Uncut January 2015

Life is full of strange delights/And in the darkness we find lights/To make our way back home again
AC/DC: Its always been do or die! 40
PAGES OF
REVIEWS
WILCO
THE VELVET
UNDERGROUND
JONI MITCHELL
SPRINGSTEEN
PIXIES
The ultimate
Review
of theYear
75
BEST
ALBUMS!
30 KEY REISSUES!
The nest lms,
books and DVDs
of 2014
AND MORE...
Uncuts 2014
Hall Of Fame
starring...
NEIL
YOUNG
KATE BUSH
JIMMY PAGE
ST VINCENT
MARK KOZELEK
SWANS
PLUS
A fond farewell
ll tto
JACK BRUCE
ROGER MCGUINN
BLAKE MILLS
EINSTRZENDE
NEUBAUTEN
AND EARLS COURT
REMEMBERED
Reunions? I dont want

to be in The Byrds!
AND
LEE BAINS III

SLEAFORD MODS
SMASHING PUMPKINS
SWAMP DOGG
JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT.CO.UK
;(2,
1HU\HY `

4 Instant Karma!
Jack Bruce remembered; Deeply Vale
Festival; Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires
14 Jimmy Page
An audience with the Zeppelin guitarist
REVIEW OF 2014
Are we rolling?
A
22 Albums Of The Year

The 75 best records of 2014
33 Reissues Of The Year

36 Films Of The Year
39 Books Of The Year
40 Kate Bush
The making of Wuthering Heights
44 Neil Young
The legends crazy year, charted by his
closest compadres, including Graham
Nash and Frank Poncho Sampedro
54 St Vincent
Album by album with Annie Clark
56 Mark Kozelek
The former Red House Painter aka
Sun Kil Moon reects on fame, infamy,
and his war with The War On Drugs
40 PAGES OF REVIEWS!
63 New Albums
Including: AC/DC, Smashing
Pumpkins, Blake Mills
81 The Archive
Including: The Velvet Underground,
Bruce Springsteen, Pixies
SunKilMoons
Sun
Kil Moons
Benji
T SOME POINT in October, I started receiving emails from record labels

and publicists about their Tips For 2015. A new year loomed, distantly,
and with it the annual music business imperative to embrace a tranche
of new artists. Around the same time, the 2014 Mercury Prize hoopla
culminated with a victory for the Scottish hip-hop act, Young Fathers, and their
Dead album, one of seven debuts in the shortlist of 12.
It is hard not to conclude from all this that the British music business has
abandoned the idea of sticking with artists for the long haul: not always the most
expedient commercial approach, but one which had at least a little bit of traction
before neurotic short-termism went into overdrive. The subtext, perhaps, is that the
industry, the media and, both would presume, the general public, find artists who
grow incrementally to be boring underachievers. If you dont start with a major
success, then youre expendable. Soon enough, therell be another new year and
another horde of contenders to fling optimistically in the direction of the BBCs
Sound Of 2015 poll.
Uncuts Albums Of 2014, though, tell another story. Four hundred and one releases
4 voters. In the Top 75 albums, only seven were technically
were nominated by our 42
d
debuts, and three of those were by artists with considerable
ccareers in other bands behind them. Plenty of the acts felt
ffresh and exciting (Sleaford Mods, for instance, who we
ffeature on page 106), but many had discreetly worked at their
art for a few years, just off the radar, cumulatively growing
with every release.
Take Mark Kozelek, who came up with what may be his
masterpiece, Benji, 22 years into a career mostly conducted
on the margins. I felt confident that Benji would be received
poorly, that people would find it to be middle-aged
ramblings about dead relatives, Kozelek told me this
month, in his most in-depth interview in years. But
something about it resonated with people.
Kozeleks career and those of Sharon Van Etten, The War On Drugs, St Vincent,
Caribou, Hurray For The Riff Raff, Future Islands, Steve Gunn and many other key
players of 2014, to say nothing of Neil Young is an object lesson in how things can
be done differently. This end-of-year Uncut special, we hope, is a testament to the
enduring creative health of our corner of the music scene; a place where many
inspiring albums are still being made, regardless of the Death Of Rock thinkpieces
that will doubtless proliferate, as they do every year, in the next month or two.
If youre hungry for more of this, Ill be posting my own personal chart of 100 or so
records Ive enjoyed in 2014 at www.uncut.co.uk any day now. In the meantime, a
heartfelt thanks for all your support over the past 12 months. Until next year
96 Film & DVD

Bill Murray in St Vincent, Muhammad
Ali documentary, The Doors
104 Live
Roger McGuinn, Sleaford Mods
117 Books
Robert Wyatt, Mick Fleetwood
118 Not Fade Away

This months obituaries
120 Feedback
Your letters, plus the Uncut crossword
122 My Life In Music

Swans Michael Gira
John Mulvey, Editor. Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey
COVER: JEFF CHIU/AP/PRESS ASSOCIATION
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THIS MONTHS REVELATIONS
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FU
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Featuring DEEPLY VALE
Jack Bruce in 1967:
He never sang or
played a dishonest
word or note in his life
4 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015
JACK BRUCE | 1943-2014
A striving to
make things that
were beautiful
and interesting
and groovy and
stimulating...
FIRST MET Jack when I was a poet in the

early to mid-60s, and I was doing a lot of
shows with jazz people like The Graham
Bond Organisation, who Jack played with.
After Cream formed, Ginger phoned me
up. It seemed like an emergency they were in the
studio, and had done this backing track, which ended
up being Wrapping Paper, their first single, but they
didnt have any words. I went down there and ended
up writing the lyrics for it.
I was living in the same place as Eric Clapton, and
we tried to write a couple of
things, and I also tried with
Ginger, but it became fairly
obvious that the chemistry was
with Jack and myself. We came
up with I Feel Free, and then it
became easier after that. There
was real chemistry between us,
and we got a lot of good stuff
down. Another thing we always
had in common was politics, we
were both dedicated socialists.
I remember once Jack and I
were sitting there at about five in
the morning, trying to get some
stuff ready for Disraeli Gears. Jack
picked up his double bass and
played a riff, and I looked out of the window and wrote,
Its gettin near dawn/When lights close their tired
eyes Jack and I wrote the verses, and then the pair
of us and Eric wrote the hook, and of course that was
Sunshine Of Your Love. Most of the successful Cream
songs were by Jack and myself, with the possible

exception of Tales Of Brave Ulysses and Badge.
Did I see any conflict between the three of them in
Cream? Oh yeah! Having three people in a band is very
claustrophobic, and it was quite a pressurised situation,
because they were the cash cow of that particular
management, so they were working them as hard as
they could. Ginger and Jack had a history of certain
amounts of conflict, and they would compete musically,
and in other ways. A three-piece lineup was incredibly
limiting for somebody like Jack as a composer and a
player, he needed a bigger palette
to work with, which is one of the
reasons they broke up.
Of course, things like Cream,
where the songs become almost
standards, do haunt you. Cream
was nearly juvenilia for Jack I
think some of his more mature
work will eventually be seen to
be just as good, if not better than
that. Funnily enough, when they
did the reunion [in 2005] they
sounded so much better than they
had before, so much more subtle
and thoughtful. They were really
listening to each other, catching
nuances that werent possible
technically because of sound systems in the 60s.
Some of Jacks early solo songs had already been
written for Cream, like Songs For A Tailors Theme For
An Imaginary Western, but Jacks manager hated them
and conspired to lose them. Originally I gave Rope
Jack was an
incredible
composer and
arranger, I was
in awe of him as
a musician
PETE BROWN
JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |
CHUCK BOYD/IDOLS/PHOTOSHOT
JACK BRUCE remembered by his

colleague of 48 years, PETE BROWN
I N STA N T KA R M A !
Ladder To The Moon to Arthur Brown, but
Arthur didnt know what to do with it so I gave it
to Jack, and he came up with the most incredible
music that was just absolutely 100 per cent
right. I generally kept out of things musically
with Jack he was an incredible composer and
arranger, I was in awe of him as a musician.
I learnt a lot from him, especially as a singer.
We actually worked together for 48 years, on
and off. I was extremely glad when Jack asked
me to write his last record, [2014]s Silver Rails,
with him. He said to me, I want this to be an old
mans album. Its got no pretensions to youth,
or machismo. It should reflect how I am, and
the age that I am. Thats a very honest thing to
say in todays world, where were all trying to
be as young as we possibly can!
Jack was a little frail when we recorded it,
and when we last saw each other, at a Silver
Rails playback, maybe it was slightly obvious
Pink Floyd fans

outside Earls Court,
August 1980, and
below, Bowie at
Earls Court, 1973
WISH YOU
WERE STILL
HERE
In memoriam: Earls Court,
venue of legends. Its a
huge loss for London
ROB VERHORST/REDFERNS; REX FEATURES
Jack Bruce, left, with

Pete Brown, 2005
iit might have been the

ffinal time. Jack had a
liver transplant a way
li
back, and managed to
b
survive it. We all thought
su
of Jack as a tremendous
ssurvivor, so I knew
iit was pretty bad
tthis time, but I was
h
hoping he would
m
make it again.
I think Jack
w
would have liked to
be remembered just
b
as a great musician.
He related a lot to
Monk and Mingus;
those guys were
composers and in
fact Jack, with the classical training he had on
the cello, had an even wider palette than some
of those guys. He could score for strings, horns
and orchestras. Jacks achievements were not
out of a striving for money, they were out of
a striving to actually make things that were
beautiful and interesting and groovy and
stimulating. Jack never sang or played a
dishonest word or note in his life. It is genuine,
honest stuff and thats why a lot of people like
it, because it doesnt come with any bullshit or
fakery. Its real. INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK
ODDY HOLDER REMEMBERS Slades

landmark show at Londons Earls Court
Exhibition Centre in July 1973 with pride.
We were the first band to think of playing Earls
Court, nobody else had done it, the singer tells
Uncut. Bowie played there first, but only
because hed heard wed booked it. Unluckily for
him he had terrible sound and got bad reviews,
and we learnt from that, put in baffles and got
much better sound. Id love to have been in the
audience. Apparently the tube was full of 20,000
people in Slade gear, everybody in top hats and
glitter. Nobody had seen anything like it.
And nobody will again, at least not at Earls
Court. Barring a last-minute miracle, the centre
is being demolished this February, the latest
London venue to pay the price of regeneration.
It will be replaced by flats, shops and offices. A
venue that saw important shows by Pink Floyd,
Bowie, the Stones, Led Zeppelin and Dylan, as
well as events from the Royal Tournament to
the Ideal Home Show, will be gone for good.
Its a huge loss for London, says Duggie
Fields, who can see the exhibition centre from
the flat he used to share with Syd Barrett, the
same one that appeared on the cover of The
Madcap Laughs. Fields, an artist, has been
campaigning to save the 1937 Art Deco building,
but now feels its destruction is inevitable.
The developers got a legal injunction against
anybody listing the building, he explains.
In London, it seems everything thats not
a shop, offices or luxury apartments is being
demolished. This striking building still attracts
millions of people from around the world, and
were throwing that history and heritage away.

Earls Court hosted some of the biggest shows
of the 1970s. Pink Floyd and David Bowie played
there in the same week in May 1973, and Floyd
would return to tour The Wall and The Division
Bell. Their shows there in June 1981 for The Wall
were the last full-length ones with Roger Waters,
while October 29, 1994 was the bands last public
performance until the 2005 reunion. In May 1975,
Led Zeppelin played five shows that some
consider the best they ever performed. Bowies
1978 show was filmed by David Hemmings, but
has yet to be released, while Dylans shows that
same year were his first in London since 1966.
More recently, the venue has hosted Take That,
Morrissey, Muse, Arctic Monkeys and Oasis,
while Arcade Fire played two shows in June.
Fields thinks this continued popularity may
be part of the problem for wealthy locals.
The fact that Earls Court draws people to
concerts is fabulous, he says. The whole area is
buzzing. But I think the concerts attract too many
of the unwashed masses in the view of the more
snobbish locals and the council. When Madonna
played [in 2001] there were thousands of girls in
the streets staggering round in boas and cowboy
hats. I think that adds life to the neighbourhood.
That is culture and we should consider ourselves
lucky to have had a venue that could draw
performers like that to it. PETER WATTS
The New Album

December 1st
ACDC.COM COLUMBIA.CO.UK
Free Super Saver Delivery and Unlimited One-Day

Delivery with Amazon Prime are available. Terms
and conditions apply. See Amazon.co.uk for details.
Recording with old
tech is a transforming
experience
ALEX STEYERMARK
LOMAX FIDELITY
Their journey took them from the

hallowed archives at the Library of
Congress to a lacquer disc plant in
California, a remote farmhouse in rural
Louisiana and even an old karate school
in Memphis where Elvis Presley studied
(Its not there anymore, laments
Steyermark. Its been turned into a
sports bar.) Their subjects include a
smattering of familiar faces: John C Reilly,
Jones Wright and
Steyermark with
Dawn Landes and Kid Creoles former
the Presto, the star
lieutenant, Coati Mundi, who is filmed in
of the project
his kitchen delivering a rendition of Billy
Boy accompanying himself on the
spoons. Other less well-known participants
include the Reverend John Wilkins son of early
blues artist Robert Wilkins, whose Thats No Way
To Get Along was recorded as Prodigal Son by
The Rolling Stones. Filmed at Hunters Chapel in
Como, Mississippi, the 73-year old Wilkins delivers
a rendition of I Want Jesus To Walk With Me that
feels like an authentic connection to Lomaxs
recordings. While Steyermark films, Wright
operates the machine, brushing away the chaff as
its stylus cuts into an acetate disc. Besides being
antique, Prestos are notoriously temperamental.
The manuals only one page, laughs Steyermark.
But the troubleshooting guide is four
We see the project as bridging 100 years of
technology, adds Wright. The music is captured
invited musicians they knew to record a song onto
on an analogue artefact, but the project is taking
the Presto. Their only stipulations were that each
into account all the technology thats available.
artist play a song in the public domain, in one take,
Indeed, the film continues to play at festivals
and that the artist choose the location. Soon, they
with a DVD and online release next year. There
secured the involvement of artists including
are also two albums of recordings from the web
Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright III and
series and film. Essentially, The 78 Project is a very
Rosanne Cash. The series grew until, in 2011, they
modern exercise in nostalgia. Its interesting,
decided to make a feature-length documentary.
says Wright, how this 80-year-old machine
We decided to take a road trip, says
interacts with new ones.
Steyermark. We want
E
Every
time we recorded,
to show how people
so
someone
would get their
from different
iP
iPhone
out and take a
cultural backgrounds
pi
picture
or a video. So its
can be connected
co
co-existing
with all these
around this
di
different
technologies
transforming
experience that takes
MICHAEL BONNER
M
place when you have
to cut a record using
For more information visit
Fo
old technology.
w
www.the78project.com
Were bridging 100

years of technology!
Hey Presto! Two filmmakers, an antique disc recorder, and
a quest to record in exactly the same way as Alan Lomax
SARAH LAW FOR THE 78 PROJECT
N APRIL 2010, the New York-based filmmaker

Alex Steyermark travelled to Quogue, Long
Island, on a rather unusual errand. Theres
an eccentric guy who lives in an old fishermans
shack way out on the south shore, Steyermark
explains. He buys old gear from studios and radio
stations that are going out of business, fixes some
of the stuff up, and sells it to collectors around the
world. There, Steyermark bought two Presto
disc recorders, similar to the machines used by
folklorist Alan Lomax in the 1930s and 40s to
document regional folk music in America.
These machines are at the heart of The 78
Project, a documentary by Steyermark and
collaborator Lavinia Jones Wright which both
honours Lomaxs fieldwork and the machines he
used. In the film, the pair travel around America
recording todays musicians on their Prestos.
As Steyermark and Wright explain, The 78
Project began as a web project in 2011, where they
THE CLASSIFIEDS
This month: The Clash and The Slits raise money for Sid Vicious murder
defence fund, while The Jam get festive From the NME, December 9, 1978
FROM THE MAKERS OF
ON
SALE
NOW!
AVAILABLE IN ALL GOOD UK NEWSAGENTS
OR ORDER FROM UNCUT.CO.UK/STORE
DEEPLY VALE FESTIVAL
A QUICK ONE
INTO THE VALLEY!

1978. Hippies and punks come together
at an idyllic free festival near Rochdale:
It was a really transformative moment!
HE FLYER PROMISED free

food and 10,000 beautiful
people: All you need is love,
but the love revolution needs
you. 1978s Deeply Vale
Festival, then in its third year, was fast
becoming the countercultural hub of the
north. Held in a wooded valley on the
fringe of Rochdale, it represented a
cultural shift. The hippy dream had
crashed and burned, explains The Fall
and Billy Bragg producer Grant Showbiz,
then involved with festival regulars Here
And Now. It was all falling to pieces and
we had to learn to fend for ourselves. We
thought that Deeply Vale was a pointer to
the future, so there was this huge kind of
political meaning to it all. It was a really
transformative moment.
Conceived by five members of a
Rochdale commune, Deeply Vale saw
disparate tribes punks, hippies, newwavers, tipi people co-exist in a spirit of
alternative living. As a new 6CD boxset
proves, it was reflected in the diversity
of bands, from newcomers The Fall, The
Ruts and The Durutti Column to relative
veterans Steve Hillage, Tractor and Nik
Turner. Whats more, everything was free.
In 76, we found this natural
amphitheatre, recalls Deeply Vale
co-founder and Ozit label chief Chris
Hewitt. A beautiful little valley with a
stream and lakes for swimming. We knew
the farmer and initially asked if we could
have a birthday party for 10 people
camping. But we ended up with 20 bands
and 300 people. The next year we had
The Deeply Vale

Festival, 1978: a
British Woodstock?
3,000 there,
30-odd acts and
a review in NME.
By 78, we had a
crowd of 20,000.
Years before
Glastonbury, we
were the first free
festival to allow punk bands on. The
Crass thing was about to happen, then
Chumbawamba and the rest of it.
One of the more anarchic local bands
at the 1978 festival was Danny And The
Dressmakers, whose ranks included a
17-year-old Graham Massey, later of 808
State. It was a good kind of chaos, he
recalls. The stage was basic. Wire and
scaffold poles, daylight in a Hobbit wood.
Sister Maura, our 17-year-old convent
schoolgirl lead singer, just screamed like a
car alarm until her voice packed up. The
festival seemed to be a platform for
musical ideas at a time when the scene
was in flux. Punk didnt divide people in
the north. There was a commonality to
anti-establishment themes and Deeply
Vale was where it played out.
The next generation were in attendance,
too, among them David Gedge, The
Chameleons, Ian Brown, Andy Rourke
and an eight-year-old Jimi Goodwin, later
of Doves; while those who performed
included teenage punks Wilful Damage,
Fast Cars, Alternative TV, Pegasus
(featuring a pre-OMD Andy McCluskey)
and Crispy Ambulance. The latters Alan
Hempsall remembers: In 1978, wed only
been going for six months. Tony Wilson
m
made
the biggest impression
o
on me. He had a spot on
S
Saturday and put on The Fall
and Durutti Column. I think it
a
was the beginning of his idea
w
for Factory. He hadnt seen Joy
fo
Division yet, but he
knew Vini Reilly from
Ed Banger And The
Nosebleeds. Vini
wanted something
that showed off his
talents more.
Reillys presiding
memory is of Les
Pryor, formerly of
Alberto Y Los Trios
Paranoias, coming to
the rescue when his
Watkins echo unit gave up: Les stepped
forward and said to the audience, Has
anyone got an elastic band? He diffused
the situation and made everyone laugh
their heads off. I had a giggling fit. The
rest of the time, says Reilly, was spent
wandering around in a hallucinogenic
fug, listening to Fela Kuti on his Walkman:
There was this very pure, strong herb that
I used to get from Moss Side. It was idyllic.
The last Deeply Vale Festival was held in
1979, though by then it had become victim
to local bureaucracy. An injunction was
served, demanding a better water supply
and sanitary conditions. And though it
struggled on for another two summers at
nearby Pickup Bank, it was all but over.
Thatcherism had come in and
community spirit went at the end of the
70s, says Hewitt. Deeply Vale was
special because it was about everybody.
Wed all been to see Woodstock and
bought the triple vinyl. So we just thought,
Wow, wouldnt it be great to do that here?
We still had that dream of the Woodstock
generation. ROB HUGHES
The Deeply Vale Box Set, including six
CDs, a 272-page book and a pack of
incense, is released Dec 1 on Dandelion
Bruce
Springsteen
recently revealed
to the New York
Times that his
fantasy dinnerparty guests would
be Philip Roth,
Keith Richards,
Tolstoy and Dylan.
A clue as to what he
might serve them
came on November
5, when the Boss

auctioned a
lasagne dinner at
his place in aid of
US veterans. The
price? $300,000.
Its a livin thing!
After his Hyde Park
show, Jeff Lynne
appears to be
planning a full
comeback. Talking
to Billboard, Lynne
revealed that hes
working on an
album, with a view
to playing new
material at US
shows in 2015.
Stumped for
that last-minute
festive treat?
The sequel to 4:13
Dream might not
have appeared in
2014, but The Cure
finish the year with
three Christmas
shows in London.
The venue is the
Eventim Apollo, on
December 21-23.
The latest Uncut
Ultimate Music
Guide is now on
sale, dedicated to
the indefatigable
genius of Paul
McCartney, and
full of fab old NME
and Melody Maker
interviews and
insightful new
reviews. And visit
uncut.co.uk,
packed with news
and reviews, and
some of Uncuts
best features from
the archives.
PLAYLIST
THE
ON THE STEREO THIS MONTH
NATALIE PRASS
Natalie Prass SPACEBOMB
Stepping out of Jenny Lewis band and
into Matthew E Whites Spacebomb cabal,
the Nashville singers debut is a sumptuous
country-soul classic.
THE GO-BETWEENS
G Stands For Go-Betweens DOMINO
An exhaustive, revelatory 8CD trawl through
Forster, McLennan and Morrisons formative
years. Further, longer, higher, older
JESSICA PRATT
On Your Own Love Again DRAG CITY
A second album of eldritch, candlelit folk
from the fine Californian singer-songwriter,
often sounding kin to Karen Dalton.
THE WATERBOYS
Modern Blues
HARLEQUIN AND CLOWN
WERE NEW HERE

The Glory Fires,
2014: (l-r) Lee Bains,
Blake Williamson,
Eric Wallace and
Adam Williamson
Lee Bains III

& The Glory Fires
Recommended this month: politics, religion and
rocknroll! The radical new firebrands of Southern Rock
w, I got nervous writing all these

Bains concedes that hes far from the first
songs, says Lee Bains III. I was
Southern musician to be drawn to what one
raised not to talk about politics,
obvious antecedent, Drive-By Truckers, defined
religion or sex in polite company. And theres
as the duality of the Southern thing. (Matt
a lot on this record about the two of those that
Patton, a former compadre of Bains in
rocknroll isnt supposed to be about.
Tuscaloosa punkers The Dexateens, recently
Bains has just been asked how hesitant he was
joined the DBTs on bass.) The South remains
about deploying the motto of his home state of
unfairly caricatured not least, as Bains has said
Alabama We Dare Defend Our Rights! as
previously, by Southerners but its tormented
the title of a song which does not, to understate
history provides any native artist with what
matters audaciously, full-throatedly endorse the
sometimes seems almost an unfair advantage:
insular belligerence with which the South in
a blessing, to coin a phrase, and a curse. That
general, and Alabama in particular, are often
white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon type, says
associated. Bains song of the same name is,
Bains, has been problematic since the inception
rather, an angry elegy to the victims of the 1963
of the South. Im interested in expanding the idea
bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in his
of a monolithic, static South into a much more
native Birmingham accompanied, like every
multiplicitous and dynamic set of identities.
song on Bains & The Glory Fires stunning second
For all that Bains lyrics are clearly important to
LP, Dereconstructed (No 40 in Uncuts Albums
him, its striking, on much of Dereconstructed,
Of 2014 list), by unmistakeably
how hard they are to hear beneath
Southern rock guitars.
the squalling furies of the music.
IM YOUR FAN
But theres a history, says
That nervousness, again?
Bains, of Southern bands
No, thats not why, he says. Or
undermining the social strictures
at least not quite we hemmed and
the Allmans, Marshall Tucker,
hawed about that. But I wanted it
Skynyrd. And I really value that
to be a rager, to sound abrasive, to
tradition. When I was in high
represent the contents of the lyrics
school, all the bands I got stoked
sonically. The records Ive loved
about coming through town were
were ones that had vocals pushing
Patterson Hood,
from Gainsville and Richmond,
Drive-By Truckers to crack through the guitars, and
ud
made me feel I was in a basement
who had this aesthetic of loud
s.
watc
guitars and politicised lyrics.
watching a band play through
rded
Mars
These were two-guitar, bearded
Marshall stacks with a busted PA.
Pand
punk bands, but they were
Pandemonium. ANDREW MUELLER
where I learned about LGBT
politics and feminism.
Dereconstructed is out on Sub Pop
Dere
Lee Bains III

is Southern
punk rock at
its nest...
Mike Scotts latest musical

adventure takes him to
Nashville, and a soulful
new Waterboys
featuring Muscle
Shoals legend David
Hood on bass.
PANDA BEAR
Panda Bear Meets
The Grim Reaper
Panda Bear
DOMINO
The Animal Collectives most

high-profile member returns with his fifth
exuberant and poppiest solo album.
SLEATER-KINNEY
No Cities To Love SUB POP
Hot on the heels of their career-spanning
boxset, a new chapter of S-Ks storied
career begins with an album picking up
roughly where 2005s The Woods left off.
LIAM HAYES
Slurrup FAT POSSUM
An unprecedented burst of activity in the
Plush mans 20-year career, following up this
autumns Korp Sole Roller with a ragged,
punchier powerpop set.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Black Fire! New Spirits! Deep And Radical
Jazz In The USA 1957-75 SOUL JAZZ
What it says on the proverbial tin. A potent
Soul Jazz round-up, featuring Don Cherry,
Archie Shepp, Yusef Lateef et al.
HOWLIN RAIN
Mansion Songs EASY SOUND
A weird major-label sojourn behind him,
Ethan Miller leads his SF rockers in a
strung-out, reflective new direction.
8:58
Eight Fifty Eight PLEDGE
In the wake of Orbitals split, Paul Hartnoll
updates the intricate systems of his old band
circa Snivilization.
For regular updates, check our blogs at www.
uncut.co.uk and follow @JohnRMulvey on Twitter
AN AUDIENCE WITH...
Jimmy
Page
Interview: Michael Bonner

Photograph: Ross Halfin
The Led Zeppelin guitarist discusses his glittering career, occult bookshops and
Robert Plants claims of a possible acoustic reunion: Its just spin, and its not on!
Y JIMMY PAGEs standards, 2014 has been a
surprisingly busy year. He has overseen the launch
of a lengthy Led Zeppelin reissue campaign,
published his autobiography and even teamed up
with designer Paul Smith for a range of limitededition Zeppelin scarves. Next year, he promises,
there will even be the prospect of new music.
Time sometimes passes quite quickly, he tells
Uncut, in the library of a boutique London hotel. Page will be 71 in January,
but he looks in remarkably good shape. With his bronze tan, white ponytail and wide smile he resembles an old-school Hollywood star recently
returned from the South Of France. Dressed in black, taking occasional
sips from a glass of sparkling mineral water, he is animated as he answers
your questions on subjects ranging from deep Zeppelin album cuts to the
prospect of a Yardbirds reunion, his formative musical inspirations and
his extraordinary session work from the 1960s. Page even responds to
Robert Plants claim in these very pages that he suggested reuniting
with his former bandmate for an acoustic project Its just spin, says
Page. I dont think its productive in any shape or form to what hes doing
or what Im doing. Now, on with your questions
DENNIS COFFIN; BEN STANSALL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
STAR QUESTION
Would you please
show me how
to play Black
Dog? Its been
bothering me
for a long time.
Brian May
Well, Ill have to, then, if Brians
asked! What are the chords for
Black Dog? Its in A, and then it
sort of goes to an E chord but then
while its snaking around it, it has
some sort of little triplets that take
you back into the A. So, yes, its
tricky. You just have to sort of know
how to count it.
Why has it taken you so long to
finish your autobiography?
Christian Parker, Shoreditch
I was doing other things at the same
time! One of the things that slowed
it up was knowing, say, there was
a photo session in the past, in the
70s, and knowing that there were
contact sheets. Maybe the images
are now with agencies, but not the

contact sheets. So I wanted to get
into the contact sheets, and that
wasnt always so easy to do. There
were also certain photos I wanted
to get, but I didnt remember who
the photographer was. It just took
time to piece it all together. But
however long it took, I knew that
nobody had done an autobiography
in photographs. As it goes from 13
through to 70 years of age, its got
a whole history of a working
musician. All the changes that go
on are almost chameleon-like but
nevertheless theyre driven by this
one thing a passion towards
music. That was the challenge: to
do something that had never been
done before but which just unfolds
the more you go through it.
What new projects are in the
pipeline and when can we
expect to hear them?
Derek Murphy, Dublin, Ireland
Ive been involved in some other
epic projects. Ive got all the
Page, left (circa

1959), outside
school in Epsom
with friend Rod
Wyatt (right)
Zeppelin remasters finished, for all

of the albums, so theyll be coming
out in staggered release. I also got
material for a what happened in
this day in history for the website,
its all stockpiled. So things will be
coming out in healthy instalments,
which then allows me to focus on
musicians and music that I want
to be seen to be doing next year. I
hoped I could do it this year, but I
cant. Its too much. I dont want to
have to contract musicians and
then go, Im sorry, Ive gotta go
over to the States for a month to
do some promo. I want to start
generating the passion within
all of the musicians that Im
working with, and were going
to go through like a rocket. Itll
manifest itself next year. Can
I tell you anything about it? Well,
Ill be playing guitar. That we

can all guarantee. And I wont be
singing. I want to go out there and
play music from all the way
through. I did a solo tour in 1988.
You know, Ive only had one solo
album out, really. And one single in
1965. So I havent tried to sort of
flood the market with my own
stuff! I want to get out there and
play exactly what it is that Ive got
in mind here to do, including new
material. But therell be some good
surprises in there. I think people
want me to go out there and play.
They know all the sort of stuff
that I can do. I can play in many
sorts of categories because weve
seen that with Led Zeppelin, all
the acoustic stuff, and this, that
and the other. Thats exactly
what I would do.
Nobody had done

an autobiography
in photographs...
Its got a whole
history of a
working musician
AN AUDIENCE WITH...
Are there plans to release any
more experimental music?
Bruce Yardley, Leeds
Ill tell you whats coming out that
Im really excited about, the mix
that I did of Lucifer Rising, but Im
leaving the guitar on it, a 12-string,
because thats the guide guitar
thats showing me where Im going
to do the overdub. This isnt what
got sent to Kenneth Anger, because
I didnt want hardly any guitar at
all, theres only a little bit of guitar
at the end, guitars coming in more
across it but the mix is really, really
superb, Im really proud of it. And
Ive got some experimental music
that was done with bow and
Theremin which is like, hang on to
your seats, because it really, really
is something else, its disturbing.
Ive got home stuff that I did at the
same studio or equipment that I did
the Lucifer Rising [soundtrack] on,
with the whole guitar textures and
overdubs. I think people want to
hear that. They want to know what
it was I was doing. Ill show you
what it was like and what I was
ming
doing and youll see. Thats coming
on the website. Vinyl.
Everything You Need Babe.

Theres a new version
of it right now, but beforehand
when it was originally there,
I heard this solo and I said,
My goodness, thats me! So
I tracked it down and it was
Bern Elliott & The Fenmen. So
I must have done this session,
because its me without a
shadow of a doubt. I wouldnt
have remembered I did a solo
let alone a song or was on the
session, they were coming fast
and furious. You didnt know
who you were going in with,
thats the important thing, so
I didnt have a whole list
myself. I can estimate how
many. Its a hell of a lot, its
gotta be. I was doing it for the
equivalent of three years or
so. Three sessions a day.
The five-piece
Yardbirds in
1966, with Jeff
Beck, below left,
and Jimmy Page,
top right
sold rrecords. Its just like you see

this old footage where theyve got
pe
people
going in booths. So Id go
th from school on the day
there
w
when
they had their deliveries
in on weekdays for the
weekend and you could
check certain artists to see
w their new record was.
what
Y
Yeah
thats it, I was really on
th I didnt wait til Saturday,
that.
in ccase something had already
STAR QUESTION
DENNIS COFFIN; PAUL REDMOND/WIREIMAGE
Reliving
all of the
wonderful
moments
from this
canon of
music,
which moment took you by
surprise the most?
Michael Des Barres
A lot of it you think, Well, this
ight
might possibly happen, that might
possibly happen. But Id say as
far as the manifestation of it went, it
was getting the first gold disc for
Led Zeppelin I. You were fully
aware of gold discs and things like
that, with artists that you were
personally endeared to along
the way, American artists.
Suddenly everything wed done,
all the work etcetera, etcetera
wed broken America, I know, but
the fact is, that gold disc was so
symbolic of everything for me, a
major thing.
Who first inspired you to play
the guitar?
Maryann, California
Lonnie Donegan inspired
everyone because he made it look
as though it was possible to do.
But who really moved it out of just
playing acoustic to electric was all
those people that were playing in
the 1950s. Initially, it was the
rockabilly-style guitar, the Johnny
Burnette Rock & Roll Trio. When
you heard that, it was just
something that inspired you so
much to want to play out of the

box, as its so abstract, the
guitar playing. Scotty Moore,
Cliff Gallop, Jonny Neats, they
gave me the inspiration If
you heard them, you were
infected by them, seduced.
That was what was going to
write the whole of the manual
for us as much as anything
else. Then The Beatles opened
it up for bands to write, and
down here in the south it was
the Chess catalogue more than
Tamla Motown. There was this
great fusion that had gone on from
rock though the blues and all that
wonderful music, that Chicago
blues movement, really, that went
on Vee-Jay and Chess. All that stuff
was so exhilarating.
Where did you buy your records
when you were growing up?
Paul Lloyd, Crystal Palace
In Epsom. Rumbelows. It was by
the Clock Tower. Rumbelows had a
little section at the back where they
sold out in the morning. I could only

afford the equivalent of my pocket
money, like one single. But I also
had to pay for guitars, so there was
a lot of bobbing and weaving when
it came to being a record collector or
a guitar player.
Is there a definitive list of
all your session work?
David Burns, via email
No, but Ill tell you something
interesting. On the BBC, theres a
little musical clip that comes on, I
think the songs called Ive Got
Are there any surviving

live multi-track tapes from
the Japan 1971 tour?
Ian Coe, Toronto
Maybe. But not for now.
Theres been a lot of Led
Zeppelin material thats
come out, including live material,
but more importantly, with visual.
But also theres the O2 which shows
the three remaining members with
Jason, a more recent incarnation.
Im so keen for the Led Zeppelin
material from the studio to go out
to give more information on what
went on and I thought that really
tipped the scales. Now theres
other things to do. And I stockpile
material. So, yeah, theres always
someone wanting to know whats
considered to be the Holy Grail
cause its yet to be discovered. But
theres no point in even thinking
about that at the moment. Ive put
quite a lot of time into the Led
Zeppelin material.
What do you consider to be
your finest non-Led Zeppelin
achievement?
David Goodson, via email
Its hard to say. Theres so many
different areas. Id surprise
everyone, but Id be very sincere
if I said that doing the Olympics
[Beijing, 2008] with Leona Lewis
was phenomenal. Shes really
plucky, shes superb, and she sang
Whole Lotta Love brilliantly. We
managed to do the full length of
Whole Lotta Love it wasnt
edited and she sang it beautifully.
It was so cool the way she
approached it. For that audience,
and the fact we didnt fuck it up
were really going to do this and
were going to do it proud. That was
important. It was a Led Zeppelin
number but it took on another
persona. I was proud to be able to
play that riff for the handover.
TOY - JOIN THE DOTS

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24.11.14
Zoso with Led

Zeppelin at
the Oakland
Coliseum, CA,
July 23, 1977
Would you consider playing

with The Yardbirds again?
Byron Lewis, Barry, Wales
But who would sing? Keith Relf
died all those many years ago.
Hed done a couple of other things,
Renaissance and Medicine Head.
Keith Relf was damn good. Could
Jeff Beck do it? Sing? He doesnt
want to sing Hi Ho Silver Lining
let alone sing For Your Love.
Thats really unfair! But I cant sing,
so there we are. Maybe Eric would
like to sing? No, dont say that,
because itll start all the stupid
rumours. Im not starting. Im just
thinking whos going to sing. At
least you got three of the original
guitarists still there and the current
ones that have been since.
LARRY HULST/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; PAUL REDMOND/WIREIMAGE
STAR QUESTION
Is there one guitar
youve had that
you feel is more
magical than the
rest? J Mascis
I think most people
would think its a
59 Les Paul Jed Walsh insisted I
buy it off him in 1969, and I go into
the second album with that. So
Whole Lotta Love is done on it,
and I also played it at the O2. Same
guitar. Im pretty loyal to my guitars
you know, but then theyre pretty
loyal to me, too. Theres also an
acoustic guitar that all of the first
four albums were written on. So
thats quite an important one. But
as far as the one that people got to
see then its the 59 Les Paul. How
many guitars do I have? I dont
know! More than I can play at

any one point in time. Even though
I do have double-necks so that I
can try and play more than one at
one time!
I wouldnt have
remembered if
I did a solo, let
alone a song or a
session they
were coming fast
and furious!
Where does Zoso come from?
Preston Currie, Sudbury, Suffolk
It comes from me everyone had
a symbol. Originally, there was
going to be no information on
Led Zeppelin IV. Then somebody
suggested having a sort of
craftsman mark. But it wasnt going
to be so easy because everyones
going to have their idea on what
that one symbol should be, so it
came down to everyone should
choose their own symbol. Because
its the fourth album, all the others
have been I, II and III in Roman
numerals, so then well have four
characters, if you like. Having been
working on it along with all the rereleases, I think of it as IV and
actually I think of Houses Of The
Holy as V. That said, everyone chose
their own symbol and I chose mine.
What does it mean?

It means I chose my
symbol and put it on
there. If I do a book,
then thats probably
the right time to
describe the whole
process of it, if you
dont mind.
A telephone
can be clearly
heard ringing in
the studio on
Zeppelins The
Ocean. Who
was on the line?
Phil Tate, South
Shields, Tyne
& Wear
I dont know. Do I
find it strange
that people pick up
on these very
specific points of
records? No. Im
thrilled the records
are recorded in such
a way that the hi-fi
quality, even
though its tough
the musics not light and wimpy
that you can hear detail on it
because thats what youre
supposed to do. It was supposed to
be something whereby you could
hear everything that was going on
and yet thered still be an intensity
and a character for each number,
each one a separate sound, very
different in its approach, almost
in its performance. I think thats got
a lot to do with the analogue
recording. All of those things were
done from analogue. On IV, youll
hear a version of Stairway To
Heaven that is absolute hi-fi, thats
exactly what hi-fi is all about. It was
done well in the first place, superbly
well, and of course when youve got
these great musicians, you want to
make sure you can hear what
theyve done.
In the 70s, you ran a bookshop
called Equinox. Can you tell
us about it?
Julie & Mo, Germany
I was interested in alternative
basically, things alternative.
There was quite a number of likeminded people around at that
point in time, so I had a bookshop
in West London because there were
a couple on Museum Street and
one in Cecil Court. Basically,
it was an occult bookshop, and it
covered all manner of things like
astrology and yoga, Eastern
mysticism, Western mysticism,
it was right across the board. Its
very similar to what you have
in a bookshop like Watkins [Cecil
Court, London WC2], really, thats
what it was.
How involved were you in Swan

Song? Davy Maguire, Dublin
Very much so. We were all very keen
to have something as a record label.
We were thrilled. Dave Edmunds,
Pretty Things. Detective, they were
good. That first album of theirs,
it was really good. It should have
been more popular, shouldnt it?
Bad Company that was more Peter
Grants thing, and that was really a
great band to have on there because
of Paul Rodgers. Hes phenomenal
he was then and still is. The Pretty
Things were a band that were really
changing their music and had done
because they probably did one of
the best singles way back in the day
with Rosalyn. Thats wild! Thats
serious! And then theyd gone
through SF Sorrow and the music
that they were doing on Swan Song
was incredible. It was the sort of
band that when someone said, Oh,
some tapes have come in, I was
keen to hear what theyd done,
because it was always so good!
Good writing, good performance
from everybody. A fine band.
Jimmy, would you agree with
Robert Plants offer to do an
all-acoustic set?
Taylor Miranda, Ferndale, CA
Thats coming from a soundbite
that is inaccurate. He would have
no intention whatsoever of doing
it. So Im not getting into it. People
keep giving me these quotes. I dont
follow what he says all I know
is, its speaking in volumes that we
just did that one show. He can say
whatever he wants. He can say
Jimmy this, Jimmy that I dont
care. Ive got acoustic songs.
Dont you think Ive got some new
material for what Im going to do?
Its just spin. Its spin, and its not
on. The Robert Plant questions are
difficult for me to answer because
Ive had enough of all of this stuff,
to be honest. Robert says this,
Robert says that. I just dont want to
be presenting soundbites so that its
like some kind of ping-pong match.
Ive had enough. I dont need it. The
only reality of it is that we did one
concert. No matter how you dress it
up, look at the situation. Thats it.
Jimmy Page, the
official autobiography
by Jimmy Page, is out
now, published by
Genesis Publications.
Price 40 from major
bookstores or jimmypagebook.com
The latest batch of Led Zeppelin
remasters IV and Houses Of The
Holy are available from Rhino
UNCUT.CO.UK
Log on to see whos in

the hot-seat next month
and to post your questions!
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THEFILMS,
ESSENTIAL
ALBUMS
DVDS & BOOKS OF THE YEAR
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
The nal, denitive word on 2014, as the Uncut team rank the key releases of the year.
Once youve worked your way through all our charts, please send us your own thoughts:
[email protected]
22 THE TOP 75 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 33 THE BEST REISSUES &

COMPS 36 2014S FINEST FILMS 39 THE YEARS BEST BOOKS
21
REVIEW OF 2014 N|E|W|R|E|L|E|A|S|E|S

75 RICHARD THOMPSON
Acoustic Classics
BEESWING
74 TEMPLES
Sun Structures
HEAVENLY
73 DAVE & PHIL ALVIN

Common Ground YEP ROC
72 DAN MICHAELSON
Distance THE STATE51 CONSPIRACY
71 BOB MOULD
Beauty & Ruin MERGE
70 FIRST AID KIT
Stay Gold COLUMBIA
69 GULP
Season Sun SONIC CATHEDRAL
68 LYDIA LOVELESS
Somewhere Else BLOODSHOT
67 PERFUME GENIUS
Too Bright
CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL S&D
66 THURSTON MOORE
The Best Day MATADOR
65 THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
Brill Bruisers MATADOR
64 KING CREOSOTE
From Scotland With Love
DOMINO
63 GAZELLE TWIN
Unflesh ANTI GHOST MOON RAY
62 PAOLO NUTINI
Caustic Love ATLANTIC
61 AFGHAN WHIGS
Do To The Beast SUB POP
60 FRAZEY FORD
Indian Ocean NETTWERK
59 RODDY FRAME
Seven Dials AED
58 JAMIE T
Carry On The Grudge
VIRGIN EMI
57 THE DELINES
Colfax DECOR
56 ANGEL OLSEN
Burn Your Fire
For No Witness JAGJAGUWAR
55 SCOTT WALKER AND SUNN O)))
Soused 4AD
54 TOM PETTY
Hypnotic Eye REPRISE
53 GOAT
Commune ROCKET
52 LIARS
Mess MUTE
51 JENNY LEWIS
The Voyager WARNER BROS
Morrissey: a
turbulent year
BEASTS
50WILD
Present Tense
DOMINO
If 2011s Smother was

somewhat uptight,
a little frigid, reinedin, corseted, Present
Tense was a welcome
return in parts to the more
colourfully ribaldry of Wild Beasts
first two albums. Synthesisers
dominated, but the album was
never alien or abrasive, more often
intimate, eerily seductive, an exotic
pleasure, indebted partly to both
Kate Bush and The Blue Nile.
HITCHCOCK
49ROBYN
The Man Upstairs
YEP ROC
Produced by Joe
Boyd, who helmed
landmark albums by
many of Hitchcocks
musical heroes, The
Man Upstairs was a largely acoustic
collection of sombre originals and
impeccably selected covers. Among
them were revelatory versions of
The Doors The Crystal Ship and
Roxys Avalon-era To Turn You On.
At 61, Hitchcock seemed finally to
have outgrown surreal whimsy. His
new maturity suited him perfectly.
MORRISSEY
48
World Peace Is None
Of Your Business
HARVEST
His first album in

five years was barely
in the shops when
Morrissey threw a fit
over Harvests
ineffective promotion. In the

subsequent public row, it was
rather forgotten that World Peace
sounded as fresh as Viva Hate did in
the wake of The Smiths. At its best,
it was a vivid reminder how great
he once was and can be still.
47ALLAH-LAS
Worship The Sun
INNOVATIVE LEISURE
Allah-Las highly
regarded 2011 debut
drew obsessively
from a wellspring of
mid-60s influences
and was in thrall to fuzzy US garage
rock, surf-pop, early psychedelia,
primitive beat music, Loves
psychotic twitchiness and The
Byrds trebly jangle. Their second
album was a similar helping of
impeccable Californian retrofetishism that subverted ridicule
by achieving so spectacularly what
it set out to do.
WATSON
46WILLIE
Folk Singer, Vol. 1
ACONY
Willie Watson,
formerly of Old Crow
Medicine Show,
picked his way
through a sometimes
arcane collection of old and obscure
folk and country songs on his
outstanding solo debut, produced
by Dave Rawlings for the label he
runs with musical partner Gillian
Welch. The results were like
something you might have heard
on an anthology compiled by
Harry Smith.
The 2014 End of Year Review in association with

TEMPEST
45KATE
Everybody Down
BIG DADA
London poet
and spoken-word
artist Tempest, the
youngest winner of
the 2012 Ted Hughes
Award poetry prize, made her debut
as a rapper on the Mercurynominated Everybody Down, an
ambitious narrative about love,
drugs and redemption, each song
a new chapter in a sometimes lurid
and generally bleak tale, partly
indebted to The Streets A Grand
Dont Come For Free.
THOM YORKE
44
Tomorrows
Modern Boxes
SELF-RELEASED
Septembers surprise
release of Thom
Yorkes second solo
album provoked
more discussion
about how the music was delivered
than the music itself, which rather
overlooked the fact that it contained
some of his most lovely, clever and
subtly involving work of the decade.
The album gave up its riches
incrementally, even reluctantly,
but there were great rewards for
the patiently attentive.
INDIA YOUTH
43EAST
Total Strife Forever
STOLEN RECORDINGS
If Brian Wilson, Eno

and Bjrk had ever
made an album
together, the results
of their stellar
N|E|W|R|E|L|E|A|S|E|S REVIEW OF 2014

collaboration might have sounded
not unlike this impressive debut
from William Doyle. Total Strife
Forever shifted kaleidoscopically
from shoegaze shimmer to ambient
abstraction, full-on electroorchestral symphonies, modern
classical austerity and pumping
acid house.
much-weathered voice. On his most

intimate and open-hearted record in
years, there were nods to his hellraising 60s and 70s prime and
riotous Nashville days, while Billy
Joe Shavers Hard To Be An
Outlaw was delivered with the
surly panache of a true renegade.
ROUX
36LATrouble
In Paradise
42 Rave Tapes
MOGWAI
POLYDOR
At the time of its

mid-summer release,
the belated follow-up
to La Rouxs selftitled 2009 debut
seemed to our reviewer like the
best pop album of 2014 so far,
warmer and much more luxurious
than its sometimes shrill
predecessor, a triumph for the
now effectively solo Elly Jackson,
following the departure of former
collaborator Ben Langmaid.
By years end, its appeal had
barely diminished.
ROCK ACTION
ON YOUR FREE CD TRACK 9
Breakthrough trio
Future Islands
LANEGAN BAND
39Singles
41 MARK
Phantom Radio
FLOODED SOIL/VAGRANT/HEAVENLY
2012s synth-heavy
Blues Funeral
marked a surprising
development in
Mark Lanegans
illustrious career, and he furthered
that albums overlapping of the
blues and folk, that have been a
cornerstone of his music, with
modern electronics on Phantom
Radio. The hypnotic pulse of
programmed drums and
washes of synthesiser created
a dramatic musical landscape
over which Lanegans weatherbeaten vocals loomed with
dark majesty.
LEE BAINS III &

40
THE GLORY FIRES
Dereconstructed
SUB POP
Ferocious Southern
rock indebted to
Lynyrd Skynyrd
and Drive-By
Truckers, with
an exciting dash of The Rolling
Stones, the second album from
Alabamas Lee Bains III & The
Glory Fires was also a potent,
articulate attempt to bring an
enlightened perspective to hoary
Southern traditions of regional
pride, faith, virility and political
intransigence.
FUTURE ISLANDS
4AD
Its about real things.

