good one to do,” says Shannon. “And Green. We’ve been playing a lot of stuff off those albums already. Singing ‘Disturbance At The Heron House’ will get your jack up and ‘World Leader Pretend’ feels like a fitting song to play right now. But after Green you’ve got Out Of Time and that’s when things get complicated. There’s a lot of different instrumentation and we’d need more players. If we did ‘Losing My Religion’, somebody would need to learn the mandolin.” More practical concerns might spell the end of the world as they know it. “It’s subject to…

WILSON PICKETT “Land Of 1000 Dances” ATLANTIC, 1966 “…Midnight Hour” was one of the first three tunes I learned with my junior high school band, Love Gun. We were very ambitious 15-year-olds! “Land Of 1000 Dances” worked to get people into a dancing frenzy. It’s about dancing, it’s self-referential. But there’s something about it that transcends itself. On Horses, Patti Smith quotes an entire verse of “Land Of 1000 Dances”, and she was also somebody who was aiming for this ritual hallelujah. That said, Wilson Pickett was not a nice man. I toured with him for a month in 1982 and I witnessed him and his bodyguard being violent with members of the band. I escaped through my ability to play country music licks on guitar. ALBERT AYLER Live At…

PULP “Spike Island” ROUGH TRADE “This time I’ll get it right”, Jarvis Cocker assures us, still pulling out festival singalong gold from his satchel full of regrets. A triumphantly messy return. NATHAN SALSBURG Ipsa Corpora NO QUARTER The folk archivist and composer’s last ever solo guitar record valiantly attempts to offset the incomprehensible awfulness of current world events with a pure blast of warm humanity. BRIAN ENO & BEATIE WOLFE “Big Empty Country” VERVE Eno’s new collaborator once beamed her music into space via the Holmdel Horn Antenna. Fittingly, this sounds like a new update to the Apollo soundtrack. CAROLINE Caroline 2 ROUGH TRADE Eccentric octet double down on their quirks, combining violin with vocoder and burying a faint techno thud beneath stark chamber-folk. But there are also sublime moments of “Total Euphoria”.…

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If Tomorrow Gets Here IDEAL 8/10 READ almost any interview with Jim O’Rourke and you’ll find the Chicago-born musician singing the praises of his old Windy City pal Kevin Drumm. While O’Rourke has paired his own highly experimental work with forays into more accessible worlds – song-based solo albums, stints as a member of Sonic Youth and producer for Wilco, Smog, Stereolab, Eiko Ishibashi and more – Drumm has kept it resolutely underground and defiantly uncommercial. He began making outre music using table-top guitars in the ’90s, as demonstrated on 1997’s hushed self-titled debut, but soon moved to using computers, synths, pulse and tone generators, oscillators, tape and phones, as well as manipulating more conventional instruments. His 2002 Mego release, Sheer Hellish Miasma – the title winning out over other…

IF I have it right, I met SG face-to-face first at Earthwave Studio in Shelbyville, Kentucky, just about a half mile from where I used to live and work at my brother Paul’s Rove Studio. My first impression likely involved her air of evident strength and gumption. She is no wallflower and trumpets her considered attention to detail in a way I greatly appreciate. She’s brilliant and driven, aggressively paring the BS out of her musical experiences. She doesn’t seem to want to make music like anyone but SG Goodman. Big power, big vulnerability and an awareness of the vital container a song inherently is, for exploration of emotion and humanity. Let’s take her song “If It Ain’t Me, Babe”: she implements restraint where she can often be effusive, if…

IT’S hard to believe now, but when they first formed in 1977, Dire Straits struggled to get gigs because their brand of liquid blues-rock was considered old hat by the new punk orthodoxy. Within eight years, the tables had turned spectacularly. Not only were Dire Straits the biggest band in the world, they were harbingers of a shiny new digital age, with Brothers In Arms becoming the first album to sell a million copies on CD. “As a 14-year-old, you dream of playing the guitar in some form or other with other people,” says bassist John Illsley – along with frontman Mark Knopfler, the only ever-present Strait. “But having success, you never really thought about it. So we had to deal with a lot of things quite quickly. I think…

JOHN HEAD: “We were getting on thebullettrain. Ink Gary Lineker was getting off at the same time – he’d just signed to a Japanese team in the J League, and he was getting welcomed at the station. The first voices he heard were scousers going, ‘Oi, Gazza!’” PETE WILKINSON: “This was the tour when Tempo turned up to the airport with his clothes in a black bin bag. He stuck it on the scales where you weigh your bag when you check in, it was a black bin bag! Because it was the ’90s they just waved him through: ‘On you get, go on, lad.’” MICHAEL HEAD: “It’s drummers, you know, ’cause Willsy [Alan Wills] was the same, he’d have a plazzy bag, and I’m sure Jock [Thomas Whelan, Pale…