Love, loss, nature,
Future Islands
vocalist Samuel T
Herring told Uncut
about his bands fourth album, their
first for 4AD. Recorded in a hunting
cabin in their native North Carolina,
Singles was full of rousing synth-pop,
Herrings operatic croon bringing an
urgent hyper-sincerity to a collection
of emotionally bold, heartfelt songs.
38Bcs
FENNESZ
EDITIONS MEGO
Since 2001s Endless

Summer, in which
guitar feedback
and processed
electronics
shimmered over discreet, nostalgic

melodies, Christian Fennesz has
never quite as successfully matched
its ample serenity, despite his
growing status as an experimental
composer who favours warmth and
romance to clinical austerity. Bcs,
though, was, however, a ravishing
experience, Fennesz emerging from
its billowing clouds of noise as
Kevin Shields most auspicious peer.
NELSON
37 WILLIE
Band Of Brothers
SONY LEGACY
This was a surprise:

a Willie Nelson
album mostly
written by Willie
Nelson and further
distinguished by the simple
grandeur of the hardy veterans
TRUCKERS
35DRIVE-BY
English Oceans
ATO
Returning from the

much-needed break
they took after 2011s
Go-Go Boots, DriveBy Truckers were
reinvigorated on English Oceans.
Band cornerstone Mike Cooley
sounded especially refreshed,
contributing nearly half the
songs on an album that followed
a blazing arc from the rowdy,
horn-driven Exile On Main St
rock of Shit Shots Count to the
epic closer Grand Canyon, and
held together better than anything
since 2003s Decoration Day.
CHRIS FORSYTH
34
& THE SOLAR
MOTEL BAND
Intensity Ghost
NO QUARTER
True renegade
Willie Nelson
The brilliant
Philadelphia
guitarists debt to
Television was even
more apparent on
Intensity Ghost than last years
raging Solar Motel, his new
album taking up where Marquee
Moon left off. If Forsyths solo
albums showcased his wiry
virtuosity, then the newly
minted Solar Motel Band
(featuring members of Spacin
and The War On Drugs) added
serious cosmic heft to his
frequently ecstatic music.
DAVE McCLISTER
Mogwais eighth
album sounded
like a major
achievement, on
which the bands
familiar predilection for vast
musical landscapes drenched by
torrential guitars and the swell of
often lachrymose melodies came
up against dark electronic
experiments, in which there were
echoes of Boards Of Canada and
even Depeche Mode. This was
music to terrorise and delight,
uniquely Mogwai.
best
of
the war on drugs

lost in the dream
2014
fka twigs
lp1
goat
commune
first aid kit
stay gold
8
jack white
lazaretto
8
swans
to be kind: 2cd
mogwai
rave tapes
warpaint
warpaint
interpol
el pintor
8
eels
the cautionary tales of
mark oliver everett
the voidz
julian casablancas+
tyranny
the brian jonestown

massacre
revelation
leonard cohen
popular problems
lucinda williams
down where the spirit
meets the bone: 2cd
8
bruce springsteen
high hopes
ryan adams
ryan adams
8
future islands
singles
mark lanegan band

phantom radio
micah p hinson
micah p hinson & the nothing
8
joanne shaw taylor
the dirty truth
david gray
mutineers
ray lamonta
gne
supernova
james
la petite mort
suck it and see
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33
Metamodern
Sounds In Country Music
STURGILL SIMPSON
Far-out
country:
Sturgill
Simpson
LOOSE
Simpsons 2013
debut album, High
Top Mountain, was
steeped in the
Outlaw country
of Waylon Jennings and Merle
Haggard. Its follow-up was rather
more cosmically inclined, whose
beauty lay in the contrast between
timeworn country obsessions
loneliness, the road, heartbreak
and a new-found starry
adventurism. If metaphysical
prog country was your bag, this
was the album for you.
32MERCHANDISE
After The End
Jack White, still

the showman
4AD
Floridas
Merchandise
shocked many fans
with the new musical
direction essayed on
2013s Totale Nite and moved even
further away from their hardcore
roots on After The End, an album of
80s pop and brooding white soul.
There were overtones of both New
Order and Lloyd Cole, while their
love of The Smiths was evident in
Carson Coxs Morrissey-like vocals.
31TUNE-YARDS
Nikki Nack
MADISON FULLER; HOLLY ANDRES
4AD
With contributions
from producers John
Hill and Malay and
Grammy-winning
vocal group Roomful
Of Teeth, Nikki Nack was a more
collaborative effort than usual from
Merrill Garbus. Their presence did
little, however, to temper her
characteristic hyperactivity. Nikki

Nack was an album bursting with
adventure and originality, a drumheavy, soul-jazz mix of teasing
sensuality, waspish protest and
art-pop mysticism.
30SPOON
They Want My Soul
LOMA VISTA
Spoon returned
after a three-year
break, sounding
brighter and louder
than ever on They
Want My Soul, an album of classic,
joyous rocknroll, the band
swaggering through blasts of
raucous garage rock and blues
stompers, hunched art-rock and
pretty balladry with hugely
confident panache. The exquisitely
romantic Inside Out, set to an
old-school rap breakbeat, was
a career highlight.
WHITE
29JACK
Lazaretto
THIRD MAN/XL
A characteristic of
Jack Whites postWhite Stripes career
has been its selfconsciously
antithetical drift away from the
Stripes dynamic minimalism.
Lazaretto in this respect featured
some of the most dense, busy and
wild music hes ever made, but
was paradoxically at its best when
Whites bravura showmanship
gave way to reflective calm and
rare moments of vulnerable
introspection.
BLACK KEYS
28THE
Turn Blue
NONESUCH
2011s El Camino was

a platinum-selling
album of in-yourface rockers that
turned The Black
Keys into one Americas biggest
bands. Turn Blue was therefore a
brave shift in musical emphasis,
largely mid-tempo, moody, lush
and deeply soulful that played like
a love letter to Motown soul. If El
Camino was their catchiest album,
this was their most seductive,
insidious and satisfying.
WATT
27BEN
Hendra
UNMADE ROAD
Bursting with
adventure:
Tune-Yards
His first solo album

since North Marine
Drive, 31 years ago,
Hendra found Ben
Watt in reflective
middle-age, trying to re-engage
with a youthful optimism that

preceded his long career with

Everything But The Girl. Bernard
Butlers guitars wonderfully
enhanced these elegant songs of
emotional resilience and David
Gilmours lap-steel solo on The
Levels was an album highlight.
GUNN
26STEVE
Way Out Weather
PARADISE OF BACHELORS
Brooklyns Steve
Gunn originally
impressed as a
virtuoso guitarist
with a flair for
extended improvisations. On
Way Out Weather, however, he
transformed himself into a classic
singer-songwriter, his formidable
instrumental chops placed at the
service of a collection beautifully
constructed songs, the woozy,
cyclical dynamic of the title track
evidence of a recent stint with
Kurt Viles Violators.
MODS
25SLEAFORD
Divide And Exit
HARBINGER SOUND
Sleaford Mods
seventh album was a
typically angry howl
from societys pissstained basement.
Jason Williamsons scatological
broadsides were delivered furiously
over Andrew Fearns brutally crude
backing tracks. Often compared
to northern ranters like John
Cooper Clarke and Mark E Smith,
Williamson here more resembled
Arthur Seaton, the bitter workingclass hero of Alan Sillitoes Saturday
Night And Sunday Morning.
24TWEEDY
Sukierae
DBPM/ANTI-
Wilcos Jeff Tweedy

had just started work
on this intimate
collaboration with
his 18-year-old
drummer son, Spencer, when
Tweedys wife was diagnosed with
cancer, a family crisis that inevitably
impacted on the record he eventually
made. Sukierae, however, rarely
sank into post-diagnosis
melancholy, Tweedy addressing
life-changing events with great
dignity on an album of profound
depth and emotional richness.
23Pom Pom
ARIEL PINK
4AD
Pom Pom was the

most consistently
entertaining Ariel
Pink album to date.
It was also the most
chaotic, vexing and ridiculous.
Across the equivalent of four sides
of vinyl, Pink giddily mixed
elements of goth, glam, pre-Beatles
teen beat, 80s MOR, twee pop, prog,
advertising jingles and themes from
kids TV shows. The results were
gleefully deranged, time-warped
and sometimes slightly sinister.
22Morning Phase
BECK
CAPITOL
Beck was reluctant

to acknowledge
Morning Phase as a
companion piece to
2002s Sea Change,
but his first album of new songs in
six years seemed tethered to the
traumas of the earlier album,
despite being presented as a new
musical dawn. The cosmic
Californian music he grew up
with was a shaping influence,
but even more affecting were the
solemn echoes of Nick Drakes
fragile folk sensibility.
21EARTH
Primitive And Deadly
SOUTHERN LORD
Seattle drone-rock
pioneer Dylan
Carlson has lately
busied himself with
film soundtracks
and, as Drcarlsonalbion,
adaptations of traditional British
folk songs. He occupied more
familiar ground here, Earths
monolithic heaviness never
weightier or more glacial. Highlights
included There Is A Serpent
MC Taylor
aka Hiss
Golden
Messenger
20 BEST
AMERICANA
ALBUMS
Hurray For The

Riff Raffs Alynda
Lee Segarra
1 HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER

Lateness Of Dancers MERGE
Coming and Rooks Across The

Gates, featuring Mark Lanegan.
STEPHEN MALKMUS
20
& THE JICKS
Wig Out At Jagbags
DOMINO
Stephen Malkmus
first album since
relocating to Berlin,
the wonderfully
titled Wig Out
struck an almost perfect balance
between his idiosyncratic pop
instincts and affection for sonic
squalls and noisy rumblings. There
were still a lot of guitar-heavy jams,
but the pithy tunefulness of its best
songs made this one of his most
consistently engaging records since
Pavements gilded heyday.
HURRAY FOR
19
THE RIFF RAFF
Small Town Heroes
ATO
Like Gillian Welch,

Alynda Lee Segarra
is inspired by
American folk
traditions, to which
she here brought a radical new
perspective, notably exposing the
sociopathic misogyny of murder
ballad Delia on The Body
Electric, which alone confirmed
Hurray For The Riff Raff as standard
bearers for a new generation of
forward-thinking roots musicians.
18To Be Kind
SWANS
YOUNG GOD/MUTE
Scale, a sense of
hugeness, in fact,
has always been
a key element of
Swans music, but
the vastness of Michael Giras sound

was especially apparent on To Be
Kind, which like 2012s The Seer,
ran to nearly two hours of assaultive
noise symphonies. It was much to
Giras credit that he made such
music not just tolerable, but
absolutely gripping.
17
Down Where The
Spirit Meets The Bone
LUCINDA WILLIAMS
HIGHWAY 20
2 ROSANNE CASH
The River & The Thread DECCA
3 LUCINDA WILLIAMS
Down Where The Spirit Meets
The Bone HIGHWAY 20
4 HURRAY FOR THE RIFF-RAFF
Small Town Heroes ATO
5 STEVE GUNN
Way Out Weather
6 STURGILL SIMPSON
Metamodern Sounds
In Country Music LOOSE
Williams first
release on her own
label was a 20-track
double album that
was also her best
record since 1998 masterpiece, Car
Wheels On A Gravel Road. Supported
by a stellar lineup including Tony
Joe White, Bill Frisell, Jakob Dylan,
Ian McLagan and Jonathan Wilson,
she rousingly mixed hillbilly
country, barroom ballads,
atmospheric Southern gothic,
hard blues, gospel and lashings
of country soul.
7 DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
English Oceans ATO
16American Interior
13 LYDIA LOVELESS
Somewhere Else BLOODSHOT
GRUFF RHYS
TURNSTILE
In 1792, 22-yearold John Evans, a

former Snowdonia
farmhand turned
explorer, set off
on a solo expedition through
America in search of a reputed
tribe of Welsh-speaking Native
Americans. 200 years later, his
descendent, Gruff Rhys,
immortalised Evans journey
in a documentary film, book,
app and this vivid, genredefying, wonderfully droll,
sometimes poignant and
enjoyably baffling re-telling
of an extraordinary story.
8 WILLIE NELSON
Band Of Brothers LEGACY
9 LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES
Dereconstructed SUB POP
10 WILLIE WATSON
Folk Singer, Vol 1 ACONY
11 THE DELINES
Colfax DECOR
12 FRAZEY FORD
Indian Ocean NETTWERK
14 DAVE & PHIL ALVIN

Common Ground YEP ROC
15 ALICE GERRARD
Follow The Music TOMPKINS SQUARE
16 REIGNING SOUND
Shattered MERGE
17 SIMONE FELICE
Strangers TEAM LOVE
18 NATHAN BOWLES
Nansemond
19 PETER ROWAN
Dharma Blues OMNIVORE
20 SHOVELS & ROPE
Swimmin Time DUALTONE
best of
caribou
our love
2014
pharrell williams
girl
east india youth

total strife foever
basement ja
xx
junto
8
thievery corporation
saudade
8
tricky
adrian thaws
kasabian
48:13
manic street preachers

futurology
karen o
crush songs
8
kate tempest
everybody down
sia
1000 forms of fear
temples
sun structures
suck it and see

buy your cds, dvds and books from fopp
if they suck well give you a swap or your lolly
fopp stores
bristol college green // cambridge sidney st //
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ROSANNE CASH
15
The River &
The Thread
2014s master of
fuzz, Ty Segall
DECCA
Rosanne Cashs first

album of original
material in seven
years, and her first
since recovering
from brain surgery in 2007, The River
& The Thread was a magisterial
comeback. A mesmerising journey
through Americas Deep South that
vividly engaged with its history,
landscape and people on songs
that were by turns haunting, poetic
and profoundly moving.
ESTATE
14REAL
Atlas
DOMINO
The sun-dappled
innocence and bright
immediacy of Real
Estates first two
albums gave way
on Atlas to a more autumnal
PREVIOUS WINNERS
1997 BOB DYLAN
Time Out Of Mind COLUMBIA
1998 MERCURY REV
Deserters Songs V2
1999 THE FLAMING LIPS
The Soft Bulletin WARNER BROS
2000 LAMBCHOP
Nixon CITY SLANG
2001 RYAN ADAMS

Gold LOST HIGHWAY
2002 THE FLAMING LIPS
Yoshimi Battles The Pink

Robots WARNER BROS
2003 WARREN ZEVON

The Wind ARTEMIS/RYKO
2004 BRIAN WILSON

Smile NONESUCH
2005 ARCADE FIRE

Funeral ROUGH TRADE
2006 BOB DYLAN
Modern Times COLUMBIA
2007 LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

Sound Of Silver DFA/EMI
2008 PORTISHEAD
Third ISLAND
2009 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
DENEE PETRACEK; YOURI LENQUETTE
Merriweather
Post Pavilion DOMINO
2010 JOANNA NEWSOM
Have One On Me DRAG CITY
2011 PJ HARVEY
Let England Shake ISLAND
2012 LEONARD COHEN

Old Ideas COLUMBIA
2013 MY BLOODY VALENTINE

m b v MY BLOODY VALENTINE
Kora masters
Diabat and son
wistfulness. Where previously their

songs soundtracked an endless
smalltown summer, largely
untroubled by adult woes, the best
tracks on Atlas were peppered
with images of change, distance,
separation and anxiety and glowed
with a beatific melancholy.
SEGALL
13TYManipulator
DRAG CITY
Segalls seventh
long-player in seven
years was a 17-track
double-album that
drew on the sounds
and styles of all his previous records.
Since no two of them have to date
sounded much like each other,
Manipulator was a torrid whirl
through Tys musical universe,
packed with amp-burning fuzz
guitars, glam-punk riffs and
frayed ballads, often notably
embellished by Mikal Cronins
decorous string arrangements.
12CARIBOU
Our Love
CITY SLANG
Four years
on from his
breakthrough
album, Swim,
Canadas Dan
Snaith here completed a journey
from indie-electronica to widescreen rave pop. Our Love was
a kaleidoscopic rush, full of
dancefloor euphoria and a
heightened sense of the ecstatic
on the blissed-out likes of Your
Love Will Set You Free and the
rapturous title track.
TOUMANI DIABAT
11
& SIDIKI DIABAT
Toumani & Sidiki
WORLD CIRCUIT
Malian kora maestro

Toumani Diabat
was joined here by
his 24-year-old son,
Sidiki, another kora
virtuoso, on partly improvised
interpretations of traditional African
songs. The mood was reflective,
typified by the one original.
Lampedusa commemorated the
300 African migrants who drowned
off the Italian island in 2013, its
slow, poignant melody a hushed
lament for the lost.
KIL MOON
10SUN
Benji
CALDO VERDE
This brutally sad

album about death
and the way people
die took confessional
songwriting to new
extremes of naked and unflinching
emotional candour. The results
were often heart-rending, hugely
affecting reflections on mortality
and loss. As demonstrated by a
recent spat with The War On Drugs,
Kozelek can seem gratuitously
churlish. But he remains a
songwriter of uncommon genius.
9STStVINCENT
Vincent
LOMA VISTA/REPUBLIC
Annie Clarks fourth

album replaced the
sometimes fraught
art-pop of its
predecessors with
rhythmic-centred party music in
whose funky grooves you could

variously hear echoes of Parliament/
Funkadelic, The Gap Band, Talking
Heads, 80s Bowie, Blondie, Gary
Numan and Madonna. Twisting the
common language of pop, Clark
ended up speaking in tongues, as
uncontrollably strange as ever.
ALBARN
8DAMON
Everyday Robots
PARLOPHONE
Damon Albarns
most personal project
to date, Everyday
Robots was an album
whose musical
shapes and lyrical images created
a coded, semi-abstract self-portrait,
from childhood innocence, through
adolescence to problematic
maturity. Often bravely vulnerable
and candid, its songs were
suspended in fragile nets of found
percussion loops, field recordings
and pastel melodies, the whole
suffused in reflective melancholy.
GOLDEN MESSENGER
7HISS
Lateness Of Dancers
MERGE
MC Taylors scholarly
appreciation of
American roots
music has sometimes
made the albums hes
released as Hiss Golden Messenger
sound like academic pastiche,
hugely enjoyable, if a little dry.
Lateness Of Dancers, however, was
a triumph, a collection of personal
songs that addressed big questions
of faith and mortality, responsibility
and doubt, the Dylan of Planet
Waves perhaps a touchstone.
6
lullaby and The
Ceaseless Roar
ROBERT PLANT
NONESUCH
Plants third
consecutive album
of fearless creative
reinvention gave a
global spin to the
roots music, mostly American, he so
profitably explored on Raising Sand
and much of its follow-up, Band Of
Joy. Plant here adventurously mixed
familiar elements of his beloved
West Coast psychedelia, Celtic and
North African folk, desert blues,
trance, techno, dub and even hints
of Led Zeppelin bombast.
VAN ETTEN
5SHARON
Are We There
JAGJAGUWAR
Across three
previous albums,
Sharon Van Ettens
songs had not lacked
a raw candour,
especially 2012 breakthrough,
Tramp. The self-produced Are We
There, however, was more fiercely
than ever the sound of love
unravelling into despair and abject
sadness, on which the listener felt
her pain as their own, especially
on show-stoppers like Your Love
Is Killing Me and Every Time The
Sun Comes Up.
PIETER M VAN HATTEM; ED MILES
TWIGS
4FKA
LP1
YOUNG TURKS
The Artist Formerly

Known As Twigs was
Tahliah Barnett, a
26-year old dancer
from Cheltenham
and therefore not quite the alien life-
form from a far-off galaxy she

appeared to be in her far-out videos.
The music on her momentous
debut album, however, certainly
sounded extraterrestrial. With its
amoebic rhythms, hallucinatory
electronics and startling vocal
performances, LP1 was weird,
sexy, genuinely futuristic.
Granduciel:
Burning a
path to the
top spot
TWIN
3APHEX
Syro
WARP
The imminent
release of the
first Aphex Twin
album since 2001,
announced via a
fluorescent green blimp flying over
London, was exciting news for
anyone interested in the electronic
music of the last 25 years, however
it was delivered. Radical new
directions may not have been
immediately apparent, but Syro
was nevertheless mostly
thrilling, unique and
typically mind-bending.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR
1
T
THE WAR
ON DRUGS
2Popular Problems
LEONARD COHEN
SONY
Only
darkness
now, Leonard
Cohen
announced
ominously on Popular
Problems, released in October
to coincide with his 80th
birthday. It was his bleakest,
most ravaged album since Songs
Of Love And Hate, over 40 years
ago, a lament for a burning world,
where slaughter and war are
commonplace, calamities to which
he responded with grim vigour
and much great writing.
King of fearless
reinvention,
Robert Plant
Lost In The Dream

SECRETLY CANADIAN
HE WAR ON Drugs third

album was recorded over 12
apparently traumatic months
that saw Adam Granduciel,
already burned out after a year on the
road touring behind the bands breakthrough second album, 2011s Slave
Ambient, now dealing with the raw climax of a long-term relationship
that had hit a wall, leaving him nursing a bruised heart, inconsolable.
I became incredibly uncomfortable in my own skin and in my own
head, he told Uncut just before Lost In The Dreams release in April,
describing the fears, anxieties and debilitating neuroses that gripped
him at the time, making him feel like hed sunk into a fucking hole.
If these were indeed the circumstances that shaped the new record,
youd have to say romantic despondency had not been essayed with such
heartbreaking elegance since the refined melancholy of Roxy Musics
Avalon, in a hazily psychedelic version of that gilded album perhaps
remixed by Brian Eno that punched significantly into the relentless
Krautrock rhythms that have inspired Granduciel since the bands 2008
debut, Wagonwheel Blues.
On that albums soaring opener, Arms Like Boulders, Granduciel
matched elements of Bruce Springsteens open-highway escapism with
the motorik pulse of Kraftwerk and Neu!, as if the E Street Band had grown
up listening to spaced-out Krautrock in a Dusseldorf suburb rather than
Mitch Ryder in sweaty New Jersey clubs. It was an unlikely juxtaposition
that also served Granduciel spectacularly well on deliriously exciting
tracks here like Red Eyes, Burning and the incandescent guitar rush
of An Ocean In Between The Waves, which added a dollop of 80s Dylan
to the mix, as if something like When The Night Comes Falling From The
Sky had drawn its momentum from some blazing kosmische epic. The
blurry atmospherics of Oh Mercy outtake Series Of Dreams might also be
regarded as a useful reference point for Lost In The Dreams more miasmic
interludes, like the windswept, wholly bereft Eyes To The Wind, a
highlight of an album that turned private hurt into public catharsis.

best of
wilko johnson and
roger daltrey
going back home
2014
st vincent
st vincent
gruff rhys
american interior
neneh cherry
blank project
5
perfume genius
too bright
5
chrissie hynde
stockholm
ema
the futures void
johnny cash
out among the stars
james vincen
post tropical t mcmorrow
5
nick mulvey
first mind
jamie t
carry on the grudge
george ezra
wanted on voyage
suck it and see

buy your cds, dvds and books from fopp
if they suck well give you a swap or your lolly
10
fopp stores
bristol college green // cambridge sidney st //
edinburgh rose st // glasgow union st & byres rd //
london covent garden // manchester brown st //
LEONARD COHEN
LIVE IN DUBLIN
The extraordinary full-length
concert recorded at Dublins
02 Arena, September 12th 2013
Available on
3CD/DVD
3CD/Bluray
3CD
Out 1st December
LEONARD COHEN
POPULAR
PROBLEMS
The critically acclaimed
studio album
Out Now
Leonard Cohen has created
a masterpiece
+++++ Daily Telegraph
+++++ The Times
A|R|C|H|I|V|E
REVIEW OF 2014
SUB POP
Start Together was a

boxset that collected
newly remastered
versions of the seven
albums SleaterKinney recorded between 1994
and 2005 in a no-frills package that
allowed their back catalogue to
speak, as it were, for itself, with
no extras, just an accompanying
photo-book. Their musical journey
from early feminist fury to mature
songcraft was thus simply and
thrillingly evoked.
THE SMALL FACES

29
There Are But
Four Small Faces
CHARLY
The US version of
their 67 UK LP, Small
Faces, overlooked
so far in the bands
belated reissue
programme, actually improved on
the domestic original, crucially
including contemporaneous singles,
Itchycoo Park, Tin Solider and
Here Come The Nice. The bonus
tracks werent earth-shattering,
but the mono version was a
dedicated mix for the US market,
otherwise unreleased.
JOHN COLTRANE
28
Offering: Live At
Temple University
RESONANCE
Recorded in
Philadelphia, nine
months before
Coltrane died, the
tapes of this concert
Sleater-Kinney:
from feminist fury
to mature songcraft
from November 1966 were only

recently discovered and featured
Coltrane alongside wife Alice on
piano, Pharoah Sanders on second
sax, and assorted percussionists.
The 90 minutes of music they
played that night was fearsome,
Coltrane pushing out to the wild
boundary of things.
CHARLES
27BOBBY
Bobby Charles
LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
Bobby Charles
wrote some of the
early rock eras most
enduring songs,
including See You
Later, Alligator and Walking To
New Orleans. By 1973, on the lam
from a dope bust in Nashville, he
was in Woodstock, where he
recorded this rarely heard
masterpiece of Delta wistfulness
and barbed wit with Dr John and
members of The Band.
MARK LANEGAN
26
Has God Seen My
Shadow? An Antholodgy
1989-2011 LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
This was a
well-chosen
trawl through
Lanegans solo
career, presented as
a roughly backwards chronology
through his catalogue, opening
with tracks from 2004s Bubblegum
and 2001s Field Songs, and ending
with two tracks from 1992 solo debut
The Winding Sheet. There was
nothing from his collaborations
with Isobel Campbell, but an extra
disc of unreleased tracks was

welcome compensation.
GRATEFUL DEAD
25
Wake Up To Find
Out: Nassau Coliseum,
Uniondale, NY 3/29/90
RHINO
Also released as part

of the rather less
digestible 23-disc
boxset, Spring 1990
(The Other One), this
three-CD live album featured the
whole of a March 1990 concert at
Nassau Stadium, NJ, where the
Dead were joined by saxophonist
Branford Marsalis, for a sincelegendary second set, including
a stellar version of Dark Star.
24MORRISSEY
Your Arsenal
EMI
Mick Ronsons glamracket production

and Mozs new
rockabilly-based
band provided a
lively backdrop for his third postSmiths solo LP after Viva Hate and
Kill Uncle, and was notable for its
evisceration of Britains far right on
The National Front Disco and the
archly triumphant We Hate It When
Our Friends Become Successful.
This reissue included a particularly
thrilling unreleased live DVD.
COODER
23RYSoundtracks
RHINO
In 1980, Cooder
wrote the music for
Walter Hills great
Western, The Long
Riders. They
subsequently collaborated on
another seven films over the next
16 years. The scores of five of them
featured on this four-disc set,
notably the startling mix of
experimental jazz and electronically
distorted guitars and drums
recorded with trumpeter Jon Hassell
and Jim Keltner for 1993s Trespass.
22LEWIS
LAmour
LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
The first of two

previously unknown
albums reissued by
the mysterious Lewis
reissued this year,
1983s LAmour was the work of one
Randall Wulff, who disappeared
soon after it was recorded, no-one
subsequently sure if he was a con
man, dope dealer or what. The
album was as strange as the
mysterious backstory: dreamy
synthpop, tinged with blurry
melancholy and fuzzy at the edges.
THE MOLES
21
Flashbacks And
Dream Sequences
FIRE
Flashbacks And
Dream Sequences
was a beguiling
compilation of just
about everything
recorded by The Moles, formed
in Sydney in the late-80s by
Richard Davies, whose penchant
for psychedelic chamber-pop was
largely at odds with Australias
emerging pre-grunge scene. The set
also included Instinct, effectively
a Davies solo album and a band
effort in name only.
AMALIE R. ROTHSCHILD
30SLEATER-KINNEY
Start Together
Miles Davis:
magnificently
risky
REVIEW OF 2014 A|R|C|H|I|V|E
20Sing To God
16
The Velvet Underground
Cardiacs have one of

the most original and
undervalued back
catalogues in British
pop. Rooted in punk,
their music also took in elements of
prog rock and psychedelic forays
reminiscent of Syd Barrett that
influenced Blur and Radiohead.
Their 1996 double album, Sing To
God, was their magnum opus,
revealed here as a sprawling
banquet of deranged genius.
POLYDOR
THE VELVET
UNDERGROUND
THE ALPHABET BUSINESS CONCERN
MILES DAVIS
19
Bootleg Series Vol 3:
At The Fillmore 1970
COLUMBIA/LEGACY
The tapes of the

four concerts Miles
played at New Yorks
Fillmore East in June
1974 were originally
released in severely edited form to
fill four sides of the Miles At Fillmore
album. This vastly expanded
version presents the shows in their
entirety across four revelatory CDs
of magnificently risky music, Miles
deploying every facet of his
considerable genius.
18
You Cant Hide
Your Love Forever
ORANGE JUICE
DOMINO
Orange Juice
brought colour to a
monochromatic
post-punk landscape
via a series of singles
for painfully hip Postcard Records,
some fans of which complained
their 82 major label debut betrayed
their original scruffy spirit. You
Cant Hide Your Love, however,
was a gorgeous racket, originals like
In A Nutshell and Falling And
Laughing bolstered by a sublime
version of Al Greens LOVE.
DOHENY
17NED
Separate Oceans
NUMERO GROUP
Doheny was one

of the first signings
to David Geffens
Asylum, although
he never had the
success of LA friends like Jackson
Browne and Don Henley. This
compilation drew from the first
decade of his career and mostly
featured sun-baked 70s soft-pop.
Bob Carpenters Silent Passage,
reissued by No Quarter, was a
darker take on the same era.
Aphex Twin:
mostly charming
With John Cales

departure, The Velvet
Undergrounds
sound changed
forever. Their third
album largely abandoned sonic
carnage for breathtakingly beautiful
ballads, the unstoppable
momentum of Eno favourite What
Goes On a rare exception to the
records mostly crepuscular mood.
Much of the extra content on this
six-CD set was already available, but
fans will want it for the unreleased
two-disc Live At The Matrix.
BEEFHEART
15CAPTAIN
Sun Zoom Spark
RHINO
This four-disc boxset

covered Beefhearts
attempt across three
great early-70s
albums to reconcile
commercial blues and boogie with
his own oblique vision 1970s
hellacious Lick My Decals Off, Baby
(remastered for the first time on CD),
The Spotlight Kid and indispensable
Clear Spot, both from 1972. A fourth
disc featured 14 fascinating
alternative versions and outtakes.
14The Beatles In Mono

THE BEATLES
APPLE
The vinyl companion

to The Beatles In
Mono CD released
in 2009 featured
all-new analogue
masters of the bands back
catalogue, up to The White Album.
It may sound like spin, but the
greater physical impact of the mono
mixes of the original tapes brought
the listener closer than ever to what
The Beatles wanted us to hear.
13No Depression
UNCLE TUPELO
SONY MUSIC CMG
Uncle Tupelos 87
debut No Depression
was a founding-stone
of Americana, Jeff
Tweedy and Jay
Farrar reclaiming county from
its dire Nashville stereotype of big
hats, big hair and rhinestone
sentimentality. This expanded
version of the original LP featured
an additional 22 tracks and Not
Forever, Just For Now, a blistering
10-track demo, early evidence of
their incredible potential.
12XTC
Skylarking
MOGWAI
10
Come On Die
Young
The pastoral
symphonies of
Skylarking may have
evoked the buzzing
meadows and sunboiled afternoons of an English
summer, but it was recorded in
Woodstock, with Andy Partridge
in constant conflict with producer
Todd Rundgren, who gave their
music an unprecedented scope.
This welcome reissue corrected
the reversed-polarity issue that
has blighted the sound on all the
albums previous incarnations.
CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND
APEHOUSE
TWIN
11APHEX
Caustic Window
REPHILEX/YOUTUBE
The idea of Aphex

Twins Richard D
James as a radical
genius working
outside the musical
continuum was rather undermined
by the belated release in bizarre
circumstances of this fabled
1994 set recorded by James under
his Caustic Window alias. Mostly
charming, embryonic spins on
early 90s electronica, a more
recognisable Aphex Twin emerged
on dystopian rave anthems
Stomper 101mod Detunekik
and Revpop.

Mogwai turned
things down on
their second album,
1999s Come On Die
Young, replacing
their trademark ear-shredding
volume with a gloomy introspection
on a suite of songs pitched
somewhere between euphoria
and sadness that constitute their
most remarkable and enduring
music. This reissue expands the
original album to a four-album
boxset and double-CD with ample
bonus material.
HARRIS
9EMMYLOU
Wrecking Ball
NONESUCH
Emmylou Harris
had reached a point
in 1995 where she
could easily have
settled for a long
dotage, trading on past glories.
Instead, she spectacularly
reinvented herself on an album
of exquisitely chosen songs
(Steve Earle, Bob Dylan, Gillian
Welch, Jimi Hendrix), produced
by Daniel Lanois, who brought
an audacious new dynamic
to her music, revitalising
her career.
WOLFGANG TILLMANS
CARDIACS
REVIEW OF 2014
A|R|C|H|I|V|E
8
CSNY 1974
5Remasters I-III
CROSBY, STILLS,
NASH & YOUNG
LED ZEPPELIN
RHINO
CSNYs two-month
cocaine-fuelled and
fractious 1974 doom
tour was the most
extravagant of its
time. This compilation, assembled
by Graham Nash from tapes of 10 of
the shows, featured 40 tracks across
three CDs, including five unreleased
songs by Neil Young, clearly on fire.
There was also a bonus DVD of live
footage of shows in Maryland, and
Londons Wembley Stadium.
7
Nightclubbing
(Expanded)
GRACE JONES
The highlight of
these new editions
of the first three Led
Zep LPs, overseen
with dutiful vigour
by Jimmy Page, was III, sometimes
overlooked as a Wiccan hoedown
but in this meticulous remaster
sure to win new converts. There
were also judiciously chosen extras
from Pages archives, including
early versions of Bron-Y-Aur
Stomp and Out On The Tiles.
UNDERWORLD
4myheadman
Dubnobasswith
JBO/UNIVERSAL
UNIVERSAL/ISLAND
Grace Jones
career-defining
1981 album was a
sublime mix of
reggae, funk, new
wave and disco. Exotic, sensual,
endlessly mysterious, it brilliantly
deconstructed songs by Roxy Music,
The Pretenders, Sting and, of course,
Iggy Pop. An unreleased version of
Gary Numans Me! I Disconnect
With You was a highlight of the
bonus disc of extended versions
and 12-inch mixes.
V/A
6
Country Funk Vol 2
(1967-1974)
LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
JOEL BERNSTEIN; ELLIOTT LANDY
RHINO
Dylan: liberated
from recent
legend
The second Light In

The Attic countryfunk compilation
was another
fascinating time
capsule from an extended moment
in the 70s when a music industry
shaken by recent cultural upheavals
was so unsure what would sell
that all kinds of unlikely musical
miscegenation was allowed.
Tracks by country familiars were
more prominent here, alongside
comparatively obscure names like
Nick Lowe favourite Jim Ford.
The five-disc 20thanniversary release

of an LP that reset the
boundaries of dance
music came with an
abundance of bonus content. Ass
well as the original album
nine tracks of slick, bassheavy undulations there
were four discs featuring
singles and remixes, demos
and rehearsals that capture a
band on their way to becoming
a cutting-edge phenomenon.
THE
3THE
Soul Mining
Released in
the interzone
between postpunk and synthpop
and reflecting both,
Soul Mining remains The Thes
defining work. Matt Johnsons
abiding concerns of social
alienation, political disillusionment,
troubles of the heart were all present,
set to lush, cinematic and deeply
textured music. This handsome box
included the remastered original LP
plus alternative versions and mixes.
Crosby, Stills, Nash

& Young: on fire
BOB DYLAN
ANDTHEBAND
T Bootleg Series
The
V 11:The Basement
Vol
Tapes
T
Complete
COLUMBIA
C
SONY MUSIC
2 SLINT
Spiderland
REISSUE OF THE YEAR
TOUCH AND GO
Slint were
a band of
hardcore
fans from
Louisville,
Kentucky, best known for
91s seminal Spiderland,
who broke up before its
release, thus adding to its
mystique. This lavish triplevinyl box included the
remastered original album,
demos, practice tapes,
booklet and 90-minute
doc by Lance Bangs.
HERE WAS A double-CD, The

Basement Tapes Raw, featuring
38 tracks you wouldnt have
had to pawn your children to
afford. But what Bob Dylan fan, who, after waiting 45 years to hear this
music, could resist the entire package? The Basement Tapes Complete
collected 138 tracks across six discs, over 30 of which had previously not
surfaced, even on something as apparently comprehensive as 2001s A
Tree With Roots bootleg, which featured 101 of these tracks from the fabled
1967 sessions in the bucolic Woodstock haven to which Dylan and The
Hawks, not yet The Band, retreated after the traumatic 1965-66 world tour.
Anyone familiar only with Robbie Robertsons flawed 1975 Basement
Tapes double would have been amazed by the mind-blowing diversity
of material on The Basement Tapes Complete, its vast trawl through US
music, drawing on everything from Appalachia to the radio strange,
rackety versions of ancient blues laments, work songs, gospel hollers, the
occasional sea shanty, arcane folk tunes and goofy, stoned covers of Hank
Williams, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Bo Diddley and The Impressions.
There were also many startling additions to the Dylan catalogue,
including the miraculous Im Not There, Tiny Montgomery, Edge
Of The Ocean, Thats The Breaks, Lo And Behold! and Sign On The
Cross, as well as more familiar zingers like I Shall Be Released, This
Wheels On Fire, Tears Of Rage, Nothing Was Delivered, Too Much
Of Nothing and You Aint Goin Nowhere, all written before Nashville
Skyline, an album that found Dylan by his own laconic admission
apparently short of notable new songs. Much has been made of the
oppositional intention of this music as a conscious rejection of psychedelic
excess that signalled a widespread return to more roots-based music,
which it did. But The Basement Tapes didnt sound like a public clarion
call. None of these tracks were meant for commercial release. It was
music Dylan and The Band made essentially for themselves, part of a
recuperative process, a healing testament, Dylan sounding here liberated
from his recent legend, even as a new mythology began to surround him.
REVIEW OF 2014 F|I|L|M|S
20
12 YEARS A SLAVE
DIR: STEVE MCQUEEN
Released in January,
McQueens drama about
a free-born AfricanAmerican, Solomon
Northup, who was
abducted and sold into slavery in
pre-Civil War America proved
to be an early highpoint among the
years films. Although driven by
commendable performances from
Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup and
Michael Fassbender as violent
plantation owner Master Epps, it was
McQueens sober, non-judgmental
treatment that impressed
unflinchingly painful truths.
19
LOCKE
DIR: STEVEN KNIGHT
Another bold career

swerve from Tom Hardy,
who followed his recent
role playing a supervillain in The Dark Knight
with this minor-key performance as
a Welsh construction professional
driving down the M1 to attend the
birth of his illegitimate child. Shot in
real-time, Hardy essentially drives
and makes phonecalls to his
family, a work colleague, the motherto-be building up a detailed picture
of a mans life on the point of
personal collapse.
18LEVIATHAN
DIR: ANDREY ZVAGINTSEV
Russias official contender

for next years Best
Foreign Language Film
at the Oscars was a hefty
and damning satire.
Following the travails of the
beleaguered Kolya (Aleksei
Serebryakov), who found himself
in conflict with a corrupt local
dignitary in a coastal village near
the Barents Sea, Leviathan drew
on themes of corruption, class
and oppression. But it was also
surprisingly funny: Zvagintsev
lacing his staunchy pessimistic
vision with some brilliant vodkabased gags.
17BLUERUIN
DIR: JEREMY SAULNIER
A number of B-movie-style
revenge films proliferated
this year, of which writer/
director Saulniers
Kickstarter-funded
project was the best. Saulnier, and
his chief conspirator, actor Macon
Blair, cooked up a lean thriller where
Blairs down-at-heel Dwight sets out
to avenge his parents murder. The
Coens were a strong influence;

especially No Country For Old Men
another film about a protagonist
who gets bad breaks.
Comic crime caper

American Hustle: (l-r)
Adams, Cooper, Renner,
Bale and Lawrence
16ONLYLOVERSLEFTALIVE
DIR: JIM JARMUSCH
Perhaps the only vampire

film to involve a trip to
see Jack Whites house in
Detroit, Jim Jarmuschs
film involved a
predictably laconic take on the
undead saga. Superbly cast, with
Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton
as a centuries-old couple, and John
Hurt as playwright Christopher
Marlowe (not dead, after all, it
seems), Jarmuschs film explored the
correlation between vampirism and
addiction; as well as the irrefutable
ennui attached to living forever.
15STARREDUP
DIR: DAVID MACKENZIE
Channeling Alan Clarkes

Scum and Jacques
Audiards A Prophet,
Mackenzies jail drama
had a surprisingly soft
heart. While foregrounding a
tremendous performance from
former Skins actor Jack OConnell as
the violent young offender Eric Love,
Mackenzie was concerned with
exploring the relationship between
Eric and his estranged father,
Neville, a career criminal who is
incarcerated in the same prison.
DVDS OF THE YEAR

MUSIC
1 ROWLAND S HOWARD:
AUTOLUMINESCENT MATCHBOX FILMS
2 HE WASNT JUST THE FIFTH
MEMBER OF JOY DIVISION: A FILM
ABOUT MARTIN HANNETT OZIT
MORPHEUS/DANDELION RECORD
3 THE NATIONAL MISTAKEN FOR

STRANGERS AMERICAN MARY PRODUCTIONS
4 THE PUNK SINGER DOGWOOF
5 ERIC CLAPTON PLANES,
TRAINS AND ERIC EAGLE ROCK
TV & FILM
1 THE CHANGES BFI

2 TWIN PEAKS: THE ENTIRE
MYSTERY PARAMOUNT
3 PARKS AND RECREATION
SEASON 4 FABULOUS FILMS
4 THE GREAT NORTHFIELD
MINNESOTA RAID 101 FILMS
5 TRUE DETECTIVE SEASON 1 HBO
POSSIBILITIES
14THE
ARE ENDLESS
DIR: JAMES HALL, EDWARD LOVELACE
A documentary following
Edwyn Collins recovery
from a stroke in 2005, its
an affecting take on its
subject. Following an
impressionistic first half intended
to mirror Collins post-stroke
confusion it settled down to
become a warm depiction of Collins
relationship with his wife, Grace,
and the positivity and good humour
with which they tackled a series of
mental and physical hurdles.
13NIGHTCRAWLER
DIR: DAN GILROY
This darkly funny thriller

found Jake Gyllenhaal
prowling nocturnal LA
with a video camera
looking for extreme
footage to sell to an unethical news
network. Gyllenhaals performance
perched on the brink of hysteria
complimented Gilroys sulphurous
satire, which resembled a West Coast
version of Scorseses early forays on
the mean streets of New York.
12AMERICANHUSTLE
DIR: DAVID O RUSSELL
Russells rangy, loose 70sset crime caper had much

to commend it; not least,
the impressive hairstyles.
Con artists Christian
Bale (comb over) and Amy Adams
(corkscrew curls) joined forces with
federal agent Bradley Cooper (perm)
for an undercover sting. Predictably,
the outcome was preposterous,
neurotic and often very funny.
11
10DALLASBUYERSCLUB
DIR: JEAN-MARC VALLE
Matthew McConaugheys
transformative, Oscarwinning performance as
Ronald Woodroof, a reallife Texas rodeo hot shot
who tested HIV-positive in 1985, was
critical to Valles drama. Shot in
trailer parks, construction sites and
seamy rodeo pens, coincidentally
the film it most closely resembled
was Aronoskys The Wrestler:
another film about the pathos of
personal ruin that similarly initiated
a bold second act in an actors career.
9CALVARY
DIR: JOHN MICHAEL McDONAGH
Coincidentally, The Guard

a previous collaboration
between writer/director
McDonagh and star
Brendan Gleeson also
reached No 9 in our Films Of The
Year back in 2011. Their follow-up
continues their exploration of
Irelands rich landscape and the
idiosyncratic characters who inhabit
it. Gleeson, predictably, was majestic
as the only notionally good man in
a remote country parish, marked for
death by one of his parishioners.
871
DIR: YANN DEMANGE
HER
DIR: SPIKE JONZE
In the future, no-one will

wear belts. This was one
of the many incidental
details to be gleaned from
Jonzes rom-com.com a

sci-fi love story between Joaquin

Phoenixs Theodore Twomby and
his personal organiser, Samantha,
voiced by Scarlett Johansson. In fact,
Jonzes film resembled a tech-age
Annie Hall, with Theodore as the
nerdy, middle-aged lead and
Samantha as the IT girl he loves
but who eventually outgrew him.
For his second appearance

in our Top 20, Jack
OConnell delivers
another fine performance
as a squaddie lost in 1970s
Belfast. 71 felt closer to Walter Hills
The Warriors or John Carpenters
F|I|L|M|S REVIEW OF 2014
Assault On Precinct 13 than other

celluloid depictions of the Troubles.
The result was a lean, behind enemy
lines thriller, with the conflict itself
summed up as rich cunts telling
dumb cunts to kill poor cunts.
720,000DAYSONEARTH
DIR: IAIN FORSYTH & JANE POLLARD
Purporting to be a day in
the life of Nick Cave, this
documentary proved
an engaging study of
authenticity and
reinvention and the fine line
between the private person and
the public persona. Visual artists
Forsyth and Pollard followed Cave
from his Sussex home to the studio,
archive, psychotherapist and a gig
finding out how Cave takes his coffee
along the way digging deep into
his extraordinary psychology.
4THEWOLFOFWALLSTREET
Its hard to begrudge

Scorsese a little fun nearly
50 years into his career.
Accordingly, this story
about white-collar crime,
based on a memoir by convicted
stock market trader Jordan Belfort,
was more screwball comedy than
cautionary tale. In the midst of the
dwarf-hurling tournaments, orgies
and cocaine blow-outs, perhaps
Scorseses most unpredictable move
was the appearance, as a high-end
money launderer, of Joanna Lumley.
3UNDERTHESKIN
DIR: JONATHAN GLAZER
Shot across 12 years,

Linklaters ambitious
time-lapse study of a boy
from age 6-18 was the most
accomplished experiment
yet in the directors eclectic career. At
its heart was a natural performance
from Elia Coltrane, whose life
was a series of quiet moments of
disillusionment you suspect he
will carry deep into adulthood.
Adapted from Michel

Fabers novel, Glazers scifi film owed more to his
experimental video work,
for Radiohead,
among others, than your
typical Hollywood CGI
blitzkrieg. This was a lowkey, elusive mood-piece, with
Scarlett Johansson as an alien
stalking Glasgow housing
schemes looking for men to
harvest. Glazer artfully
balanced scenes of out-there
fantasy with rough-edged
realism, while Mica Levis
soundtrack helped convey the
films dissociative qualities.
5MRTURNER
2INSIDELLEWYNDAVIS
6BOYHOOD
DIR: RICHARD LINKLATER
DIR: MIKE LEIGH
DIR: JOEL AND ETHAN COEN
Leigh has done period

biopic before, of course,
with Topsy-Turvy. He
revisited the same time
period the mid-19th
Century for this thoughtful study
of painter JMW Turner, played by
Timothy Spall. Leigh attempted to
join the dots to describe the private
life of this secretive artist, who was
ultimately revealed to be a man of
vibrant, fleshly contradictions.
Going up: a lordly

comic performance
from Ralph Fiennes
(seated, right)
DIR: MARTIN SCORSESE
This wintry film wass

yet another yarn
about failure from
the Coens. This time, their
whipping boy was a oncefted folk singer in Greenwich
Village during the 1960s, shrewdly
played by Oscar Isaac. As his
melancholic tale of near-success
unfolded, the brothers mused on
notions of authenticity versus
compromise with winning results.
Cave exploration:
20,000 Days
On Earth
FILM OF THE YEAR
1
A
THE GRAND
BUDAPEST HOTEL
DIR: WES ANDERSON

DIR
lthough Wes Anderson has

been a regular fixture in
our end of year polls, this
is only the second time
on
one of his films has reached the
ha
hallowed top spot, after 2002s The
R
Royal Tenenbaums. Essentially, The
G
Grand Budapest Hotel provided an
in
intensely pleasurable immersion in
A
Andersonalia. As we know, the director
h
habitually sets his films in their own
se
self-contained environments an elite
prep school, for instance, or a train car rattling across India but
here he went one step further to create an entire European state
populated by eccentric aristocratic dynasties. At the centre of
Zubrowka Andersons lentre-deux-guerres Alpine republic lay
the Grand Budapest Hotel, a splendid dolls house of a building
overseen by the prickly and imperious concierge, Gustave H (Ralph
Fiennes). This being Anderson, what followed involved a secret
code, mysterious societies, a murder and a priceless painting, while
the action skipped gamely from hotel to prison and snowy mountain
peaks. Much as youd expect, all of this was presented via a series of
whimsical structural flourishes different narrators, time periods,
Chapter headings, each one as deliciously elaborate as the cakes
served up in the hotels grand dining hall.
The film was lorded over by an impeccable comic performance
from Fiennes, while predictably excellent support came from old
(and new) Anderson cohorts, including Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe,
Jeff Goldblum, Adrien Brody, Ed Norton, Tilda Swinton and Harvey
Keitel. Indeed, The Grand Budapest Hotel became Andersons
highest grossing film and also the subject of a trans-Atlantic cruise
on the Queen Mary 2, attended by the director himself. But surely the
ultimate accolade besides being our film of the year, of course
was the construction of the Grand Hotel Budapest in over 50,000
Lego bricks. This wasnt simply evidence that Andersons fastidious
attention to detail could be replicated in colourful interlocking
plastic bricks, but a testament to the charm of Andersons
marvellous film.
Free Super Saver Delivery and Unlimited One-Day Delivery with Amazon Prime are available on eligible orders. Terms and Conditions apply. See Amazon.co.uk for details.
B|O|O|K|S REVIEW OF 2014

squatting scene of the early-70s
and the meagre beginnings of
the band, whose career was
scuppered by the defection of Joe
Strummer to The Clash. While it
also covered subsequent stints
with The Raincoats, PiL and
Basement 5, his long friendship
with Strummer was at the heart of
the book, a final reconciliation
enormously touching.
THE BEATLES LYRICS:

7
THE UNSEEN STORY
BEHIND THEIR MUSIC
Hunter Davies
Chilton: enigmatic,
unexplained
A MAN CALLED
10
DESTRUCTION: THE LIFE
AND MUSIC OF ALEX CHILTON,
FROM BOX TOPS TO BIG STAR
TO BACKDOOR MAN
Holly George-Warren
PENGUIN
A third of this Alex

Chilton biog was devoted
to his early career with
The Box Tops, whose 1967
single The Letter made
Chilton a teen idol at 17. As their
history is less well-documented
than the less successful but
critically adored Big Star, these were
the most illuminating pages in a
sometimes earnest book, Chilton
in this telling remaining distant,
enigmatic and unexplained.
ANGER IS AN ENERGY:
9
MY LIFE UNCENSORED
John Lydon with Andrew
Perry SIMON & SCHUSTER
A lot of Anger Is An Energy

was painfully predictable.
Familiar hostilities were
cheerfully revived, scorn
accumulating to the point
of tedium. What made it worth
reading, though, was a harrowing
account of growing up poor in North
London that was almost Dickensian
in its graphic evocation of grim
deprivation, disease, squalor and
delinquency that seemed to belong
to an even better book.
SQUAT CITY ROCKS:

PROTO-PUNK AND
BEYOND, A MUSICAL MEMOIR
FROM THE MARGINS
Richard Dudanski DUDANSKI

Former 101ers drummer
Richard Dudanskis
autobiography was
wonderfully evocative
of the West London
WEIDENFELD AND NICOLSON
The Beatles wrote and

recorded an estimated
182 songs. Davies in
his research for this
book tracked down
the original manuscripts of 100 of
them. Many were reproduced here,
sometimes blurrily. It was amazing
to see them, however, with their
many revisions, ideas re-thought
even before they were fully
complete, as if The Beatles couldnt
quite keep up with their own
creative momentum.
FUTURE DAYS: KRAUTROCK

6
AND THE RE-BUILDING OF
MODERN GERMANY
David Stubbs FABER
Stubbs admirable
history of the German
experimental music of the
late-60s and early-70s
was at its best when it set
the music in the traumatic context of
a post-war Germany and the radical
politics of the era, with which the
so-called Krautrock bands were
broadly sympathetic. Their
revolution sweeping, with
international consequences
on the shape of modern popular
music was, however, cultural,
a momentous if fleeting
creative blossoming.
LOVE GOES TO BUILDINGS

5
ON FIRE: FIVE YEARS IN
NEW YORK THAT CHANGED
MUSIC FOREVER
Will Hermes
VIKING
Hermes terrific history of

New York music between
1973 and 1975 was
packaged as if its solitary
focus was the CBGB punk
scene and bands like Television,
Ramones, Blondie and Talking
Heads, who were only part of its
story. It was most fascinating,
though, when it addressed what else
was happening, the parallel

histories of salsa, disco, hip-hop,
the jazz loft scene and beyond.
SINGING FROM THE

4
FLOOR: A HISTORY OF
BRITISH FOLK CLUBS
JP Bean FABER
JP Beans Songs From The

Floor was a 400-page oral
history or as the author
preferred, a printedword documentary of
British folk clubs, perhaps not a
subject to set the pulse racing, the
wary reader possibly anticipating
something dour and earnest. The
book, however, was an absorbing
account of the folk revival, the
venues that supported it and the
formidable talent it nurtured across
nearly six decades.
CLOTHES, CLOTHES,
3
CLOTHES, MUSIC, MUSIC,
MUSIC, BOYS, BOYS, BOYS
Viv Albertine FABER
Anyone who writes an

autobiography is either
a twat or broke, Viv
Albertine announced,
introducing her
admirably refreshing memoir,
before candidly sharing her

thoughts on masturbation and
much else, including the punk
scene that made her famous,
about whose rigid orthodoxies and
macho attitudes she was scathing.
Music was only a part of the story,
however. In the context of her
own many personal tragedies
and rebirth of her career, it had
a much wider resonance.
DIFFERENT EVERY TIME:

2
THE AUTHORISED
BIOGRAPHYOFROBERTWYATT
Marcus ODair
SERPENTS TAIL
The recent announcement

of his retirement
coincided with this
meticulously researched
biography, which
affectingly reminded fans of the
great music Robert Wyatt has put
his name to over five decades.
With valuable input from Wyatt,
family, friends and collaborators,
the book took us through Wyatts
bohemian childhood, through the
Canterbury Scene and Soft Machine
to the 1973 accident that changed
his life and the new one he created
in its aftermath.
BOOK OF THE YEAR
RESPECT
YOURSELF:
STAX RECORDS
AND THE SOUL
EXPLOSION
Robert Gordon
BLOOMSBURY
HE SUCCESS OF the
great Memphis soul
imprint in its heyday
Wilson
W
i
Pickett
was astonishing,
Stax growing from homespun
ki machine
hi with
ith breathtaking
b t
beginnings to a major money-making
velocity, making major stars of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave,
Booker T & The MGs, Wilson Pickett and The Staple Singers. For Gordon,
who grew up in Memphis as Stax was establishing its commercial
supremacy, it remains a miracle that a label that recognised no racial
boundaries, whose founders were white but whose talent pool was largely
drawn from local black communities, should have flourished in a place
where deep into the 20th Century plantation prejudices still prevailed.
He told its story brilliantly here. Drawing extensively on a vast archive
of interviews originally conducted for a PBS documentary on the label,
he allowed us to share its exciting ascendency and equally spectacular
1975 collapse amid a welter of litigation, corporate corruption, federal
investigation and unpaid debts.
THE MAKING OF...
Wuthering
Heights
BY
K ATE BUSH
How the 20-year-old Cathy, inspired by

Emily Bront, recorded her epic debut single,
and fought EMI to score a monumental No 1:
The unusualness was key, this strange girl
KEY PLAYERS
Andrew Powell
Producer,
arranger, bass
David Paton
12-string guitar
Ian Bairnson
Guitar
Brian Bath
Guitarist in
KT Bush Band
Brian Wiseman
NICK HARVEY/WIREIMAGE
Video maker
Gered
Mankowitz
Photographer
RIOR TO HER triumphant London

shows earlier this year, the last song
Kate Bush performed at one of her
own concerts, on May 14, 1979,
was the extraordinary single that
launched an extraordinary career.
Her only No 1, Wuthering
Heights was inspired by a BBC mini-series of Emily
Bronts Gothic novel. Haunted by the image of Catherine
Earnshaws ghostly hand outside the window Let me
in! Let me in! Bush wrote the song aged 18, shortly
before beginning work on debut album The Kick Inside.
I was in my flat, sitting at the upright piano at about
midnight, she told her fan club in 1979. There was a full
moon, the curtains were open, and it came quite easily.
The fact that Bush shared her childhood name
(Cathy) with Earnshaw, and a birthday (July 30) with
Bront, fostered a sense of cosmic kinship with the
subject of Wuthering Heights, a bond acted out when
she recorded the song with members of the Alan Parsons
Project. She seemed to adopt different personas when
she was singing, recalls guitarist Ian Bairnson.
Suddenly there was another person there.
Aided by a wildly eccentric video and some revealing
publicity photos, Wuthering Heights was instantly
impactful, and later spoofed by everyone from Pamela
Stephenson to Alan Partridge. These days, Bush may
regard its unbridled romanticism with mixed feelings
(it was nowhere to be heard in the Before The Dawn
shows), but it remains one of musics boldest opening
statements of artistic intent, and an unforgettable
exploration of obsessive love, supernatural imagining
and powerful femininity. GRAEME THOMSON
ANDREW POWELL: In 1975, I got a call from David

Gilmour, saying hed got this artist and he just thought
she was something really special. This was substantially
prior to Kate signing to EMI. Initially he said he was going
to produce her, but in the end Dave put up money for
some sessions. These were really superior demos, and
I ended up producing them, including The Man With
The Child In His Eyes. A couple of years later I went in
to do the album. She had so many songs. Ive still got
some of the cassettes. I must have 100 songs here, still,
written pre-The Kick Inside.
BRIAN BATH: She wrote Wuthering Heights at
her flat at Wickham Road in Brockley when she was
living with [KT Bush Band bassist] Del Palmer there.
At the time [their relationship] was all a bit hush-hush,
a bit keep it careful.
POWELL: My memory is that Wuthering Heights
was written very close to us going into the studio. I think
it was only a few days before. Kate came around to where
I was living and said, What about this one? She sat
down at my piano and out it came. It was obvious to me
immediately that it was something extraordinary.
DAVID PATON: Andrew gave us a brief outline as to
what Kate was all about, Dave Gilmour nurturing her and
all that. He said, Shes very young but EMI are really
excited about her, shes really special. I remember him
saying the music was a bit wild, a bit wacky even. We
arrived at the studio, Kate introduced herself, and
Andrew said, Sit down and play them the song, and
thats how it was done. She sat down at the piano, said,
It goes like this, and just played. We were all gathered
around the piano with our jaws dropped, because it was
a stunning performance. Faultless, absolutely faultless,
and she could do that time and time again. It sounded
fantastic, there was just a great vibe in the studio.
IAN BAIRNSON: She sat and played the piano and
sang the guide vocal. We wrapped ourselves around her,
looking for ways to embellish it or give it direction. For us
it was a very refreshing thing, because it was wide open.
PATON: Talking about Cathy and Heathcliff was so
clever. I didnt like to ask her, Whats this song really
about? That book must have had a huge impact

on her to influence her in that way, but she kept
her vision to herself. A lot of artists you work
with, you usually find that theyre besotted with
themselves like Freddie Mercury, all he could do
was talk about himself all the time. She wasnt like
that at all. She didnt say, I want to do this and
that, me, me, me, me. She wasnt that kind of
person at all and that in itself was very refreshing.
BAIRNSON: I didnt pay a lot of notice to the
lyrics. It was only about a year ago when I read
the lyrics and appreciated them so much more.
JON KELLY (Engineer): The depth of her lyrics
and the originality of her melodies were just so
different from anything else that was around.
PATON: Her influences were pretty unique,
pretty stylised. And that high-pitched voice.
It wasnt until I was listening to Wuthering
Heights on the radio that I really realised, Woah,
thats really high-pitched! When she sat and sang
live for us I didnt really notice anything unusual
about it, I just felt her style was very unique.
I said to Kate, Youre

going to be so famous
youre not going to
be able to walk
down the street
JON KELLY, ENGINEER
POWELL: I loved it, I was very much in favour
of it. She was doing some very interesting things
with her voice. She was experimenting more and
more in all sorts of directions vocally, lyrically
and musically.
BAIRNSON: Whether she was putting on an
unusual voice or voices on Wuthering
Heights, or whatever, it still came across as
genuine and we accepted it. That is what made her

stand apart. The fact that her talent had so many
facets to it and each one was so believable.
POWELL: Did she twirl around all the time? No.
I know singers who do, but shed just stand there
and sing and concentrate on what she was doing.
She wasnt one for doing the dance of the seven
veils while she was doing her vocals.
BAIRNSON: I never saw her pick up the guitar,
but she loved it. On Wuthering Heights I built a
solo and endeavoured to make it part of the song.
PATON: I didnt play bass on the song. That was
at Andrews insistence! He was a bass player in his
youth and he plays OK hes a bit busy and as a
consolation prize he said, Davie, you can play
12-string. Hmmm. I must say hes a very
accomplished musician all round.
POWELL: I played bass. Partly because I had
a good idea for a part, and also because Ian had
sprained his wrist or something. Normally Id have
had Ian play acoustic and David play bass, but Ian
couldnt play barre chords and Wuthering
41
GERED MANKOWITZ
She was
experimenting
more and more
in all kinds of
directions
Kate Bush in
1978
r
room
during the shoot. It
w her choice, done with
was
h full participation and
her
k
knowledge.
She was very
c
comfortable
with her body.
T pictures were a huge
The
co
commercial
success and I
thin they had a great deal to
think
do w
with putting Kate on the map.
KELL I can remember saying,
KELLY:
g
Youre going
to be so famous youre
b able to walk down the
not going to be
street. I said that to her after the first week of
She certainly
recording, though she wouldnt have believed it.
wasnt uncomfortable
with it Kate Bush
POWELL: The unusualness was key, this
shot by Gered
strange girl. As soon as she did Wuthering
Mankowitz, 1978
Heights on Top Of The Tops, that made a
difference, too, because it wasnt a conventional
performance.
BAIRNSON: It was quite a shock when I saw her
first on Top Of The Pops, because the Kate we knew
in the studio and the one that turned up on TV was
a completely different persona.
BATH: She was just a bag of
nerves her first time on Top Of
The Pops. Unfortunately its not
a great performance. It wasnt
Written by: Kate Bush
ideal. The KT Bush Band all went
Performers: Kate Bush
along expecting to play, and at
(piano, vocals), Andrew
the BBC they said, Oh no, we
Powell (bass), David Paton
use our own musicians. We
(guitar), Ian Bairnson (lead
were all upset not to be included,
guitar), Stuart Elliott (drums),
and so was she. All we could do
Duncan MacKay (keyboards)
was stand in front of her and say,
Producer: Andrew Powell
Come on Kate, go for it. But she
something like that, and played
Engineer: Jon Kelly
was very nervous. I think if we
it. We couldnt believe it was
Recorded at: AIR, London
had been onstage it would have
coming out of the radio. And
Released: January 20, 1978
been better, but it didnt matter.
then he kept playing it. You
UK/US charts: 1/na
The song was already massive
could phone Capitol to vote for
by then. I think the video helped.
the song you wanted to hear that
BRIAN WISEMAN: She had done an outdoor
day. I was round at her parents farm pretty much
video for Wuthering Heights but EMI asked
every day, there was always something to do, and
Keith MacMillan to shoot another, which I worked
Kates mum would say, Have you phoned Capitol
on. We did it really quickly, through the middle of
radio yet? Use the phone! Do it now! It kept
the night at Ewart studios in Wandsworth. We got
getting played and all of a sudden it just exploded.
halfway through it, decided we didnt like what we
GERED MANKOWITZ: I took the infamous
were doing, and started over. We got an idea from
leotard photo in my Great Windmill Street studio
some Canadian movie Keith had seen, shot it on
in Soho in early 1978. I was doing a lot of work for
video and went down a load of generations to get
EMI, and they called me and said, Weve got this
that ghostly, mirrored effect. It was quite striking.
extraordinary young woman called Kate Bush,
She didnt have any real creative input on that at
she sounds like nobody else, shes wonderful to
all, as I recall, but she was very nice, very quirky.
look at, but we dont know what to do with her.
POWELL: When I saw the first video I thought,
We need some photographs, we need an image. I
Oh, OK, this is going to be an interesting
always found the clothes that dancers used during
development! By that point it was clear that there
rehearsals a very attractive look, and I thought it
was a whole lot of layers to what she was doing.
was a natural fit for Kate because she was so into
From that point on, there was no stopping her.
dance and movement. I suggested we got leotards
and woollen working socks and all that gear, and
she seemed to like the idea. When the pictures
WOW! Kate Bush by
W
were processed, the advertising agency EMI had
G
Gered Mankowitz is an ultraemployed to promote Wuthering Heights came
llarge-format, signed, limitedup with the campaign of putting the posters on
eedition book of photographs from
buses, and selected the one in the pink leotard
G
Gered Mankowitzs 1978/79
famously showing her nipples and the rest is
ssessions with Kate Bush. WOW!
history. She certainly wasnt uncomfortable with
iis published by Ormond Yard
it. She was perfectly aware of how she looked,
P
Press and is available from
because she had spent two hours in the dressing
w
www.snapgalleries.com
GERED MANKOWITZ
FACT FILE
Heights, being in F#m, its all barre chords

so David ended up playing guitar. Rather than
having to double-track his own performance,
I just had an idea and thought, Hang on a minute,
can I have your bass? Actually, I think I used my
own in the end because I re-did it.
KELLY: Andrew was a superb musician and
arranger. All the parts were written out and hed
hand them to the rhythm section, they had chord
charts and a brief outline of what he wanted. Hed
worked with Kate on the arrangement beforehand
and how he wanted it to turn out. It was an
absolutely brilliant job, a first-class record.
POWELL: EMI wanted James And The Cold
Gun to be the first single. It was the most obvious
song on the record, and it would have been one of
the worst choices. I mean, it was a fun thing to
have on there, and it was one of the few songs of
hers shed already played live with the KT Bush
Band, but she stuck to her guns on Wuthering
Heights and she was absolutely right.
KELLY: It was on Kates insistence that
Wuthering Heights should be the first single,
and good for her. Quite right. It was fabulous.
BAIRNSON: I remember thinking, This is
really good, but I wonder how people will react?
It was going to be all or nothing. You can never
pre-judge the great British record buying public.
BATH: I remember going around to her flat
when Wuthering Heights was first played on
Capitol Radio. Kate said, Oh, theyre playing my
song tonight. We were all sitting round there and
the DJ said hed found this really odd song, or
TIMELINE
Summer 1976
Catherine Bush
signs to EMI
March June 1977 Gigs
in London pubs with
the KT Bush Band
Summer 1977 Writes

Wuthering Heights
at 44 Wickham Road,
South London. She
records it during
sessions for The Kick
Inside, at AIR
20 January, 1978
Wuthering Heights
is released
18 February, 1978 With
the song at No 27, Bush
performs on Top Of
The Pops. She later
describes the
experience as like
watching myself die
March 11, 1978 Bush
becomes the first

woman to have a UK
No 1 with a self-written
song. Wuthering
Heights remains at
the top for four weeks
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Story: Michael Bonner
Photograph: Jo McCaughey
A fork in
the road
Two intense and personal albums. A possibly valedictory

tour with Crazy Horse. Revelatory solo shows. A new book,
a new sound system, a new political engagement and
a new relationship... 2014 shaped up to be one of the strangest and
most compelling years of NEIL YOUNGs storied career. With the
help of his closest compadres including GRAHAM NASH,
FRANK PONCHO SAMPEDRO and the late RICK ROSAS Uncut
discovers the truth about what really happened in the last 12
months, and wonders just what rocks greatest maverick might do
next. I dont think its a musical decade coming up, as much as it is
one of ghting for mankind...
Recording A Letter
Home at Third Man
Records, Nashville,
September 18, 2014
NEIL YOUNG
45
NEIL YOUNG
Circle of friends:
Young onstage at
Hollywoods Dolby
Theatre, April 1, 2014
PAUL R. GIUNTA/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES
RITING IN HIS latest memoir

Special Deluxe, Neil Young recalls
meeting his son, Ben, for dinner
one evening last spring. The venue
was a familiar hangout the
Mountain House, a homely
weatherboard cantina in the hills south of San Francisco, just a
10-minute ride from Youngs Broken Arrow ranch. Pulling the
old Jeepster up in front of that place, Young writes, with the
heater blasting welcomed warmth, I felt the passage of life and
how fleeting it really is. In a silent prayer to the Great Spirit,
I asked to be worthy of more time. There was still so much to do.
Based on the evidence of the past 12 months, perhaps
not even Young himself realised quite how hectic his
2014 would be. Next year, Young turns 70; an age when
many people would be looking forward to scaling back
their commitments in favour of a gentler pace; not
adding to them. But why slow down? asks Bruce
Botnick, a friend of Youngs since the late 1960s. Its
no fun to slow down. Neils very creative, and we know
now that our remaining lifetime is getting pretty short.
We dont know about tomorrow, so why not go for it?
Be in the now, enjoy yourself, thats what Neils doing.
Certainly, this year, Young has had two brushes
with mortality: Crazy Horses Billy Talbot suffered a
mild stroke in June, while another long-serving
collaborator, bassist Rick Rosas, died on November 6.

Youngs many endeavours biofuel cars, revolutionary
new audio systems, albums, tours, art exhibitions,
environmental activism, vinyl boxsets, books and films
seem inextricably tied together. Its possible to divine a
path, for instance, between his electro-hybrid car venture,
LincVolt, and his audio project, Pono. Both are about
resurrecting and refining the past: whether it be updating
beautiful vintage gas-guzzlers for an eco-future or restoring
some of the denuded audio quality to music.
But with all these various undertakings, the suspicion
exists that Young currently has too many priorities on the go.
While Bruce Botnick thinks itll all even out, at least one old
accomplice thinks Young has risked stretching himself too
far this year. Crazy Horse guitarist Poncho Sampedro reveals,
Honestly, some of my last conversations with Neil, when we
were just talking like guys, I cant help but look him in the
face and say, Neil youre a great musician. I think you should
kee writing songs and stay out of business. Thats from my
keep
heart. He puts so much energy and passion and love into
the Pono project, into the LincVolt project and writing
books, all these other things. But I think it takes a little
away from his music. Thats really what his calling is.
A the same time, if he can make a difference, if he really
At
d change something, more power to him.
did
More than most, Sampedro is aware of the unpredictable
n
nature
of Youngs muse. The guitarist recalls an incident
t took place earlier this year, on the last day of rehearsals
that
f Crazy Horses European summer dates. As we were
for
fi
finishing,
we played a version of Tumbleweed, Sampedro
sa identifying a song that eventually appeared on
says,
Yo
Youngs
Storytone album in November. At the time, we
di
didnt know it was called Tumbleweed. We played it at low
w as four benefit shows in his native Canada

well
under the banner Honour The Treaties, was
u
mainly
devoted to classics drawn from the
m
years
1966-78. But much of what followed was
y
recondite
and wilfully contrarian. What was
r
he
h doing? Was there a plan?
Reflecting on Youngs working practices
during
his glorious 70s era, Poncho Sampedro
d
says,
sa I remember we would go to Neils ranch
Young with
Jack White,
to record. Wed stay there for a summer, maybe
at Third Man
ev nine months, just recording, coming up
even
Records,
Nashville
w songs and partying, then Neil would come
with
in and go, Oh, shit, you guys. Youre not going to
be
believe
it, Warner Brothers called. We got to turn
in a record. What do you think we should put on
it? We never had the concept that we were making a record.
However, Joshua V Smith can offer a first-hand account of
Youngs recent methods. An engineer at Jack Whites Third
Man Records, Smith had been on hand when Young visited
the labels Nashville headquarters on Record Store Day 2013.
Later, Smith acted as engineer on A Letter Home, recorded
in Whites 1947 Voice-O-Graph recording booth at sessions
between September 16 and 18, 2013. Smith recalls a week of
preparation adapting the booth to Whites specifications,
including adding a video screen so Young could watch
himself work. Jack and Neil were pitching
ideas to each other, explains Smith. They
both are very strong-minded, opinionated
people. They want what they want, but they
also worked really well together.
Jack would say, What if you do this song?
and Neil would be, Yeah, yeah, that would
be great. He had an assortment of guitars,
including his Martin D-28, one of Hank
Williams guitars. He and Jack were like, Hey,
try this one for this song. So it seemed like
they were deciding on things together.
Smith estimates that together Young and
White recorded close to 20 songs during the
three days, with Young working 8 to 10 hours
when he was there. Smith was also on hand
level, all
le
when Young recorded the spoken-word intro, a message to
hu
huddled in
his late mother, Rassy, where Young reiterated his mission
fro of the
front
statement for 2014: I still really have a lot of work to do here.
dr
drums.
Neil
At first we had no idea he was gonna do it, reveals Smith.
gr
grabbed
his
I think he and Jack just came up with that idea. He arrived
iP
iPhone
and
on the second day and went in the booth. I was expecting a
hit record, then threw it on the floor in between us. We were
song and all of a sudden he just starts talking. For me, it just
just jamming and he was saying/singing some words. We
clicked. I dont know if they went into the project knowing
stayed on one chord and played it every way we knew how.
that was what they were going to do. But it just made it into
When we finished, a lot of the crew came out and asked what
a real album. It gave it so much purpose. Mindy Watts, who
was that. They said it sounded spooky and really good. So,
was assisting on the record, got a little teary-eyed.
the only recording of it was on Neils iPhone. At one point his
The recording was not without its difficulties, as Smith
engineer, Mark Humphreys, came out and tried to pick up
explains. When it came to record the piano, we put Neil in
the phone but Neil blocked him! Later, on the road, Neil
the booth on a stool and pushed the piano up against the
spoke to Ralph [Molina, drums] about going into the studio
door. His back was facing the mic. It wasnt the best place
and overdubbing the drums so it could be used on the
to fit. We just had to do whatever we could to get the piano
record. I dont know what happened to that. You know,
recorded on there. At first, we tried where hes kind of sitting
most people turn a corner. Neil ricochets.
outside with it, but it didnt work. So we just ended up rolling
it up against him pretty much and up against the booth. It
OOKING BACK ON the weird and gripping narrative of
was funny, Jack said for having a mic in basically a phone
Youngs past 12 months, a number of familiar, nagging
booth, this has ended being a really complicated record.
patterns emerge. The old accomplices who resurface
Perhaps the biggest revelation about A Letter Home was the
Crazy Horse, producer Niko Bolas, or Bruce Botnick, who
original distribution method they had in mind. They were
now works for Young at Pono and even the beloved songs he
gonna try to release it a month after and not announce at all,
revisits. Youngs first album this year, A Letter Home, felt like
explains Smith. One idea was to plant some records in
a historical adventure as he covered songs by contemporaries
random record stores around the country, maybe even in the
including Dylan, Willie Nelson and Tim Hardin; many of
Used section, and just let somebody find something and
which hed played at Farm Aid 2013. A solo acoustic tour
think What is this? I never heard of this!
Young performed sporadically between January and
Young finally released A Letter Home on April 19, Record
October, starting at Carnegie Hall, New York and visiting
Store Day 2014. It is an odd though poignant addition to his
Hollywood, Dallas, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, as
canon. There are clues, though, to its purpose. Ahead of its
Most
people turn
p
a corner.
Neil
ricochets
PONCHO
SAMPEDRO
JO MCCAUGHEY
THRASHER
AND OTHER
RARITIES
This year, Neil Young
has surprised and
delighted fans by
digging out some
deep cuts from his
catalogue. Heres
the key tracks
Solo acoustic:
Out Of My Mind
(Buffalo Springfield,
Buffalo Springfield);
last played, 1996
Thrasher (Rust Never
Sleeps); last played, 1978
Crazy Horse:
Name Of Love (CSNY,
American Dream); last
played, 1988
Separate Ways
(unreleased);
last played, 2008
Days That Used To Be

(Ragged Glory); last
played, 1991
Standing In The Light

Of Love (unreleased);
last played, 2001
Be The Rain
(Greendale);
last played, 2004
Goin Home
(Are You Passionate?);
last played, 2003
Y OUNG
NEILIL YO
release, a news story announcing
its arrival appeared on Youngs
website credited to Homer Grosvenor;
a sly reference to the house on
Grosvenor Avenue, Winnipeg, where
Young and Rassy lived during his
first significant forays into music.
Speaking to Uncut, Young even
called it an historic art project. To
add to its peculiarities, it arrived
while much of Youngs energy was
otherwise engaged with Pono.
Standing up to save the

planet: Neil Young at the
Toronto International
Film Festival on
September 10, 2014
SET LIST
1.0!
A sneak peek at
an early version
of the Crazy
Horse summer
tour setlist,
worked up after
the Oakland,
California,
rehearsals before
the band arrived
in Iceland
Goin Home
Dont Cry No Tears
Days That Used To Be
Stupid Girl
Love To Burn
Separate Ways
Barstool Blues
Psychedelic Pill
Cortez The Killer
After The Gold Rush
Trans Am
Whos Gonna
Stand Up
MAARTEN DE BOER/GETTY IMAGES
Down By The River

Tonights the Night/
Like A Hurricane
OTHERS
Ramada Inn
Hold Back The Tears
Danger Bird
IKE MOST THINGS, Poncho

Sampedro has a view on
Pono. The Crazy Horse
guitarist remembers his first
exposure to the system one day at
his home in Hawaii. Neil has a
place not that far from me here,
he begins. I was into this whole
natural farming thing, this natural
farmer guru was coming by my
house and I was really nervous.
I called Neil up and I said, Neil,
would you come over here and give
me a little support? So he hung
with me while this guy, Master Cho, was here. His whole
family came and they checked it out and it was a big deal,
then they all left. We sat on the couch, Neil and I, talking.
Thats when he first started to sell me Pono.
He got up and started going, So I walked into
Warner Bros, heres the sales pitch I gave
them He pretended he had a blackboard
and everything, and I said, Neil, man, that
sounds great. But I havent listened to a record
in probably 20 years. After that, he never
really talked to me about it again.
Bruce Botnick, meanwhile, has an
understandably different perspective on
Youngs high-resolution audio service.
Botnick co-producer of Loves Forever
Changes and a mainstay of many Doors
albums first worked with Young on 1967s
Buffalo Springfield Again. We stayed in
touch, he explains. Id go to some of his
concerts. Wed hang, and wed catch up. Three years ago,
when he took the Buffalo Springfield reunion on the road, he
played a concert near us in Santa Barbara. I went to the show,
and Neil said, Can you come backstage after? He wanted
to show me the prototype for Pono. At that time, it was in
LincVolt, his Lincoln convertible, but it was an astonishingly
great speaker system and amplifiers, and he had a prototype
not the one we hold in our hands today, but electronically,
the concept in place, and he was able to demonstrate it.
Botnick recalls Young playing him Aretha Franklin on his
new system. Since April this year, Botnick has worked for
Pono as VP of Content Acquisition, liaising with record labels.
He arrived at the company after Young debuted the system at
thwest in March, but is agreeably confident
South By Southwest
tems prospects: They started the Kickstarter
about the systems
appeal to try and raise about seven- or eight-hundred
lars, and instead raised $6.8
thousand dollars,
ever lose sight of the fact it is
million. We never
t, from the start, and
Neils concept,
rumental. I hate
hes very instrumental.
obs as an
to use Steve Jobs
analogy, but Steve
ry.
was a visionary.
And Neil, in his
own way, is a
o.
visionary, too.
As persuasive as Botnick sounds, Pono is still an unknown

quantity; albeit one with significant support. The Kickstarter
site, for instance, offered the chance to sign up for Artist
Signature Series PonoPlayers, limited to 500 each and costing
$400 a pop, featuring artists like Tom Petty, Elton John, James
Taylor, ZZ Top, Pearl Jam and CSN. Essentially, Pono will give
you the opportunity to buy better versions of the music you
have probably bought several times over in other formats.
Botnick explains that both Archives Vol 1 and eventually
Vol 2 will arrive on Pono: Well be doing enhanced metadata
in the store, reveals Botnick. So you will be able to click
on that album, and download an extremely large PDF with
all the news thats fit to print about when it was recorded, who
recorded it, who produced it, who were the musicians, what
hours of the day, what studio, all that kind of good stuff
who was having a baby that day, what kind of food they were
eating! Were harking back to the old days of vinyl, when
you could hold a 12 in your hand and read a lot.
OST DAYS, YOULL find Poncho Sampedro

outside. After 18 years working at NBC, he has
effectively retired to Hawaii where he enjoys
gardening, swimming and other outdoor pursuits. He still
makes music, though. In his living-room, there are two
acoustic guitars, a ukulele and an acoustic bass. Every
Tuesday night, a friend drops by and they play really hard
for five or six hours.
Its funny, he says, reflecting on Youngs 2014. While the
rest of us are slowing down, Neils speeding up. He seems
more conscious of work than ever before. One person,
Sampedro notes, who isnt here to witness
Youngs creative streak is long-standing
producer David Briggs, who died in 1995. He
was such a big influence with this band and
Neil, he explains. We had to rock and you
had to deliver. You cant play around. He
would go up to Neil, get right in Neils face and
say, It seems to me like youre just noodling
around. Dont you have anything to say when
you solo? People dont come to listen to you
just to hear you noodle around. Nobody talks
to Neil like that any more. I dont know who he
would listen to these days. People can tell him
what to do, but he doesnt listen to anybody.
It has been an unpredictable year for Crazy
Horse; a band who have experienced more
than their fair share of upheaval. Next year marks 40 years
since Sampedro made his Horse debut on Zuma. Since then,
there have been several unreleased albums recorded with
Young. More recently, the band had to curtail their 2013 tour
after Sampedro broke a finger and thumb. They reconvened
with Young earlier this year for European tour dates. Arriving
on June 10 at the Fox Theater in Oakland, California for three
days of rehearsing, they found Young had a new song
prepared: Whos Gonna Stand Up.
Neil starts playing it, begins Sampedro, explaining how
Young routinely introduces a new song to the band. He
stares at you. You start playing along with him. You plug
times Then hell stop. I
through it a couple of times.
remember on Whos Gonna
Up he stopped and I
Stand Up,
Ne what is that riff
said, Neil,
that you played at the
beginni
beginning?
He said,
o
Which one?
I started
s
playing something
like
though was the riff
I thought
and he go
goes, Thats about it.
nic if we played
Itd be nice
together No, no. Thats
it together.
fine. We d
definitely really got
it. I think tthe last night we
Neil
Young, in
his own
way, is a
visionary
BRUCE
BOTNICK
THE ANTHOLOGY
1964-1971
The most comprehensive
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r Over 100 tracks across 5 discs
r Newly remastered
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r 25 previously unavailable tracks
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GUS STEWART/REDFERNS VIA GETTY IMAGES
NEIL YOUNG
played it pretty good. But Neil never took the time at a

soundcheck to say, OK, this is it, were going to play this four
times, then this happens, then that happens. He never laid it
out and said, This is it. So it was always a little unsettled.
After the last date of rehearsals June 13 Sampedro
headed home. Five days later, he received a call from Youngs
manager, Elliot Roberts, telling him Billy Talbot had suffered
a stroke. Billy was travelling from Oakland to South
Dakota, says Sampedro. His wife was driving. He told me
it was kind of odd, he didnt even know that he had a stroke.
They stopped at Salt Lake City, Utah, then when he went to
step out of the car, his foot wouldnt work. He said, If I hadnt
got out of the car I wouldnt even know Id had a stroke. My
first inkling when Elliot called me was the tour is cancelled.
Then the next day, I got a call from Neil and he said he talked
to Rick Rosas and said, We got a bass player, we can do this.
Rosas was on vacation in Santa Barbara when he got a call
from Young on June 18. He asked if I was willing to come out
and help him out, confirms Rosas, in an interview that took
place just a week before his death. I said, Of course, Im
willing to help you out. This is kind of a strange circumstance,
but Im there for you. He says, Ill send you some songs for
you to learn and just take it from there. I think I had maybe
10 days to rehearse the material I was unfamiliar with.
Neil said, Why dont you just sing most of Billys parts?
continues Sampedro. Im not the worlds best harmony
singer, but I was enthusiastic that morning. I told Neil,
Yeah, Ill fill in for Billy, Ill take over, Ill do what I can. I went
through all the songs we had, I started singing background
parts to figure out Billys parts. I called Neil back the next
morning, my voice was hoarse. I said, Neil, I cant do it. Im
going to be the cause of really screwing up some shows if I
have to sing on all of those. Its not going to be fun. He said,
Dont worry, well get some background singers. I never
realised how many changes that was going to make in the
band, just not having Billy there. First of all, it took three
people to fill in for him. Then we really never could rock like
when Billys there. Its so easy to rock. Thats what we do.
With this configuration, it was a little softer, the intensity was
gone. Thats not taking away anything, we were a good band.
But we just werent what everybody knows as Crazy Horse.
The band augmented by Dorene Carter and YaDonna
West headed to Iceland at the start of July. We had three
days to rehearse, says Sampedro. I remember walking in
the dressing-room, and Ralph was sitting with his head down
and I said, Whats up, Ralph? He goes, I miss Billy. I went,
Well, I miss him, too! It was funny, he said, I just miss his
face, I miss his expressions. I said, I miss the constant beat
that we always have, too. Rick plays too good; Rick knows a
lot of notes, he can play all over the place,

and Billy, we just get in a groove and lock it
down and hold it there. Nothing ever
wavers. Nothing that Rick does is wrong,
its just something were not used to. I think
we were suffering because it wasnt Crazy
Horse, Ralph and I. But Neil went to the next
level. He was enjoying the fact that he had a
new band with girls who could sing all the
parts and a bass player that could play a lot
of different stuff. Thats why the material
was so different. He had freedom to do a lot
of other things. We werent doing classic
Crazy Horse hits on that tour.
Indeed, the Crazy Horse summer tour
of Europe was one of the most irregular in
Youngs ever-evolving relationship with
his trusty backing band. It wasnt just the
The Horse ride again: Frank
Sampedro, Rick Rosas and Neil
different focus and energy that inevitably
Young perform at the British
accompanied the change in personnel; but
Summer Time Festival at
Londons Hyde Park, July 12, 2014
the tantalising possibilities it presented.
Young dusted down rarities like Separate
Ways and Goin Home and incorporated
Only Love Can Break Your Heart and After The Gold Rush
that hed not played with Crazy Horse since 2001. Songs
introduced on 2013s Alchemy tour Hole In The Sky and
Singer Without A Song vanished entirely, putting paid to
speculation (dismissed by Sampedro) that there was a new
Crazy Horse album in the works.
We always do these vocal warm-ups before each show,
The latest on Billy
about 20 minutes well be singing through scales, reveals
Talbots postSampedro. Hell stop right in the middle of that and go like,
stroke recovery
You know the part to Down By The River is this low part,
TALKED to
Poncho. Hell sing it like twice then go back to the vocal
him last week,
warm-ups and then well do
Poncho
the song that night. Or hell
Sampedro tells Uncut.
turn to somebody and say,
He seemed to be
Do you know Everybody
fine. He went to the
Knows This Is Nowhere?
Bridge concert and I
Thats the only mention of
talked to some people
it, and then he does it. I
who saw him there and
remember one night, the
they said he looked
buses were parked by this
the same as ever, just
river and I thought, Oh man,
maybe moving a little
I hope we dont do Down
slower. Hes working
By The River tonight. We
on his own music. He
walked onstage and he
said he played piano
started it and we played it for
on a lot of songs and
25 minutes! I love that song,
hes playing guitar and
but I feel self-conscious
bass. All his faculties
because Danny [Whitten] played such great parts on it.
are back. Hes got to
I always feel like Im struggling when I do that song.
gather his strength.
I was told to learn Ramada Inn and a few others, so I
At the time, there
already had them in my head, adds Rosas. But we never got
was no talk of him
into them. We just got into this set that morphed into what he
rejoining the tour. He
thought was best for the situation, I guess. But hes got so
was walking with
much material, you never know what hes going to throw at
a cane and had just
you. Ive been on tours with Neil where there were no setlists!
started using his
Hopefully, hell tell somebody before he starts out the song.
hands. His left foot
Its almost guaranteed that if you rehearse it and know it
and hand werent
perfectly, youll never play it, laughs Sampedro. As the tour
working so well. And
progressed, Neil got more and more into the activist part of it.
at our age, the energy
The war in Israel was happening. We had to cancel our show
it takes to travel every
there. From then on, all of a sudden we were playing a lot
day and play every
more politically minded songs. We had a whole group of new
other night, you gotta
songs to learn again. During that tour, I think we had about
be in shape. We all
25 songs from the beginning to the end that we played. Its
work out before a tour.
funny, here at home in the States, we dont see as much of the
I dont think there was
small conflicts that are going on globally on our TV news. But
ever a thought he
when youre in Europe, you turn on the TV and flick through
might try to come
the channels, you see war, war, war, war. I think that was a
back at that point.
big part of it. We were looking forward to playing Israel. We
HOWS
BILLY?
Neils
always
tried to do
good things
for the
Earth
RICK ROSAS
Young, centre, marches with

the Cowboy Indian Alliance in
Washington DC to protest
against the Keystone XL
pipeline with Daryl Hannah
behind the banner, second right
onSaturday, April 26, 2014
IMNEVERSURPRISED
IM
NEVER SURPRISED
BY ANYTHING NEIL DOES
played in Turkey around that same time and just to get into
our hotel you had to go through a screening process like at
an airport. I think all those things affected Neil.
PETE MAROVICH/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES; TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES; PIETER M VAN HATTEM
F COURSE, YOUNG has a lengthy history of political

engagement, stretching back to Ohio, Farm Aid or,
more recently, the environmental project Greendale
and his outcry against George W Bushs military policies on
Living With War. This Januarys Honour The Treaties shows in
Canada were yet more evidence of Youngs political agenda;
this time in defence of the First Nations tribes land rights,
which are under threat from the Keystone XL pipeline project.
In some ways, Honour The Treaties mirrored the 2010 Gulf
Coast tour, in aid of residents affected by the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill. Oil companies, once again, were the target
of Youngs ire. I think hes always been an activist as far as
trying to do good things for the Earth, says Rick Rosas. He
had been working on this electric car for years and that has
something to do with not using fuel. So thats always been
on his mind; finding other ways to use the Earths energy.
Sampedro sees Youngs activism in 2014 as part of an
ongoing history of protest stretching back many decades.
I think it still comes from his heart, he says. If you can
make things better, why dont you?
Even the seemingly arbitrary appearance of a directors cut
of Human Highway at the Toronto Film Festival in September
chimed with Youngs current thinking. Originally conceived
during a period of protest against the growing use of nuclear
power, its not hard to see Young drawing parallels between
that battle and his current struggle against oil companies.
Willie Nelsons son Lukas has known Young most of his life.
One early memories is approaching the man he called Uncle
Neil with a song he had written. I wanted to show Neil the
song, he explains. So I had my brother come sing it with me,
and we played it for Neil, and he said, Oh man! Thats some
good guitar picking. So it was cool. I mustve been 10 or 11.
More recently, Nelson found himself sharing a stage with
Young during Harvest The Hope, a benefit in September to
raise funds for the fight against the Keystone pipeline. We
didnt know what we were gonna do, Nelson admits. I
talked to Neil briefly at Farm Aid, a fortnight before. He said,
Ill bring my electric guitar over to the protest. Ill come and sit
in with your band, and well jam a bit. I said, All right, that
sounds great. So, we were expecting Neil to come sit in with
us. Then when we got there it became us backing both dad
and Neil. So we went into Neils bus that afternoon, we
GRAHAM NASH reflects on Youngs 2014
DONT KNOW what goes on in