“THE Hindu Love Gods was a name Peter had always wanted to use,” says Mike Mills. “It was a little cover band with our friend Bryan Cook in Athens and we played a few shows in early 1984. Then Andy Slater, who Peter knew back in Atlanta, became Warren’s manager and he hooked us up together. Warren was a very amenable guy. He was ready to have some fun in a different way than his years of Southern California mellowness. He was crazy, but it was mostly the alcohol that made him so. When he was sober, he wasn’t all that crazy, although he did take his bonus from signing with Virgin and bought a Corvette for cash that he couldn’t drive.” In 1987, R.E.M. were invited to Los Angeles…

THE SURFER Directed by Lorcan Finnegan Starring Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim  Certificate 15 Opens May 9  8/10 WHEN THE LIGHT BREAKS Directed by Rúnar Rúnarsson Starring Elín Hall, Mikael Kaaber, Katla Njálsdóttir Certificate To be confirmed  Opens May 23  8/10 THE MARCHING BAND Directed by Emmanuel Courcol  Starring Benjamin Lavernhe, Pierre Lottin, Sarah Suco  Certificate 15 Opens May 16  8/10 PARTHENOPE Directed by Paolo Sorrentino  Starring Celeste Dalla Porta, Stefania Sandrelli, Gary Oldman  Certificate 15  Opens May 2 6/10 THE UNINVITED Directed by Nadia Conners  Starring Walton Goggins, Elizabeth Reaser, Pedro Pascal  Certificate 15 Opens May 9 7/10…

DARRYL W Bullock’s biography of Joe Meek is called Love And Fury, but there is more fury than love. The legacy is something else, and it is well served by Bullock’s encyclopaedic approach to the recording career of the producer, whose fame rests – with fluctuating intensity – on his innovative approach to sound, the eerie charm of the 1962 instrumental “Telstar”, and the fact that Meek murdered his landlady Violet Shenton and shot himself dead on February 3, 1967. Can you praise Joe Meek’s approach to reverb and ignore the shooting of Mrs Shenton? Does “Telstar” still sound as innocent and otherworldly if you don’t? When Margaret Thatcher cited “Telstar” as “a lovely song” in a 1987 Smash Hits interview with Tom Hibbert, she was most likely harking back…

Peek-a-boo! The latest Ultimate Music Guide brings you the full story of post-punk pioneers Siouxsie & The Banshees, from “Hong Kong Garden” to Mantaray, via classic interviews, in-depth new writing and a great many guitarists, the majority of them called John. It’s in shops now or available to order directly from us at shop. kelsey.co.uk/uncut… Also out now from the same places, Ultimate Record Collection presents The 500 Greatest Albums of The 1950s… Ranked! Rock’n’roll, jazz, folk, early electronic music – even the first audiobooks. Includes an exclusive introductory interview with Shirley Collins, who recalls her remarkable life in the 1950s, from preparing pre-cooked spaghetti for London folk singers to recording in Mississippi prisons… Former Clash associate Kosmo Vinyl has teamed up with designer Jules Balme and writer Will Birch…

Strawberries TAPETE 8/10 THE ability to draw out the extraordinary from the everyday is one evergreen hallmark of engaging songwriting. Robert Forster has been sketching self-contained emotional vignettes and spinning semi-autobiographical yarns since his days in The Go-Betweens, the Antipodean high-water mark of guitar jangle. On his ninth solo album, Strawberries, Forster once again knits together the ordinary and the remarkable, furring the edges with a craftsman’s dexterity. Take “Breakfast On The Train”, which is among the most involving songs this storied chronicler of the heart has ever penned. Beginning with just his guitar and laconic drawl, Forster spins out the tale of a night of loud hotel sex into a poignant epic – funny, dry, full of detail, told in retrospect over nearly eight elegant minutes as other musicians…

LOS JAIVAS Alturas De Macchu Picchu  (reissue, 1981) THE STATE 51 CONSPIRACY 7/10 Mind-expanding blend of prog, psychedelia, folk and mid-20th-century communist poetry TO appreciate the absurdist grandeur of 1981’s Alturas De Macchu Picchu by still active Chileans Los Jaivas, it’s best to seek out that year’s TV special, filmed 2,430 metres above sea level. With a gleaming grand piano, delivered by helicopter, among the ruins, the immaculately coiffured quintet, in spotless white outfits, roam Peru’s ‘Lost City of the Incas’, miming the album’s entirety. It’s a South American variation on Pink Floyd’s Live At Pompeii, albeit a decade later with panpipes. Their eighth album demanded such extravagance. Formed by brothers Eduardo, Claudio and (the late) Gabriel Parra, they’d emerged as improvisers in Can’s mould, with 1971’s recently reissued eponymous…

PLANTING by the signs is a very, very old practice,” says SG Goodman as she slides into a booth at Rudy’s On The Square, her favourite diner in Murray, Kentucky. “I was reading about the idea in this series called the Foxfire books, which collect a lot of ‘‘PLANTING interviews and history from the South. I recalled people talking about it when I was a kid, including my family. When I was weaned off my mother, I was weaned by the signs. My brother cuts his hair by the signs.” The practice, she explains, involves planning things out by the phases of the moon. Since the moon controls the tides, it must exert some effect on all water, including the water in human bodies. “Someone might say: you don’t want…