But weve been here before, hearing
Neils head. Who the hell does?
people saying CSNY will never go
Im not even sure that Neil
forward, but we always manage to do
knows half of the time. Neil has had
something. If a few oddly chosen words
an incredible last couple of months,
in the press from David and a paragraph
especially with his pending divorce
of mine in my book stopped CSNY
from Pegi and his relationship with
making music again, that would be
Daryl Hannah. The heart is a mysterious
incredibly sad.
instrument, isnt it? And when Neils
Neils packed every second. Were
heart moves, he has to move. I certainly
getting older, how long can this go on?
feel sad for Pegi and for Neils family,
Rick Rosas died yesterday. Its very sad,
hes been married to her for a long time.
he was a nice man. We need to get on
But as far as his relationship with Daryl
with life and fill it with the best of what
is concerned, I did not like what David
we can and keep creating. But Im never
Crosby said in the press. I thought it
surprised by anything Neil does. Hes
was uncalled for. But quite honestly,
been very dedicated to his music, he
its one of the things that endears us to
has always thought to explore new ways
Crosby. Hell tell you how he feels, and
of doing it and God bless him. Its
unfortunately in this day of social media
interesting Neil has finally stepped up
it spreads like wild fire, so that was
his concern for the planet this year.
unfortunate and I understand why Neil
Where was he 30-odd years ago when
is upset. I wish Pegi and Neil the very
we did No Nukes? Where was he when
best. How could I not? Hes my friend.
we started out on all environmental
Will there be any more CSNY? Right
concerns? But the point is, if hes on
now, it looks pretty bleak. Neil is a little
board now, Im all in favour. You have
upset with me because of my
to face the problem, and
Stephen Stills, Graham
book, Wild Tales. And hes
thats what Neils doing.
Nash, Young and David
INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK
obviously upset with David. Crosby on their Freedom
Of Speech 06 tour,
Concord Pavilion,
California, July 25, 2006
NEIL YOUNG
practised a bit. We didnt have any
guitars, he just showed us the chords to a
bunch of these songs, five songs.
Nelson shared another enjoyably
spontaneous and hairy experience at this
years Bridge School benefit on October 25
and 26. We just went there to hang, and
Young recording
we were like, maybe we should bring our
Storytones Like
You Used To Do
instruments. We figured he might wanna
play with us. He did. So we rehearsed for
half an hour on his bus
Neils always got so much going on, observes
Nelson. Even if he looks like hes just standing
there, his mind is working. To us, hes like Yoda, or
something. Dads like that, too. Those guys, its in
their make-up. I have no doubt Neils gonna be
rocking for a long time. Dads 81 and hes still
going. Theyre cut from the same cloth, and Neil
admires my dad for that very reason, too.
F YOUNG CIRCLED many familiar themes

during 2014, the one song that seemed to suit
all his concerns was
Whos Gonna Stand
Up. It appeared in no
less than three versions
during the course of the
year live with Crazy
Horse, and then in two
versions on Storytone,
the album he recorded
with orchestral and bigband accompaniment.
Everybody knows how
involved he is with
fighting fracking and
building electric cars and
finding alternatives to
fuel, he always has been, says Storytone producer
Niko Bolas. When he did Living With War he
called me while I was working in the studio and
said, How come nobodys writing protest records?
Weve been in this war forever and nobodys
writing anything. And this thing is kind of true
with Whos Gonna Stand Up. He said, I want this
to be big and for the people.
Young and Bolas began work on Storytone
several months ahead of its October release.
Bolas recalls that they recorded the albums
accompanying solo tracks on June 26 and 27.
About a year ago, we were talking about what
things he still wanted to do, Bolas explains.
Among the things he wanted to do was sing in the
middle of an orchestra. He called me to say hed
written some new songs, and what did I think. So I
booked a couple of days at Capitol with Al Schmitt.
I called Lon Cohen, whos a vintage gear guy, and
we filled the studio with all kinds of weird, old
instruments that Neil had not played. Ukulele,
four-string, weird banjos. We got the Storytone
piano, an upright piano, resonator, there wasnt
anything that he was used to. He could sit down
and there may be something there you know,
every instrument has its own inspiration. We
captured the songs then he left for the Crazy Horse
tour. I got Michael Bearden and Chris Walden, the
arrangers, and came up with charts so when he
came back we could jump in a room in September
and see what happens. Neil gave me a list of
adjectives big orchestra, chorale voices, have
it mean something The first instruction was,
play Michael and Chris the 10 songs and if either
Neil is ready to
live until hes
100-andsomething!
PONCHO SAMPEDRO
g has a favourite, let them

guy
h
have that. While he was on
tthe road, Id use FaceTime
a
and hook him up with the
a
arrangers and talk through
tthe preliminary ideas.
W
When Neil came back,
tthe guys came over
to the house and we sat at
the piano and played him
the original ideas.
Storytone, then,
proved to be yet another
experimental album from
Young; harking back,
perhaps, to the orchestral flourishes on 1972s
Harvest or the brassy romp of 1988s This Notes
For You. But the other, equally significant element
of Storytone was what was on Youngs mind.
On July 29, he filed for divorce from his wife
Pegi; many of the songs seem informed by that
WILL CRAZY
HORSE TOUR
AGAIN?
CERTAINLY hope so, says

Sampedro. My hopes and
dreams, if you want to know
those, is that Neil writes a bunch of
songs and in January, February we start
recording and we go out on a big tour. I
always want to call it a farewell tour, but
I dont think Neil would ever accept that.
But for me, I like to live in a perfect world.
We had a farewell tour, we got to say
goodbye to all the people. Theres been
people listening to us and supporting us
and weve been counting on them to buy
our records and show up at gigs, and it
would be nice to do something where we
all were together saying goodbye, we
appreciate it. I dont know how to put
it in words. Like a Frank Capra movie,
a big happy ending.
separation and also his budding romance

with actress and eco-activist Daryl
Hannah. The opener, Plastic Flowers,
seems to capture the early trajectory of his
and Hannahs relationship: In the
summertime/We met to see a threat,
while Glimmer basks in the glow of
new love when all the feelings in your
heart/Come reawakened. Like You
Used To Do, meanwhile, bears evidence
of a corrosive relationship with a former
partner: I got my problems/But they mostly show
up with you, he sings. Someday youll want me/
Someday youre gonna get back there/Someday
youre gonna need me/Like you used to do.
Young has frequently documented stages of
his life in song Journey Through The Past,
Are You Ready For The Country and Old Man
address Youngs relocation to Broken Arrow in
1969, for instance. The unreleased Separate
Ways, from the Homegrown sessions, deals with
his split from actress Carrie Snodgress in the mid70s; Young pointedly repurposed it during the
summer Crazy Horse shows. Collateral to all this
appeared to be Youngs relationship with David
Crosby. Young hadnt been involved in the release
earlier in the summer of the long-delayed CSNY
1974 live boxset. In October, Crosby reportedly
weighed in on Youngs marriage split; Young
responded by ruling out any future CSNY work.
He is very angry with me Crosby admitted.
FTER THE CRAZY Horse tour

finished, remembers Poncho
Sampedro. I wrote to Neil and I said,
Im home, Im with my girl, Im enjoying life. I
know youre still working on something. You
havent stopped since the day I said goodbye to you
and gave you a hug. Youre probably working on a
couple of projects. I just want you to know, I feel as
if I could walk out in front of my house and put up
a sign that says, Mission Accomplished. But
I know Neil doesnt feel that way.
Although Sampedro isnt certain what the future
holds for Crazy Horse, he admires his old friends
astonishing workrate during 2014. Neil is ready to
live until hes 100-and-something, he laughs.
There are others, though, who draw different
conclusions from the bustling narrative of Youngs
year. Niko Bolas, for instance, makes a surprising
deduction about how he believes all Youngs
many different projects will shape the next period
of his life. If anything, he may have completed
a lot of things so he can take the next decade and
triumph in the other things hes concerned about.
I dont think its a musical decade coming up, as
much as it is one of fighting for mankind. Hes
stood in a tar sand field and looked at dead
animals and come out thinking, Why isnt
anybody doing anything about this? If anybody
has the ability to use fame to affect change, hes
the guy that has the courage to do that.
Hes become quite an activist, confirms Rick
Rosas. Hes done things Ive never seen him do
before, like book signings and a lot of media.
Before, youd be surprised if you saw Neil on TV.
So things are changing. Obviously, he feels its
time for him to be outspoken on his environmental
thoughts and hopefully provide awareness to
people. Its a good thing. But there are only forks
in the road with Neil. Anything could happen.
I wouldnt put it past him.
THE SONGS OF PAUL McCARTNEY

SUNG BY THE WORLDS GREATEST ARTISTS
FEATURING
Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Steve Miller, Willie Nelson,

Paul Rodgers, B.B. King, The Cure AND MANY MORE
THE ART OF McCARTNEY OUT NOW

AVAILABLE ON CD, LUXURY CD INCLUDING DVD, TRIPLE VINYL, VINYL BOXSET, SUPER DELUXE BOXSET, DIGITAL
ALBUM BY ALBUM
Vincent
on Disney films, David Byrne and selfimposed isolation: I just follow my ears!
NNIE CLARK HAS accomplished a staggering

amount since surfacing as St Vincent last decade.
Her four solo albums including this years
acclaimed self-titled record, No 9 in our albums
of 2014 (see the full list on p21) are just the most
obvious signifiers in a career that has also seen her
collaborate with David Byrne, develop an extraordinary live show
and emerge as a truly modern guitar hero.
I constantly take experiences and write about them, Clark
explains of her songwriting. Thats just how I function, how I make
sense of the universe and how I like to live.
The Dallas-raised singer, guitarist and composer is certainly not
afraid of hard work, filtering her myriad influences and experiences
into complex, concise music that is simultaneously melodic and
experimental. I just like to work, she admits. I dont need scented
candles and incense in the studio. I just get to work, its not brain
surgery, you know? TOM PINNOCK
It was tough
and intense
St Vincent in 2011
circa Strange Mercy
TINA TYRELL; PIETER M VAN HATTEM
Clark with
David Byrne,
2012
MARRY ME
ACTOR
BEGGARS BANQUET,
2007
4AD, 2009
Annie Clarks debut,

helped along by
Sufjan Stevens, The
Polyphonic Spree
and one of David
Bowies right-hand men
Annie Clark: To make my own music was
always my ambition from a very young age.
I was working on Marry Me before I joined
The Polyphonic Spree and then I finished it
while touring with them. Sufjan Stevens heard
it and asked me to be in his band and open
for him. When I was opening for Sufjan in
London the people from Beggars Banquet
were there, so I got a record deal based off
of that performance. Mike Garson had
recorded with The Polyphonic Spree on
The Fragile Army, so I got to know him, and
he was a really, really kind, sweet guy. He
was doing this thing on MySpace at the time
where people would basically send him
tracks, and he would do his amazing
Mike Garson thing on top of it. I think
thats how we did it; I sent him my song
Your Lips Are Red and he just did his
awesome crazy Mike Garson thing. To be
honest with you, I dont think I own a copy
of this album! I think I have a file somewhere,
but its on a laptop that has died. I havent
heard it in years. Listening back to your old
records feels a little like looking at a highschool yearbook.
Clark teams up with

her long-term producer
for the first time, and
narrowly avoids making
the soundtrack to
The Lion King
This was the first record I worked on with John
Congleton. I started it with another producer,
but things just went horribly wrong so I called
John. Id spent a long, long time on all of these
tracks, all of these beautiful wind and string
passages that I was trying to make into songs.
I called John and said, You know what? I think
I need to try again with these songs I think
that if Im not careful Ill be making the
soundtrack to The Lion King, so can we just
rethink this? I went in and basically
re-recorded everything but the wind and
strings. It was definitely an eleventh-hour
thing, with John and I together in the studio
saving the record. When I was writing it, I was
watching a lot of films, Disney films from the
30s and 40s. I was going for Technicolor on
that record, and luckily we saved it from being
the last record I ever made. The way it had
been going, Im not sure if anyone wouldve
given it a listen. Johns sonic power is strong
and contagious and, because we were already
friends, I felt very comfortable with him. We
were able to go about making a record with no
ego or strange human relationships. We could
be clear-headed about the songs and the best
way to present them with the arrangements.
THE
CLASSIC
STRANGE MERCY
4AD, 2011
Isolating herself during an intense month in

the Pacific Northwest, Clark takes another
step forward
I read about Nick Caves approach to
songwriting and how you just have to treat
it like a day job, put on a suit and trousers in
aspects of it, and get to work. I figured that
in order to do that I needed to go to a place
where I wouldnt be distracted by friends or
fun or anything like that. I just wanted to be
alone in a little bit of isolation. So I went out
to Seattle for a month and rented a studio
The flamboyant
2014 St Vincent
2012, 4AD
Teaming up with her

hero, Clark crafted this
hyperactive, brass-led
LP, which spawned some spectacular live shows
I suggested brass as a prominent voice because
I think that at the time David and I decided to
write songs together I had just done the Actor
record with a lot of woodwind and a lot of strings
on it. So I hadnt explored brass and I wanted to.
Originally, we were going to do a night of music
at a bookstore for charity, so I was thinking OK,
it could be a small ensemble, just me and David
and a couple of guitars and then well call it a
day. But then obviously it grew and grew and
grew. Brass was a way to bridge what we do in
some sort of a neutral middle ground. When
we toured the album, just the sheer number of
people onstage was exciting and overwhelming,
and then these people organised the stage
movement in really fun and idiosyncratic ways
and it made for such a light-hearted, beguiling
show. For me as a performer, choreographing
onstage movement is so liberating, because
I get to actually be here now really Buddhiststyle, because Im not having to think about
what my arms and legs and feet should be
doing. If my body is acting subconsciously
then I can really be there in the moment with
the people. Thats really great for me. Thats
a great little exercise.
ST VINCENT
LOMA VISTA/REPUBLIC,
2014
Clark gets extroverted,

exploring a flamboyant
image and crafting her
most commercially
successful album yet
This is a more primary colour record than Ive
done in the past, I think. Its generally a bit
brighter as a record. It was less emotionally
fraught than when I was writing Strange Mercy.
I think theres an exuberance in Love This Giant,
and maybe some of that carried on into this
record. Did my image change happen naturally?
Yeah its entertainment, its fun. In songs, I tell
people nightly the worst thoughts Ive ever
thought or very intimate details of my life. I find
music to be very revealing and I connect with
various characters that are universally human.
Adding a layer of theatricality to it makes it more
fun for me, and entertaining for the audience.
Im resting on this idea that everything is a
performance. I did a lot of sketching for St Vincent
in Garageband before going into the studio.
The process of actually recording it was less
about discovery and putting the Frankensteins
monster together, and a bit more about
execution. There were a lot of things that had
already been decided long before I walked into
the studio. It was a different experience than
Strange Mercy or Actor. Recording took about six
weeks all in, around May 2013. John and I usually
work every day and take maybe one day off every
10 or 12 days. I work hard? Thats bullshit.
55
SHAMIL TANNA/WWW.TIMEINCUKCONTENT.COM
from my friends in Death Cab For Cutie and

just worked there 12 hours a day. It was a
good exercise because Id never done it so
vigorously; Ive always written at home,
so it was nice to just go elsewhere, to have
a separate space in order to be creative, and
also to learn how to turn on the faucet and
not judge whats coming out. Just to write
every day and not worry about the outcome,
because ultimately you are going to put the
pieces together eventually, but if youre
stuck on something then just work on
something else. It was very productive and
constructive to work like that. It was lonely
as hell, and it was tough and intense, but it
was worthwhile I mean, everybody works
for a living! Its my job. Youre always
following your intuition and hoping that
your intuition and your intellect intersect
at a point thats fruitful. Im always just
following my ears. At the end of the day, thats
all you really have. Thats how Ive been able
to develop and grow over the course of my
albums. I think writers block this is the
quote Ive read was a term invented in Los
Angeles by people who dont know how to
write. There are so many ways to be creative,
that I just dont believe in writers block, I think
thats a fundamental lack of imagination.
Once I was sort of stuck, so I just transcribed
all of Madonnas first record, because I wanted
to see how it worked.
DAVID BYRNE
& ST VINCENT
LOVE THIS
GIANT
MARK KOZELEK
Story: John Mulvey | Photograph: Bill Ellison
Im not
interested in
peoples bitching
and whining...
At the end of an uncommonly action-packed year, MARK KOZELEK
reects on fame, infamy, 22 years at the helm of Red House Painters
and Sun Kil Moon, and the perverse sense of humour that provoked
a war with The War On Drugs. When I put words together, no-one can touch
me. You tweet and play Bob Dylan covers? Good for you!
ROM MARK KOZELEKS living-room window,

he can see the Golden Gate Bridge, the San
Francisco Marina and, he points out, the Tiburon
neighbourhood where Robin Williams killed
himself. Its hard for middle-aged people to see
San Francisco taken over by young, Silicon Valley
money, he says of the city hes lived in for most of
his adult life. Kozeleks favourite restaurant closed
down a few weeks ago, and the grocery store down
the street, and the Lumiere movie theatre. That
stuff bothers me, he continues, and makes me
feel old. But Ive got this gorgeous view and a pretty
good set-up and Im still inspired every day so
why fix what isnt broke?
Today, Kozelek is answering questions by email, having
avoided old-fashioned interviews for the past few years
So I dont get quoted with words like dunno, he claims.
Last night, Sun Kil Moon played a show at the Fonda Theatre
in LA, part of a 2014 campaign which has been, even by his
industrious standards, intense. It began with the release of
Benji, the most critically acclaimed LP of his 22-year career,
and is ending, more or less, with a tender, dolorous
collection entitled Mark Kozelek Sings Christmas Carols.
Over roughly 17 albums, mostly using the band names Red
House Painters and Sun Kil Moon, Kozelek has forensically
documented his life: a compelling patchwork of family
anecdotes, love stories, tragedies, bereavements, tour
grouches and small talk about cats and boxing. In the past
two years, though, four remarkable albums (Among The
Leaves, Perils From The Sea, Mark Kozelek And Desertshore
and Benji) have seen Kozelek accelerate his creative process
with an evolved, off-the-cuff way of writing songs; a

diaristic vigour that gives even greater intimacy to what he
calls, archly, middle-aged ramblings about dead relatives.
Kozelek runs his own label (Caldo Verde), usually tours
solo, and releases a steady stream of live albums to make a
pragmatic living as a cult artist. But the rapturous reviews
for Benji, especially, have given him a greater prominence
than ever before, and exposed some other aspects of his
personality to a wider and slightly shocked audience.
It has been an eventful autumn. On September 5, at
the Hopscotch Festival in North Carolina, Kozeleks
characteristically grumpy stage persona found him
lambasting a talkative crowd as fucking hillbillies. Online
indignation duly followed, and by September 9 Kozelek was
selling T-shirts with the slogan All You Fuckin Hillbillies
Shut The Fuck Up on his website. Then, on September 14,
Kozeleks performance at the Ottawa Folk Festival was
disrupted by The War On Drugs playing, at somewhat louder
volume, on a neighbouring stage. Who the fuck is that?
Kozelek asked the crowd. I hate that beer commercial
lead-guitar shit. He then introduced his next song as
The War On Drugs Can Suck My Fucking Dick.
A bewildered War On Drugs later took to social media to try
and find out what had been going on, which only served to
amuse, or provoke, Kozelek further. By October 7, he had
written, recorded and released War On Drugs: Suck My
Cock, in which he also referred to a journalist whod taken
offence at his hillbillies jibe as a spoiled bitch rich kid
blogger brat. After ranting in similar fashion for two
decades, Kozeleks cantankerous humour had suddenly
been turned into rolling indie-rock news. The War On
Im here to
make music
and I dont
believe in
wasting time
MARK KOZELEK
57
MARK KOZELEK
Drugs Adam Granduciel
eventually responded,
exasperated. Kozelek, now
pathological in his pursuit,
released Adam Granofsky
Blues, in which he read out
Granduciels quotes punctuated
by increasingly hysterical
laughter. This last phase of
the story happened after our
interview, however; one in
which he talks unrepentantly
about his banter, scathingly
about social media and
seriously, and in depth, about
his art. Again and again, too,
theres a sense of him asserting
his credentials as a decent human being. I have
love in my heart, he says, and Im kind to people
every single day of my life.
PHOTOS COURTESY MARK KOZELEK
When we first met in 1992, how did you

expect to spend the next 22 years? What were
your expectations then? I didnt think that far
ahead. I remember Ivo [Watts-Russell, founder
of 4AD] telling me he was 38 and I thought that
sounded old, but here I am, at 47. The only thing
I felt confident about, at that time, was that Id
make a living playing music for the rest of my life.
I had a sense of it somehow.
You must feel very proud about how youve
stuck with your art for over two decades?
Yes, but its not been the easiest road. There were
several label switches, and the industry has
changed so much. But Im my own boss now:
I work at my own pace.
By most peoples standards, you work at an
incredibly fast pace. Every artist has different
priorities. Some artists I know dont make as
Mark
Kozelek,
Christmas
1974
much music as they used to

social media has taken over
their lives. I work at what I feel
is a normal pace and things
keep clicking. Its rewarding.
Sun Kil Moon had a beautiful
show in LA last night, and I felt
so much love from the crowd.
Red House
Painters in
1993
What needs to happen for you to pick up

that love? There are many elements that have to
come together for a show to come off. Sometimes
Im playing indoors, sometimes Im playing
outdoor festivals at 6pm, trying to play Carissa
with some other bands music bleeding into my
set. Sometimes sound and crew know what
theyre doing, sometimes not as much.
Sometimes a crowd is seated and respectful.
Sometimes theyve had too much to drink.
Have you been surprised by the reaction
to Benji? I never worry about how records will be
received, but I felt confident that Benji would be
received poorly, that people would find it to be
PASSING FANCIES
There isnt all

the baggage that
comes with,
This is forever.
Jimmy LaValle,
Desertshore, Justin
Broadrick, Ben Gibbard?
Kozelek on collaborations
HEY DO THE music, I

do the vocals. Jimmy
[LaValle, with whom he
made 2013s Perils From The Sea] and
I recorded the entire album with only
one phone conversation. It doesnt
get easier than that. There was talk
of us doing an EP, but he had
a child since then, and you
know how it is, he got busy
with his things and I got busy
with mine. But that guy made
music that inspired me to
sing at my very best. Maybe
someday well do it again.
With Desertshore [the San
Kozelek with (from top)

Jimmy LaValle, Justin
Broadrick, Ben Gibbard
and Desertshore
Francisco instrumentalists
F
who backed him on an
w
eponymous 2013 set], Id
e
just show up, listen to what
ju
theyd recorded and write
th
words and melodies on the
w
spot. Easy stuff. When
sp
something is a side project,
so
there isnt all the baggage
th
tthat comes with, This is forever.
Youre just working on one thing
Y
tto see how it all turns out.
Ben [Gibbard, The Postal
S
Service/Death Cab For Cutie
ffrontman] and I will make
ssome music someday, Im
ssure. I dont know how or
w
when. Maybe him on drums,
b
both of us singing and doing
o
overdubs. Hes a great
d
drummer. Justin Broadrick
[B
[British avant-metal musician,
b
best known for Godflesh] and I
aare working on something, as we
ccan, here and there, as were so
ffucking busy. Its going to be
ssomething, though, that album.
IItll probably be out in 2016.
middle-aged ramblings about dead relatives. But

something about it resonated with people. Im
sure a lot of people love their mothers and
fathers, or had a friend who died way too young.
Has 2014 been your most successful year?
My most successful album happened back in the
mid-90s, pre-internet times, with Songs For A
Blue Guitar. We were supported by Island, we
toured a lot, songs were licensed to TV ads and
movies. The second most successful was Sun Kil
Moons Ghosts Of The Great Highway. Benji,
despite all of the hype, has sold about half of
what Tiny Cities did. But considering the times
were in, selling 20,000 records in the USA, in a
world where music is free, is pretty good.
Do you feel staying in the public eye, with
things like the War On Drugs business,
will help? Im not doing anything intentionally
to stay in the public eye. Im staying true to my
art, like I always have. The press, for whatever
reason, decided to zone in on what is very
common banter for me. It got worked out through
song the same way I work everything out.
Do you think your songwriting style changed
from Among The Leaves onwards?
I wrote Sunshine In Chicago just before I went
onstage in Chicago and played it that night, and
it worked. I followed that same flow throughout
the rest of Among The Leaves: stream of
consciousness. Id just write, record, write,
record. I was responding to whatever I was
feeling and firing the songs off, one after another.
Ive got to a place where I dont work at writing. I
get things out of my system quickly and move on.
I had a look back at my interview from 1992,
and a couple of your quotes stood out: If my
girlfriend fucks somebody else, or if I fuck
somebody else, or were not getting along,
its always my reaction to write about things.
Im not afraid to examine myself. I take my
life very seriously, thats all. I dont wanna
think too much about This is weird, Mark;
youre solitary, you write about hating
I THOUGHT MY LIFE
WAS OVER WHEN
TRUE DETECTIVE
ENDED
Mark Kozeleks
life beyond music.
Involves a lot
of boxing
IRLFRIEND,
long walks,
bed, baths,
HBO, food: thats my life
outside of music. I thought
my life was over when True
Detective ended. I Iike Jim
Lampleys The Fight Game,
and there is a great short
documentary I just saw on
referee Kenny Bayless. The
TV series right now are all
reruns, but the boxing
stays fairly current. The
six-part documentary on
[boxing trainer] Freddie
Roach was hypnotic. I love
when a documentary
shows someone at work,
rather than talking about
their work. But yeah,
mostly its boxing. Its funny
my dad and I used to go to
his friend Billys house and
all that guy watched was
wrestling and boxing,
period. I used to think,
Man, what does this guy do
besides watch boxing?
and here I am, just like Billy,
watching boxing all the
fucking time.
Does it surprise you to be still

portrayed as a misanthropist
and bad-tempered, when so
many of your songs are so
empathetic and humane ?
I dont know where all of that
comes from, the misanthropy.
Ive played everywhere from
Moscow to Jeju Island, Korea to
Newtown, Connecticut, and I
put my heart into every concert
I play. I sign every autograph Im
asked to sign. People embed a
piece of information into their
brain and go with it, because its
easier. Im playful with my
audiences, I tease them from
time to time. I make people
laugh. But there is always going
to be someone who pretends to
be offended by it, because
theyre bored or alarmist or
dramatic and have a phone in
their hand. I show up to every
concert making a mental note to
remember every person in the
staffs name. Im respectful.
I have a friend who is sick and
she doesnt have the strength to
come see my shows, but I send
her my live records as she said
the best parts are my banter,
they make her laugh. Anyone who thinks Im bad
tempered is being lead by the nose. Sometimes
youre only as good as the environment around
you and, even in those not so great
circumstances, I get through it with humour.
You had to be there in Ottawa that night.
Playing Benji effectively wasnt an option, so I
turned on the comedy. If people think Im a prick
because I dont have a Facebook page and I dont
play Red House Painters songs any more, its their
issue, not mine.
What do you feel is so bad

about Facebook and Twitter?
It soaks up too much of peoples
time. I knew people, who were
once great artists, who turned
into internet junkies. So while
theyre posting photos of their
new amps sitting in their garage,
Ill actually be on tour. Im
moving forward, always.
Do you ever worry that you
reveal too much? Im in the
songwriting business, not the
wallpaper business.
How do you feel about the War
On Drugs episode now?
The band tweeted they wanted
confirmation of my stage banter,
and they got it. They tweet, I
write songs. Thats how it works.
Have you read any of the

thinkpieces? Ive got a picture
of someone who died at the age
of 34 next to my bed. So Im not
interested in peoples bitching
and whining. Be grateful you
can walk across the street.
Someday it will end. Go outside
and put a smile on someones
face. Tell a joke or give a $20
bill to a homeless person. This
Christmas, when I see someone
lonely and hungry, Im handing
them a $100 bill and giving them
a hug, if they want it. You know
why? I want to make peoples
faces light up with happiness on
Christmas Day. Ive had a great
year, gotten lots of hugs and
applause and big paychecks.
Ive made a living doing what I
dreamed of doing since I was a
kid. So Im gonna pass around some money and
love to those whove been less fortunate than me.
Do you regret any of the language you used?
Language? Who are you, Tipper Gore? Ive got a
great sense of humour and anyone who doesnt
share it is entitled to go cry about nothing.
I was surprised at how much you knew about
The War On Drugs sound. Do you keep up
with new music? Their music drowned out my
entire set in Ottawa. I got familiar with their

music whether I wanted to or not. I listen to
classical guitar music and I check new music out
when Im at festivals, but when youre a full-time
musician, youre busy with your own music.
Does the press stereotype of you as a grumpy
middle-aged man annoy you? There are
times when it looks like youre using it to
your advantage. I was a grumpy twentysomething, I used to pick on Evan Dando, for
shits and giggles, between songs. Im funny. I
dont know whats going on out there in the press
slow times, maybe. But yeah, War On Drugs
asked for a song, I gave them one. Press girl in
North Carolina loved my hillbilly remark so
much, I made her a shirt. If people dont want my
banter soaking up all the press, then MAKE A
GOOD ALBUM OR PLAY A SHOW THATS
WORTH TALKING ABOUT. My hillbilly comment
stole the show at Hopscotch? Not my fault. My
War On Drugs banter upstaged you in Ottawa?
Not my fault. If my banter is more noteworthy to
the press than your music not my fault.
I play two-and-a-half-hour sets and fly all
around the world. Do fans want me to sleep in
their basement all weekend? Id love to, but Ive
got another city to play the next day. What do
people want from me? To join Facebook and
tweet? Hey fans, heres what Im eating today!
Heres a picture of my new salt and pepper
shakers! I make albums and I sing my heart out
and Ill sign everything in your backpack when
its over. Im sorry if thats not enough for you.
Ive put as many hours into my music as any
successful lawyer or doctor. Im here to make
music and I dont believe in wasting time.
How would you like to be remembered?
As a great artist who inspired other artists to
make music.
And do you think, right now, that youre a
great artist? Yes.
Does songwriting work as therapy, as a
purgative process, for you? Yes. I spent all day
in the studio today and it felt great. When I put
words together, forget it. No-one can touch me.
You tweet and play Bob Dylan covers? Good for
you, congratulations.
Are there any songs that are too emotionally
difficult for you to play these days? Somehow
The Wonder Of Life Prevails [From Perils From
The Sea] is really fucking hard for me. Ah man,
With Steve Shelley at

work on Benji: Hyde
Street Studios, San
Francisco, August 2013
Sun Kil Moon at Hardly Strictly

Bluegrass 2014: (l-r) Kozelek,
Will Oldham, Mike Stevens,
Phil Carney, Kirby Hammel
and Nick Zubeck
59
MIKE MELNYK; REX/ HBO/EVERETT
people, so why are you on the

stage singing? And I just
sing about shit thats directly
involved with me. Those
quotes suggest youve stayed
remarkably constant
throughout your career?
The quotes read awkwardly
to me. But the sentence that
basically remains true is
that Im still writing about
what Im passionate about.
in 2003]. I saw her the night she passed away.

What she would have given to see her daughter
turn one. Her death destroyed me friends had
to take care of me. I couldnt get out of bed for
two weeks. I remember calling Ivo and just
crying my guts out and he sent me the most
beautiful card. Ill never forget all of the support
I got from friends. But with time, you get a
different perspective. Katy always wanted to
have a child and she got to do that in her life.
I think of her every day. Every single day.
Do you get bored of your songs after a while?
Yes, thats a necessary process in growing as
an artist. Songs just sort of die out, for me, my
passion for them. I cant hang around a project
too long, tweaking this and that. Its just boring
and I need to get to the next song. I see poetry
around me every day and I have to capture it.
SCOTT DUDELSON/FILMMAGIC
Live at the Hardly

Strictly Bluegrass
festival, Golden Gate
Park, San Francisco,
October 5, 2014
its hard for me to talk about without crying,

but my friend committed suicide when he was 21.
I was in Pacific Grove, California when I found
out about it. He committed a crime when we were
young and did some time in a detention centre.
Anyhow, he was living with his parents and one
night he left their house and drove into a tree.
Thats all I want to say on it. But every verse in
that song kills me. There is the verse about my
father and a bad scrap we got into when I was
young, but I love him with all of my heart
because he got me my first guitar from Sears
when I was about seven.
The hardest verse of all is the one about Katy [an
early girlfriend and key muse, who died of cancer
Whats your oldest song that youre not

bored with? Black Kite. Anything that
precedes Among The Leaves is a strain to play.
But I played Mistress this year at one show, in
Maine, because there was a guy in a wheelchair
and he kept yelling out for it and that hed waited
22 years to come see me and I believed him, as
he was in a wheelchair and it was my first time
playing Portland, Maine. After the show, he
wheeled himself up to me and asked for a hug
and I gave him one and he would not let go. I
mean, he would not let go. It just killed me. His
name was Mike. Mike, its not my favourite song
any more, but if I ever play Mistress again, itll
be for you, cos youre the definition of strength
and bravery and that hug made my fucking year.
How easy is it for you to write songs now?
In my sleep, on walks, on planes. Lyrics are
the easiest thing. Just find an understanding
girlfriend and write whats on your mind.
How does your girlfriend feel about you

revealing so much in your lyrics? She knows
that I have to be true to my art. Our relationship
is deep. All you need to know is that I want to live
a very long time. I wish I could live 10 lifetimes
so I could spend them all with her.
You seem to reveal so much in your songs,
and guard your privacy so assiduously
outside of them? When youre a professional,
you develop a thing called boundaries. You dont
just let anyone walk into your home. Im not in
this business to be everyones best friend. I dont
let any stranger walk into my backstage area.
Having boundaries is part of being professional.
If you want to get anywhere in this world as a
professional, you have to have boundaries.
In 2004, you told me, Im happy, but theres
a lot of people who probably think Im an
asshole. Do you still believe that? Im making
a new album as we speak, and trust me, it wont
be wallpaper. Is that bad of me to do? Does that
make me an asshole? My mom is coming into
town tomorrow for 10 days and Im going to play
Scrabble with her all day long. Does that make
me an asshole? Ill be in Europe for the fourth
time this year and will be taking my music to
Israel. Does that make me an asshole? A friend of
mine is sick and I send her money. Does that
make me an asshole? When Jason Molina died, I
contributed the first track turned in, to help raise
money for his family. Does that make me an
asshole? When Tim Mooney died, who wrote a
song for him? Every day of my life I have positive
interactions with people. I go for walks and I
make people smile at coffee shops, banks,
restaurants. There isnt a day that goes by that
I dont make someone smile. I see my girlfriend
every night and when she looks at me, I smile
and she smiles. Thats all that matters.
MARK KOZELEK: A BUYERS GUIDE
Sad reminders of what seems years ago...

RED HOUSE
PAINTERS
RED HOUSE
PAINTERS 4AD, 1993
The second RHP album (aka

Rollercoaster), after demos collection Down
Colorful Hill. These two CDs of often pretty,
often harrowing, confessionals established
Kozeleks reputation as a sadcore magus.
Another eponymous CD (aka Bridge) from
the sessions was released later in 1993.
RED HOUSE
PAINTERS
SONGS FOR
A BLUE GUITAR
SUPREME/ISLAND, 1996
Dropped from 4AD because, allegedly, their

guitar solos had got too long, RHP found a
new home at the label run by filmmaker John
Hughes. Kozelek once spent seven hours on
the phone with Hughes as he needed a loan.
I just wanted to get $15,000. Listening to him
talk for seven hours was the price I had to pay.
RED HOUSE
PAINTERS
OLD RAMON SUB POP, 2001
Record label politics left the

final RHP album on the shelf
for three years. By the time this exceptional
collection was finally released, the band had
dissolved, and Kozelek had tentatively
embarked on a solo career: his LP of acoustic
AC/DC reconstructions, Whats Next To The
Moon, preceded Old Ramon by three months.
SUN KIL MOON

GHOSTS OF THE
GREAT HIGHWAY
JETSET, 2003
Alongside RHP drummer

Anthony Koutsos, Kozelek launched his
second band with what is, arguably, his
masterpiece. A rolling expansion of Old
Ramons Crazy Horse vibe, with meditations
on memory, Judas Priest guitarists and sundry
boxers that culminates with the 14-minute
slow-burn of Duk Koo Kim.
SUN KIL MOON

ADMIRAL FELL
PROMISES
CALDO VERDE, 2010
Kozelek rates this and his 2013

collaboration with Jimmy LaValle, Perils From
The Sea, as his best albums. A solo recording
that privileges Kozeleks increasing mastery
of the nylon-string guitar sound he loves on
classical work by the likes of Segovia. The last
SKM album before Kozelek moved towards his
current spontaneous, sprechgesang style.
SUN KIL MOON

BENJI CALDO VERDE, 2014
An unflinching and profoundly

moving collection of stories,
so unmediated they seem to
unravel in real-time; Will Oldham and
Steve Shelley figure in an expanded cast.
When youre middle-aged, you are who
you are. Im a full-time musician. I play
decent-sized rooms, I make a good living.
Ive never, ever compromised.
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APRICOT JAM
SLOVENLY RECORDINGS LP / CD
The second album from Greek

juggernauts recorded during a year in
seclusion on a Mediterranean island.
Deep, dark, exotic and terribly legitimate
psychedelic rocknroll.
WILD BILLY
CHILDISH & CTMF
ACORN MAN
EARTH RECORDINGS LP / CD
Reissue of very rare and sought after

private pressing from Australian
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and wonderful acid folk treasure from
1974.
SWEARING AT
MOTORISTS
WHILE LAUGHING, THE JOKER
TELLS THE TRUTH
A RECORDINGS LP / CD
8 years after their last release SAM have

resurfaced in Hamburg, Germany, with
a new album to be released on Anton
Newcombes label A Recordings Ltd.
MAGIC CASTLES
SKY SOUNDS
A RECORDINGS LP / CD
Magic Castles are a ve-piece psychedelic

rock band from Minneapolis MN. Their
sound has been described as minimalistic,
dream pop & neo-psychedelic rock.
MR. MITCH
BIS
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THE NEW TRANSISTOR HEROES

(DELUXE)
SOCIAL DANCING (DELUXE)
PLANET MU LP / CD
DO YOURSELF IN 2CD
Debut Lo- Punk/Disco album from 1997

fully remastered with additional disc lled
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Includes Kill Yr Boyfriend, Starbright
Boy and Monstarr
Featuring Eurodisco and Action And

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including the rare Music For A Stranger
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Also available Return To Central
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THE TOWER OF FORONICITY
WAITING FOR A SIGN
DEF MASK
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SWIM CD / LP
GAMMA PROFORMA CD / 2LP
Limited 500 only box set.

Open the box, light a joss stick, put one
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Githead are Colin Newman (Wire), Malka

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This is their 4th album and the rst since
2009.
Over a decade since his highly acclaimed

Directrix long player dropped on Mo
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in the style of Blade Runner.
The undisputed king of garage rock is

back! Joyous punk, rock and beat on one
of Billys most accessible LPs.
The sound of yesterday, tomorrow!
Mr. Mitch has been re-imagining the genre of

Grime. His debut album Parallel Memories
combines its famous minimalism with a
gentle subtlety and is imbued with a very
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associated with the genre.
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New albums
T HIS MON T H SM A SHI NG PU M PK I NS | BL A K E MI L LS | SWA M P DOG G
AC/DC
Rock Or Bust
ALBERT/COLUMBIA
Man down, but still ghting. Rocks heaviest artillery

res again. By John Robinson
TRACKLIST
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Rock Or Bust
Play Ball
Rock The Blues Away
Miss Adventure
Dogs Of War
Got Some Rock & Roll Thunder
Hard Times
Baptism By Fire
Rock The House
Sweet Candy
Emission Control
HISTORICALLY, AC/DC HAVE

triumphed making the best of
a bad job. When Bon Scott,
the charismatic singer who fronted the band on
their rise to fame died in London in 1980, they
responded the only way they could. Namely,
heavily: employing a new singer, and turning
Back In Black into one of the 10 biggest-selling
albums of all time. Oblique strategies arent
something you imagine the band have a lot of
time for, but their pragmatic problem-solving
has often yielded spectacular results.
The news that Malcolm Young had left AC/DC
8/10
prior to recording this new album, and is battling

dementia, presents the band in late career with a
different kind of challenge. While his younger
brother Angus commands the spotlight with
his duckwalk and wild solos, AC/DC remains
Malcolms band. His three-chord tricks have
always been the cornerstone on which their
empire of hard rock and innuendo has been
built, and his musical relationship with his
brother seems highly likely to continue to
define the dynamic of the group.
In light of recent developments, singer
Brian Johnson suggested that a possible
63
New Albums
Back in more black: (l-r)

Brian Johnson, Stevie
Young, Angus Young,
Cliff Williams
title for this new album was Man Down

militarily correct, for sure, but ultimately
suggestive of an unseemly vulnerable side. So
here instead is the more forbidding Rock Or Bust,
recorded with Brendan OBrien, and featuring
what one imagines will be the final Young/Young
compositions. Life has again thrown down a
gauntlet. With their 15th studio album, AC/DC
have picked it up, and risen to the challenge.
As Angus Young describes it, it was simply the
only thing to do. Though principally a good-time
band, AC/DC have for the past 30 years or so
seemed governed by strong management and
their own (smallprint-filled) take on an honour
code. The band aim to deliver shows that please
fans old and new (but are, compared to say, The
Rolling Stones, completely inflexible on setlist).

They refuse to make fans pay twice for material,
though have a lucrative line in live albums and
DVDs. They refuse to consider greatest hits
collections but have contrived to achieve the
same thing by exclusively soundtracking Robert
Downey Jrs Iron Man movie franchise, the
logical endpoint of their musics appearance in
movies and TV.
Rock Or Bust plays in a slightly different way in
the light of this last development a hard-rock
version of the chicken and egg conundrum. As
the bands music has become a movie staple,
an audio shorthand for scenes like strip club,
car is driven fast, and men dressed in leather
jackets, youre left to wonder which comes first,
the song, or the scene in the Mark Wahlberg

movie it is ultimately destined for?
On a couple of the more minor compositions
here (say, Miss Adventure or Sweet Candy)
you might be left in some doubt. In both, there
are strong choruses, but the journey to them
certainly isnt entirely memorable. The latter
apparently evaluates the talents of a pole
dancer, while the former inexplicably
recommends hot cross buns.
These arent standout tracks, but they and
the excellent Dogs Of War and Hard Times
still go some way to illustrating the retrenchment
that is in play here. As they did on their early
1980s albums, the verses on the songs here have
diminished in importance, and are written to the
HOW
TO BUY...
AC/DC
The dirty deeds

you need in your
collection
High Voltage 1976
Powerage 1978
If You Want Blood 1978
Back In Black 1980
Combining material from

the bands rst two albums
(Aus-only High Voltage
and TNT, both 1975), the
album dened the bands
original blueprint: escape
from blue-collar boredom
via innuendo and raw blues
rock. As RocknRoll Singer
conrms, self-mythology
wouldnt be so prophetic
until Denitely Maybe.
Allegedly Keith Richards

favourite, if one underserved by recent DC
setlists. Ri Ra is the
denitive Young/Young
guitar double act, while
retaining pub rock rawness.
The ceaselessly dynamic
Down Payment Blues
meanwhile, articulates an
autobiographical point on
the cusp of stardom.
Angus! Angus! The insane

reception at this 1978
Glasgow show (essentially
a homecoming for the
Scottish-parented band)
urges the group to deliver
some extraordinary
performances. The epic
Bad Boy Boogie is a
relentless highlight, as
if German motorik was
horribly pissed at the wheel.
Bon but not forgotten. The

albums bespoke elegiac
nature is a bit overplayed
(the music was virtually
complete before Scotts
untimely 1980 death),
but this and the followup, For Those About To
Rock, dened the bands
monolithic latter-day
sound. A major record
with minor chords.
9/10
8/10
8/10
9/10
New Albums
choruses which have become a good deal
weightier. The album is heavy because its
dense with detail. Hooks and backing vocal
tricks from glam and hair metal are all pulled
in and devoured by the bands machine. At 34
minutes, this is the shortest AC/DC album
but stylistically its one of the leanest. Unlike
Black Ice, you wont find anything like a ballad
on here.
Here, rock is all. On Rock The Blues Away,
a blue-collar, good-time anthem somewhere
between You Shook Me All Night Long and
I Fought The Law, all pool halls and cigarette
smoking, it is the soundtrack to the end of a
thankless week. On Rock The House, where
operative adjectives are hot, wet and wild,
it occupies a heritage role as a euphemism for
sex. On Got Some Rock & Roll Thunder, the
band simply celebrate the monolithic nature of
their music since Back In Black: since which time
their songs and production have served to make
rock interchangeable with God, nation, and
war another pursuit that takes place on a global
stage, demanding
SLEEVE
heavy machinery and
NOTES
great heroism. The word
appears 70 times in the
Produced by:
Brendan OBrien
albums duration, just
Recorded at:
over two rocks a minute.
The Warehouse
Only with an AC/DC
Studio, Vancouver,
album
can you unselfBC, Canada
consciously talk in
Personnel: Angus
terms of an opening
Young (lead guitar),
Brian Johnson
salvo of songs, and the
(lead vocals), Cli
one presented here is
Williams (bass guitar),
strong indeed. Rock Or
Phil Rudd (drums),
Bust itself is a classic
Stevie Young
stop-start riff, the
(rhythm guitar)
chorus outlining a band
motto as clearly as did
For Those About To Rock over 30 years ago:
In rock we trust/Rock or bust Verse two makes
reference to sirens wailing, which might all have
seemed a little fanciful prior to the recent arrest
of drummer Phil Rudd.
This is followed by first single Play Ball.
On one level, the song is fairly transparently a
strategy to have material used on television
during the maximum possible number of
montaged sports action highlights. On another,
its a classic AC/DC song, the brutality of the main
riff complemented by the delicacy and fluidity
of Angus Youngs lead. Theres a solo, of course,
but ultimately, the song is all about the collective
power of the group. The sequencing of the
album is about pacing a good time, which
doesnt peak too early in the evening. The mood
change of Hard Times, say, is immediately
regulated by the great Baptism By Fire which
appears to recall elements from 1976s Live
Wire, and resumes things to the albums
customary clip.
Still, for all the drinks poured, cars driven,
ladies enchanted and cigarettes smoked during
the course of the record, this is nonetheless
an album made by a group arguably in extremis:
singer nearly 70, rhythm guitarist retired,
drummer out on bail. Rock sincerely hopes
that this isnt the last word from AC/DC, but if
it is, we will know that they died as they lived
and didnt go down without a fight.
good title and it sets you thinking what if

I try this, see how it goes? Most of the songs
that weve ever sat and played about with
have been guitar riffs any songs we came
up with, they were always in combination
with each other. Its something we always did.
Sometimes we borrowed bits from each other.
Like Malcolm would say, You know that riff
you had from that other period? Lets try that
with this
As weve read, Malcolm is seriously ill [Young
has dementia and has retired from AC/DC].
How was he able to participate in writing
the album?
A lot of writing, it was stuff we had done in the
past together. There were also other ideas
Malcolm had done on his own, and the same for
myself. So a lot of it is a combination. Theres
hidden material weve always had. Sometimes
weve borrowed from the past, sometimes
created something new.
Everything weve ever

done has been do or die
ANGUS YOUNG gives us
the lowdown on Rock Or Bust
For Rock Or Bust you worked again with
Brendan OBrien, who produced Black Ice.
What did you enjoy about working with him
that you wanted to repeat? How long did
recording take?
About four weeks. We had all the material,
we were well-prepared to do the album and
that helped a lot. Wed done a lot of the work
before going in the studio. Brendan is a very
accomplished musician, so thats part of why we
work with him. He knows all his instruments. He
seems to know, for us, how his input could help.
Youve been making records 40 years. Do you
even need a producer?
Its always good to have an outside ear because
then you have someone who takes control of the
project, you let him be the boss. Its good in that
respect you trust him, that hes going to do his
best to get the best album out of you, you know?
Tell me about the title. I read that you
considered Man Down. Rock Or Bust sounds
a lot more determinedIs that the idea?
For the band it was a stronger title. Rock Or Bust is
a thing weve always done when we play live,
its always been a do or die
effort. And everything
weve ever done has always
had that approach.
When did these get written? Did you have

stuff left over from Black Ice?
Well, they came together basically in the last year
before the album. We just start over in this case,
we did go through a lot of tapes, ideas wed had
from the past, but I do that for every album.
You researched particularly hard, because
you couldnt write with Malcolm in the
normal way?
Yes and Malcolm and I had stuff that he had
done up until he could no longer do it.
How is Malcolm?
Hes in good spirits at this point, and hes getting
the best of care where he is. Hes being well
looked after.
Since Malcolm has been such a big part
of AC/DC, how will you be able to work
going forwards?
We do what we do best. Malcolms had the illness
for a while. He had the onset of it when we were
doing the previous album he toured. I said
to him, do you really wanna do this? He said,
I wanna do this as long as I can keep doing it.
Hes got a do or die spirit its the strength of his
character. It is a big thing that hes not there.
Are you looking forward to touring the
album? How do you keep things fresh?
If everything comes together, well be out
there. Its always exciting because weve been
lucky over the years
because the younger
generations, theres
a lot of people who
have never seen us.
Its always exciting.
Malcolm was ill

when we were doing
the previous album
he wanted to play for
as long as he could
Stevie Young [rhythm

guitar] does a great job
on the album. But it must
have felt odd being in the
studio without Malcolm?
How did you work
through that?
Stevie did do a great job.
Hes the only person I could
think of who is a second
Mal, he plays that style. Still, he adds his own
little touches, so thats also good.
All the songs are co-writes between you

and [your brother] Malcolm [Young, rhythm
guitar]. How have your songs come about,
historically?
It can come any number of ways. Sometimes
youll have a good guitar riff, and think this is
good, then other times you might just need a
You have a very vocal

fanbase who are quite
opinionated about
your setlists. How do
you decide what to
put in?
Weve always played a lot of
songs from the beginning
to the present, so it becomes a bit of a juggle
sometimes in how long we can sustain that
show. We like to do a show thats exciting. We
dont want to be on there too long we dont want
it to be a long-winded affair. Id like it to be short
and powerful. But we always try to do our best,
put in a few strong songs that are fan favourites.
My own favourites? Ive been involved with them
since the beginning, so I love them all
INTERVIEW: JOHN ROBINSON
65
New Albums
TRACKLIST
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Tiberius
Being Beige
Anaise!
One And All
Run2Me
Drum + Fife
Monuments
Dorian
Anti-Hero
SMASHING PUMPKINS
Monuments To An Elegy
MARTHAS MUSIC/BMG
Back to psychedelic hard-rock form, with Mtley Cres

Tommy Lee on drums! By Louis Pattison
New Albums
8/10
SAY WHAT YOU want about

Billy Corgan, but youll not find
him resting on his laurels. For
Smashing Pumpkins tireless leader, 2014 has
Billy Corgan
been busy. Back in March he was holed up for a
day in a coffee shop on the outskirts of Chicago,
ou say people have told you
where he performed an eight-hour modular synth
that this is a very Smashing
jam accompanied by a real-time reading of
Pumpkins-like album
Hermann Hesses Siddhartha, the tale of a
Well, you make an album, then it
wandering ascetic seeking enlightenment.
comes out and people start attaching
September saw a reissue of the Pumpkins 1998
buzzwords to it. Musically, I dont think
album, Adore that expanded the original to a
theres a link to the past. But I think
flabbergasting 107 tracks. And thats before you
people are hearing an emotional quality
get to his day job as creative director at the
that reminds them of something in the
professional wrestling company that he founded,
past. By extension, they assume Im
Resistance Pro, or the forthcoming spiritual
trying to get back there. But the truth
memoir, which he assures Uncut is currently in
is the opposite I stopped trying to
the works.
avoid it. I went o to have this
Now there is Monuments To An Elegy, which is
Hermann Hesse-style spiritual journey,
but a tile in a larger jigsaw puzzle: both the first
through dierent sounds and
half of what began as a double album, before
subcultures. And then I came home,
splitting into two; and part of a broader project
and allowed myself to make the music
titled Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, a TarotI might naturally make.
inspired song suite which commenced in 2009
and will itself be completed when its second half,
How did Tommy Lee get involved?
Day For Night, sees release in 2015.
Ive known Tommy since 1992, didnt
Yes, its all quite complicated. But its hard
know him real well, but enough to call
to see anything heavily conceptual that ties
him up. He was like, the Pumpkins
together the nine songs of Monuments
drumming style is a lot busier than I
a relief, perhaps. Instead, this record feels of a
play. But he heard it in demo form and
piece with 2012s Oceania, a stirring collection of
said, I wanna play on all of them. You
psych hard rock powered by thick, saturated
can hear on tracks like Run To Me,
guitars and a mood of thwarted romance that
where he did a lot of drum programming
itself harked back to the salad days of Gish and
he took real investment in the material.
Siamese Dream.
Today, of course, the Pumpkins name is more of
When Teargarden By Kaleidyscope
a banner than an actual band: the Billy Corgan
is nished, will you present it as a
Experience, essentially he and guitarist Jeff
complete work?
Schroeder, plus whomever he chooses to ask
I hope so. Originally it was going to be
along for the ride. Joining the pair here is
44 songs, but now its going to be more
producer Howard Willing, who worked with the
like 60, 80. Theres a lot of demos that
Smashing Pumpkins on the dreamy, synthesised
are release-worthy, but I dont want to
Adore, and somewhat unexpectedly Tommy
be Don Quixote, rushing forward with
Lee, more used to flying over audiences on the
my boxset to an audience of no-one.
drumstool of Sunset Strip hair metallers Mtley
Maybe Ill let it marinate. See how it
Cre. Teasing Monuments To An Elegy, Corgan
feels in 10 years time.
promised guitars, guitars, guitars, and more
guitars something you can certainly hear as
the opening Tiberius explodes with syrupysweet fuzz. But Lees muscular rhythm keeping
Mellon Collies Bullet With Butterfly
and characterful fills hark back to that other
Wings, while elsewhere there are nods
Pumpkins virtuoso, deposed drummer Jimmy
to the electropop of Adore: the sleek New
Chamberlain, while the addition of baroque
Order-style mope of Dorian, or the
synthesiser lines and guitars that climb proggy
sparkling Monuments, with an
ascending scales make this a fusion of Pumpkins
acrylic synthesiser riff reminiscent of
past and present.
Tubeway Army.
Monuments To An Elegy veers upbeat and direct.
Monuments To An Elegy can sometimes
Love and heartbreak are a common lyrical focus,
feel somewhat lightweight, and its in the
driven home on ecstatic or bittersweet choruses:
more electronic-accentuated moments that
the gauzy roar of Anti-Hero, with its
its flaws really show; a
repeated entreaties to a girl like
serviceable rock stomp called
SLEEVE
you; or the positively rapturous
Anaise! is spoilt by all
NOTES
Drum + Fife, on which Celtic pipes
manner of busy digital
Produced by:
ring out, Tommy Lee tosses in little
effects, while Run To Me,
Howard Willing
militaristic flurries of percussion,
with its bubbling synth and
Recorded: Chicago,
and Corgans mind drifts off to
pulsing four-to-the-floor
2014
distant shores and wintry mornings.
beat, feels rather cheap in a
Personnel includes:
Infidelity is the theme of first single
way that this records fiery
Billy Corgan (vocals,
Being Beige, which winds from
guitar barrages do not. Still,
guitar, bass, keys), Je
delicate acoustic guitar and drum
there have been times in the
Schroeder (guitar),
machine to a chorus of breezy uplift,
last few years and not so
Tommy Lee (drums,
spiked with the line, You once made
recently, actually when it
drum programming)
me smile/Then you strayed. Yet the
seemed Corgans talents had
tone is one of zen-like acceptance,
been fully squandered on
not spiteful recrimination, while the
cumbersome concepts and
couplet Your furs are wrapped up/And thats
creative bridge-burning. In that context,
that, suggests its pointedly not to be read as
Monuments To An Elegy constitutes an
being about ex-girlfriend Jessica Origliasso of The
unexpected return to form: the sound of an
Veronicas, a campaigner for PETA.
older, wiser, warmer Billy Corgan, one
In places, we hear further echoes of other
content to wind down The Machines Of God,
earlier Smashing Pumpkins periods. One
turn his back on the Infinite Sadness and
And All borrows its gnarly guitar growl from
speak simple truths once more.
COMING UP
THIS MONTH...
p68 BLAKE MILLS
p69 CLAUDIA BRCKEN
p70 DAVE DAVIES
p71 FAUST
p72 EINSTRZENDE NEUBAUTEN
p77 SWAMP DOGG
p78 BOB SEGER
p79 JAMES WILLIAMSON
p79 YUSUF
MARSHALL
APPLEWHITE
Leave Earth
YOSUCKA!
Sludgy beats and acid

flashbacks from Detroit
techno underground
Also known as OktoRed
7/10 and
Cocky Balboa, techno
producer Joel Dunn has remixed his identity
once more, this time naming himself after the
leader of the notorious Heavens Gate suicide
cult. Dunn calls his latest hybrid style sludge,
which seems to encompass stomping midtempo
beats, minimal melodic motifs and maximal
use of Roland 303 acid-squelch basslines. While
much of this LP feels like functional dancefloor
fare, more left-field artistic intentions shine
through on a handful of more experimental
sci-fi robo-funk tracks, as well as the growling
Yello-style vocal number In Need Of Control
and the wonky spoken-word mumbletronica of
Dimension 8. Go home, techno, youre drunk.
STEPHEN DALTON
BARNT
Magazine 13
MAGAZINE
Cologne modernists
perverse synthpop
debut LP
Across a handful of
singles,
8/10 eccentric
Barnts Daniel Ansorge
has made a little go a long way. A discreet
member of Colognes extended Kompakt family,
through which his art and music depot,
Magazine, is distributed, Ansorges wilfully
nave, almost dyslexic approach to electronics
sets him well apart from his peers. His bizarre
debut, Magazine 13, flits between Art Of Noise
preset chintz, serene Vangelis miniatures
(Blame A Hill) and serrated Knife-like
techno primitivism (the shrill How Do I
Know What Solutions X Form) with such
aplomb that its tempting to view this as
either a very good inside joke or striking
outsider art.
PIERS MARTIN
67
New Albums
BLAKE
MILLS
Heigh Ho
VERVE
Phenomenal (says E Clapton)

guitarist fashions an instant
classic. By Bud Scoppa
THE TITLE OF a song
on Blake Mills subtly
brilliant new album
could describe the
28-year-old artists
career so far: Just Out
Of View. Outside of
his elite musical circle,
Mills name will
register primarily
9/10 among close readers of
album credits; in 2014
alone, he played guitar on LPs from Benmont Tench,
Lili Haydn, Neil Diamond, Dan Wilson, Ed Sheeran,
Sky Ferreira, Carlene Carter, the Belle Brigade and
Conor Oberst. Hes also making a name for himself
as a producer, though what will be his highestprofile project to date the Alabama Shakes second
album hasnt come out yet.
A Malibu kid, Mills got guitar tips from Dickey
Betts son Duane, a neighbour, before forming
Simon Dawes with his schoolmate Taylor Goldsmith
in 2005. As that band morphed into Dawes, Mills
struck out on his own, touring with Jenny Lewis,
Lucinda Williams, Band Of Horses and Julian
Casablancas, while doing sessions with a diverse
assortment of acts including Weezer, the Avett
Brothers, Norah Jones and Kid Rock; he cut his first
album, Break Mirrors, in 2010, but few heard it. Two
years later, Mills turned his focus to production,
working with Jesca Hoop, Sara Watkins, Sky
Ferreira and Billy Gibbons, as well as accompanying
and opening for Fiona Apple on their Anything
We Want tour. And his jam sessions at Venices
Mollusk Surf Shop continue to be a hub of an
intergenerational SoCal musical community.
Though Mills has built an impressive CV in a
relatively short time, the music hes made up to
now doesnt fully prepare the listener for a close
encounter with Heigh Ho. From moment to moment
on this sublime record, you might think youre
listening to some just-discovered gem from Randy
Newman (Cry To Laugh could be an outtake from
Nilsson Sings Newman), Ry Cooder (Gold Coast
Sinkin), Jackson Browne (Half Asleep, Before
It Fell) or Lowell George (Curable Disease). But
Mills isnt a revivalist, nor is he bound by genre; he
simply draws from his expansive palette, mixing
colours and textures to give each song precisely
what it needs to come across as directly as possible
on an album that is less a collection of tracks than
a series of captured moments.
Opener Am I Unworthy sets the tone; the song
itself resembles a Muscle Shoals soul ballad from
late 60s, but its radically understated at first, as
Mills delivers the ardent but troubled lyric (What
if Im unworthy of the power I hold over you?) in a
subdued tone, with just the hint of an ache, like a
self-questioning lover trying to not to lose control.
At first, the only other sound is his guitar, riffing and
tapping rhythmically at the same time. At the midpoint, Jim Keltners rumbling drums appear just
before Mills guitar erupts in a tormented solo, joined
by Rob Mooses swelling string section at its climax.
SLEEVE
NOTES
Produced by:
Blake Mills
Recorded at: Ocean
Way, Hollywood;
additional recording
at NRG, North
Hollywood, and
Zeitgeist Studios,
Brentwood
Personnel: Blake
Mills (vocals, guitar,
guitarron, tiple,
harmonica, organ,
perc, bass, drums),
Jim Keltner drums,
perc, cowbell),
Grin Goldsmith
(brushes, perc), Don
Was, Mike Elizondo
(bass), Rob Moose
(strings), Benmont
Tench, Gabriel Kahane
(piano), Jon Brion
(tiple, piano), Fiona
Apple (vocals, bells),
Tony Berg (Ace Tone)
The meaty middle of the album is the

three-song sequence of Seven, Dont
Tell Our Friends About Me and Gold
Coast Sinkin. The first is Mills take on
the traditional Nashville turnaround
Its the seventh song on the record that
always makes me cry/Its been seven
years since we caught each others eye
presented as a Gram & Emmyloustyle duet with Fiona Apple, whos
never sounded warmer or more
empathetic. She provides a countervocal on the overtly confessional
Dont Tell Our Friends About Us, Heigh Hos
most structurally and psychologically intricate
song, as Mills follows the title refrain in the proper
chorus with a coda, admitting I know I fucked up
eight times leading up to a falsetto but please,
resolving into the title phrase. The

track also offers a zesty dialogue
between Mills and Jon Brion, both
on small tiples guitars. Gold Coast
Sinkin provides a release from
accumulated emotional freight,
ambling catlike across the spacious
sonic topography, punctuated by the
growling of a wickedly distorted guitar.
Heigh Ho is distinguished by its
beauty, dynamism, naturalness and
economy; every note and word comes
across with utter clarity because theres
nothing extraneous between the music and the
listener. Mills has attained a particular kind of
perfection hes made a timeless California album,
that demands to be treasured right alongside the
auteurist masterpieces it so thrillingly evokes.
line is a sense of personal honesty. If it emulates

other records that are also works of honesty,
then I take that as a very generous compliment.
Blake Mills
o you feel like youre part of a Los

Angeles musical community?
Denitely. Theres always been a rapport
between musicians who push each other to do
something new, and those musicians tend to
nd each other.
Your album strikes me as carrying on a

rich legacy.
When you fall in love with something, it enters
your vocabulary, and you have to nd an
appropriate way to use that stu where its not
just emulation. So making Heigh Ho was really
an exercise in trying to make the right decisions
rather than following any genre, and the through
I love the way youve stripped everything down

to its essence.
Popular music is becoming less and less dynamic,
because people are compressing everything to
make it sound louder than the next thing. Thats
not a musical idea to me its fast-food music;
nature doesnt work like that, and my favourite
music doesnt sound like that. So I tried to make
a record that sounds more like how these songs
are supposed to be. It may be a quixotic eort,
but I feel like its important to be on the side
of history where you do something that feels
honest and right because you believe in it and
whether or not its wildly inappropriate for the
times doesnt come into the equation.
INTERVIEW: BUD SCOPPA
New Albums
BRASSICA
Man Is
Deaf
CIVIL MUSIC
CHAPELIER FOU
Deltas
CHLLNGR
Form Of Release
ICI DAILLEURS
TIME NO PLACE
Promising producers
luxurious electropop
debut
fittingly for
7/10 Somewhat
an act named after
the cabbage family, fted Tonbridge, Kent
producer Mike Wrights Brassica outfit
has been bubbling away for quite a few
years now, and in places debut album
Man Is Deaf a rich dish full of flavour
feels a little overcooked. Smouldering,
sinuous synthpop is Wrights speciality,
best realised on the Depeche-and-dry-ice
of Dance and the towering giallo disco of
Ballo Dei Morti, but he tends to pad things
out with meandering Balearic chuggers such
as Psychic Heartburn and Art Ebb Lull Us.
Given time, however, not unlike an artichoke,
Man Is Deaf reveals its pleasures layer by layer.
French one-man band

hosts avant-pop
tea party in electroorchestral wonderland
an alias that
7/10 Sporting
translates as mad hatter,
young Frenchman Louis Warynski plays a
multi-instrumental mix which he then samples
and weaves into artisan electro-acoustic
confections. Signed to the label run by Yann
Tiersen, Warynksi operates in similarly mellow
chamber-pop terrain, but his manicured moodpieces often conceal a deeper experimental
edge. Much of Deltas has a deceptively playful,
shiny, toybox feel which belies the crisp
modernist complexity of stand-outs like
Tickling Time and the magnificent Triads
For Two, a kindergarten-on-acid gem that
puts a Gallic spin on the vivid sense-warping
euphoria of Aphex Twin or Flying Lotus.
Digi-soul Danes
assured second
Frank Ocean may have
unlocked the floodgates,
hes hardly responsible
7/10 but
for the deluge of mediocre,
future R&B/electronic soul that has become a
default setting for so much alternative pop in
2014. Not that Steven Jess Borth IIs productions
fit that bill. His 2011 debut a blend of postdubstep atmospherics and UK bass, with pop
leanings was alluringly melancholic if familiar,
but now out of that rather formulaic fog, soulful
definition and focus have emerged. His guestlist
includes UK rapper Dels and sweet-voiced
Brooklyn singer/songwriter Josiahwise Is The
SerpentWithFeet , who steps up on five tracks,
notably the cavernous, synth-swathed Without
Yours and Waiting, which wraps lush
orchestrations round a pagan-gospel chant.
PIERS MARTIN
STEPHEN DALTON
SHARON OCONNELL
PIETA BROWN
Paradise
Outlaw
RED HOUSE
Sultry Iowan
troubadour, pared
down to her essence
daughter of
8/10 The
folk singer-songwriter
Greg Brown, Pieta has guested with Calexico,
recorded with Don Was, and recently paired
with Australian singer Lucie Thorne in Love
Over Gold. For her sixth solo album, Brown
has stripped her performance to the bone,
recording quickly in Justin Vernons April
Base Wisconsin studio. Browns banjo is
prominent alongside Bo Ramseys plangent
guitar, and Vernon himself adds sweet
harmonies, notably on the gorgeous
Ricochet. But the key instrument is
Browns voice, revealed in all its beauty
in a country duet with Amos Lee on Do
You Know?.
ALASTAIR McKAY
CLAUDIA
BRCKEN
Where Else
CHERRY RED
Intriguing third
solo album from
ex-Propaganda singer
synth-pop stylings
7/10 The
that have characterised
Brckens recordings over 30 years take a back
seat here to a more organic approach. A cover of
Nick Drakes Day Is Done (think Nico singing
Jackson Brownes These Days) flags the
change of direction and her own compositions
such as Nothing Good Is Ever Easy and
Sweet Sound Vision eschew outright
electronic abstraction for a more traditional
storytelling architecture. But the layers of
programming are still discernible, albeit more
subtle and ethereal, so that Where Else is never
reduced to anything as banal as a conventional
singer-songwriter album, but represents an
impressively seamless third way.
NIGEL WILLIAMSON
HOW TO BUY...
POWER
ELECTRONICS
WHITEHOUSE
Erector COME
ORGANISATION, 1981
Their sonic palette

would become
sophisticated in
later years, but early
Whitehouse denes
power electronics. Listening back to sides like
Erector, its surprising how minimal this noise
is: using stripped-back means for maximum
impact, its often just a WASP synth, feedback
and overloaded vocals, but the impact is utterly
disquieting and compelling.
8/10
PURE
Fetor BIRTHBITER, 1981

While most power
electronics used
synths, Pures
excoriating noise
was mostly rung from
six strings. Loops
and blasted vocals scratch out precarious
architectures, while guitars blaze out into the
midnight sky, and staggered drum machines
accelerate and collapse. A very early showing
from UK underground legend Matthew Bower,
later of Skullower, Voltiguers and Hototogisu.
8/10
MAURIZIO
BIANCHI
Carcinosi M.B., 1983

Italian musician
Bianchi pushed early
power electronics and
industrial forms to
their most psychedelic
and eloquent ends, warping the fabric of time
with cold, brittle electronics that oscillated
in delirious, sea-sick ux around a solid,
hissing core of drone. Soon after Carcinosi
was released, Bianchi renounced music and
became a Jehovahs Witness.
9/10
CLARK
Clark
WARP
Engaging seventh
from Berlin-based
techno auteur
Chris Clark has always felt
second-tier among
7/10 slightly
Warps stable of oddball
techno artistes, perhaps lacking a gimmick to
distinguish him from his peers. Hard to deny,
though, that Clark is quite a piece of work: an
elegant, sculpted electronica thats cerebral of
construction but robust enough to beat a dance
floor into life. Unfurla is a neat encapsulation
of Clarks skill for an electronic music that feels
organic and mutable, morphing with each bar,
waving in ringing chimes and lush blooms of
synth. But the real mark of Clark is the way each
track feels part of a broader whole see how
those fluttering choral voices that surface
during the body-popping electro of Banjo
really take flight on the following Songbird.
LOUIS PATTISON
CUT HANDS
Festival Of
The Dead
BLACKEST EVER BLACK
More Afro-noise from

ex-Whitehouse member
William Bennetts legend
on the confronting,
8/10 rests
uncompromising
industrial/noise tactics he unleashed via
Whitehouse, the arch-provocateurs of the
English underground. Often misread as
manifesting the very conditions they set out
to analyse, Whitehouses ambiguity follows
through into Cut Hands, where rudimentary
percussion pounds out rhythms that stretch
into eternity, perfect for accessing other states.
There are a few slippages into rote dark
ambience, and occasional recourse to postEBM tedium, but for the most part Festival Of
The Dead is alive with possibility, with songs
like Madwoman and Fire Ends The Day
scarred by underhand electronics.
JON DALE
JON DALE
69
New Albums
AMERICANA
TIENNE
DAHO
Les Chansons
De LInnocence
Retrouve
POLYDOR
BLA FLECK &

ABIGAIL WASHBURN
Bla Fleck & Abigail Washburn
BEST
OF THE
MONTH
French pop
doyens swaggering,
7/10 all-star
13th
Even at the height of his fame in the late-80s
as one of Frances biggest stars, part of
tienne Dahos appeal was that he looked
a little lost. That hes managed to preserve
this quality at age 58, even as he poses with
a young topless girl on the cover of his 13th
album, imbues this reflective set of
swaggering funk-pop with an emotional
heft that was perhaps absent from some of
his recent work. Guests including Nile
Rodgers, Debbie Harry and Savages Jehnny
Beth join Daho, whose creamy timbre still
purrs splendidly on Le Baiser De Destin
and the stirring title track.
PIERS MARTIN
ANTHONY
DAMATO
The Shipwreck
From The Shore
ROUNDER
Duelling banjos: a virtuoso display of bluegrass

Fleck is to the banjo what Ravi Shankar was to the sitar and Toumani
Diabat is to the kora not only the worlds premier virtuoso on his
instrument but an ambassador, adventurer, innovator and educator.
Hes ranged across jazz, classical, folk, rock and world music,
dramatically expanding the instruments repertoire and reputation
and winning a record-breaking 15 Grammy awards in the process.
Here he reverts to the style with which the banjo is perhaps most
closely associated downhome bluegrass picking with its roots
deep in Appalachian folk tradition. Its also the first album hes recorded with his wife, a fine singersongwriter and banjo player in her own right whose solo albums lovingly plough the rich, fertile
terrain of classic Americana. Washburn sings in a keening, emotive voice on a dozen songs that
include trad ballads and originals, and the result is a heartfelt collection that will readily find favour
with fans of Gillian Welch and The Be Good Tanyas. Whereas most records in this field would augment
the songs with fiddles, mandolins, dobros and guitars, here everything is played solely on the couples
banjos although youd hardly guess it, for on tracks such as Ride To You, Little Birdie and
Shotgun Blues (a modern murder ballad in which Washburn reverses the male/female roles) they
create such a full sound that youd swear a full string band was at work. Banjo Banjo gets the full-on
virtuosi treatment, like the Deliverance theme without the cornball. Pretty Polly and And Am I
Born To Die are more stripped and plaintive. But taken as a whole, the couples armoury of banjocello, uke banjo and fretless, bass and baritone models creates an orchestra of picking, plucking,
sliding strings that goes a long way to support Flecks claim that an instrument routinely described
as humble is actually unrivalled in its rich depths and versatility. NIGEL WILLIAMSON
8/10
NEW WEST
Rising folksters pastreferencing third

Jersey singer8/10 New
songwriter DAmato may
have written his Princeton thesis on Bruce
Springsteen, but initial exposure to his majorlabel debut suggests another touchstone. The
rat-a-tat vocal delivery and wailing harmonica
of Was A Time echoes with early Bob Dylan,
as does the dustbowl-tinged Middle Ground,
but there are additional strings to his bow on the
harmony-laden Cold Comfort and the smooth
Southern soul of Good And Ready. Producer
Sam Kassler puts DAmatos appealingly direct
voice front of the mix, with crack players from
Bon Iver and Natalie Merchants band weaving
sweet sounds behind him, especially effective
on the Mavis Staples salute Back Back Back.
TERRY STAUNTON
THE AMERICANA ROUND-UP

Gravel-tongued
songwriter Ryan
Bingham returns
in late January with
Fear And Saturday
Night, his rst album
for three years. Issued
on his own Axter
Bingham label and
helmed by Wilco/Tom Petty producer Jim
Scott, its the product of a hermetic spell
in the California mountains, where the
Oscar-winner drew on his own troubled
family history for inspiration. The record
also features contributions from Rose Hill
Drive. Bingham fans may also be directed
to the similarly authentic Americana of
Texan James McMurtry. Due in February,
Complicated Game is a belated followup to 2008s Just Us Kids and pairs the
folk-leaning politico with New Orleans

producer CC Adcock. Details are still a little
sketchy, though McMurtry describes the
new songs as organic and with no added
sultes, aged in oak for several years.
Butch Walkers latest, Afraid Of Ghosts,
is due in February, too. Produced by friend
and admirer Ryan Adams at the latters own
Pax Am studio in LA, special guests include
Johnny Depp and Bob Mould. UK dates are
planned for sometime next year. Elsewhere
in California, Rosanne Cash has opened
the newly constructed Johnny Cash Trail
and Overpass in Folsom, designed to mimic
the guard towers of the famous prisons east
gate. Its all part of a $4m project which will
eventually include a themed 2.5-mile trail
and park, replete with Cash-centric works
of art and a 50ft steel monument entitled
The Man In Black. ROB HUGHES
DAVE DAVIES
Rippin Up
Time
RED RIVER
Hard riffing and

hints of the past
While never lacking
firepower,
Davies
7/10 previous solo
outings
have suffered from an absence of light and
shade. Rippin Up Time, however, offers a
wider variety of hues. His knack for rousing
guitar riffs gets a workout on the bluesy
Johnny Adams and the title tracks psych
metal shapes, but his cranked-up strings
dont do all the talking. Brother Ray would
be proud of the people portraits on the punkish Nosey Neighbours (Lookin at me/
Through a hole in the fence or from behind
a tree) and the ode to a lonely pub crooner
King Of Karaoke, the latter containing
a cheeky reference to The Kinks own
Sunny Afternoon.
TERRY STAUNTON
New Albums
THE DRINK
Company
EXIT
VERSE
Exit Verse
MELODIC
DAMNABLY
Freewheeling debut
from a new breed
of Minogue
Already one third of
Wharves, Dublins
7/10 The
Dearbhla Minogue
stole Fighting Kites rhythm section Daniel
Fordham and David Stewart and released
three startling EPs that Melodisc have now
collected into a remarkably coherent first
album. Often resembling a dream collaboration
between The Slits, The Roches and Vampire
Weekend, Company is a showcase for Minogues
restless, ambitious songs, alternatively crabby
and ringing guitars, and, especially, her
stunning voice, which is at its best when
multi-tracked into skipping harmonies
that communicate an infectious delight in
the act of singing. A fascinating first shot,
packed with potential.
70s FM rock redux

from a Chicagoan
guitar hero
Geoff Farina led the
7/10 Chicago
cult band
Karate through seven albums and 600
shows as a jazz, punk and post-rock-fusing
jam band. His latest power trio is a more
focused affair, taking its lead from the
kind of 70s rock which easily veered
between hard and soft at the flick of a
pick-up switch; think Steve Miller, Nils
Lofgren or Thin Lizzy in poet-vagabond
mode. Farina often sounds like a less
eloquent Stephen Malkmus, but his tough
yet elegant guitar is the star here, and
Sparrows, Chrome and Perfect Hair
cry out for high volume on a long drive
through the American badlands.
Fizzing return of
Detroit quartet
Milias tales
8/10 Matthew
of suburban angst
reached a peak on last years Eternity Of
Dimming, a sprawling double album that
packed enough lyrics for a short novel.
Frontier Ruckus follow-up is altogether
more concise, though its still a fabulously
rich concoction of clever wordplay, rooted
in Milias nostalgia for 90s TV and detailed
by bittersweet memories of the girls who
got away. Banjos, horns, frothy guitars
and a musical saw bring a busy rusticity
to these decidedly non-rural songs.
At its best, Sitcom Afterlife is a direct
spiritual link to The Feelies and Neutral
Milk Hotel.
GARRY MULHOLLAND
GARRY MULHOLLAND
ROB HUGHES
MATTHEW
EDWARDS
AND THE
UNFORTUNATES
The Fates
WER E
NEW
HERE
Singer-songwriters odes
melancholy; Eric Drew
7/10 to
Feldman produces
Birmingham-born, San Francisco-based,
Edwards has opened for Joanna Newsom and
Devendra Banhart though his lugubrious
and consciously English style recalls earlier
generations of singer-songwriters. Produced by
Pixies/Beefheart man Feldman, Edwards
fourth album in 11 years has touches of country,
Americana and blues, alongside mannered
Parisian swirls. The songs, though, are firmly
the fruit of the mother country. The presence of
guitarist Fred Frith is perhaps the key here. At
its best on The English Blues and Sandrine
Bonnaire The Fates rolling wordplay recalls
Kevin Ayers; all wry wit and louche melancholy.
Uneven outing for

the German legends
Excepting Kraftwerk,
Faust remain the last of
original Krautrockers
6/10 the
standing. If they do not
quite get the respect they deserve, its maybe
because their innovations absurdist humour,
tape collage, concerts involving concrete mixers
and angle grinders never became mainstream
rock tactics. Alternatively, perhaps its because
albums like Just Us never entirely take off.
Described by guitarist Jean-Herv Peron and
drummer Zappi Diermaier as 12 musical
foundations, much here feels underdeveloped.
Sprightly folk jam Gammes and Sur Le
Ventre, a padding groove with hammer-meetsanvil percussion, are diverting. But improv
sections flounder, and seven-minute drum jam
Palpitations feels like a cue to tune out.
In the academic world there tends to be

a separation between high culture and mass
entertainment, but to me those are very
permeable walls, says Anthony DAmato
about cutting his singer-songwriter teeth
in the Ivy League atmosphere of Princeton
University. There were musical programmes
for classical or jazz performance, no real
troubadour scene, but I convinced the school
to let me work independently with one of
my professors. That professor was Paul
Muldoon, a Pulitzer-winning poet whod
previously collaborated with Warren Zevon
(he co-wrote My Rides Here). Id work up
a batch of songs, and then wed get together
to talk about them, he helped me edit myself
and think more clearly about what I was
trying to say. He also gave me books of lyrics
by Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon. Under
Muldoons mentorship, DAmato made two
zero-budget albums on a laptop in his dorm
room, prior to the release of The Shipwreck
From The Shore, while simultaneously working
on his thesis about Bruce Springsteen. I used
Springsteen as a jumping-o point to study
the tradition of American alienation in song
and literature, tracing back through Woody
Guthrie, Jack Kerouac, Flannery OConnor, all
the way to the New World Puritan sermons of
the 1600s. The lineage is fascinating.
LOUIS PATTISON
TERRY STAUNTON
MARK BENTLEY
FAUST
Just Us
BUREAU B
QUITE SCIENTIFIC
Anthony
DAmato
METAL POSTCARD
JIM WRIGHT
FRONTIER
RUCKUS
Sitcom
Afterlife
GROUPER
Ruins
KRANKY
Piano ballads from

Oregonian in Portugal
Desolate as its title
suggests, this feels like
breakup
6/10 Groupers
record, about living in
the remains of love, feeling full of political
anger and emotional garbage. Recorded in
Portugal on an upright piano, with just a little
of her usual sonic treatments of low-fidelity
echo acting as a flickering veil over her
meditations (minus the beautiful sweep
of air that is the 11-minute final track). She
latches onto some lovely melodic patterns
on Lighthouse and Clearing, a little
like Cat Power at her lowest. Depending on
your mood or generosity, these are either
indulgently doleful or movingly ascetic
in their dutiful repetitions worth
investigating either way.
BEN BEAUMONT-THOMAS
ALDOUS
HARDING
Aldous Harding
SPUNK
Compelling, gothic-folk
first from NZ newcomer
Its almost a relief to find
Aldous (ne Hannah)
8/10 that
Harding regards her
intense alt.folk/country songs as kind of gothic
fairy tales, and that lyrics like I would rather
die than sleep tonight arent necessarily
confessional. The 23-year-old singer-songwriter
and guitarists debut is an accomplished set that
features delicate acoustic fingerpicking, plus
lean electric guitar, violin, woodwind, the odd
male vocal harmony and (on opener Stop Your
Tears) a ghostly choir. There are echoes of
Bunyan, Perhacs and Newsom, as well as Nick
Drake, but the haunted No Peace At All and
exquisite Two Bitten Hearts where a
Theremin intertwines with Hardings pure
voice prove the singularity of her talent.
SHARON OCONNELL
71
New Albums
SLEEVE
NOTES
EINSTRZENDE
NEUBAUTEN
Lament
MUTE
Extreme noise terrorists conjure WWI. By Tom Pinnock

WITH THE
INTRODUCTION of
submachine guns,
barbed wire jungles,
high-explosive
shells, massed tank
offensives, and
chlorine, mustard
and phosgene gases,
the First World War
8/10 became the first truly
industrial conflict. So
as far as musical memorials go, an industrial group
seems the perfect outfit to somehow make sense of
the mechanised slaughter, not to mention having
any hope of matching the sturm und drang of war.
A project commissioned by the Flemish city of
Diksmuide, Lament sees Blixa Bargeld and his
Berlin cohorts create an eclectic song cycle
examining those seismic events from a century
ago. The extreme noise quintet have certainly done
their research, delving into the archives at Berlins
Humboldt University to uncover lost songs and
texts from the period, imbuing them with all the
terrible noise the group customarily conjure up.
The first third of the LP acts as a kind of prelude,
with the opening six-minute crescendo, aptly titled
Kriegsmaschinerie, rising from disturbing creaks
to a cacophony of squealing metal. The score used
for this piece was a graph, defence budget as a
percentage of GDP between 1905 and 1913 for the
countries who would wage the war (heres a clue:
the percentages rise dramatically). Then, after
a bastardised version of God Save The King
performed in English, German and Flemish, were
Recorded at:
andereBaustelle
Tonstudio, Berlin
Produced by: Boris
Wilsdorf/Einstrzende
Neubauten
Personnel include:
Blixa Bargeld (vocals,
guitar, prepared
piano, organ, rhythm
machine, signs, bells),
Alexander Hacke
(bass, perc, vocals,
Mellotron, electronics,
plastic pipes, amplied
crotches), Jochen
Arbeit (guitar, vocals,
plastic pipes), NU Unruh
(perc, barbed wire harp,
vocals, plastic pipes),
Rudolf Moser (perc,
electronic treatments,
vocals, plastic pipes,
ammunition shells)
down in the trenches. Here, an

adaptation of little-known writer
Paul Van Den Broecks In De
Loopgraaf with Blixa solemnly
intoning the original Flemish words, is
accompanied by the hollow knocking
of the gruesome barbed-wire harp,
the latest in a long line of percussionist
NU Unruhs infernal, homemade instruments.
The 13-minute Der 1. Weltkrieg (Percussion
Version) is another early highlight, albeit a
mathematical one every beat counts as one day of
the war, with each country represented by a plastic
pipe that resonates at a unique note when beaten.
Blixa announces each states entry into the conflict,
setting off a flurry of tuned pipes, while female
voices dryly recite the names of notable battles or
campaigns. Its a surprisingly moving piece with its
own strange, gripping momentum Champagne
Polygon Wood The Kingdom Of Bulgaria
Even without knowledge of Neubautens methods,
though, Lament is a startling, eclectic listen. Every
reverbed, metallic squeal or bone-cracking thud is
intensely visual; but rather than, say, an elegant
landscape of poppies, Lament brings to mind
something rather more like Paul Nashs wryly titled
painting, We Are Making A New World, a barren
waste of mud, wire, craters and splintered stumps.
There is still beauty to be found among the
destruction, though the luscious, velvet-dark
How Did I Die is worth every second of its seven
minutes, as Bargeld enigmatically speaks of death
in the trenches over melancholic piano, strings and
softly ticking percussion. Other tracks utilise the
collage techniques and sampling that the group
have pursued since at least 1983s

Zeichnungen Des Patienten OT. The
third part of the title suite, the stringled Pater Pecavi, sees crackling
voices, taken from wax-cylinder
recordings of German prisoners of
war telling the story of The Prodigal
Son, fade in and out among a thicket
of funereal strings. There are also two
covers of songs originally by the band
of the 369th Infantry Regiment better
known as the Harlem Hellfighters, the
first African-American regiment sent
abroad to fight with fragments of the
original recordings interlaced.
Bargeld insists Lament shouldnt be
seen as a proper Neubauten album,
and hes right; its admittedly hard
to identify when any listener would
find occasion to play it often too
uncomfortable to relax to, too
disturbing for dinner parties, too dynamically
varied for the car, and, at 77 minutes, a little too
long. But then, the record is a document of the
groups performance for Diksmuide, after all,
more of an art project than anything to do with
rocknroll. Its not too much of a stretch to imagine
its best bits comprising part of an experimental
Radio 4 play. Not everything works surely, no-one
would have missed Der Beginn Des Weltkrieges
1914, a six-minute spoken-word piece in German,
from 1926, which tells the story of the war complete
with animal impressions, or a version of Marlene
Dietrichs cover of Pete Seegers Where Have
All The Flowers Gone, which is interesting but
adds little.
At its peak, though, Lament is a fittingly noisy
reminder of the brutality and pointlessness of the
First World War. Yet its also a potent warning, a
look at what happens when industrialised states
are propelled unwittingly into conflict through
some terrible collective inertia. War is not
something that appears and disappears,
Blixa Bargeld told a Danish TV show recently.
War is something that is always there It
sometimes moves. As the climate today turns
ever frostier in Eastern Europe, Lament is a warning
well worth heeding.
New Albums
HELLO
SAFERIDE
The Fox,
The Hunter
And Hello
Saferide
OLIVIA JEAN
Bathtub Love
Killings
THIRD MAN
JOUIS
Dojo
BEETROOT
Dark third LP of
literary Swedish pop
stursunds Annika Norlin records in
Swedish as Skert! and in English as
Hello Saferide. She writes short story
songs, often with dark themes, which are
somewhat masked by the sweetness of
her delivery. As she notes on the gorgeous
opening track of The Fox, The Hunter And
Hello Saferide, I Forgot About Songs,
Norlin is a romantic, but shes also a
feminist. I Was Jesus reincarnates the
Messiah as a woman, Rocky considers
the roots of male violence, while the
stand-out, Hey Ho, wraps heartbreak
in a warm blanket of existential ennui.
Jack White produces

splendid debut by Third
Man singer-songwriter
Olivia Jean nor
8/10 Neither
producer Jack White will
be delighted by the comparison, but theres
something about this strong debut that recalls
Meg Whites occasional vocal contributions
to White Stripes records. Jean a multiinstrumentalist and compelling lyricist, who
fronted The Black Belles and recorded for Third
Man with Karen Elson and Wanda Jackson
has many more strings to her bow, but also
possesses a deadpan delivery that neatly
undercut her catchy, garage-blues riffs.
Highlights include bluesy crawler Green
Honeycreeper, country ballad Haunt Me,
the strutting Excuses and rocker Cat Fight,
with Jack White on squealing lead guitar.
Masterly 70s-styled
psych-folk-rock from
Brighton quintet
The scent of incense and
odour of Afghan
8/10 musty
coats may hang heavy over
Jouis debut, but high praise indeed it only
confirms a notable immersion in records like
David Crosbys If I Could Only Remember My
Name. That theyre former music students is
no surprise: their musical proficiency, time
changes and multi-layered harmonies are
intricate and considered. But legendary
producer Phill Brown brings experience of
sessions with Traffic, ensuring the credibility
of lengthy jams like Hyperception with
its kaleidoscopic psychotropic chant and
the autumnal grooves of Lp, which
slides effortlessly into the archly titled
Whats New Guru?.
ALASTAIR McKAY
PETER WATTS
WYNDHAM WALLACE
RAZZIA
8/10
HIS NAME
IS ALIVE
Tecuciztecatl
LONDON LONDON
Twins! Librarians!
A demon baby! HNIAs
prog rock opera
memories
8/10 Ifofyour
American pop
iconoclasts His Name Is Alive are of their
bewitching, ghostly avant-pop for 4AD
back in the 90s, forget everything you
think you know. Since then theyve dug
The Beach Boys, gone R&B, paid tribute to
free-jazzer Marion Brown, and built their
own, unique psycho-climate in Detroit.
So its little surprise that their 14th album
Tecuciztecatl is such a singular listen: their
rock opera is true to form, a progressive
rock epic that dips into drones, blasting
freak-riffery, tweaked folk-pop, and a
ridiculous amount of harmony guitar solos.
Warped and great.
JON DALE
ERIK HONOR
Heliographs
HUBRO
Prolific Norwegian
polymath floats on a
perfumed cloud of
artisan esoterica
author, serial
6/10 Composer,
collaborator and music
festival director Erik Honor has worked with
dozens of artists on the avant-jazz margins
including Brian Eno, David Sylvian and Jon
Hassell. Heliographs is Honors first solo album
under his own name, though it features several
guests including jazz chanteuse Sidsel
Endresen, whose chirruping vocalese has a
lovely, Liz Fraser-ish quality on Navigators.
Blending real instruments with samples, these
electro-acoustic confections have an artisan
delicacy which sometimes shades into timid
tastefulness. That said, there is a nerve-tingling
beauty to melancholy mood pieces like Red
Caf and Last Chance Gas & Water.
STEPHEN DALTON
WER E
NEW
HERE
Olivia
Jean
As former singer of The Black Belles

and player on albums by Wanda Jackson,
Karen Elson and Jack White, it was always
likely that Olivia Jeans solo debut would be
on Whites Third Man label. Bathtub Love
Killings, produced by White himself, is a
strong collection of folk, country and blues
tunes, laden with Third Mans 50s/garage
twang. Third Man denitely has a signature
sound, says Jean. They are so dierent
when it comes to genre and attitude, yet have
the same beautiful accents and familiarities
in sound. Jack inuenced me to use every
ounce of my creativity. The nished product
wouldnt have been the same if it wasnt for
Jacks amazing ear and innovation. Jean is no
slouch herself, playing numerous instruments.
I have always been able to pick up any
instrument and nd notes, she says. I just
needed to use whatever instrument I could
to help nish my recordings. Jeans a smart
lyricist too, writing directly about friendships
gone sour. Throughout, members of the
Third Man stable contribute ideas and musical
input. One of the best songs is Cat Fight,
with White on guitar. Its an avant-garde
shred-fest of Jack White and I duelling
guitar ris, says Jean. It was so much fun
to record. PETER WATTS
HAL KETCHUM
Im The Troubadour
MUSIC ROAD
Low-key, indie-style
comeback for erstwhile
country superstar
Troubled by debilitating
issues related to
7/10 health
multiple sclerosis, C&W
chart-topper Ketchum essentially retired after
departing his longtime label Curb five years
ago. Freed from mainstream Nashville
pressures, though, he went on to write some
of the most soul-searching songs of his career.
Produced by Austin mainstay Jimmy LaFave,
Im The Troubadour flows without constraint,
like an old-fashioned country/soul gem.
Ketchum is in fine voice, too, understated yet
direct, even bringing gospel fervour to songs
like the defiant I Shall Remain. Nothing fancy,
just love and loss, spirituality and mortality,
played via straightforward arrangements with
a simple, noble eloquence.
LUKE TORN
KID MOXIE
1888
UNDO/EMI
Gutter pop gals