THE Chippewa Valley lies just to the west of central Wisconsin, a stretch of pasture and prairie and deep woodland; of maple and aspen, basswood and pine. Justin Vernon spent much of the pandemic here, on the property he bought several years ago, not far from his home city of Eau Claire. It was a steady time; quiet and undemanding, and somewhere during those months he found himself out alone in the woods, asking himself a question: ‘Do I want to do this at all any more?’ The ‘this’ was the life he had built as Bon Iver, the project he had started in 2006 and that had swiftly bloomed into a platinum-selling phenomenon, bound to the familiar cycle of album release, press campaign, global tour. It had won him…

MICHAEL Head is standing across the road from the Liverpool Olympia, a mischievous gleam apparent behind his shades. “Buffalo Bill brought his travelling circus here back in the 1900s,” he says. “They built bear pits and elephant pits under the stage, and apparently they’re still there. Imagine… fuckin’ Buffalo Bill on the West Derby Road!” At the moment, he and his brother John are showing Uncut round their childhood haunts. As it transpires, this ornate, time-worn hall in the city’s Kensington district is a key location. Their mum used to go to the bingo there back when it was a Mecca; now the Olympia is the location of Shack’s first gig for over 15 years. It ends the longest gap in their activity since the group rose out of the…

ON August 3, 1983, Prince and backing band the Revolution – with 19-year-old guitarist Wendy Melvoin making her live debut – played a benefit gig for the Minnesota Dance Theatre at the First Avenue club in downtown Minneapolis. Prince used the occasion to showcase songs that would form the backbone of sixth album Purple Rain, the soundtrack for a proposed movie. Among these was an apocalyptic ballad with a grandstanding guitar solo that became the title song of both the album and film. On hand was engineer David Rivkin (aka David Z, brother of Revolution drummer Bobby Z), instructed by Prince to record the show on a mobile unit. “It was an incredible night,” he recalls. “Prince had improved the band so much that he didn’t settle for anything other…

SIDE 1 1 FEELING GRAVITYS PULL The album’s strange, elemental opener, introduced by three descending notes. “The second we wrote it, we knew it was gonna be the first song on the record. It just felt like this is a new feel for us. We didn’t want to start with “Driver 8”, as good a song as it is. Hearing “Gravitys Pull” reminds me of what that record is. 2 MAPS AND LEGENDS Buck’s glorious Rickenbacker jangle and Mills’ harmonies back Stipe’s lyrics about Georgian folk artist Howard Finster. “It’s got that kind of Patti Smith chord change thing, although it actually isn’t a Patti Smith chord change. We continued to play it on and off for the rest of our career, maybe not much the end. It was still…

ON a chilly Thursday night on February 27, Michael Stipe took the stage at the 40 Watt in Athens, Georgia. Peter Buck was already there playing guitar and Stipe just wanted to sing backup on “Pretty Persuasion” with arguably the best tribute band in the world right now, featuring such R.E.M. superfans as Oscar-nominated actor Michael Shannon, veteran indie guitarist Jason Narducy and members of The Mountain Goats, Wilco and Poi Dog Pondering. “I’m no dipshit,” says Shannon. “I know people would rather watch Michael Stipe than me, so I gave him the floor. He didn’t disappoint.” Mike Mills jumped up to sing along and halfway through the Reckoning track, guitarist Dag Juhlin spotted Bill Berry at the side of the stage. He motioned manically for him to get up…

CLOUD OPENS APRIL 25 J-horror auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns with a psychological thriller about the dark world of online resellers. THUNDERBOLTS* OPENS MAY 1 TWO TO ONE OPENS MAY 2 Sandra Hüller stars in this sentimental heist comedy set in East Germany after the fall of the Wall. SHADOW FORCE OPENS MAY 2 Kerry Washington and Omar Sy star as a special forces couple forced to go underground in order to protect their son in this thriller directed by Joe Carnahan. BIRDEATER OPENS MAY 9 A bachelor party takes a feral turn in this Australian exploration of toxic masculinity from debut writer-directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir. MOTEL DESTINO OPENS MAY 9 A young man on the run from a mob boss lands an unlikely job in a love motel…

MICHAEL HURLEY Godfather of American freak-folk  (1941–2025) SPEAKING to The Times in 2021, Will Oldham attempted to explain the mercurial nature of songwriting, particularly when he found himself at a creative impasse. “The refrain,” he said, “is, ‘What would Michael Hurley do?’” By that point, the then 80-year-old Hurley had become a touchstone for a generation of leftfield songwriters. Oldham called him a hero, Cat Power covered his songs, Devendra Banhart released Hurley albums on his Gnomonsong label, and his list of admirers included Yo La Tengo, Lucinda Williams, Calexico and Josephine Foster. It wasn’t difficult to understand Hurley’s appeal. He was the quintessential outsider artist, making playful, idiosyncratic and sometimes profound music that paid little heed to commerce or convention. It was folk music at its source, sprinkled with…