spangled second
As Kid Moxie, LA-based
singer-songwriter (and
Elena Charbila
7/10 actor)
delivers noir-ish synth-pop
songs with a sweetly forlorn core, that seem
custom-made for 3am drives through deserted
city streets. Her mix of desolation and romance
is seductive enough to have had her tagged the
Greek Goldfrapp, and moody soundtrack don
Angelo Badalamenti appears with a rewrite of
Mysteries Of Love (originally recorded with
Julee Cruise) but beneath the glittery,
cinematic sweep, there are intriguing twists.
Museum Motel (featuring The Gaslamp Killer)
echoes Goldfrapps Lovely Head but moves
to a military rat-tat-tat, while the haunting
Blackberry Fields borrows from the calland-response of folk tradition.
SHARON OCONNELL
73
New Albums
KING GIZZARD
& THE LIZARD
WIZARD
Im In Your
Mind Fuzz
LANDLADY
Upright Behavior
LOSCIL
Sea Island
HOME TAPES
KRANKY
Aussie freaks
deeply
groovy fifth
8/10 The question
is why
anyone might choose such a terrible band name
to signpost their tripped-out excellence, but it
seems this Australian septet were stuck with it
after forming to play at a party in 2011. Its
memorable, anyway as is their reverby mix of
60s garage psych, kosmische and glam, which
shifts from deep-fried mania (Cellophane)
to blissed-out jams (despite the title, Satan
Speeds Up). Tame Impala/Pond and Unknown
Mortal Orchestra are kindred spirits, but its
KGs hyperactive tendencies that distinguish
them along with the flute, harmonica and
Theremin. Small wonder White Fence embraced
them on a recent North American tour.
Genre-dodging quintets
exultant second
Theres an intelligent,
adventurous bent to
Schatzs art pop
7/10 Adam
that marks the singersongwriter and multi-instrumentalist out as
very much New York-based. Hes certainly
bedded in there; thats his saxophone on
Vampire Weekends Diane Young and hes
played with both Fab Morettis Little Joy and
Adam Green/Binki Shapiro. All of which
might make the NYU jazz studies graduate
sound like a mere scenester, but Landladys
latest is a sparky, skewed delight with both
smarts and an open heart. Whether flirting
with doo wop (as on Dying Day), mixing
psych and a cappella gospel (Under The Yard)
or channelling John Cage via TV On The Radio
(the title track) it charms at every turn.
Quietly intense
driftworks, organic
and blissed-out
Scott Morgan has spent
past decade working
7/10 the
as Loscil, releasing
understated, occasionally ravishing albums
on long-running experimental label Kranky.
His aesthetic is solid ambience pulsing with
echoes of dub techno; acoustic instruments
as pointillistic, discrete punctuation and
he works with a regular cast of players, which
means stepping into a Loscil record often
yields similar results. Sea Island feels
comfortable, perhaps a little overly so, though
there are plenty of lovely moments. And on
songs like Catalina 1943, Morgan finds his
metier, with shivering tremolos and bleeping
arpeggios wilding across a bed of gorgeous,
light-headed texture.
SHARON OCONNELL
SHARON OCONNELL
JON DALE
HEAVENLY
GEMMA HAYES
Bones +
Longing
CHASING DRAGONS
LES SINS
Michael
MAGIC
CASTLES
Sky Sounds
CARPARK
A RECORDS
Tipperary-born
singer goes back
to her roots with
LP
7/10 fifth
Since receiving a
Mercury prize nomination in 2002 for her
debut, Night On My Side, the Irish singersongwriter Gemma Hayes seems to have
fallen off the radar, a result, possibly, of her
increasingly fruitful sideline composing
film and TV scores. With her fifth album
she is back on familiar territory, trading in
the gentle melodies, ghostly vocals and
heady atmospherics that first made her
name. She picks up the pace on the
delightful, clip-clopping Palomino,
though her excursion into electronic
dance on Chasing is less successful,
too flimsy to make any lasting impact.
Toro Y Moi spins into

dance variety show
This is a side-project
from hipster bedroom
pop artist Toro Y Moi,
5/10 and
a veritable selection
box of dance styles from across the last
couple of decades: disco-house in a
Scandinavian or Metro Area style,
lightweight ghettotech, French touch, triphop, 90s rave, minimal techno and late 80s
boogie. His previous project reached some
amazing highs when he blended his
songcraft with groove, but this is arranged
limply, and sounds like the work of a
trainspotter poring over his scrapbook.
True, its less derivative than some current
house revivalists, and perfect wallpaper
for independent coffee shops, but you cant
really get down to such studiousness.
Brian Jonestown
Massacre-endorsed
psychedelia
knows if this
7/10 Who
Minneapolis quintet
wish they were working in the 1960s or early
90s: their meanderings owe as much to The
Byrds and 13th Floor Elevators as Galaxie 500
and Mad Richard-era Verve. Either way,
theyre a stoners dream, whether exploring
pastoral territory like Dragonfly, with its
flutes and swirling guitar lines, or drifting
heavenwards amid reverb-drenched guitars
on White Stone, a distant cousin of
Gravity Grave. Like Jason Edmonds
vocals, which jealousy guard instrumental
melodies throughout and were seemingly
recorded at the far end of a cave, its endlessly
familiar but agreeably hallucinatory.
FIONA STURGES
BEN BEAUMONT-THOMAS
WYNDHAM WALLACE
JAMES
KING & THE
LONEWOLVES
Lost Songs Of
The Confederacy
LIFECYCLE
Lino Cosmos
EL MAY
The Other
Person Is You
SUPERSYMMETRY
LOJINX
Glaswegian voodoo
blues
miscreants
7/10 revived
In their 1980s pomp, Kings Lonewolves
carried a hint of menace, but a promising
career was lost to alcohol, and a mythical
album, recorded for Alan Hornes postPostcard imprint Swamplands (allegedly
produced by John Cale), never materialised.
They were all twang and swagger back
then, and they still are on the brooding
Fun Patrol and the mordant Even
Beatles Die but theres an unexpected
note of melancholy on Bridgeton
Summer, while the closing A Step
Away From Home hijacks Hank
Williams Cadillac.
London trio
recycle some
post-punk rhythms
Lifecycle make no
secret of
7/10 musical
their roots in the
breakbeat scene: drummer Nick Holder
and bassist Tish Austin make up a
prodigiously powerful rhythm section,
their tribal beats also recalling 23 Skidoos
classic The Gospel Comes To New
Guinea and ESG at their more energetic.
Singer Geoff Dent meanwhile pulls off
a passable impression of Perry Farrell on
the Janes Addiction rock of The Big Picture
and John Lydon, especially on Dissolve,
which sounds like the missing link between
PiLs Album and 1987s Happy?. He does
Sting, too, on Change Tact, but lets not
dwell on that.
Therapeutic alt.pop
from Los Angeles
singer-songwriter
so many Californians,
6/10 Like
Lara Meyerratken has
spent some time on the counsellors couch.
Consequently, her second album as El May
responds to romantic disappointments with a
revelation; the people we interact with are all
aspects of ourselves, and our failure to fully
understand this leads us into doomed love.
Frustratingly, Meyerratkens smooth mix
of old-fashioned songcraft, soft-rock
instrumentation and breathy vocals cant
quite carry the intensity of the premise.
Nevertheless, the pretty hooks, twangy
guitars and guest spots from the likes of
Eugene Kelly and Dean Wareham make for
a sweet 40 minutes of talking cure.
ALASTAIR McKAY
WYNDHAM WALLACE
GARRY MULHOLLAND
STEREOGRAM
New Albums
THE MEN THEY
COULDNT
HANG
The Deant
MALCOLM
MIDDLETON &
DAVID SHRIGLEY
Music And Words
VINYL STAR
MELODIC
SARAH JANE
MORRIS
Bloody Rain
FALLEN ANGEL
Roots-rock veterans
celebrating 30 years
of
6/10 Likeresistance
political fellowtravellers The Levellers and Chumbawamba,
the blustery folk- agit-punk of TMTCH may
be desperately uncool in these cynical times,
but theres also something hugely admirable
about their refusal to compromise on an aptly
titled album that finds Phil Odgers still fighting
the class war on behalf of the dispossessed
everywhere. Fail To Comply, a tale of life on
benefit street, namechecks Joe Strummer, the
raucous Raising Hell is the sort of record
Shane MacGowan ought still to be making, and
if mandolins, bouzoukis and fiddles thrashed
to a rocknroll beat are never going to win the
revolution, they make a fine old noise trying.
Ex-Arab Strap man

on familiar ground
Greetings!
And good
5/10 fucking wishes
to you
and your fuckhead, arsehole family. As one
half of Arab Strap, Malcolm Middleton is used
to offering up his music as a backdrop for artful
profanity, so this collaboration with crude
cartoonist David Shrigley is a perfect fit.
Music And Words comes across like an episode
of Chris Morris Blue Jam, with Middleton
providing wispy electronica and doleful
guitar figures while Shrigley (via voice
actors Gavin Mitchell and Bridget McCann)
provides the increasingly disturbed, babyeating monologues. An amusing curio,
although youre unlikely to listen to it more
than once.
Righteous risk-taking
on her most potent
album to date
her chart7/10 Since
topping days with The
Communards, Morris has boldly forged her own
singular path. There is nothing easy listening
about this set of protest songs dedicated to the
people of Africa and touching on subjects such
as child soldiers (Comfort They Have None),
homophobia (David Kato) , honour killings
(No Beyonc) and political tyranny (the title
track). Supported by an empathetic cast that
includes Courtney Pine and Pee-Wee Ellis and
African guitarist Tony Remy, her octave-leaping
jazz-soul voice oozes with the kind of fierce,
emotional drama youd associate with Nina
Simone. Uplifting, harrowing, passionate and
challenging in equal measure.
NIGEL WILLIAMSON
SAM RICHARDS
NIGEL WILLIAMSON
MONDKOPF
Hades
IN PARADISUM
Glowering inferno
of devil-horned
electronica
Welding a superstructure
doom-metal sonics
7/10 of
onto techno foundations
in a manner that thankfully avoids taking the
sledgehammer Prodigy/Skrillex route, Parisian
DJ and electronic producer Paul Mondkopf
Rgimbeau conjurs up some alluringly exotic
mutant noises here. The slithering crescendo
of Immolate finds buried malevolence in
cavernous reverb, while Cause & Care builds
to a Godzilla-sized dubstep floorshaker. But the
centrepiece is Absences, which starts out like
early Sabbath played on kitchen implements
before erupting into a vivid fireworks display
of fizz and crackle. Not quite techno, not quite
metal, Hades steals a little kinetic propulsion
and latent melodrama from both.
STEPHEN DALTON
MR MITCH
Parallel Memories
PLANET MU
South Londoners
stripped-down grime
shows a soft side
Miles Mitchell is one of the
behind the London
7/10 heads
club night Boxed, whose
take on the now rather venerable genre of
grime is currently turning heads afresh. Their
innovation is to take the familiar grime template
and strip it down, removing all MC presence and
reworking stabby, synthetic beats and blownglass melodies as something meditative and
weightless. Parallel Memories is, in places,
almost too minimal see the barely-there The
Night. But Mitchells softness of touch leads to
some moving moments: the gloomy boom-clap
of Sweet Boy Code, a collaboration with fellow
producer Dark0; and Dont Leave, which
spins a vocal sample from Blackstreets Dont
Leave Me into a tearful, lighters-out anthem.
LOUIS PATTISON
HOW TO BUY...
NAZORANAI
The Most Painful
Time Happens
Only Once Has It
Arrived Already?
BRITISH ARTISTS
MAKING MUSIC
MARTIN
CREED
Mind Trap
IDEOLOGIC ORGAN
Acid Brass
Supertrios
second
7/10 varied
Keiji Haino, Stephen
OMalley and Oren Ambarchi are literal
heavyweights of their own worlds
respectively, experimental psych/noise rock,
avant doom metal/drone and the defying of
both compositional and playing conventions.
But as Nazoranai, they channel their power into
freeform excursions of an often surprising
delicacy, as on the epic opener of this four-track
set, which cuts intricate melodic paths across
plains of textured guitar. By contrast, Who Is
Making The Time Rot detonates an improv
bomb of brilliant ferocity that sends guitar
shards flying, before giving way to the almost
comically wonky funk of the closing title track.
BLAST FIRST, 1997
SHARON OCONNELL
TELEPHONE, 2014
The man behind the

Turner Prize-winning
Work No. 227, The
Lights Going On And
O turns his hand to a curious folk-rock with
shades of Ivor Cutler. Sometimes a touch
banal, but three orchestral compositions
performed by the Brno Philharmonic
Orchestra are beautifully done.
6/10
WILLIAMS
FAIREY BRASS
BAND
It was released
under the name of
the Stockport brass
band that played it, but Acid Brass is the
brainchild of Jeremy Deller, who set out to
blend two authentic forms of folk art
brass band music and acid house. Genuinely
stirring takes on Voodoo Ray and Strings
Of Life ensue.
NUDE
BEACH
77
DON GIOVANNI
7/10
Excellent double-player
of Byrds-like jangle
from Brooklyn trio
much for fans of
8/10 Very
Bandwagonesque-era
Teenage Fanclub, Nude Beachs new record
is so full of jangle and joie de vivre its almost
alarming. A classic good-time power trio
with two albums behind them, Nude Beachs
third is a double LP, with a first half of poppunk nuggets like the raucous Used To It,
garage-soul classic I Cant Keep The Tears
From Falling and the Undertones-like
Yesterday. The second half, though, is
more reflective and psychedelic although
still in thrall to Big Star and Teenage
Fanclub, with cracking longer rockers
like Changes and 10-minute Byrdsapeing thriller I Found You.
LOUIS PATTISON
PETER WATTS
8/10
DINOS
CHAPMAN
Luftbobler
THE VINYL
FACTORY, 2013
The younger Chapman

Brother takes a
breather from making
penis-nosed children and sandal-wearing
Klansmen to toil at a skittering, downbeat
electronica with shades of Aphex Twin
or Autechre lacking the shock factor
of his artwork, perhaps, but hardly
less unnerving.
75
New Albums
OBJEKT
Flatland
LEE RANALDO
AND THE DUST
Acoustic Dust
PAN
EL SEGELL DEL PRIMAVERA
NED ROBERTS
Ned Roberts
UNGAWA
Berlin boffins
delirious techno
Cold, clinical and
emanating from
Germany, on first listen,
7/10 dancefloor
darling
Objekts bamboozling computer music would
seem to conform to most major techno
stereotypes. But TJ Hertz, the young Berlinbased Brit behind Objekt, is as mischievous
and gifted a producer as Autechre, and he
approaches his debut Flatland knowing he
has the skills and momentum to construct a
pretty audacious record. And it is impressive
on a technical level drunk and disorderly,
Rachet, Dogma and Strays display
exquisite sound design but as he prowls
through a barren no mans land of grey,
glinting electronics, you long for that soft,
personal touch.
Acoustic treatments of
solo songs, plus covers
Lee Ranaldos post-Sonic
albums Between
8/10 Youth
The Times And The Tides
and Last Night On Earth have perhaps
surprisingly highlighted the guitarists love of
classic rock as much as his impressive, understated songwriting. Here he takes four songs
from each album and adds a trio of covers to
demonstrate their strengths, recasting them
as campfire acoustic ditties. This allows some
of their lyrical directness to shine through on
fine versions of the spooky Hammer Blows,
the hallucinatory Key/Hole and the
unsettlingly intimate Stranded. Ranaldo
complements this with three covers, including
Revolution Blues, cementing the bond
between Neil Young and Death Valleyy 69.
9
Gorgeous Leonard
Cohen-esque debut
by gifted British
guitarist
is a young
8/10 Roberts
British finger-picker
with a voice and style that could sound
dated were he not so gifted, possessing
a fine ear for a tune and a real knack for
storytelling. This debut album, with its
strong echoes of early Leonard Cohen, was
produced by Luther Russell in LA and is
a seriously confident affair, paring songs
right back to guitar and voice, rendering
them direct, urgent and ageless. Wistful
opener Forty Miles sets a mood of romantic
yearning that is followed up by excellent
songs like the folky Sketch, the intense
Where The Wild Thyme Blows and the
stunning Old Coney St.
PIERS MARTIN
PETER WATTS
PETER WATTS
ERLEND YE
Legao
BUBBLES
Indie heartthrobs
Icelandic reggae affair
Having retired Kings Of
Convenience and The
Whitest Boy Alive, and
8/10 swapped
Berlin for
Sicily, where he lives with his mother,
Norways serial collaborator Erlend ye
hooks up with Keflavik toasters Hjlmar,
on only his second solo album, for a set of
characteristically bittersweet soul-searching
dispatched in a lovers rock style. Like most
things attributed to the bard of Bergen,
Legao feels light and effortless: Whistler
and Save Some Loving are among his
loveliest moments. Swaddled in Hjlmars
feelgood grooves, when ye sighs, You
scold me with silence, I suffer and fight on
the lilting Peng Pong, his navel-gazing
doesnt sound so sad.
PIERS MARTIN
RADIAN & HOWE

GELB
Radian Verses
Howe Gelb
DENSE
HOW TO BUY...
HOWE GELB
RHYTON
Kykeon
Giant Sand and more
Giant Sand
Center Of The
Universe OW OM, 1992
A going concern since
the early 80s, when
he founded the band
with the late Rainer
Ptacek, Giant Sand served as an ever-shifting
repository for Gelbs love of punk, blues,
folk, roots and beyond. This eighth LP stirs a
grungy urgency into the mix, care of distorted
guitars, stomp box and some killer harmonies
from The Psycho Sisters.
8/10
Giant Sand
Chore Of
Enchantment
LOOSE, 2000
An all-star ensemble
(Calexico, Juliana
Hateld, Jim Dickinson,
John Parish, Dylans old pedal-steel player
David Manseld and more) help esh out
Gelbs fever dreams of dusty Americana. Cue
rambling folksiness, a fair dash of country
twang and spooky jazz accents. The results
are as accessible as they are wonderfully
strange, not least X-Tra Wide and Shiver.
THRILL JOCKEY
NYC avant-vets discover

Greece is the word
Thanks to Rhyton and
the recent Xylouris White
Greek music seems
7/10 album,
to be having a small
moment in rock circles. The formers new album
begins with 80 seconds of needling guitar
noise, but soon coalesces into a much more
satisfying, Aegean-inflected jam session.
Bouzouki/saz/guitar player Dave Shuford has
form here: besides his work with the No-Neck
Blues Band (semi-feral improv) and fronting
D Charles Speer & The Helix (rowdy bar-room
Americana), 2011s solo set, Arghiledes, was
ostensibly a study of Greek folk music. Kykeon
combines that knowledge with freewheeling
homeland psych. Gneiss is a notable high,
imbued with a prickly funk that connoisseurs of
Anatolian psych will find recognisably potent.
JOHN MULVEY
RYKSOPP
The Inevitable
End
DOG TRIUMPH
A mixed impromptu
team-up
Improv is a risky business,
5/10 with
rewards in slim
supply unless the participants have developed
the empathy of long association. Here, the
alliance of post-rockers Radian and Giant
Sands Howe Gelb sounds impromptu and
largely unsatisfying, sound-montages in which
the murmured vocals, glitchy static crackle,
abstracted beats and found-sounds rarely
coalesces into something interesting and
when it does, as with the piano/vibes passage
of Im Going In, it usually ends abruptly. At
its best, with the fuzz-guitar shards of The
Constant Pitch And Sway, the results can be
enjoyably Faustian; but its mostly too desultory
to make a memorable impression.
9/10
8/10
Last hurrah (sort 0f) for

the mega-selling kings
of electropop
can say one thing
8/10 You
for Ryksopp: they know
how to go out on a high. Fresh from their
dynamite collaboration with Robyn on the
mini-album Do It Again, the Norwegian
duo of Svein Berge and Torbjrn Brundtland
have announced that while they will
continue making and releasing music together
this fifth full-length will be their final
album. From the stately You Know I Have
To Go, featuring Jamie McDermott of
The Irrepressibles, to the Daft Punk-style
closer Thank You, The Inevitable End
is a bittersweet triumph that makes damned
sure well miss their album-length voyages
when theyre gone.
ANDY GILL
ROB HUGHES
FIONA STURGES
HOWE GELB
The Coincidentalist
NEW WEST, 2013
Gelb has sired 25 GS LPs,

alongside incarnations
as OP8, Arizona Amp
And Alternator and The
Band Of Blacky Ranchette. Somehow, hes
also built a prolic solo career, culminating
in this luminous set that takes root in the
metaphysical desertscape of the American
South West. M Ward and KT Tunstall feature,
though its Bonnie Prince Billy duet
Vortexas that really lingers.
SWAMP
DOGG
The White Man
Made Me Do It
ALIVE NATURALSOUND
The psychedelic soul veteran

returns in vintage form,
nds Gavin Martin
IN 1970, JERRY
Williams was a writer,
performer and
producer, whose
clients included
Gene Pitney and Doris
Duke for whom he
masterminded the
deep soul classic Im
A Loser. His own solo
however, was
8/10 career,
frustrating. A victim,
he recently revealed, of child rape who debuted on
record aged 12, Williams dissatisfaction with
chitlin circuit stereotyping erupted after an
involuntary LSD experience and a dispiriting
A&R stint under Jerry Wexler at Atlantic.
His solution was Swamp Dogg an outrageous,
one-of-a-kind, jester antagonist. Swamp Doggs
debut album promised Total Destruction To Your
Mind and, over the next four decades, he has
presented a defiant, often uproarious, sometimes
angry, happily madcap alternative soul vision.
The irrepressible showman in white top hat and
tails, gleefully dancing atop the table of a corporate
boardroom on the cover shot for 1981s rockaccented Im Not Selling Out, Im Buying In, was
propelled equally by Frank Zappas absurdist
confrontations and Sly Stones innovative funk
(the latter is toasted on this current album with
the frank but rousing tribute Can Anybody Tell
Me Where Is Sly?).
Rooted in deep soul (as a teenage performer he
supported Solomon and Otis), raised on trad
country, transformed by rock Swamp Doggs
music became a glorious, often unclassifiable,
and, consequently, commercially doomed,
melange of these and sundry influences.
Indefatigably scurrilous (I Had A Ball (I Did It
All)) and profane (the 12-minute title track of 2007s
Resurrection), his wracked but tenacious tenor cried
for social change (We Need A Revolution) while
his extracurricular songwriting credits, notably
Johnny Paychecks country crossover smash
Shes All I Got, paid the bills.
Sampled in recent years by Talib Kweli and
Kid Rock, Swamps prolific but spotty career has
left him proudly claiming the title of the most
successful failure in America. Newly energised by
the Alive labels reissue campaign of his explosive
early sides and unsung classic productions (Duke
and Charlie Whiteheads venomous Raw Spitt)
Williams has declared The White Man to be the
true follow-up to Total Destruction, and its easy
to hear what he means.
At 72, his razor-sharp smarts and laugh-out-loud
sense of fun attain a perfect symmetry. Cutting
back on past waywardness, he plays to his musical
strengths, commanding from the grand piano a
brass-boosted ensemble. The purposefully epic
seven-minute opening title track is a triumphant
recasting of Black American history with white
oppression as the driving force.
I used to sit on the rooftop and read by moonlight
SLEEVE
NOTES
Produced by:
Jerry Swamp Dogg
Williams and Larry
Moogstar Clemons
Recorded at:
The Dogg House,
Northridge, CA
Personnel Includes:
Moogstar (keyboards),
Swamp Dogg (vocals,
grand piano), Lucky
Lloyd Wright (guitar),
Steve Stoney Dixon
(bass), Michael Murphy
(organ and keyboards),
Craig Kimbrough
(drums), Charlie
Hayes (tenor sax),
Andy Najara (baritone
sax), Phil Ranelin
(trombone), Troy
Lombard (trumpet),
Dan Weinstein
(string ensemble)
while the master was in the shack screwing my wife
(a line which cues up the cover image), links to the
rise of black role models famous (Oprah, Obama)
and obscure Bessie Coleman received an aviators
pilot license BEFORE Amelia Earhart and she
didnt get lost. Its Dogg at his emotively
incandescent best.
Elsewhere his interpretive gifts soar on a slow,
greasy deconstruction of Leiber and Stollers
Smokey Joes Cafe. An unabashed joy flows
through the grooves typified by the swoonsome
reimagining of Sam Cookes You Send Me and
the Doggs many-sided personality is given full rein.
Swamp Dogg
he racism you experienced growing up

in Virginia seems to inform this album
keenly. Yeah, theres things people just
dont believe when I tell them a white man on
the sidewalk and you are also on the sidewalk,
as a black you had to step o the kerb into the
street so that the white man dont have to move
to pass you, all that type of silly shit. There were
a few hangings back over in Virginia when I was
a kid. You still got little pockets in America where
they drag a black man behind a truck down the
highway. I think Ive only seen a 15 per cent
change in my lifetime.
Racism has been a constant in Swamp Dogg

music what more was there to be said? I
wanted to tell the whole story in one song and
Im So Happy is simmering organ-stoked gospel

with a twist, Prejudice Is Alive And Well brings
bitter but bumptious guitar-strangled protest, and
Hey Renae with its rude rasping horn chart and
Caribbean flavour (Swamp is an icon in Trinidad)
revels in jubilant sexual celebration.
His magnificently see-sawing piano line expertly
pilots closer If That Aint The Blues Nothing Is
between the positive uplift of the verse and hard
life lessons of the chorus.
Sounds like Americas most successful failure
has hit a career high. Perhaps now maybe the
Dogg will finally get to have his day.
a couple of others on this LP act as footnotes.

The whole idea was to tell black people to get up
o their ass because we have people that are
role models that wont let you down. Most
people have to be dead to be a role model.
Youve got a great expansive downhome sound
on this album was it a decisive return to
musical roots? I almost used Auto-Tune but too
many of my sick fans would be furious, I thought,
No its gonna piss them o even though it may
sound great. Theyll take it from Nicki Minaj but
they aint gonna take it from Swamp Dogg.
Your tribute to Sly Stone seems to come with
a caveat Sly and James Brown were the only
two real musical inventors. I loved what he did
and I miss him as a recording artist, though I
never need to meet him again. I know the
condition hes in and that the new Sly more
than likely would be the worst shit we ever
heard in our lives. INTERVIEW: GAVIN MARTIN
77
New Albums
KATE RUSBY
Ghost
ELIZABETH
SHEPHERD
The Signal
PURE
THE TOURRAICHEL
COLLECTIVE
The Paris Session
LINUS ENTERTAINMENT
Eleventh studio
album from Yorkshire
folk queen
Kate Rusbys voice is
without having
7/10 special
much range or agility,
meaning theres a predictable ring to her
cadences. She and her husband and
collaborator Damien OKane ring some
subtle changes here, however, delivering
a rich production full of ringing guitars
with flecks of guest banjo, bringing some
urgency to trad material like The Outlandish
Knight. A clutch of originals also spices
proceedings, among them a charming
May song, We Will Sing, and the more
laboured melancholia of the title track,
a rare piano piece. Yet, though her many
fans wont mind, theres a feeling we have
heard much of Ghost before.
Snaking, intense
indie jazz from
Canadian chanteuse
This fifth album from
8/10 Quebec
native Shepherd
is a striking blend of late-night ballads and
math-rock grooves but there are some pretty
heavy twists. These songs feel like they belong
together, Shepherds paper-smooth voice finds
its foil in Rhodes chords, liquid basslines and
pleasingly odd African guitar, courtesy of the
celebrated Lionel Loueke. Lyrically, Shepherd
tackles some subjects less suited to the supper
club, including gang rape, the Indian cottonindustry, and new motherhood. Its here,
with messages masked by easy-on-the-ear
arrangements, that the album shares space
with Donald Fagens The Nightfly, or the first
album by Rickie Lee Jones.
Malian Muslim and

Israeli Jew find common
musical ground
7/10 Vieux
Farka Tours solo
work has marked him out as a worthy desert
bluesman in the inherited style of his late father
Ali Farka Tour. More audacious, though, was
2012s The Tel Aviv Session, a mesmeric set of
mostly instrumental improvs recorded with the
Israeli keyboardist Idan Raichel. The follow-up
is more song-based, the piano/guitar duets
augmented by African percussion, vocals and
trumpet. But spontaneity remains central to the
script, particularly on Diaraby, a reimagining
of a tune recorded by Vieuxs father on Talking
Timbuktu, on which Raichels piano arpeggios
are juxtaposed with a magical simplicity
against Tours gruff-but-poignant vocal.
NEIL SPENCER
MARK BENTLEY
NIGEL WILLIAMSON
SAINT
SAVIOUR
In The
Seams
CUMBANCHA
THE STRAY
BIRDS
Best Medicine
YEP ROC
TOKOLOSH
Stay Strong
JACK TO PHONO
Former Groove
Armada singer gives
music the
7/10 dance
heave-ho
After five years fronting Groove Armada,
Becky Jones, aka Saint Saviour, has
apparently had her fill of beats. Produced
by the ex-Coral guitarist, Bill Ryder-Jones,
In The Seams is her second solo album,
though its the first one that casts
electronic music aside in favour of folk
tracks simply arranged with acoustic
guitar, piano, harp, and strings courtesy
of Manchesters Camerata Orchestra. The
crystalline sweetness of Jones voice belies
the dark melancholy that underpins songs
such as Sad Kid and Nobody Died, both
drawing on memories of childhood.
A drop of the good

stuff from rootsy
Pennsylvania trio
keening Appalachian
7/10 The
harmonies and raw
resonance of their guitar/dobro/banjo/fiddle
interplay suggests Maya de Vitry, Oliver Craven
and Charles Muench were raised on a Virginia
back porch and have never ventured beyond
the county line. In reality theyre all classically
trained northerners, which might make them
inauthentic borrowers of a tradition that aint
theirs, but thats a politically correct irrelevance
when their rusticity sounds as deliciously
convincing as this. Feathers And Bone is
testament to their sharp storytelling, while trad
songs Pallet and Whos Gonna Shoe are
retooled with a brio that sounds as if theyve
been playing this stuff all their lives.
Ebullient debut
from Northern
collective
Liam Frosts
promise
7/10 early
as Manchesters
brightest new folkie hit the buffers after
a couple of albums and some record label
shenanigans. He seems reinvigorated
now, though, with the imminent arrival
of his first solo album in five years and,
more pressingly, his role at the head of
the five-piece Tokolosh. A fine band they
are, too, comprising various outriders
from local combos The Earlies and
The Whip. They expertly make their
way through a nimble set of songs
that borrow from RnB, folk and Memphisstyle soul, driven by Frosts keening
voice and shady lyrical obsessions.
FIONA STURGES
NIGEL WILLIAMSON
ROB HUGHES
SURFACE AREA
BOB SEGER
Ride Out
RYAN TEAGUE
Block Boundaries
CAPITOL
VILLAGE GREEN
THE TWILIGHT
SAD
Nobody Wants
To Be Here And
Nobody Wants
To Leave
Heartland rocker
returns with loud
but mixed results
The first album since
for Bob Seger is
7/10 2006
hardly a wallflower.
Everything from the introspectively personal to
the highly sociopolitical is in the rockers
playbook, starting with John Hiatts Motor City
tribute Detroit Made. Recorded in a crunchy
Promised Land-style nod to Chuck Berry,
guitars set to stun, its an instant, easy,
nostalgia-filled classic. A soaring take on
Steve Earles classic Devils Right Hand
works, too, while the disturbing litanies
essayed in the title track (Subterranean
Homesick Blues turned inside out) are
heartbreakingly undeniable. Highlights dim
somewhat, though, with the earnest and/or
bombastic originals on the albums second half.
Derivative but
delightful instrumentals
from Bristol composer
These days, Steve Reichs
is everywhere,
8/10 influence
not least all over Ryan
Teagues mesmerising fifth album. Block
Boundaries frequently mimics the cyclical
melodies and contrapuntal rhythms familiar
from pieces like Music For 18 Musicians, or
Reichs devotees Penguin Caf Orchestra,
especially on Remote Outliers, with its
triggered vocal samples. But Teagues mallet
instruments are often paired with synths
and programmed rhythms, as on the celloadorned Site And Situation. There are
contemporary electro-acoustic comparisons,
too: Liminal Space echoes Nils Frahm,
while Animated Landscape boasts treated
piano like Hauschkas.
Fourth from much-loved

angsty Scots
Glasgows James Graham, Andy MacFarlane
and Mark Devine have built a large, devoted
fanbase out of sad songs, delivered in Grahams
rich Glaswegian accent, backed by the moodier,
almost-gothic end of 80s rock. The trio see
no reason to change tack now, and theres
no denying the doomy elegance within the
melodies of Theres A Girl In The Corner
and I Could Give You All That You Dont
Want, or the epic bleakness of In Nowheres.
Those who like a little light and humour in
their rock or, indeed, an acknowledgement
of the last 25 years of popular music may
find themselves unmoved.
LUKE TORN
WYNDHAM WALLACE
GARRY MULHOLLAND
FAT CAT
6/10
New Albums
MORENO
VELOSO
Coisa Boa
WILDBIRDS &
PEACEDRUMS
Rhythm
JAMES
WILLIAMSON
Re-Licked
LUAKA BOP
LEAF
LEOPARD LADY
Long overdue return

for Brazilian prodigy
Velosos 2001 album Music
found him
8/10 Typewriter
acclaimed as the brightest
young talent in Brazilian music. Since then
hes taken a backseat as a performer and
concentrated on producing albums by his father
Caetano, and Gilberto Gil. Coisa Boa translates
as good thing, and his first album under his
own name in 13 years is exactly that. Steeped
in the best of Brazilian traditions, as youd
expect given his pedigree, the floating, ambient
soundscapes of the opener La e Ca, the
engaging bossa funk of Em Todo Lugar and
the tinkling, ramshackle charm of Verso
Simples all add a thoroughly modern but
pleasingly whimsical twist to the classic
Tropiclia style.
The best set yet from

percussive Swedish
husband-wife duo
Mariam Wallentin
8/10 Singer
and drummer Andreas
Werliin are becoming so good at their strippeddown thing that they just keep stripping.
Rhythm is made of almost nothing except
percussion and voice, yet the pair deliver an
overload of information. Tapping into themes
of repression and confusion, Wallentins voice
roars, rages and coos so soulfully that its hard
to fathom this sound didnt come from a Delta
soul singer. Werliin talks back by way of African
beats, funky breaks and tumbling rolls. The
obvious comparisons are The Creatures and
Merrill Garbus similarly percussive TuneYards. But Rhythm is even more thrilling than
the latters recent Nikki Nack.
Star-studded fuzz-fest:
The Stooges secret
back pages
Stooges proper may
7/10 The
be on hiatus, but long-MIA
guitarist Williamson, reinvigorated by recent
reunions, is out to reclaim his legacy. Re-Licked
ranges from incendiary to hit-and-miss,
rounding up vocalists from the famous (Bobby
Gillespie) to the obscure (Mario Cuomo) to
rescue The Stooges mythical post-Raw Power
repertory. Scruffy, in-the-red backing is suitably
Stoogian (raw, occasionally unfocused), but
the material is impeccable: Jello Biafra burns
through the mighty Head On The Curve, while
The BellRays Lisa Kekaula positively owns I
Got A Right. Most shocking has to be Carolyn
Wonderlands intense, unhinged, soul-of-theblues reading of Open Up And Bleed.
NIGEL WILLIAMSON
GARRY MULHOLLAND
LUKE TORN
THE WANDS
The Dawn
FUZZ CLUB
Raucous acid-rock from

irreverent Danish duo
Psychedelia appears to
be the current choice for
hipsters appalled
8/10 young
by the cookie-cutter
contrivance of contemporary pop. Or maybe
the acid is just especially good in Denmark
these days, because this debut from Christian
Skibdal and Mads Grs is more fun than magic
mushrooms on toasted ciabatta. Whether
taking a blowtorch to the Yardbirds (Sound
Of The Machine) and The Doors (Get It Out
Of Your System/Dont You Wanna Feel
Alright), or rhyming soul, mind control
and totem pole on And Full Of Colours,
The Wands always keep on the right side
of pastiche by way of freak-fuzz guitars,
churchy organ and ace tunes. Funny,
serious and very groovy.
REVELATIONS
James Williamson on the almighty

riff and the collapse of The Stooges
GARRY MULHOLLAND
SONY RED
HEATHER HARRIS
SONY LEGACY
If morning aint
broken, dont fix it
The Artist Still
Occasionally Known
Cat (the advance
7/10 As
press bumph continually
credits the album to Yusuf/Cat Stevens) is
in A-list company on his third album since
returning to mainstream music. Rick Rubin
co-produces, and guest players include
Richard Thompson, Bonnie Prince Billy
and Tinariwen, but the results will be familiar
to fans of his early 70s big-hitters. I Was
Raised In Babylon and Cat And The Dog
Trap tick folk boxes, while Gold Digger
and an understated cover of Jimmy Reeds
Big Boss Man dabble in low-key blues.
Its all very polite and reserved, even when
Yusuf catalogues the industry frustrations
of old on Editing Floor Blues.
TERRY STAUNTON
TIM WHEELER
Lost Domain
Ash singer composes
heartfelt solo memoir
of grief and loss
Dripping with raw
Tim Wheelers
8/10 emotion,
solo debut is a moving
memorial to his father George, who died after
a rapid decline into dementia. Mapping the
stages of bereavement, from wrenching
farewell and crushing depression to renewed
love and optimism, these string-laced soft-rock
confessionals confirm Wheelers evergreen flair
for heart-tugging melodic uplift, even bursting
into luxuriant Brian Wilson-style harmonies
during Hospital. The albums epic centrepiece
is Medicine, a Springsteen-esque rock opera
that sprawls across a broad spectrum, from
hushed strum to roaring orchestral melodrama.
In a poignant but lovely touch, it features a
sample of George himself on piano.
STEPHEN DALTON
YUSUF
Tell Em Im Gone
Thats a bit like asking someone

why their ngerprint is unique, opines
James Williamson as to why his massive,
distinctive guitar ring still out-ris
everyone else. Its a little like the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle as soon as you get
involved in the question, you change the
outcome of the answer. Those ngerprints,
dene Re-Licked, a brain-rattling collection
wherein Williamson and a bevy of guest
vocalists reclaim The Stooges raucous,
post-Raw Power era. That time was awful,
Williamson remembers, because not only
were we refused the chance to record these
wonderful songs, we felt like [when Columbia
rejected the ensuing album] we were being
refused our last chance to be a legitimate
band. Revenge might have been late in
coming, but its here now; everything from
Rubber Leg to Cock In My Pocket gets
refreshed and reframed. Jello Biafra [ideal
foil for its deant Motherfuckers tryin to
run my world chorus] almost demanded
to be the singer on Head On The Curve,
he says proudly.
LUKE TORN
ZEITKRATZER
Whitehouse
ZEITKRATZER
Avant-garde vs
power electronics
Following orchestral
reinterpretations of freemaestro Keiji Haino
7/10 improv
and Lou Reeds Metal
Machine Music, the Berlin-based contemporary
music ensemble up the ante by joining forces
with transgressive noise malcontents
Whitehouse. Its not the first time Zeitkratzer
have tackled Whitehouse material a 2010
album saw Reinhold Friedl and orchestra
reinterpret their late-period work but here
Whitehouse mainman William Bennett is on
board, supplying a chilling monologue on
Daddo. Elsewhere, clarinet and violins do a
good job of mimicking Whitehouses electronic
high-end, with French horn and beaten piano
strings supplying droning bass frequencies
best seen on the menacing White Whip.
LOUIS PATTISON
79
SCORING: THE ORIGINAL ALBUM
10 Masterpiece
1 Poor!
SCORING: EXTRA MATERIAL
1 Barrel-scrapings
R EISSU ES|C OM P S|BOX SE T S|L OS T R EC OR DI NGS
MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
10 Untold riches
Archive
THE VELVET
UNDERGROUND
TRACKLIST
DISC ONE THE VAL VALENTIN MIX
1 Candy Says
2 What Goes On
3 Some Kinda Love
4 Pale Blue Eyes
5 Jesus
6 Beginning To See The Light
7 Im Set Free
8 Thats The Story Of My Life
9 The Murder Mystery
10 After Hours
DISC TWO THE CLOSET MIX
1 Candy Says
2 What Goes On
3 Some Kinda Love
4 Pale Blue Eyes
5 Jesus
7 Im Set Free
10 After Hours
11 Beginning To See The Light (alternate mix)
45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition

POLYDOR/UME
Remake! Remodel! The VU unveil their new incarnation:

no drones, but many tunes follow. By Michael Bonner
TO REPLACE JOHN Cale in The
Velvet Underground took some
doing. After all, Cale had been critical to the
strange alchemy at work on the bands first two
records, especially the experimental pulse of
White Light/White Heat. But, by late September
1968, Cales position in the band had become
untenable. A man of uncompromising views
passionately expressed, Cale was informed that
his services were no longer required. Many
bands might consider calling it a day after
the departure of a key member, but within a
matter of weeks the Velvets had recruited a
replacement: a 21-year-old Long Island native,
Doug Yule. A friend of road manager Hans
Onsager, Yule brought harmony where there
9/10
had previously been discord; acquiescence

instead of provocation. The first album The
Velvet Underground recorded after Yule joined
was, in its own way, a radical departure from
the music associated with Cales tenure. No
chairs were scraped across floors. Gone were
epic monologues about the pitfalls of sending
yourself through the mail in a cardboard box.
But while the bands avant-garde impulses may
have been softened, the music they made on
their third studio album was just as remarkable.
Quoted in the sleevenotes for this six-CD deluxe
reissue, Lou Reed admits, I thought we had to
demonstrate the other side of us.
Recorded between November and
December 1968 at TTG Studios, Hollywood,
81
Archive
TRACKLIST Continued
DISC FOUR 1969 SESSIONS

1 Foggy Notion (original 1969 mix) +
2 One Of These Days (new 2014 mix) +
3 Lisa Says (new 2014 mix) +
4 Im Sticking With You (original 1969 mix) +
5 Andys Chest (original 1969 mix) +
6 Coney Island Steeplechase (new 2014 mix)+
7 Ocean (original 1969 mix)
8 I Cant Stand It (new 2014 mix) +
9 Shes My Best Friend (original 1969 mix) +
10 Were Gonna Have A Real
Good Time Together (new 2014 mix) +
11 Im Gonna Move Right In (original 1969 mix)
12 Ferryboat Bill (original 1969 mix)
13 Rock & Roll (original 1969 mix)
14 Ride Into The Sun (new 2014 mix) +
+ previously unreleased mixes
DISC FIVE LIVE AT THE MATRIX
NOVEMBER 26 & 27, 1969 (Part 1)
1 Im Waiting For The Man *
2 What Goes On *
3 Some Kinda Love **
4 Over You *
5 Were Gonna Have A Real
Good Time Together *
6 Beginning To See The Light **
7 Lisa Says **
8 Rock & Roll **
9 Pale Blue Eyes *
10 I Cant Stand It Anymore *
11 Venus In Furs *
12 There She Goes Again *
DISC SIX LIVE AT THE MATRIX
NOVEMBER 26 & 27, 1969 (Part 2)
1 Sister Ray ***
2 Heroin *
3 White Light/White Heat **
4 Im Set Free *
5 After Hours *
6 Sweet Jane **
All mixes previously unreleased.
* previously unreleased performance
** dierent source mix of this performancee
d Live
appears on 1969: The Velvet Underground
ce
*** dierent source mix of this performance
appears on The Quine Tapes Box Set

with Doug Yule (right)
live in Texas, 1969
The Velvet Underground sets out a new

musical agenda for the band. Mostly, the
vibe is intimate and meditative, although its
not an entirely soothing listen. There are halfwhispered backing vocals and ghostly, circular
guitar lines that establish a nocturnal, strungout mood. But although sonically different from
both The Velvet Underground And Nico and
White Light/White Heat, it still shares some
properties with its predecessors. Candy Says
a tribute to Warhol superstar Candy Darling,
sung by Yule is an explicit link back to the
bands Factory days. Taken in context with
Cales departure only months earlier, it might
seem an unusual choice to open the record with.
After all, the bands decision to relocate to the
West Coast for the duration of the albums
recording suggests a desire to put distance
between themselves and New York, where Cale
was still based. But listened to more closely, it
becomes evident that Candy Says is looking
for something beyond the Factory floor: Im
gonna watch the blue birds fly over my shoulder.
There must be something more, implies Reed.
What Goes On has one of the bands
greatest riffs an unstoppable,
propulsive churn from Sterling Morrison

supplemented by Yules rising two-note organ
motif. Some Kind Of Love finds Reed quoting
TS Eliot as he revisits the risqu bedroom antics
of Venus In Furs: Put jelly on your shoulder/
Let us do what you fear most. It contains the line
The possibilities are endless, which was also
the only full sentence Edwyn Collins could
speak successfully after his hemorrhagic stroke.
Pale Blue Eyes is a majestic, slow and sad
love letter to Reeds college sweetheart, Shelly
Albin. Meanwhile, the tone poem Jesus is
followed by Beginning To See The Light and
Im Set Free. Its possible to see them as a
sequence, with Reed on the look-out for
redemption perhaps from the accoutrements
associated with life in the late-60s rock milieu.
He gets his wish sort of on Im Set Free,
only to discover that hes merely now ready to
find a new illusion. The Murder Mystery, in
which Reed and Morrison read two separate
narratives simultaneously, is a clever idea, but
the outcome is messy and annoying. After
Hours, though, is a jaunty number in which
champ
Reed once again champions
the positive aspects
no
of nocturnal
living: If you
clos the door/The night
close
cou last forever. Getting
could
Moe Tucker to sing it,
how
however,
is a great move:
her g
guileless reading is a wry
count
counterpoint
to the songs
crepus
crepuscular
endeavours.
This ne
new anniversary set
t three different
presents the
versio the Valentin mix,
versions:
t Closet mix and a
the
Promotional Mono
mix. They have all
been available
previously the
V
Valentin
has been the
standard mix used on CD and
DOUG YULE/COURTESY OF SAL MERCURI COLLECTION
DISC THREE PROMOTIONAL MONO MIX

1 Candy Says
2 What Goes On
3 Some Kinda Love
4 Pale Blue Eyes
5 Jesus
7 Im Set Free
10 After Hours
11 What Goes On (Mono Single April 1969)
12 Jesus (Mono Single April 1969)
Archive
Lets just do this and be done, who cares. We
gave it our best, but we didnt expect it to be
coming out, as I recall. Not with MGM, anyway.
D
Doug
Yule and Maureen
T
Tucker on sewing, Nobel
P
Prizes and Jimi Hendrix
OW DID DOUG YULE come to

be in the band?
MAUREEN TUCKER: We had
known Doug for a long time before
he joined us. He was in Boston and we played
there
th a lot. I think we even stayed at his
apartment
one time.
ap
remasters since the 1980s. Meanwhile, the

Closet appears in the Peel Slowly And See boxset
and the Promotional Mono was included in a
2012 Sundazed Verve/MGM vinyl set. Reeds
own Closet mix (named by Morrison, who
claimed it sounded like it was recorded in one)
offers a slightly more intimate take on the songs.
This is achieved by mixing the vocals a little
higher. The spindly guitar lines on Jesus
sound cleaner, for one, while the jangling lead
guitar on Beginning To See The Light is
sharper and foregrounded, making it sound
rather gloriously like The Byrds at their most
propulsive. The most noticeable difference
is on Some Kinda Love, which features an
entirely different vocal take from Reed, who
sounds totally stoned.
The Promotional Mono mix, on the other
hand, is a fold of the Closet mix, done to
accommodate radio stations. Theres
no significant difference, but What Goes
On sounds approvingly chunky and
full-on in mono.
Theres an additional three discs. The first,
1969 Demos, is essentially the material the
band demoed for a proposed fourth MGM
album. But relationships between band and
label always difficult soured and the Velvets
signed to Atlantic in late 1969.
Again, these 14 tracks have been available
before on VU and Another View, but six
tracks benefit here from updated mixes.
Unquestionably, the highlight remains the
amniotic swirl of Ocean: its been out before,
but when a songs this good, who cares? In
terms of unreleased material, the motherlode is
the two-disc Live At The Matrix set, recorded on
November 26 and 27, 1969 at the San Francisco
venue. Of the 18 songs here, 10 are previously
unreleased. A surprisingly laidback stroll
through Waiting For The Man accelerates into
a furious version of What Goes On. Later,
theres a faithful reading of Pale Blue Eyes
and bewitching versions of Venus In Furs
and Heroin.
All are comprehensively bested by the
36-minute version of Sister Ray that builds
from a slow groove into a lengthy freeform jam,
sustained by Moe Tuckers staunch timekeeping
and Yules blistering Hammond riffs.
The 12-month period charted in this boxset
covers a remarkable period in Doug Yules
life, from joining the band to playing The
Matrix. It was, he admits, the best year I had
with them.
You were in the unusual position of seeing

The Velvet Underground play prior to
joining the band. What were they like live?
DOUG YULE: The first time I saw them was at
Harvard University. John was sick. All I saw
was Lou, Sterling and Maureen playing in a
dark room. Lou was wearing black leather.
They had good volume, substantial volume.
But it was more the presence of the band, they
were very intense.
What did Doug bring to the band?
TUCKER: He brought sweetness. He could sew!
Hes one of those people I admire who can do
all sorts of things. Hes a good cook, hes a good
singer, hes a great musician. I guess he brought
a little bit of calm after the storm.
What do you remember from the album
sessions themselves?
YULE: Its my favourite album out of all the
recordings we did, because we recorded the
tracks with all four people, then overdubbed
vocals and harmonies. Its really the closest to
the band sounding like playing live.
TUCKER: I remember
recording After Hours.
Oh, yeah! I was a nervous
wreck. Took about eight
takes, cause I kept
forgetting the words or
laughing! Finally I had the
sense to make everybody
leave the studio. Id never
sung anything. I wanted to
do a good job!
What could I have expected to see if Id

attended one of the Matrix shows?
TUCKER: We were all, basically, having fun.
And doing our best, and enjoying it. I was
totally happy playing live. Oh, I got very tired of
playing Beginning To See The Light. I dont
know why, I didnt think it was a crappy song, I
just got very sick of it. My favourites were Sister
Ray, Heroin, Im Waiting For The Man,
Run Run Run and Pale Blue Eyes.
YULE: It depends on what night you went.
Some nights it was really crowded and some
nights youd get 15-20 people because it was
an off night. It was laidback and very casual,
like a separate club where the act is unknown.
Lou was talkative and it seems to be around
the time where he started to pretend I was
his brother.
Isnt there a story of David Bowie mistaking
you for Lou?
YULE: We played at the Electric Circus in New
York, and somebody came up to us afterwards
and said, Someone here wants to meet you
guys. So he came back. He was enthusiastic
and we talked a little bit. He had an English
accent, and since The Beatles I have been
enamoured by English things, so I was thrilled
to talk to someone with an English accent! We
had a conversation and then he took off. About
15, 20 years later he told that story to MPR that
he thought it was Lou and he had no idea who
he was talking to and neither did I
You met Hendrix during the 1969 tour,
didnt you?
YULE: Yeah, we first ran across him at the
Whisky in 69 on tour. He was with Mitch
Mitchell. During our set, he was jumping up
and down, banging his glass on the table, and
really getting into it. He
came up to us after, and
we were talking a little
bit. We were sitting there
with our mouths open
thinking: Did that really
just happen?
During our set, Jimi

was jumping up and
down, banging his
glass on the table,
really getting into it
You were all living in a

bungalow together at the
Chateau Marmont. How was that?
YULE: We were like a little family during his
period. Wed go to the studio together, to the
Chateau, wed go out and eat together. We weree
a little band of gypsies. Normally in New York,
we would go home over the weekends. I
wouldnt see them again until it was time to go
out again. For this period, we lived and worked
d
as a group and we were very close.
TUCKER: It was fun! It was up at 4am and I had
d
the radio on, and it was announced the father of
our road guy had just won the Nobel Prize [Larss
Onsager; winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize for
chemistry]! Isnt that funny? Thats where we
were, in that little cabin.
The boxset includes the 1969 sessions for
a potential fourth album for MGM. What do
o
you remember about the circumstances
around that?
TUCKER: We were pretty much doing it to be
done with the contract we owed MGM an
album. We didnt go in and say, Oh, screw it!
What do you do these

days, Doug?
YULE: I make violins. I
have a shop. And I play
violin and guitar. I have
a string band, RedDog.
Theres a guitar/banjo player and a mandolin
player. I play fiddle. Weve made two albums.
The website is www.reddogseattle.com.
INTERVIEWS: MICHAEL BONNER
Doug Yule today:

We were like
a little family
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
The Album Collection,
Vol. 1 (1973-1984)
COLUMBIA LEGACY
No remastering revelations, but still a classic set. By Andy Gill

WEVE ALL GROWN
understandably wary of
remastered editions, which in
some cases seem just an opportunity to capitalise
further on fan fidelity through purported
improvements in high fidelity, without the bother
of actually having to shoulder the recording
overheads of new material. There appears no end
of reissuing potential for the slim catalogues of
such as Led Zeppelin, perhaps the worst offenders
in this respect: every few years, the supposedly
definitive versions are redefined yet again,
in ways likely discernible only to dogs.
So, how to regard this boxset of Springsteen
remasters, dealing with the same seven albums
that comprised 2010s slipcase boxset The
Collection 1973-84? Vital or venal? Buy, or pass by?
Well, in purely commercial terms, theres no
9/10
ALBUMS INCLUDED:
GREETINGS FROM ASBURY
PARK, NJ (1973)*
THE WILD, THE INNOCENT
AND THE E STREET SHUFFLE (1973)*
BORN TO RUN (1975)
DARKNESS ON THE
EDGE OF TOWN (1978)
THE RIVER (1980)*
NEBRASKA (1982)*
BORN IN THE USA (1984)*
*denotes rst time remastered on CD
dispute: at around 15 just over 2 per album

The Collection 1973-84 is about 40 cheaper than
this remastered set, so unless youve got the kind
of hi-fi system that costs the earth and threatens
the foundations, thats undoubtedly the most
cost-effective option on buying Bruce in bulk.
But if youre a nut for sonic sizzle, an addict for
audio authenticity, you may find these remastered
versions tickle your fancy in any number of new
and unexpected ways.
Heard en masse, the new set reveals more
clearly than before how Springsteens career
development went in emotional waves, with the
wordy urgency of his debut supplanted by the
growing ebullience of his RnB street-opera style
on The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle
which then crested on Born To Run, before his
three-year recording exile incubated the flintier,
Archive
Remaster master Bob Ludwig on

remastering Bruces early albums
What does the remastering
process entail?
Theres a new technology that
got invented recently, called
the Plangent Process. When
you record onto tape, theres a
high-frequency bias, between 80,000 cycles
and 500,000 cycles, which greatly lowers
the distortion. When remastering with the
Plangent Process, you have not just left and
right outputs but also a third output for the
bias frequency, which can now be used to
correct the time-based anomalies in the audio
so that theres no wow or utter, no jitteriness.
What it does is make the whole sonic image
more clear you can hear more deeply into
the mix, hear things you couldnt before.
The rst two albums seem to prot most
from the new process.
The last time I remastered those rst two
albums was back in 1984, and the quality of the
digital converters we had back then was awful.
more thoughtful cast of Darkness On The Edge
Of Town, whose burgeoning interest in social
duty and blue-collar honour bore too-abundant
fruit on The River before hardening into a more
bitter medicine on the melancholy Nebraska.
Finally, with Born In The USA, Springsteen
found a way of dealing out that medicine in
a more generous, pop-sweetened manner that
connected back to the engaging charm of his
earlier, ebullient albums.
Its those earliest albums on which the new
remastering technology something called
Plangent Process [see sidebar] bears most
evident fruit. Restoring the high-frequency bias
applied to the original tape recordings, this
process both corrects timing faults and presents
the individual elements in clearer detail,
occasionally enabling one to hear things that
have previously been obscured. On Greetings
From Asbury Park, NJ, theres more of a crackle
to the guitars and drums on Blinded By The
Light, and the bass is crisper on Growin Up;
and theres some rather leaden percussion in
the left channel on the refrain of Spirit In The
Were using high-resolution digital now, as

opposed to the compact disc format we were
recording to back then. It adds a whole new
area of detail. The irony is that rather than
putting more manipulations into the mastering
with equalisation and compression, it actually
needed less, because you can already hear
things more clearly. Those rst two albums
are now dramatically better, in my opinion.
Do the dierent types of album pose dierent
problems say, the nakedness of Nebraska
compared to the density of Born To Run?
Oh yes! Born To Run is the one Ive remastered
several times, most recently for the boxset a
few years ago thats the one that Bruce told
me sounded closest to the way hed imagined it
in his head, which is the ultimate compliment!
So I stuck closely to that when we remastered
for the Plangent Process. However, it did add
extra clarity even to that: on Thunder Road,
if you listen to previous versions, the rst chord
of harmonica and piano is not quite stable,
it slides a little; but its rock solid with the
Plangent Process. Nebraska was a revelation
to me: thats the one that was done from a
cassette originally, and when I remastered it
this time, it was another case of not having to
do as much as before. INTERVIEW: ANDY GILL
Night which, on reflection, Id rather had been
mixed out. Nothing, though, can salvage the
dolorous Mary, Queen Of Arkansas.
But the real benefit comes on The Wild, The
Innocent And The E Street Shuffle, with clearer
interplay between the riffing horns, slick guitar
and burbling clavinet on The E Street Shuffle
itself, and the high guitar detail on 4th Of July,
Asbury Park (Sandy) the Spanish Harlem
of Springsteens own rock mythos glittering
more brightly against the saxophone, while
the backing vocals acquire a new, spectral
quality that sends shivers down the spine.
Most of the other albums have already
received so much previous remastering
attention that the differences are less
discernible though ironically, given its
cassette source, Nebraska profits from
increased clarity to the guitar work and
glockenspiel details. Or so it seems, anyway,
on the streamed files Im reviewing from. But
ultimately, despite the flabbiness of some parts
of The River, its hard to fault an early-career
retrospective with as little filler as this.
16
HORSEPOWER
Hoarse
(reissue, 2000)
GLITTERHOUSE
Powerful 1998 live

album by intense
9/10 American rockers
Its not often that cover
versions provide such a neat summary of a
bands key influences as the trio that feature
on this reissue of 16 Horsepowers invigorating
and unnerving 1998 live album. Creedences
Bad Moon Rising, The Gun Clubs Fire
Spirit and Day Of The Lords by Joy Division
pretty much nail 16HP completely, providing
musical and spiritual context for the
supercharged, doom-laden, compellingly
primitive rockers. Recorded live in Denver,
the eight originals are drawn largely from
the bands first two albums, and the entirety
perfectly captures the pummelling power
and spiritual energy eked from songwriter
David Eugene Edwards complex relationship
with God and with his bandmates. Black
Soul Choir encapsulates this, bristling
with tension and Baptist fire-and-brimstone
loathing for humanitys evil. The album
can seem sinister in the extreme For
Heavens Sake has a Waitsian menace,
Horse Head threatens and pulsates,
while the covers of Bad Moon Rising and
Day Of The Lords are almost draining in
their intensity and it says much of the bands
sense of wilful perversity that the jauntiest
number is titled Black Lung.
EXTRAS: None.
PETER WATTS
ABBA
Live At Wembley
POLAR MUSIC
Awkward but endearing

live show, in their pomp
The full version of this
concert has become
7/10 something of a holy grail
for Abba completists. A
12-track version of this 1979 Wembley Arena
show was broadcast by the BBC; a heavily edited
eight-track version was released on LaserDisc,
other bits have cropped up on bootlegs. But this
is the first mixing board release of the entire
90-minute, 25-song concert. The opening
instrumental Gammal Fbodpsalm a solo
synth version of an old Swedish hymn has
touches of Wendy Carlos Clockwork Orange,
while the airing of lesser-known LP tracks such
as the Nordic anthem Eagle and the Aryan
disco of As Good As New add to that eerie
sense of Scandinavian otherness. There is
one previously unreleased track, a blandly
pretty power ballad entitled Im Still Alive
(written by Agnetha, who accompanies
herself on piano). Elsewhere, the band play
like the orchestra pit in the Mamma Mia
musical, desperately replicating the studio
arrangements. As a result the most quietly
thrilling moments see them deviate
from the familiar versions: check out the
timpani flourishes in Chiquitita, the lengthy
Steely Dan-style guitar solo on Does Your
Mother Know or most excitingly a lengthy
prog-funk workout in the middle of Gimme
Gimme Gimme.
EXTRAS: None.
JOHN LEWIS
85
Archive
Rediscovered!
Uncovering the underrated and overlooked
ANTONY & THE

JOHNSONS
Turning
ROUGH TRADE
Intense document
of 2006s live
audiovisual outing
7/10 In November 2006,
Antony Hegarty brought
Turning, his collaboration with American
visual artist Charles Atlas, to London. During
the show, Atlas created live video portraits
of the 13 models slowly rotating on stage
(hence the title), projecting the results on to
giant screens while Hegarty and his six-piece
band performed. It makes absolute sense
that this album documenting the entire
Barbican event is accompanied by a DVD,
but the musical element stands tall on
its own merits. Recorded on the heels
of the Mercury Prize-winning 2005 album
I Am A Bird Now, the song choices range
across Hegartys first three records. Its
a giddily emotive affair, primarily slow
and sensual, his extraordinary, tremulous
voice soaring and sobbing over elegant
piano and strings. The climax of
Everything Is New recalls Jeff Buckleys
vaulting art rock, but its the simple,
soulful intensity of I Fell In Love With
A Dead Boy, Hope Theres Someone
and One Dove which linger. You Are
My Sister provides a hymn-like conclusion
to a quietly remarkable show.
EXTRAS: Two bonus tracks from a rare
2006 seven-inch, Whose Are These and
Tears Tears Tears.
GRAEME THOMSON
MICKEY JUPP
Kiss Me Quick Squeeze Me Slow:
The Collection
REPERTOIRE
ADRIAN BOOT/URBANIMAGE.TV
9/10
Fine songs from the Southend-scene eccentric, on four discs
Mickey Jupps gift is writing witty, often touching songs, this four-disc
boxset racking up around 60 examples recorded between 1969 and
1994. Its in your heart and soul, he says of an ability to conjure up
the spirit of Jerry Lee Lewis on the wonderfully titled Monte Bronte
And The Sisters or borrow Chuck Berrys riff from Memphis for
Taxi Driver, then transpose a lyric worthy of the man himself.
Jupps haphazard career began in unrecorded Southend beat groups
after which every so often people would say Come and make an album, and Id say All right
then. His band Legend was the first English act on Bell in 1969, followed by two albums for
Vertigo, including the fabled Red Boot album, where Legends country-blues ditties were square
pegs in round holes. Legend folded in 1973, just as pub rock kicked off. Wed have been at the
forefront of that, but I was always out of step.
In 1978, Jupp signed to Stiff, surely a natural home. He recorded much of Juppanese with Nick
Lowe and Rockpile, joined the Be Stiff tour, but then refused to travel on to New York. I was
already eccentric so I didnt have to dress up like Wreckless Eric or Lene Lovich. I never had to try
and be different.
Later albums often brought in name producers, including Godley & Creme and Francis Rossi,
but that didnt work out either. Im an awkward bastard, he admits, I dont try and upset
anybody, but its my life. In 1982, Jupp was flown to Santa Monica to collaborate with Ry Cooder.
I was flattered, we spent time at his house but we were both loners really; hes his own man, like
me, so we cancelled each other out.
The final disc here features a documentary filmed in 1994 where fellow Southender Wilko
Johnson gives testament: There are so many famous musicians in this country, but they havent
got that thing, and hes got tons of it.
MICK HOUGHTON
BEDHEAD
1992-1998: A
Complete Bedhead
Retrospective
Boxset NUMERO GROUP
Career-spanning comp
from the best little
8/10 slowcore band in Texas
The state of Texas is not a
place that breeds them halting and diffident, so
its a testament to the greatness of Bedhead that
they survived long enough to even make it out of
town. Formed around the songwriting siblings
Matt and Bubba Kadane, Bedheads music felt
like an aesthetic revolt against the rage of 80s
punk and hardcore: slow, quiet, sparse and
reflective music that posed big, philosophical
questions. Still, they found their allies some
unlikely. Their three albums saw the light of day
on Trance Syndicate, the label run by Butthole
Surfers King Coffey; the last, 1998s Transaction
De Novo was recorded by Steve Albini, who has
sung the bands praises on numerous occasions.
This four-CD box also available as five LPs
demonstrates Bedhead to be a band incapable
of missteps. 1994s WhatFunLifeWas is a neat
encapsulation of their quiet ambitions, from
the gentle VU moves of Bedside Table to
The Unpredictable Landlord, a plea to an
uncaring god (These conditions deserve
attention/This place where we live is unhealthy).
Transaction De Novo is probably their best,
Albinis production prowess giving Parade
and Extramundane a pleasing bite. The fourth
disc collects singles and B-sides, including a
gem of a cover of Joy Divisions Disorder.
EXTRAS: Deluxe box, bound book.
8/10 LOUIS PATTISON
Archive
COLIN
BLUNSTONE
Ennismore/
Journey
THE CRYAN
SHAMES
A Scratch In
The Sky
(reissues, 1972, 1974)
(reissue, 1967)
VOICEPRINT
NOW SOUNDS/CHERRY RED
THE CZARS
The Best Of
The Czars
BELLA UNION
Early 70s brace from

the erstwhile Zombie
In common with his solo
debut, 1971s One Year, Blunstones follow-up
12 months later found him again calling upon
the services of former Zombies bandmates as
players and producers. However, unlike the
string-driven baroque hues of its predecessor,
Ennismore leans towards a standard guitar/
piano pop-rock set-up. A bridge between the
two styles is provided by the stately opener,
Russ Ballards I Dont Believe In Miracles,
before heading in a mellow, folk-minded
direction for Every Sound I Heard and How
Wrong Can One Man Be. Blunstones sweet
whisper seduces throughout, not least on
Andorra and its shades of his old groups big
hit Time Of The Season. Journey, from 1974, is
less assured, shorter on strong and memorable
songs, but is distinguished by the tender
melancholy of Keep The Curtains Closed
Today and You Who Are Lonely, the latter
again the handiwork of Ballard, while the piano
pomp of Something Happens When You Touch
Me bears the hallmarks of his future label boss
Elton John. Its when the tempo steps up that
Blunstone gets a little lost, the delicacy of his
voice buried under boisterous horns on Its
Magical and the faux Philly soul dance
rhythms of Weak For You.
EXTRAS: None.
Pioneering Chicago
popsters lost gem
Neophytes know them, if at
all, from their cover of The Searchers Sugar and
Spice, immortalised on Lenny Kayes Nuggets.
But broadly speaking, The Cryan Shames were
among a small contingent of longhairs who put
Chicago on the rocknroll map in the post-Beatles
era. A Scratch In The Sky was album number two,
their creative high-water mark, filled with sly
sonic touches, moody melodies and daring
harmonies (experimentation apropos of the early
post-Sgt Pepper era). Though surely derivative
(Fabs, Byrds and Beach Boys vibes) and MORslanted in places, they were never less than
inventively, endearingly so. The Jim Fairs/Lenny
Kerley songwriting team, meanwhile, was also
chameleonic, morphing here into heavy psych
(The Sailing Ship, with bagpipes), there into
incipient country-rock (Cobblestone Road (Shes
Been Walkin). By the time harder, heavier bands
turned up, the Shames had trouble keeping up.
Nonetheless, retrospectively, the purity and
unsullied innocence, within the grooves holds
plenty of late appeal. And several cuts, especially,
In The Caf, a hushed, haunted ballad la early
Zombies and The Town Id Like To Go Back To,
Scratchs deceptive crown jewel softly nostalgic
before drifting into a sparkly, jazzy dreamland
prove they were underrated all along.
EXTRAS: None.
Big-hearted collection
from Jon Grants
odd band
8/10 Denvers The Czars
sustained a troubled
yet fruitful 10-year career with sad and
spiky songs that meandered through
country, indie-rock, folk-rock and cabaret,
accompanied by the magnificently plaintive
baritone of frontman John Grant. Acclaimed
by the press, they were nonetheless ignored
by the masses and in 2004, weighed down
by their singers drink and drug addictions,
they finally threw in the towel. Grant
subsequently cleaned up and began a career
as a solo artist, the culmination of which
was last years hugely successful Pale Green
Ghosts. While nothing on this best-of
collection quite matches the exquisiteness
of Grants solo work, you can still hear him
testing the waters and laying the groundwork
for what was to come. There are moments
when his way with a melody, and his
astringent turn of phrase, takes your
breath away, from the mordant, piano-led
melodrama of Drug (This is not ecstasy
but its better than cocaine) to the
monumental parting shot to an ex-lover
that is Goodbye (Id love to see you fade
and die). Grant may have moved on, but
these songs are full of heart and soul, and
a precious part of his evolution.
EXTRAS: None.
TERRY STAUNTON
LUKE TORN
FIONA STURGES
7/10
BOARDS OF
CANADA
Hi Scores
8/10
HOW TO BUY...
(reissue, 1996)
LOUIS PATTISON
(reissue, 2004)
LOU REED
The Raven SIRE, 2003
SKAM
Early excursion in dark

dreaminess from the
7/10 Scottish electronic duo
Discounting a couple of
semi-official releases largely distributed among
friends and family, the Hi Scores EP constitutes
the first proper release by brothers Mike
Sandison and Marcus Eoin, aka Boards Of
Canada. Hi Scores is nothing as precious as a lost
work its been repressed before in relatively
small quantities, in 2002 and 2005 and some
of these tracks have gone on to have a new life
elsewhere: Turquoise Hexagon Sun, named
after the duos studio, would be reworked for
their Warp debut Music Has The Right To Children
two years later, while Everything You Do Is A
Balloon would find its way onto the soundtrack
to 2002s Morvern Callar. Compared to what
would come later on 2002s Geogaddi and last
years apocalyptic Tomorrows Harvest, the likes
of Nlogax and the Autechre-like June 9 feel
slightly vestigial: the gauzy, out-of-whack synths
are on point, but the beats a little less realised,
tethered in an electro sensibility more suited for
breakdancing than zoning out or contemplating
environmental collapse. Its best when they hit
on a mood of gentle motion: the serene drift of
the title track, or the closing Everything You Do
Is A Balloon, its quizzical melodies implying
comfort, nostalgia and a touch of autumnal chill.
EXTRAS: Spot varnish packaging, double6/10 backed poster and Braille stickers.
DIPLO
F10rida
ANTONY HEGARTY
COLLABORATIONS
One of Hegartys key early
patrons in the NY art-rock milieu,
Reed bolstered this ambitious,
eccentric framing of Edgar Allan Poes short
stories and poems with a slew of guest vocalists,
among them Laurie Anderson, Bowie and
Willem Dafoe. Hegarty joins the party on a
full-scale deconstruction of Perfect Day,
reimagining the song as a skeletal electro-hymn.
7/10
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Want Two GEFFEN, 2004
Hegarty duets with Wainwright

on Old Whores Diet, an
odd, reggae-inected dance
around decadence. With a loose structure and
minimal lyrics, its the interaction of these two
idiosyncratic voices that holds centrestage.
Hegarty is at his most unashamedly operatic.
7/10
BJRK
Volta O NE LITTLE INDIAN, 2007

Hegarty joins in on two tracks,
the fragile My Juvenile and
epic The Dull Flame Of Desire,
a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev. He performed the
song regularly on her Volta tour and appears
in the video for the single. Bjrk returned the
favour on Fltta, from Swanlights.
8/10
GRAEME THOMSON
BIG DADA
Tenth anniversary
respray of superstar
DJs haunting debut
7/10 Apparently, the already
intrepid Wesley Pentz
was living in Japan when he spotted a
magazine piece mentioning that Ninja Tune
offshoot Big Dada were looking for avantgarde dancehall acts. True enough, while
Diplo would become famous for making
avant-garde dancehall, his debut long-player
is actually dominated by carefully
orchestrated instrumentals. F10rida sees the
23-year-old future noise-pop vandal paying
tribute to his home state via both British
trip-hop and the ambient side of Balearic
beat, with tempos largely staying resolutely
down and a great many romantic melodies
bathed in reverb. But the breadth of Diplos
musicality is already in evidence, in the
Philly-style fuzz guitars that see out the
aching Sarah, the sparse syncopations
that backdrop Martina Topley-Birds
childlike chirpings on Into The Sun,
and in Vybz Kartels guest spot on the
yes! avant-garde dancehall of Diplo
Rhythm. The tentative emerging of a
Major (Lazer) talent.
EXTRAS: Ten bonus tracks including the
6/10 long-unavailable three-track EP
Epistomology Suite. The triple-vinyl
includes an email conversation between
Diplo and Big Dada printed on a scroll.
GARRY MULHOLLAND
87
Archive
BRIAN ENO/
JON HASSELL
Fourth World
Vol 1: Possible
Musics (reissue, 1980)
GRAVENHURST
Flashlight Seasons/
Black Holes
In The Sand/
Oerings: Lost
Songs 2000-2004
GLITTERBEAT
GUYERS
CONNECTION
Portrait
(reissue, 1983)
MINIMAL WAVE
Ghostly ambience for

8/10 imagined territories
By 1980, Brian Eno had
pretty much all but trademarked ambient, and
Jon Hassell had released two albums of miasmic
drift music Vernal Equinox and Earthquake
Island after having studied with Stockhausen
and played with LaMonte Young and Terry Riley
in Youngs drone outfit Theatre Of Eternal
Music. The collaboration beween Eno and
Hassell lit off into different terrain, their
Possible Musics grounded in Hassells vision of
a Fourth World music, which hes described as
a term to describe the possibility of music in
global terms beyond First World, beyond Third
World, beyond High-Tech Art classical, beyond
pop. Despite simplistic readings that adopt
Fourth World as synonymous with world music,
Hassell was interested in creating music for
imagined and unknown regions. With Possible
Musics, Eno shrouded Hassells electronically
manipulated trumpet in a fog of texture,
moving the latters winding playing inspired
by his master Pandit Pran Nath, which makes
perfect sense listening back into humid
territory. Nana Vasconcelos and Michael Brook
guest, but the most impressive thing about
Possible Musics is how everyone falls into place
behind Hassells simple, weaving melodies,
deep but light.
EXTRAS: None.
Triple-decker of early
work by Bristol alt.folkie
There are 50 shades of autumn on this threepart archive package from Nick Talbot, the
acoustic balladeer behind Gravenhust. In 2004,
Talbot released his Warp debut Flashlight
Seasons, a masterclass in finger-picking
restraint and menacing understatement. Ten
years on, the samey pace and low-voltage tone
still drag a little, but Talbot sporadically
blindsides you with softly devastating
heartbroken pastorals like The Ice Tree, or the
lyrically brutal I Turn My Face To The Forest
Floor, which sounds like one of Morrisseys
darker East End gangster fantasies set to an
early Dylan strum. Released soon after, minialbum Black Holes In The Sand combines folknoir themes with more dissonant arrangements.
The title track ends in a lightly psychedelic fog
of drones and church organs while the fade-out
instrumental, confusingly titled Flashlight
Seasons, affirms Talbots avowed love of
shoegazing sonics. The third disc of previously
unreleased material contains a few gems,
with Talbot displaying a passionate bite on
Romance and embracing agreeably luminous
abstraction on the shimmering Abilene/Slow
Water Outro. But this is inevitably the most
uneven and inessential of the trio.
EXTRAS: None.
Swiss teens
synth-pop classic
9/10 Precocious new-wavers
Philippe Alioth and Tibor
Csbits were only 14 and 15 when they formed
Guyers Connection in Basel in the early 80s,
using two keyboards, a drum machine and
a four-track recorder. Gauche, slightly cocky
and teeming with ideas, the pair produced
and self-released their only album, Portrait,
in 1983, a set of sugary OMD synthpop with
a post-punk sneer thats been out of print
ever since. Thirty years on, it remains not
just the pinnacle of Swiss minimal synth
openers Pogo Of Techno and Ballade Pour
Nous display a compositional elegance and
knack for lean Kraftwerkian melody that belies
the duos youthfulness but also sheds light
on teenage life in Mitteleuropa. Like most
adolescents, singer Alioth was bored and
expressed himself in song. On Keep The
City Clean, he muses on the problems smokers
face in Basel and describes a visit to a popular
fast-food joint: You come out of McDonalds,
you cannot suppress the vomit. Even worse,
Switzerland was in the grip of the Ewings.
No more time for sex and crime cos
everywhere is Dallas time, he sings on
Dallas, adding, No more war in Palestine
cos also there is Dallas time. Some things,
it seems, never change.
EXTRAS: None.
JON DALE
STEPHEN DALTON
PIERS MARTIN
HOWARD
EYNON
So What If Im
Standing In Apricot
Jam (reissue, 1974)
WARP
7/10
REVELATIONS
MICAH P
HINSON
And The Gospel
Of Progress
Howard Eynon on his other life as

an actor and variety performer
(reissue, 2004)
EARTH RECORDINGS
English expats psychfolk curio resurfaces

Add the fact that Howard
Eynon was an actor (he had a small part in
Mad Max) as well as a singer, songwriter and
guitarist, to his albums whimsical, apostrophedenying title and the potential for selfindulgence is immense. But So What the
only record by the Cambridgeshire native,
who moved to Australia as a child dodges
any such accusations due to his irreverence
and a culturally skewed take on English
psychedelic folk. Originally released in 1974
as a private pressing, its very much of its time;
the openers Jabberwocky-apeing lyrics and
the hammering of a police/pigs metaphor in
Roast Pork (grunting included) especially
date it, but Eynon isnt always flippant. The
Ralph McTell-like Nows The Time swells
with subtle strings and the epic Village Hill
whips up a terrific twin-violin storm, while
Shadows & Riff successfully fuses Windmills
Of Your Mind with Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
and Baba ORiley. Kevin Ayers, Donovan,
Syd Barrett and Nick Drake are obvious
touchstones, but Eynon is well aware of the
path that hes treading. As he sings in his
Antipodean twang on the suggestive Hot BJ,
If you want to be critical and say that this sounds
a bit like Donovan, I wont change it.
EXTRAS: None.
TALITRES
7/10
SHARON OCONNELL
Texans folk-noir
debut, 10 years on
In 2004, when alt.
country was still a label to be applied to lo-fi
balladeers, Hinsons confessional debut arrived
with a compelling backstory. In the original tale,
hed had his heart broken by a Vogue model,
forged a prescription and spent time in jail.
Thereafter, hed been homeless, and poured
his angst into these songs. In addition, or
perhaps alternatively, a friend punched him
in the back at a Burns supper, injuring his
spine, leading him to fear an addiction to
painkillers. Whatever the truth, the way
Hinson interrogates his emotions is forensic.
The production by The Earlies is minimal,
but pretty, colouring the dark corners of
Hinsons psyche with flute, melodica and
cello. So, while Stand In My Way is
technically a country shuffle, it sounds
like the opening dance at an abandoned
wedding. On release, even Hinsons
supporters suggested he had overdone
the glumness, but the most affecting
moments are those where he loses balance
(the furiously self-pitying Patience, or the
airless You Lost Sight On Me). The Day
Texas Sank To The Bottom Of The Sea closes
the album on a properly funereal note,
gospel choir and all.
EXTRAS: Bonus song, Cant Change A Thing.
8/10
Id have to look up what a renaissance

man is before I could say whether I am one,
laughs 67-year-old Howard Eynon. He reckons
that, I always considered myself low-prole,
which is not a good way to be as an actor,
but was in long-running Australian TV drama
The Sullivans, as well as theatre and movies.
Aged 24, he won the 1971 New Faces national
title by triumphing in the NSW heats, despite
having crashed out of the Victoria nal. At
the last minute I decided to change the key,
he recalls of his rendition of Blackbird,
which meant a totally dierent bunch of
ngerings, and I totally stued it. They said
I was shite and kicked me o. The prize was
$3,000 and a contract with a TV variety show,
from which Eynon was red after a row with
the choreographer. I said, I was employed
as a singer, not a bloody dancer. In 1976 he
supported Hunter S Thompson on his two
Australian dates, but there was no chummy
drinking after. Not even a spli or a snort. The
guy kept himself to himself. SHARON OCONNELL
7/10 ALASTAIR McKAY
PIXIES
Doolittle 25
4AD
ANDREW CATLIN
Slicing up eyeballs: the denitive

version of an all-time classic.
By Sam Richards
THE 1989
AMERICAN Tour
pairing Pixies with
Happy Mondays
might have
initially seemed
like a bit of
a mismatch:
the uptight
Massachusetts
misfits and the
10/10 mad-fer-it Manc
scallywags. Yet not
only were firm friendships forged (as the photos
of Kim Deal goofing around in New York with
Shaun Ryder and Bez attest); in their own ways,
both bands were instrumental in demolishing
the 80s tedious dual narrative of excess and
austerity. Suddenly, alternative didnt have to
mean dogmatic opposition to the mainstream
it could simply be about whooping it up on your
own terms. Well, hallelujah and rock a my soul.
Albums dont come much more whooped-up
than Doolittle. Sure, its jittery tales of death,
dismemberment, sexual frustration and religious
confusion arent exactly party tunes in the Pills
N Thrills sense. But Charles Black Francis
Thompson always had the good grace to vent
his id in the form of phenomenally catchy, skinscorching pop songs. And youre not meant to get
hung up on the thematics in any case. Eighty per
cent of its baloney, admitted Charles to Melody
Maker in 1988. Its the T.Rex thing of if it sounds
cool And boy, did Doolittle sound cool,
barrelling unstoppably through a netherworld
of eyeball-slicing maniacs, suicide surfers,
underwater gods and six-foot tattooed girls
inspiring outbursts of frothing Spanglish.
The third release is meant to be the difficult
one. True to form, Pixies had virtually exhausted
their initial cache of songs from the legendary
Purple Tape on 1987s Come On Pilgrim and the
following years Surfer Rosa (save for the ultimate
rainy-day ace-up-the-sleeve of Here Comes
Your Man). Next, the almost impossible task
of quickly penning a whole new and better
album, in the midst of the gathering hysteria
whipped up by the first two. Yet Charles only
seemed to thrive on the pressure.
Throughout Doolittle, his ability to switch from
virginal croon to lecherous leer to primal yelp at
the drop of a hat is breathtaking; Joey Santiagos
white-hot guitar knocks you sideways for much
the same reason. And if Kim was smarting from
having most of her songs rejected (countryish
death waltz Silver was her only co-write) youd
never tell, her emphatic basslines and droll
counter-melodies proving absolutely essential
to the potion.
Doolittle has been such a constant presence in
our lives over the past quarter-century, especially
since Pixies reformed in 2004, that a reappraisal
isnt really necessary. What this re-release does
provide, however, is a fascinating insight into
how some of the groups most enduring songs
came together. A rough set of demos taped during
rehearsals in early 1988 reveal that Debasers
references to Buuels surrealist touchstone Un
Chien Andalou were an inspired late addition,
TRACKLIST
DISC ONE Doolittle
B-side of Here Comes
while Wave Of Mutilation
DISC TWO B-Sides & Peel Sessions
Your Man which,
was carefully extracted from
DISC THREE Demos
according to producer
the carcass of another song
1
Debaser
Paul Q Kolderie, she had
entirely. Pixies had already
2 Tame*
to be cajoled into singing.
proved on Surfer Rosa that
3 Wave Of Mutilation (First Demo)
In a more democratic
they could write tightly
4 I Bleed *
band, some of the songs
structured songs packed with
Here
Comes
Your
Man
(1986
Demo)
5
that ended up on The
hair-raising dynamic shifts,
6 Dead*
Breeders Pod might have
and by the time they came to
7 Monkey Gone To Heaven*
found a home here, but
demo Doolittle properly in a
8 Mr Grieves*
to be fair, its not as if
tiny studio beneath a hair
9
Crackity
Jones*
Doolittle is carrying any
salon in the Boston suburbs
10 La La Love You*
flab. The lyrics may have
in September 88, most of the
11 No. 13 Baby VIVA LA LOMA
been baloney but, even
songs were greased up and
RICA (First Demo)*
at 25 years remove,
ready to roll. Yet producer
12
There
Goes
My
Gun*
Doolittles lively morsels
Gil Nortons influence on
13 Hey (First Demo)*
still taste startlingly fresh.
the end product cant be
14 Silver*
EXTRAS: CD2 features the
underestimated: without
15 Gouge Away*
7/10 six B-sides from
recourse to expensive studio
Bonus Demo Tracks
trickery (he estimated that
Monkey Gone To Heaven
16 My Manta Ray Is All Right*
Doolittle cost no more than
and Here Comes Your
17 Santo*
$30,000 to make), the likes of
Man (including the eerie
18 Weird At My School (First Demo)*
Monkey Gone To Heaven
UK Surf version of
19
Wave
Of
Mutilation*
and Debaser were buffed
Wave Of Mutilation)
20 No 13 Baby
hard into imperishable rock
along with two Peel
21 Debaser (First Demo)*
anthems. Who would have
Sessions dated October
22 Gouge Away (First Demo)*
guessed, for instance, that
88 and May 89 although
*
Denotes
Previously
Unreleased
what really made Debaser
all but two of those session
groove was the crucial
tracks were previously
addition of a tambourine?
released on Pixies At The
Doolittles one downside is the absence of a
BBC. CD3 comprises the album demos, plus
sequel to Gigantic. Increased dysfunctionality
intriguing nascent versions of Debaser,
within the band meant that Kims only lead vocal
Wave Of Mutilation, Hey and three others,
of the period (apart from Silvers queasy duet)
as well as the Purple Tape version of Here
was on the listless Into The White from the
Comes Your Man.
89
Archive
WILCO
Alpha Mike Foxtrot:
Rare Tracks 19942014
RHINO
Sunken treasure: the alternative

history of a great American band,
on 4CDs. By John Mulvey
AROUND THE TURN
of the millennium,
Jeff Tweedy merrily
nurtured a reputation
as a contrarian. How
best could a man,
sanctified as the
archetype of what
was once called
alt.country, confound
his fans? With antsy
8/10 powerpop? Radio
static? Fifteen-minute
ambient noise jams? The recruitment of a fiendish
avant-jazzer to take over on lead guitar? A song for
a Spongebob Squarepants movie?
What might look perverse at the time can, of
course, be thrown into an uncannily logical light
by history. So it is with Alpha Mike Foxtrot, a 4CD set
that celebrates Wilcos 20th anniversary by telling
elling
their story through 77 tracks of marginalia. Its
ts a
clever idea, not least because Wilco have become
come
the sort of band defined by the nuanced depths
ths
of their catalogue, one whose fans have long
been encouraged to treat apparent obscurities
es
the 2002 singalong B-side A Magazine
Called Sunset, say as critical parts of the
canon. The tour page of wilcoworld.net
contains a request a song function for every
y
show; a challenge to be obtuse, perhaps, thatt
Alpha Mike Foxtrot will only exacerbate.
As a result, a companion 2CD greatest hits
set, Whats Your 20: Essential Tracks, is terrific
ic
but somewhat extraneous, Wilco generally
attracting obsessive fans rather than casual ones

(no new tracks are included on Whats Your 20 to
bait the completists). The hardcore might feel a little
disappointed that there is no unreleased content on
Alpha Mike Foxtrot, either, though even the most
committed collector may have struggled to stay
abreast of the various bonus discs, downloads,
B-sides and tribute albums from which the
tracklisting has been assembled. An oddly faithful,
entirely creditable 2000 stab at Steely Dans Any
Major Dude Will Tell You, for example, is salvaged
from the soundtrack to Me, Myself & Irene.
At times, in his wry sleevenotes, Tweedy seems to
decry the notion of continuity. Listening back to
stuff like this, I dont know how we got from where
we were to where we are. Its been a strange, strange
path, he wonders, confronted with a workmanlike
country-rock take on Jim Glasers Who Were You
Thinking Of.
For all the shifts in tone and lineup, however, it is
Wilcos underlying consistency that is most striking
or rather, the consistency of Tweedys hesitant,
sometimes fractured, way of unravelling a song.
Its a self-effacing quirk that remains charming
rather than affected, even 20 years after the discreet
twang of a gem like Promising, or 18 on from the
lovely Blasting Fonda, another lost song from a
movie, Feeling Minnesota.
That fragile songcraft does not stand up to all the
things that have been thrown at it. Tweedy sounds
lost in Randy Scruggs mainstream Nashville
production of The TB Is Whipping Me for a 1994
Red Hot + Country comp. The fraught end of Wilcos
tenure with Reprise, meanwhile, results in a
gimmicky radio remix of A Shot In The Arm by the
antagonistic head of A&R, David Kahne. A dated
mess, reckons Tweedy, not unreasonably, of a
track clearly included for historical rather than

aesthetic reasons.
Other songs from the end of the 90s fare better.
The Lonely 1 (White Hen Version), from 1997, is a
precursor of the layered soundscaping that would
come to full fruition on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, with
the band making a field recording of their walk from
the studio to buy cigarettes, then chopping it up and
using it as an effective backdrop to the song. That
might be the first example of our using a process
as a way to be creative, Tweedy notes.
The tense, low-key experiments from the time of
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are predictably among the best
songs here. One Tweedy/Jay Bennett co-write, Cars
Cant Escape, with a distorted noise solo at the
death that never disrupts the restrained vibes, is
especially strong. A tipping point comes, though,
two-thirds of the way through Disc Three, with the
arrival of the master guitarist Nels Cline and the
multi-tasking Pat Sansone, and the stable lineup
that has endured for the past decade. A slew of live
tracks At Least Thats What You Said, from 2004,
and a rearing 2007 take on the Television-like
Impossible Germany may be the pick illustrate
the questing virtuosity that has become Wilcos
default setting. Sort of like a small version of
the Dead, reckons bassist John Stirratt in the
sleevenotes. I think weve been able to attract fans
who have created their own culture around us.
Its a culture manifest in Alpha Mike Foxtrot:
encyclopaedic, loving, droll, emotionally candid,
often adventurous, but never really as alienating
or difficult as the legends might suggest. Ive got a
million things that Id rather do than play rocknroll
start of Lets Not Get
for you, sings Tweedy at the sta
Carried Away, a fine, refusenik take on Stones
though, kidding no-one
raunch from 2007. He is, though
these days. These
the
lyrics were meant to
lyr
be funny, but I think
people might have
pe
taken them more
ta
seriously than I meant
se
them, he writes.
th
Maybe the reason
M
it didnt make it on
any record is because
an
the drum solo is
th
way too short.
w
JETHRO TULL
War Child
CHRYSALIS
ANGEL OLSEN
Burn Your Fire
For No Witness
Deluxe Edition
OZZY
OSBOURNE
Memoirs Of
A Madman
JAGJAGUWAR
EPIC
Expanded edition of
the 1974 album of the
movie that never was
Even by Ian Andersons
6/10 ambitious standards,
Jethro Tulls seventh album
was a grandiose concept, intended to be a
double LP accompanied by a full-length movie
about a teenage girl in the afterlife, meeting
God, St Peter and Lucifer, starring Leonard
Rossiter, choreographed by Margot Fonteyn
and with John Cleese as humour consultant.
When the band couldnt find a studio prepared
to finance the project, the movie treatment
was shelved and the album truncated to a
conventional 10-song release. Despite some
densely obscure lyrics, it made No 2 in the
American charts and contains at least two
of Andersons finest compositions in the
lovely acoustic Skating Away On The Thin
Ice Of A New Day and the prog classic
Bungle In The Jungle, with a potent string
arrangement by David Palmer.
EXTRAS: Three bonus discs include previously
7/10 unreleased tracks, a quadrophonic
version, orchestral pieces composed for the
abandoned movie, some contemporary film
footage and an 80-page booklet. The package
offers a considerably more complete picture
of Andersons original vision, but its
impossible to escape the conclusion that if
the movie had ever been made, it would
have gone down as one of the great rock
follies of our times.
Missourian singersongwriters
8/10 hypnotising second LP
re-released digitally
In recent years, Angel Olsen has given the
impression of an artist coming to terms with her
own talent. For a long while she was content to
lurk in the shadows, providing backing vocals
for Will Oldham, aka Bonnie Prince Billy, and
briefly joining Emmett Kellys musical collective
The Cairo Gang. While her first LP, 2012s Half
Way Home, was a collection of low-key acoustic
tracks built around her distinctly bruised
vocals, her second, this years Burn Your Fire
For No Witness, was made with a full band, the
result being greater breadth and drama and,
on occasion, a cranking up of the volume. The
sharp, fuzz-filled Forgiven/Forgotten is
the Ramones meets The Ronettes, while the
seething Stars is part PJ Harvey, part Cat
Power. Elsewhere Olsen slows the pace down
to a crawl, such as on White Fire (Everything
is tragic/It all just falls apart), a minor-key nod
to Leonard Cohen-style lugubriousness, and
on the intimately tear-stained Enemy. Burn
Your Fire is the sound of an artist in bloom
which leaves you wondering what she will
pull off next.
EXTRAS: Five previously unheard songs,
7/10 three of them taken from the albums
recording sessions, including the engagingly
rough-around-the-edges All Right Now.
Bat-biting, (very) bad

boys solo singles
7/10 The popular image of
Ozzy Osbourne as a
gleefully controversial rocker in extremis
has these days been replaced by one of a
mumbling senior in jogging pants. Still,
the singer-songwriters post-Black Sabbath
longevity is celebrated with this compilation
of 17 singles, which ranges from his multiplatinum debut solo LP, 1980s Blizzard Of
Ozz to 2010s Scream. The first two albums
featuring guitarist Randy Rhoads are widely
acknowledged as Osbournes best, but what
this set reveals is not only his (and his
collaborators) pop nous, but also the subtle
stylistic shifts made according to the times.
The impact of American stadium acts like
Guns N Roses is discernible (notably on
No More Tears), as is the challenge issued
by Slayer et al, but Osbourne rarely betrays
his genre. The exceptions are Mama, Im
Coming Home, a country-metal hybrid
co-written by Lemmy, and 2003s remake of
Black Sabbaths Changes as a schmaltzy
piano duet with daughter Kelly. Conspicuous
by its absence is Suicide Solution, the song
that allegedly encouraged a US teen to take
his own life and his parents to file a lawsuit
in 1986. Osbournes appetite for provocation
has decreased with age, it seems.
EXTRAS: None.
NIGEL WILLIAMSON
FIONA STURGES
SHARON OCONNELL
HAILU MERGIA
AND THE
WALIAS
Tche Belew
REVELATIONS
Ian Anderson on Jethro Tulls

shelved War Child movie
AWESOME TAPES FROM AFRICA
More irresistible
jazz/funk from
8/10 Swinging Addis
A few years ago, the
thiopiques series of comps revealed a hitherto
secret world of Addis Ababa nightclubs to
western listeners; a world where traditional
Ethiopian music, cool jazz, Arabic scales
and JBs funk came together with rapturous
consequences. Most of the music on those
comps dated from the end of Haile Selassies
rule, from the 60s and early 70s. This latest
treasure a crate-diggers holy grail, it seems
dates from 1977, and the more unforgiving
Derg regime. Oppression did not, however,
stem the musical effervescence of Hailu Mergia
and his band. thiopiques collectors will
spot Mulatu Astatke, who recently toured
and recorded with The Heliocentrics, on
vibes. He solos, beautifully, on the fade
of Musicawi Silt, something of a local
anthem according to the sleevenotes.
Mostly, though, it is the horn section and
Mergia, on Farfisa organ, who dominate,
the latter following elaborate and oblique
melody lines delivered with the slurred
virtuosity of his hero, Jimmy Smith. Special
mention, too, for Mahmoud Aman, whose
rhythm guitar, subtly reminiscent of 70s
Southern soul updates the rich and
syncopated Addis sound.
EXTRAS: None.
JOHN MULVEY
Ian Anderson isnt quite sure whether

hes frustrated or relieved that his War Child
movie never got made. It wouldnt have been
commercially successful, he admits. Yet he
persuaded on board some stellar names. I
spoke to Margot Fonteyn in South America
and sent her the synopsis. She agreed to
a cameo role written by the Royal Ballets
director Sir Frederick Ashton, who was grand
but charming and willingly gave me his time. I
was going to have Leonard Rossiter play God
but then Donald Pleasance said, I want to be
God. John Cleese wouldve had some acting
part but his main role was to write. Finding
a director was a bigger problem. Lindsay
Anderson was asked but was abrupt and rude,
really cruel and dismissive. The American
directors approached just wanted to make
it an American movie. By then Anderson had
reached the point where I thought sod it, move
on. But could it have worked? In retrospect
my synopsis appears rather nave. It wouldve
needed a strong character who could have torn
it up and started again. NIGEL WILLIAMSON
DAVE RAY
Legacy
RED HOUSE
Take it, Snaker:

Impressive, expansive
trawl through a blues
legends 50-year archive
8/10 As the driving acoustic
six- and 12-string guitarist
behind Koerner, Ray & Glover, Dave Snaker
Ray was a force of nature, well-versed in
Lead Belly, Lightnin and Blind Lemon,
providing a yin to the Paul Butterfield Blues
Bands yang. Their approach was acoustic, the
opposite of the super-amperage of Butterfield,
but no less studied and intense, young white
kids delivering blues purity with a vengeance.
Despite a brief solo career and a stint with
Elektra rockers Bamboo, though, Ray all but
disappeared from the mainstream post-1960s.
And yet Rays blues got deeper, more intuitive
and wide-ranging with time, through thousands
of live shows and occasional indie record
releases. Friend and bandmate Tony Glover
constructs a devastating narrative throughout
this 55-track set, from strong interpretations
of Sleepy John Estes, Memphis Minnie, Jimmy
Reed in truth the full pantheon of American
blues singers to material from the trios
shocking 96 comeback One Foot In The Groove.
From a mesmerizing 1987 take on Howlin Wolfs
Goin Down Slow, to out-stoning the Stones to
country/blues perfection on Its All Over Now,
to a nimble take on Arthur Crudups So Glad Im
Living, recorded just before Rays 2002 passing,
Legacy is startling, an embarrassment of riches.
EXTRAS: None.
LUKE TORN
91
Archive
TODD
RUNDGREN
Todd Rundgren At
The BBC 1972-82
ESOTERIC
SLEAFORD
MODS
Chubbed Up+
STEELEYE
SPAN & TERRY
PRATCHETT
Wintersmith
IPECAC
PARK
Utopia for Rundgren fans

Seasoned Todd-botherers
7/10 have long learned to accept
that the sublime must sit
side-by-side with the ridiculous, and this
compendium is a case in point. It kicks off
with a 30-minute solo performance from the
BBCs own Paris Theatre in 1972. Despite having
taken the precaution of pre-recording plush
backing tracks for several songs, Todds own
performance is a tad cavalier. On the other
hand, he earns his stripes as a raconteur with
a lengthy yet amusing digression about school
dinners in the middle of Piss Aaron. Disc Two
comprises a live show from 1975 with an early
lineup of Utopia (including Luther Vandross
on BVs!). Expanding on the setlist of Another
Live with a few choice cuts from Todds solo
catalogue, its full of killer harmonies,
astonishing wig-outs and spectacular
self-indulgence. Disc Three is mostly just the
latter: a live show from 1977, by which point
Utopia have gone full-on cosmic prog
although Todds tongue remains at least
halfway in his cheek on the likes of Singring
And The Glass Guitar.
EXTRAS: Disc Four is a DVD of two Old Grey
8/10 Whistle Test appearances (the first
with Utopia in 1975, the second an extended
solo appearance from 1982) bookending
a ludicrously outr Utopia set from the 1977
Bearsville Picnic.
Collected singles and

a few newies from the
Nottingham ranters
8/10 For a group who initially
appeared an acquired
taste, Sleaford Mods appear to be palatable to
many. Two blokes from the Nottingham area,
one shouting, one with a laptop, their trenchant
social commentary a volatile mix of popculture mischief and class warfare has taken
them a remarkable distance: recording with The
Prodigy, touring with The Specials, beloved of
Stewart Lee, that sort of thing. Singles collection
Chubbed Up+, released on Mike Pattons Ipecac,
feels like a bit of a stopgap between this years
Divide And Exit and a new album scheduled for
early next year, but it nonetheless has much to
recommend it. Highlights include Pubic Hair
Ltd, a glare askance at the rock reunion; Tweet
Tweet Tweet, a tirade against social media,
apathy and UKIP to clacking drum machine
and Ghost Town-style vocal harmonies;
and Jobseeker, in which vocalist Jason
Williamson lives out fantasies of what hed like
to have told the dole officer. The production,
courtesy of Andrew Fearn, is rickety as ever, but
that as ever is part of the charm. Three brand
new tracks here too, the best being the closing
Fear Of Anarchy, a Northern Soul bounce that
imagines the sunbed under the arse of Philip
Green. For all that, expect to see Sleaford Mods
T-shirts in Topshop this time next year.
EXTRAS: None.
Expanded edition
of Spans proggy
6/10 22nd album and
Pratchetts first
A lifelong Spanner who cited Thomas
The Rhymer as his all-time favourite track
on Desert Island Discs in 1997, when Pratchett
learnt that Maddy Prior was in turn a fan of
his novels, he suggested that she try to
weave some of his words into her own.
She took as her source Pratchetts 2006
novel Wintersmith and its tale of Tiffany
Aching and her adventures in Discworld.
First released in 2013, the results are prog-rock
as much as folk-rock and have as much in
common with Jeff Waynes War Of The Worlds
as All Around My Hat. The spoken-word
interludes, which find Pratchett intoning
lines such as A good witch never cackles,
are particularly redolent of 1970s proggism,
as are the histrionic guitar solos and rock
riffing. That said, theres some fine music
here, too, usually pieces involving Peter
Knights violin and Peter Zorns sax,
while Maddy Priors voice has shed its
one-time tendency to shrillness and has
only got better with age.
EXTRAS: A second bonus disc features four
6/10 new studio recordings, a brace of
demos and eight live tracks, Peter Knights
final recordings before his departure after
more than 40 years with the band.
SAM RICHARDS
LOUIS PATTISON
NIGEL WILLIAMSON
GIL SCOTTHERON
Free Will
SLIM TWIG
A Hound At
The Hem
NIKKI
SUDDEN
Fred Beethoven
(reissue, 1972)
(reissue, 2012)
TROUBADOUR
ACE
DFA
Expanded reissue of
hybrid third album
8/10 After the success of his
second album, 1971s Pieces
Of A Man, Scott-Heron was reportedly reluctant
to record a follow-up and contemplated a return
to his literary roots as a poet and novelist. His
vital musical foil Brian Jackson and producer
Bob Thiele persuaded him otherwise, but his
mixed feelings led to an intriguingly hybrid
album. Side One contained five fully-worked
songs in familiar neo-jazz-soul territory, the
stand-out of which is Did You Hear What
They Said?, a coruscating critique of the
disproportionate number of black conscript
soldiers who were dying in Vietnam. But Side
Two is even more intense and finds Scott-Heron
rapping his insurrectionary verses accompanied
by nothing more than flute and percussion. Its
earnest, deadly serious stuff but laced with wit,
too. Try Aint No New Thing, an alternative
history of popular music touched with the spark
of genius, which he introduces by explaining
that white people couldnt dig having their
daughters cream over no black man wiggling on
the stage so they invented Elvis Presley.
EXTRAS: A bonus disc featuring alternate takes
7/10 of the entire album, remastered from
the original session tapes. It would be overegging to call it revelatory but it does offer a
fascinating glimpse into Scott-Herons mercurial
creative processes.
Cult Canadian concept

album pays skewed
6/10 homage to Nabokov
and Gainsbourg
An actor, producer and recording artist with
multiple musical personalities, Toronto-based
twentysomething Max Turnbull aka Slim Twig
had admirably grand ambitious for this selfreleased concept album back in 2012. Drawing
on both Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita and the 1971
Serge Gainsbourg album it inspired, Histoire De
Melody Nelson, Turnbulls sprawling cabaretpunk chansons map out the loose narrative of
a predatory older man pursuing an underage
girl. Couched in string arrangements by Owen
Pallett, the songs lurch and swerve like a
drunken music-hall orchestra. Heavy
Splendour and Clerical Collar vibrate with
some of the centrifugal chaos of early Nick Cave,
while Shroud By The Sheetful is all sinister
chimes and prowling menace. Turnbulls voice
is the weak link here, more muffled moan than
blues explosion. His conceptual conceit is
churning with rich ingredients, but lacks a
strong vocal figurehead to corral its mutinous
energies into line. Still, NY hipster label DFA
clearly feel this cultish labour of love deserves
a second chance to find an audience, and maybe
they are right. Slim Twigs louche theatricality
will probably repel as many listeners as it
attracts, but life is a cabaret, old chum.
EXTRAS: None.
Swell Maps mans

lost rocknroll
masterpiece
8/10 Best known for co-piloting
Birminghams highly
influential Swell Maps through post-punk with
his brother Epic Soundtracks, or for his hearton-sleeve balladry with David Kusworth as
the Jacobites from the mid-80s onwards,
Nikki Sudden had rocknroll in his DNA.
Recorded across 1998 and 1999, and for
some reason languishing in the vaults for
fifteen years, Fred Beethoven is a rough,
wild blast, pulling together some of Suddens
long-term fascinations the street-tough
smarts of Johnny Thunders, the brutal glam
minimalism of Marc Bolan, the ragged glory
of The Rolling Stones at their peak and
fully inhabiting them within a set of
deceptively simple, borderline-chaotic
rock songs that are up there with the wilder
moments of 1989s Groove. The whole set,
available on CD or light blue vinyl, is great,
but reaches a peak towards its final third
a loose cover of Ronnie Lanes Debris is
bested by the albums ballad, Pin A Rose
On Me, before Sudden who passed away
in New York in 2006, aged just 49 pulls
out all the stops, building Dont Look Back
on the same chord changes as T.Rexs Get It
On. Thats the way to do it shameless and
with attitude to burn.
EXTRAS: None.
NIGEL WILLIAMSON
STEPHEN DALTON
JON DALE
JONI
MITCHELL
Love Has Many

Faces: A Quartet,
A Ballet, Waiting
To Be Danced
RHINO
Folk-rock grande dame curates

her own typically eccentric
retrospective. By Stephen Trouss
I AM A lonely painter, Joni
Mitchell once sang, I live in a
box of paints. And shes often
toyed with the notion that her
musical career has been one
long, strange detour from her
essential artistic vocation.
Easy to presume, then, that
this new four-disc collection,
distilling 40 years vexed,
rapturous, disconsolate
meditations on the human
heart, is, at last, her grand,
6/10 self-curated retrospective,
perfectly framed and hung,
obsessively themed and sequenced.
Never one to shy from the imperious statement,
Joni insists that this boxset is, in fact, an original,
quasi-cinematic production. What I have done
here is to gather some of these scenes (like a
documentary filmmaker) and by juxtaposition,
edit them into a whole new work. But shes not
finished: For todays abbreviated minds, this
could be a challenge. I recommend that you who
are impaired in this way try to take the trip anyway.
How can you resist the invitation? But even
forewarned of the eccentricity of the enterprise,
Love Has Many Faces proves to be a challenging
voyage. It was originally conceived, following the
success of her 2007 collaboration with the Alberta
Ballet Company, as the soundtrack to a new ballet
about love. But faced with the daunting challenge
of self-editing, Mitchell was unable to contain
herself to a sub-Wagnerian
running time. What she had most
enjoyed about The Fiddle And
The Drum, after all, had been
the opportunity to spotlight her
comparatively neglected work
of the 80s and 90s. [These]
songs have long soliloquies, like
Shakespeare, she said. They
need action to sustain the interest
of some people. The ballet gives
them that.
The result, with the ballet long
abandoned, is a collection that
hopscotches, backwards and
forwards, across her back pages,
in search of deeper continuities.
And, on the first disc at least,
the new context throws
interesting light on
some neglected
corners.
Beginning with
In France
They Kiss On
Main Street (from 1975s The Hissing Of Summer

Lawns), and its blooming smalltown schoolgirl
fantasies of rocknroll liberty, it naturally skips
a heartbeat to Rays Dads Cadillac (from 1991s
Night Ride Home) with its Lynchian 50s memories
of pink fins in the falling rain, before maturing to
the midlife memories of Chinese Cafe (from 1982s
Wild Things Run Fast). In such company, even
Dancin Clown (which, for those who have
repressed its memory, features, not only Billy Idol
and Tom Petty, but also Thomas
Dolby on Fairlight marimba for
full, high-80s authenticity),
seems like charming curio in
a larger story. Assembled like
this, the songs seem less like
scenes in a larger movie,
more like stories in an Alice
Munro collection, obsessively
reworking that same
Canadian primal scene,
tracing the consequences
of that teenage wildness.
But the juxtaposition is less
suggestive when Dancin
Clown is followed immediately
by River, still heart-stopping
after almost half a century of
canonical ubiquity and
imitation. The song saps
its neighbours, as
the main course
of a river drains
its tributary.
As the
headwater of
this main current it makes you want to put Blue on

immediately. And then follow that with Court And
Spark. And then dig out The Hissing Of Summer
Lawns. And then wrap up the evening with Hejira.
Because, of course, the problem with presenting a
four-disc set of Joni Mitchell songs about love, is the
widely held belief that she already did a pretty good
job herself between 1970 and 1976, with a matchless
sequence of albums that deepened and widened the
possibilities and potency of popular song.
It would be nice to report that this fresh curation
brings some hitherto hidden nuggets to attention.
But in fact, Love Has Many Faces doesnt even do a
particularly good job of displaying the later albums
to their best effect. It draws more heavily on 1998s
Taming The Tiger than it does on The Hissing Of
Summer Lawns, but, even in this indulgence, still
manages to overlook Man From Mars, one of the
most touching later songs (even if it is about her
missing cat, Nietzsche). Similarly youll look in vain
for songs you might think central to such a project:
Help Me, Song For Sharon, Blue Motel Room
Even songs like Hana, from the 2007 comeback
Starbucks album, Shine, arent without their
charms, but nestled in the heart of the second disc,
cheek by jowl with the uncanny The Wolf That
Lives In Lindsey and the mighty Hejira, it withers.
The obstinate contrariness of Love Has Many
Faces is entirely characteristic and only to be
admired. Its the enduring reluctance of a great
artist to accept other peoples frames, other peoples
narratives. But take this case of Joni down in one
five-hour draft, as she instructs, and youll still
be on your feet. While a single sip from Court
And Spark can still knock you out.
EXTRAS: None.
93
Archive
The
Specialist
SUEDE
Dog Man Star
Limited Edition
Box Set
Lost soul and jazz
This month: Chuck Berry

Beyond Goode:
Berry at his
50s peak
CHUCK BERRY
Rock And Roll Music: Any Old Way You Choose
It: The Complete Studio Recordings Plus
BEAR FAMILY
BEAR FAMILY RECORDS
9/10
The lifes work of a musical giant
Its impossible to overestimate Chuck Berrys mammoth influence
on rocknroll, indeed on western culture at large. Irrespective of
the bizarre way his 60-year career has played out, his music,
poetry and early spirit cast an enormous shadow on everything
rocknroll was, is, even what it might still be. Berry had it all. A fine singer, arranger and melodist,
well-versed in pop, jazz, country, boogie and blues, he was adept at assimilating everything,
formulating it anew for young ears.
His sly wordplay compact but complex narratives and deft character sketches reflected the
hopes and aspirations, trials and tribulations of school-age (and beyond) persons. Berry was the
portent of a new kind of adulthood, and those rolling, roiling and over-boiling guitar arpeggios,
carried the listener into ecstatic new realms, signaling more than just a watershed. After Roll
Over Beethoven Sinatra was on the ropes, Mitch Miller in the ditch. The music, especially once
the formative Rolling Stones, Beatles and Beach Boys paid their debts, swiftly became canonical,
overshadowing mightily the oft-troubled figure that created it. At the same time in
a bitter twist of irony, Berry himself brilliant yet paranoid, outrageously vilified in Jim Crow
America struggled to command his chaotic, if quasar-like career. Despite some notable
exceptions, dime-store nostalgia, artistic redundancy and cavalier performances would dominate
his career post-1965. While Berrys been endlessly anthologised, Bears 16-disc, 21-hour monster
represents the first effort at beginning-to-(presumably)-end documentation, foisting the brilliant
early rocker against the bland pop vocalist, raucous, brain-rattling riffage against excruciating
Latin balladry and exotic pop excursions, and finally to the diminishing return of countless
remakes, remodels and, well, My Ding-A-Ling. Its formula invites liberal use of the skip button,
yet countless rare treasures await: instrumentals galore, with extraordinary Berry/Johnnie
Johnson guitar-piano interplay; superb, little-noticed Berry compositions both early (Dear Dad)
and late (Tulane); the virtually forgotten Rock It, his final studio LP from 1979. His momentous,
oh-so-brief 1964 post-prison
son comeback Nadine,
Nadine , Promised
Promised Land
Land and, eventually, his finest
LP, St Louis To Liverpool may
y stand as his definitive work.
As tangible as this set iss the
lifes work of a musical giant
ia
ant
its the intangibles, the pure
urre joy
of Berrys finest work, that
att rule
the day. There was a sense
see of
freedom flying out of those
osee
guitar solos; of possibility,
y,,
optimism, adventure. Human
um
man
aspirations transcending
and
g time
t
generations lie within those
osse
rhythms. Its simply somee
of the most glorious pop
music ever produced.
LUKE TORN
22015
015
15
EDSEL
Britpop bands second

album with bells on
8/10 We were competing
with the great records
of the past, said Brett Anderson recently of
Suedes 1994 album. Now, after 20 years,
during which the eras albums have been
reassessed and Suede rehabilitated, Dog Man
Star has become one of those records, the
cornerstone of Anderson and cos career,
despite its troubled inception (guitarist
Bernard Butler left the band before it was
completed). Most noticeable now is how it
sounds so out of its time, steeped as it is in
fractured instrumentals and intense, druggy
melodrama. A case in point is Daddys
Speeding, a song in several acts that ratchets
up the claustrophobia with wilfully murky
production. Singles The Wild Ones and
We Are The Pigs stand up beautifully, their
noir-ish narratives buoyed by overwrought
yet deeply affecting melodies. Worlds away
from Britpops plodding guitar rock, Dog Man
Star sounds as good now as it did then.
EXTRAS: Everything and the kitchen sink
8/10 drama. You want piano, orchestral,
live and extended versions of the album
tracks? Youve got em. The huge package
includes a cassette of the original album,
a vinyl version, DVD footage with unseen
interviews, new sleevenotes from Anderson,
plus lyrics, a hardback book and A2 poster.
FIONA STURGES
SWANS
Filth (reissue, 1983)
MUTE
Brutish studio debut

from New York noise
rockers, disinterred
Since returning to active
7/10 service in 2010, Michael
Giras Swans have bucked
the reformation trend, turning out albums
like 2012s The Seer and this years To Be Kind
that, by comparison, leave the groups early
work in the shade. While still labouring at
compositions of sustained, brutal intensity,
Giras latter-day work has taken on a broader,
orchestral instrumentation and a certain
elegance of expression both qualities that
1983s Filth conspicuously lacks. Still, perhaps
its a case of not worse, just different, as this
remastered vinyl edition of Filth nonetheless
has much to recommend it. Big Strong Boss
and Blackout are grim churns of existential
horror and dissonant repetition, fusing the
raw blues of Howlin Wolf and the scratchy
no-wave of Lydia Lunchs Teenage Jesus And
The Jerks. But not unmusical, exactly: guitarist
Norman Westberg, here making his debut,
makes the blues scale roar like a spinning
drill-bit, while two drumkits achieve a brute,
slave-galley propulsion. The tape manipulations
of Freak feel somewhat dated, and the
whole thing starts to sag around the 30th
minute, but Giras stentorian delivery Use
money for cruelty!/Use hate for freedom!
he bellows on standout Power For Power
cannot easily be denied.
EXTRAS: Two reproduced concert posters.
6/10 LOUIS PATTISON
Archive
ULTRAMARINE
Every Man And
Woman Is A Star
(reissue, 1992)
VARIOUS
ARTISTS
Scratchin:
The Wild Jimmy
Spruill Story
ROUGH TRADE
GVC
Pioneering album of
bucolic electronica
8/10 Pastoral techno might seem
like an oxymoron, but from
the orbital raves to Boards Of Canadas remote
bunker, British electronica has always had one
foot in the countryside. Originally released on
Brainiak in 1991 predating Aphex Twins first
volume of Selected Ambient Works by several
months Every Man And Woman Is A Star was
one of the first post-rave LPs to employ bleeps
and burbles to evoke Arcadian bliss rather than
dystopian dread. The likes of Saratoga and
Nova Scotia are lifted by funky flute loops
and dollops of folk-jazz whimsy, presaging
the duos collaboration with Robert Wyatt on
1993s United Kingdoms. Like Underworld,
Ultramarine were 80s art-rockers galvanised
by the acid house explosion; Ian Cooper and
Paul Hammond first worked together in
industrial funk outfit A Primary Industry, and
Every Man owes as much to Talk Talk and AR
Kane as it does to the burgeoning rave scene,
although clearly the duo had watched the sun
come up on a few thumping bacchanals. Every
Mans style of easy-listening electronica may
have subsequently become the default sound
of home makeover reveals and call-centre hold
queues, but that cant dull the lustre of a blissedout British original.
EXTRAS: Four of the album tracks in the form
7/10 of a 1992 Peel Session.
Prolific, overlooked
guitar man
One of the busiest session
guitarists in New York from the mid-50s to the
mid-70s, Jimmy Spruill is thought to have
played on over 3,000 sessions, notably for
Bobby and Danny Robinsons Harlem-based
Fire, Fury and Everlast labels. This jubilant
61-track compilation is the most comprehensive
attempt yet to chronicle an overlooked guitar
hero who played on his share of RnB hits
including Wilbert Harrisons Kansas City,
Buster Browns Fanny Mae and Lee Dorseys
Ya Ya. Spruills signature scratchin style is
usually evident; a hard, attacking approach
that can explode at will, choking the strings
way down the guitar neck and unleashing
notes in quick succession playing with the
unpredictable edge that would later distinguish
Mike Bloomfields work. Scratchin combines
familiar tracks, mostly at the sharp, bluesier
end of RnB and doo wop, with hard-to-find 45s
credited to Wild Jimmy Spruill or as featured
in long-forgotten bands led by Noble Thin
Man Watts, Charles Walker and Horace
Cooper. Let off the leash, Wild Jimmy runs
rampant on raw instrumentals such as Hard
Grind, Driving Home, Hard Times and
Scratchin that make a strong case for some
long overdue recognition.
EXTRAS: None.
SAM RICHARDS
MICK HOUGHTON
8/10
HOW TO BUY...
SWANS
VARIOUS
ARTISTS
The Deeply
Vale Box
Michael Giras brutal best

est
Cop/Young God/Holy
Money YOUNG GOD, 1999
A double-CD set collects three
early Swans albums and the
Young God EP, highlighting
their early, brutal extremity, and the gradual
integration of Jarboe into the band. Her
commanding delivery on A Hanging and the
piano-led You Need Me marks the maturation
of Swans into a more complex, musical beast.
8/10
The Burning World
UNI, 1989
Following their breakout cover of

Love Will Tear Us Apart, Swans
made a brief foray into majorlabel land. Gira himself calls it a debacle, but
the Bill Laswell-produced The Burning World
has much to recommend it, the likes of Saved
exploring a gothic Americana augmented with
tabla, bouzouki and strings.
7/10
To Be Kind
YOUNG GOD/MUTE, 2014
Spanning two hours, the tireless

To Be Kind is a monumental
achievement, from the crashing
crescendos of 30-minute centrepiece Bring
The Sun/Toussaint LOuverture to more
tender moments featuring cameos from Little
Annie, Cold Specks and St Vincent.
9/10
LOUIS PATTISON
OZIT/MORPHEUS
East Lancashires
punky Woodstock
immortalised
Punk drew a dividing line
between generations in
London, but the
7/10 that
situation in the hinterlands
was never quite so clear-cut. The four annual
Deeply Vale free festivals near Bury from 197679, were a weirdly egalitarian idyll where Steve
Hillage and punk co-existed in a state of prelapsarian harmony. These 6CDs, compiled by
one of the festivals organisers, Chris Hewitt,
mix lo-fi and hi-fi, old and new, in appropriately
benign and bewildering fashion. Hence, the
1978 Falls live reading of Vince Taylors Brand
New Cadillac is preserved along with five
minutes of stage commentary on the festivals
joint-rolling contest. Libertarian principles
are upheld in words by Accident On The East
Lancs pot-smoking punkarama We Want It
Legalised, and in spirit by Graham 808 State
Masseys punky-fleabag band Danny And The
Dressmakers, shriek-and-hope masterpieces
like Ernie Bishops Dead Body and How Hot
Is A Match? encapsulating the impishly
anarchic spirit of the times.
EXTRAS: Witnesses share memories in a book
8/10 which also documents how heroin,
selfishness and intransigent farmers spelled the
festivals demise. Light up your free joss sticks
and you can almost feel the 1980s coming.
JIM WIRTH
COMING
NEXT
MONTH...
The eponymous
debut record by San
Franciscos Jessica
Pratt had most of the
people who heard it
proclaiming it timeless,
aecting, in a Laurel
Canyon tradition, and
not completely unlike Joanna Newsom. While
that album released by Birth records, the
label run by Tim Presley from White Fence
was direct in its simplicity, the new one On
Your Own Love Again, to arrive at the end
of January on Drag City is dierent. Of
course, youll still nd Pratts pure, clear
voice and detailed songwriting but theres
also a psychedelic playfulness present, as
she articially stretches her voice into
new shapes.
No stranger to that is Panda Bear the
Animal Collective musician is back with
Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper,
which is rich, heavy and very strange. Into this
absurdly active month come a host of other
strong new voices: not least Curtis Harding,
Sons Of Bill and Matthew E White associate
Natalie Prass, and strong returns from The
Waterboys and Alasdair Roberts. Theres
also a couple of utterly dissimilar species
emerging from hibernation: lesser-spotted
peoples band The Charlatans and, hot
on the heels of a boxset
VISIT
UNCUT.CO.UK compiling their previous
FOR OVER 5,000 work, the soaring indie guitar
ARCHIVED
rock of critics favourites
REVIEWS!
Sleater-Kinney.
[email protected]
Films
BY
MICH A EL BON N ER
This month: a perfect role

for Bill Murray; up close with
Muhammad Ali; Cumberbatch as
Turing; and a decent vampire caper
T VINCENT A few months ago, Bill

Murray was the subject of a cruel
internet hoax. According to an online
news story, subsequently discredited,
Murray was to star in a sequel to The
Big Lebowski, where he would play the long-lost
brother to Jeff Bridges accidental hero, The Dude.
As a piece of wish-fulfilment casting, it was perfect.
After all, who wouldnt want to see Murray dance
round his house in his underwear to Jefferson
Airplanes Somebody To Love?
St Vincent is the closest we may get to seeing
Murray as an errant Lebowski. His Vincent
MacKenna is an unruly Brooklyn retiree living in
splendidly grumpy isolation. His only companion
is a cat, though he employs a pregnant Russian
prostitute (Naomi Watts) to fulfil his physical needs.
Whatever other social interaction he tolerates
appears to take place either at the racetrack or the
bar. Vincent, the eccentric grouch, is a perfect
character for Murray: and he plays the part noteperfectly. But watching him does beg the question,
how many Bill Murray films have actually done
justice to Bill Murray? Surprisingly, this is his first
starring role in a decade; though he is capable of
lighting up even a wobbly film like The Monuments
Men with only the most meagre of ingredients.
But while St Vincent offers Murray the chance to
play a splendidly curdled curmudgeon, the movie
itself becomes an increasingly hokey proposition.
Vincent reluctantly agrees to babysit Oliver (Jaeden
Lieberher), the kid next door, for his overstretched
mother (Melissa McCarthy), as a way to fund his
trips to the track. Plot-wise, there are clear parallels
with Bad Santa. What follows is a by-numbers
unravelling of Vincent until ta da! the good
man beneath the grumpy exterior is revealed.
There is something to be said for the element of
surprise, which is sadly absent here. But debuting
writer/director Theodore Melfi at least allows his
star the chance to do all the things we love about
Bill Murray testy, irreverent, mean. A sequence
over the closing credits, where Murray delivers a
one-take rendition of Dylans Shelter From The
Storm has all the loose, freewheeling spirit you
wished Melfi had brought to the rest of the film.
I Am Ali For her documentary on Muhammad

Ali, filmmaker Clare Lewins has been granted
unprecedented access to the boxers personal
archives, family, friends and former colleagues.
But admittance into the inner circle comes with its
own set of problems. While its undoubtedly an
impressive coup to hear vintage audio of Alis
phone conversations, Lewins portrait is a
relatively sanitised account, lacking in fresh
insight and sidestepping controversy. Even with a
wealth of uncovered archival material, I Am Ali
plays like a greatest hits version of its subjects life.
The film opens with Lewins camera prowling
towards Alis house, a television showing his 1965
appearance on US quiz show Whats My Line? (Are
you primarily in nighclubs?, asks panellist Arlene
Francis). Over a black screen, we hear him on the
phone chatting to his young daughter May May in
1979. Lewins presents Ali as a genial family man.
The queue of talking heads lining up to sing his
praises is vast: ex-business manager Gene Kilroy
tell us, Everybody wanted to be around him,
everybody wanted to meet him, his brother

Rahman Ali claims. He was born for greatness.
This, pretty much, is the narrative line pursed
through the rest of the film by Lewins. Those
closest to Ali including Angelo Dundee, who
looks like Rod Steiger, his ex-wife Veronica Porsche
offer us platitudes and familiar anecdotes.
Indeed, Alis past is well-documented, but
presumably out of respect for his condition with
Parkinsons, theres no real discussion about the
present. As such, I Am Ali feels incomplete.
The Homesman In only his second film

as director, Tommy Lee Jones offers us a sobering
glimpse of frontier life. This is the vast Nebraska
Territory circa 1870, a forbidding, dusty flatland
empty but for a few stunted trees. In Loup, such
are the hardships endured by the settlers, three
women have been driven mad. It falls to the lonely,
devout Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) to
transport them back east to their families: it
transpires that their husbands have no stomach
Reviewed this month...

ST VINCENT
I AM ALI
Director
Theodore Melfi
Starring Bill
Murray, Naomi
Watts
Opens Dec 5
Cert 12A
Director Clare
Lewins
Starring
Muhammad Ali,
Mike Tyson
Opens Nov 26
Cert PG
7/10
6/10
THE
HOMESMAN
THE IMITATION
GAME
Director Tommy
Lee Jones
Starring Hilary
Swank, Tommy
Lee Jones
Opened Nov 21
Cert 15
Director Morten
Tyldum
Starring Benedict
Cumberbatch,
Keira Knightley
Opened Nov 14
Cert 12A
8/10
7/10
WHAT WE
DO IN THE
SHADOWS
Directors Jemaine
Clement, Taika
Waititi
Starring Jemaine
Clement
Opened Nov 21
Cert 12A
7/10
Films
A splendidly curdled
curmudgeon: Bill
Murray in St Vincent
is conspicuously present in the experiences of the

tormented women of The Homesman.
The Imitation Game Have we reached

Peak Benedict Cumberbatch? asked a British
broadsheet recently, before devoting further space
to a news story claiming that the actor was in fact
related to Alan Turing, the British mathematician
played by Cumberbatch in his new film, The
Imitation Game. Turing has already been the
subject of an oratorio this year by the Pet Shop
Boys, which premiered during the Proms.
Elsewhere, Turings WWII world of Bletchley codebreakers has been relatively recently documented
by Robert Harris in his thriller, Enigma, later
brought to the screen by producer Mick Jagger
who owns one of the fabled Enigma machines. But
despite his remarkable achievements during
WWII, Turing is a relatively unfamiliar figure. This
allows Cumberbatch to do, basically, Cumberbatch:
testy, brilliant, arrogant, a retread of some of his
familiar Sherlock characteristics. But in real life,
Turing was a far more complicated individual:
beyond his Bletchley triumphs, he had a difficult
relationship with a female mathematician (played
here by Keira Knightley) while his criminalisation
for homosexuality led to his suicide in 54.
Norwegian director Morten Tyldum presents a solid
piece of heritage drama, peopled by the likes of
Charles Dance, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear and
Mark Strong. Its good film but not quite in the
same league as next months The Theory Of
Everything, another biopic of a brilliant scientific
mind, Stephen Hawking, a role Cumberbatch
previously played in a 2002 British TV drama.
for the task. Cuddy is joined by George Briggs
(Jones), a claim jumper who she saves from a
lynching on condition he join her on this difficult
journey. Adapted from a 1988 novel by Glendon
Swarthout, The Homesman shares a few key
similarities with Jones previous directorial outing
another Western The Three Burials Of
Melquiades Estrada. Both films address the
hardness of the West, and both rely on a promise to
help propel the story. But there are other, familiar
elements bubbling away under the films grizzly
hide. The pairing of the upright Cuddy and crabby
Briggs recalls Hepburn and Bogart in The African
Queen, while the
bewhiskered Jones looks
like a cross between Lee
Marvin and Warren
Oates. But as the film
progresses, it becomes
apparent that Jones
isnt telling an entirely
conventional story. There
are stray encounters with
Native Americans, rival cowboys and settlers, but
none of them necessarily pan out in the way youd
expect, adding a strangeness to the narrative. A
sequence with James Spader, as a grandiloquent
Irish settler who is hoping to attract high clientele
to his newly built hotel, starts off as broad comedy
before unexpectedly turning dark.
Commendably, the film grapples with some risky
ideas. Cuddy is tough and staunchly independent,
but Jones offers no false impressions about feminist
impulses on the frontier. The cost of expansionism
What We Do In The Shadows While Bret

McKenzie has enjoyed success as a songwriter on
the two most recent Muppets films, his former
Flight Of The Conchords collaborator, Jemaine
Clement, has been a less conspicuous presence.
Clement returns or, more aptly, is resurrected
for this vampire mockumentary, which he
co-wrote, directs and stars in. He plays 862-year-old
Vladislav, one of three vampires sharing a flat in a
suburb of Wellington. At 80 minutes, part of the
films charm is the speed at which it rattles along.
There is little substance; its really just a selection of
sketches and scenes strung loosely together. But it
is pretty funny stuff: a
significant improvement
on the last vampire
comedy, Tim Burtons
woeful Dark Shadows in
2012. The plot follows an
NZ documentary crew
whove been allowed
to follow a group of
vampires in the months
leading up to an annual masked ball, attended by
the countrys supernatural entities. Clements
Vladislaw is a European aristocrat aka Vlad the
poker fallen on hard times. His flatmates are
slovenly Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) and Nosferatulike Petyr (Ben Fransham); Flight Of The Conchords
fans will be pleased to see Rhys Darby as Anton,
head of the New Zealand werewolf pack. Amid the
jokes, though, are strangely affecting moments.
When introduced to the internet, one of the first
things the vampires want to see is a sunrise.
When introduced to the

internet, one of the first
things the vampires
want to see is a sunrise
Also out...
THE GRANDMASTER
OPENS DECEMBER 5
Reviewed in Take 211. Wong Kar-Wais opulent
period drama; martial arts and painterly set
pieces in 1930s China.
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE

FIVE ARMIES
OPENS DECEMBER 12
Pray heaven, let this be it. Peter Jacksons
final spin round Middle Earth. Expect a
lengthy run time. Cushions required.
DUMB AND DUMBER TO

OPENS DECEMBER 19
After years in the wilderness, a possible
career comeback for Jim Carrey, reprising a
successful early role with the films original
directors, the Farrelly brothers.
GUYS AND DOLLS

OPENS DECEMBER 19
Brando and Sinatra square up in Joseph
Mankiewiczs vibrant adaptation of the
Broadway musical; digitally remastered
and in all major UK cities.
KON-TIKI
OPENS DECEMBER 19
Thor Heyerdahls 1947 voyage across the
Pacific, recreated here in this epic drama.
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM:

SECRET OF THE TOMB
OPENS DECEMBER 19
Third time unlucky for Ben Stiller family
comedy franchise: its Mickey Rooneys final
film and one of the last films Robin Williams
made before he died.
ANNIE
OPENS DECEMBER 26
The post-Christmas graveyard is populated
by a surprising number of big-name projects,
starting with this remake starring Jamie Foxx.
BIG EYES
OPENS DECEMBER 26
Tim Burton joins the Boxing Day throng with
this biopic about US painter Walter Keane.
Stars Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams.
Christian Bale
in Exodus: Gods
And Kings
EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

OPENS DECEMBER 26
Christian Bale is Moses! Ridley Scott directs;
cant be worse than Aronofskys turgid Noah.
UNBROKEN
OPENS DECEMBER 26
Angelina Jolie directs rising Brit star Jack
OConnell Starred Up, 71 in a true-life
drama about an Olympic track star who
survived two years in a Japanese POW camp.
97
S C I- F I
O C T O B E R D E C E M B E R 2 0 14
Over 1000 screenings of classic lm and TV,

brought to you by the BFI Film Audience Network
Cornerhouse Manchester
Insomniac Invasion
Sci-Fi all-nighter
Sat 15 Sun 16 Nov
Watershed, Bristol
DJ Cheeba presents
Plan 9 From Outer Space
Fri 21 Nov
ICA London
Bjrks Biophilia Live + Q&A
Sat 22 Nov
Duke of Yorks Brighton

Man with X-Ray Eyes +
Pere Ubu live score
Sun 23 Nov
MK Gallery, Milton Keynes

John Carpenters Dark Star
+ live score by Animat
Wakefield, Huddersfield
& Ilkley
DJ Yoda creates a virtuoso
live Sci-Fi movie mash-up
Sat 22 Nov
Thu 27 Sun 30 Nov
Chapter, Cardiff
Trip to the Moon +
Pat (Datblygu) live score
Sat 6 Dec
Eden Court, Inverness

The Man From Planet X
and Devil Girl from Mars
Sun 14 Dec
Black Box, Belfast

The Incredible Melting Man
Sun 14 Dec
FIND EVENTS NEAR YOU AT BFI.ORG.UK/SCIFI
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AN OUT OF THIS WORLD SEASON OF FILMS AND

LIVE EVENTS AT OVER 200 LOCATIONS ACROSS THE UK
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T H IS MON T H: R EM ON MT V | BR A ZIL | THE SIXTIES | SGT BILKO
Madness on
the road: John
Densmore and
Jim Morrison
THE DOORS
Feast Of Friends
EAGLE ROCK
Morrison and cos oblique tour documentary. By John Robinson

NOT ONLY WAS he singer,
poet and lizard king, Jim
Morrison was also a decent
movie critic. Asked about the
filming that ultimately ends
up as Feast Of Friends, he
looks characteristically
bemused but makes a wry
observation. Its a fictional
documentary, he tells the
camera. Its making itself
Hes certainly on to
something. Neither as tedious as a procedural
rock doc, nor as abstract as a piece of period
freaksploitation, Feast For Friends like most
Doors-related film artefacts occupies a place
between home movie and next-level music
piece, effortlessly over-reaching one role but
falling short of the other.
Filmed by Paul Ferrara, a UCLA Film School
friend of Morrisons, Feast Of Friends doesnt have
much in the way of narrative, but it makes up for
it in sheer beauty, a powerful Doors quality.
Notionally an account of the bands 1968 American
tour, in truth that fact is more something that you
discover for yourself than from the film.
Faced with a wealth of good material, deriving
from the madness and controversy of Doors
performances at the time, Ferrara seems uncertain
what to do. Undoubtedly a talented filmmaker
and editor, he montages stage invasions to the
extent that a disproportionately large chunk of
8/10
the films running time is spent watching a

Keystone Cops slapstick of kids foiled by burly,
nightstick-wielding policemen. Nor is any of this
accompanied by live music.
Better by far are the moments when he lets the
film run, and observe The Doors being a great
live band. No-one over the age of 19 is probably
especially excited about hearing The End
another time, but the long preamble here, where
Morrison attempts to get the lights turned down
in the auditorium raises warm laughter, as might
greet an accomplished chat show guest, and casts
Morrison in a different light.
As much as by their music, The Doors worked by
seduction, and a strength of his film is that Ferrara
allows himself to be seduced. Never mind what
they think their movie is about theres a great deal
of pleasure to watch The Doors simply walking
about in the modern America that charmed and
horrified them. There is a beautiful vignette of the
band on a yacht, and some nice stuff from a small
plane. Watching the band on a monorail, rubbing
shoulders, just about, with John Q Public in his
sports coat, is wonderful the bands potential to
charm and outrage right there in the carriage.
The band and their public, specifically the
fragile boundaries between them, is the films
tacit subject. The stage invasions are one thing,
but what is almost accidentally recounted here
is the bands growing stature, and the elevation
of Morrison into a star and about the contexts in
which this has meaning, and those where it doesnt.
We follow the band silently cross a carpeted

expanse en route to the stage, a mass of press
and industry others behind a cordon. We are
in the limousine as the band arrive at a venue:
fans address Morrison, and one girl places her
hand on his crotch, more to her disbelief than
his. We are backstage with a girl who has been
hit by a chair. She is sitting with Morrison, who
explains to the camera what has happened,
and wipes the blood that is streaming down
her face. These moments are both incredibly
intimate, of course. But whats staggering
about them is not so much the sense of a
boundary being crossed, as a boundary simply
not being there in the first place. You cant
imagine Mick Jagger wiping blood in 72, or
as Morrison does here having a conversation
with an intense, pipe-chewing clergyman about
the nature of his art.
Later in 1968, The Doors entered a more
dangerous arena the British living-room, in
the run-up to Christmas. The first rock film to be
commissioned by UK TV, The Doors Are Open
(the supporting feature on this DVD) is a black
and white film which captures the band in London,
backstage, and on it at the Roundhouse just a
few days after their US tour ended. The narrator
advises that to his fans Jim Morrison is poet,
prophet and politician.
Where Ferraras camera has no agenda,
The Doors Are Open has one set in stone: The
Doors as a political band, and duly intercuts their
music with footage of news events. Jim Morrison,
to his credit, comes up with some mildly
controversial supporting quotage (These days
to be a superstar you have to be a politician or an
assassin), but it is Robby Krieger who best
articulates the band and the mood of this DVD
as a whole. Is the band political? Our music,
he says, is more symbolic.
EXTRAS: Extra scenes: Morrison swimming,
7/10 communing with rocks etc.
99
DVD & Blu-ray

OUT OF THE
UNKNOWN
REM
REMTV
BFI
WARNER MUSIC
Futureshock from the vaults

From 1965-71, the BBCs
questing, grown-up sci-fi
anthology adapted wildly
divergent writers from EM
Forster to Isaac Asimov by
way of JG Ballard. Many
10/10 episodes were wiped;
the surviving 20 have
languished unseen for
decades, beyond washed-out bootleg cults.
Beautifully restored for this seven-disc set,
theyre a revelation, variously stark, sly,
unsettling, visionary and shaky, some
unexpectedly moving, some outright barking:
65s excellent Stranger In The Family is
Cronenbergs Scanners 16 years early. A world
of wonders, and radiophonic as you please.
EXTRAS: Sumptuous notes, making-of doc,
10/10 commentaries, lost episode
reconstructions, galleries.
Six-disc live summary

When they started, REM
couldnt get radio play.
As their popularity
grew, so did the
importance of MTV,
which with Michael
8/10 Stipe curating the
visuals they exploited
brilliantly. This
extensive survey eschews videos,
concentrating on live performances, plus
two Unplugged shows, and the entertaining
Storytellers appearance (all with unreleased
songs). The highlight is a new feature-length
documentary which shows how wilful
perversity begat mass success. Highlights
include Mike Mills fragile piano version of
Rockville, and Stipes anecdote about the
deification of koala bears.
EXTRAS: None.
DAMIEN LOVE
ALASTAIR McKAY
BLACULA:
THE COMPLETE
COLLECTION
RED SHIFT
BFI
Blaxploitation horror
double-bill, fun in
small bites
Legendary low-budget
studio AIP caught the
Blaxploitation wave
7/10 with 1972s Blacula, in
which 18th-Century
African prince William
Marshall travels to Transylvania hoping to
recruit Dracula in the fight to defeat slavery
(uh?), only to get bitten and wake up
200 years later as a curiously noble
bloodsucker in sleazy (and homophobic)
70s Los Angeles. Better than it should be,
with a killer soundtrack. 1973 sequel Scream
Blacula Scream isnt as good, but does have
a voodoo Pam Grier.
EXTRAS: Sumptuous booklet, trailers,
7/10 and introductions for both movies.
Exceptional 70s
sci-fi-ish TV episode
The BBCs Play For
Today is today instantly
associated with gritty
social realism, but in fact
that anthology shifted
week by week as different
9/10 voices screamed and
whispered. Case in
point: this ambitious,
time-slipping, mind-bending 1978 episode,
adapted by Alan Garner from his own novel.
It begins as a strangely poetic contemporary
teen-angst love story, then splinters into
piercing, impressionistic psychic folk sci-fi, as
three parallel narratives echo across 1,000
years in the same leafy, bloody corner of
England. Essential for fans of Garner, and
British TVs forgotten possibilities.
EXTRAS: Sublime 1972 Garner doc, short
10/10 film, interviews, packed booklet.
DAMIEN LOVE
DAMIEN LOVE
EUREKA
BRASIL BAM BAM

BAM: THE STORY
OF SONZEIRA
TALKIN LOUD / VIRGIN EMI
THE SIXTIES
FREMANTLE MEDIA
INTERNATIONAL
A wide-ranging trip to Rio

DJ Gilles Peterson
imagine a particularly
impish Martin Freeman
makes an engaging host
as he takes us to Rio to
8/10 oversee the recording
of his all-star AngloBrazilian album. The trip
becomes a chance to explore his favourite
Brazilian music: interviewing his samba and
jazz heroes (Marcos Valle, Ed Motta, Elza
Soares, Seu Jorge, Nan Vasconcelos), visiting
line-dancing carnivals and the fanatically
supported samba schools, as well as digging
crates to find a rare-as-hens-teeth LP by Jos
Prates. Even the grimmer moments like an
investigation into the polices pacification
of Rios favelas are beautifully filmed.
EXTRAS: None.
A treasure trove of
archival footage
This three-disc set
features all 10 episodes
of the recent Tom Hanksproduced history of the
60s. With each 40-minute
7/10 episode focusing on a
different topic JFKs
assassination, Vietnam,
Sex, Drugs And RocknRoll or 1968 the
analysis can be rather superficial, and it
suffers from a lack of chronological narrative,
but theres so much excellent archival footage
its easy to forgive. There are two musicspecific episodes, with the one on the British
Invasion particularly fun, looking at
Beatlemania from a US perspective and
featuring some wonderful, lesser-seen
contemporary footage.
EXTRAS: None.
JOHN LEWIS
PETER WATTS
Silvers as Sgt
Bilko, second left
SGT BILKO:
THE PHIL SILVERS SHOW

FREMANTLE MEDIA
Ten-hut! 62 hours of
square-bashing
and scheming
IN THEORY, PHIL Silvers
should have mistrusted
TV. Cinema had been
stealing fans from the
vaudeville/burlesque
circuits where he cut his
teeth for decades, and
by 55, when Master
10/10 Sergeant Ernest G Bilko
made his bow, the
smaller screen of the idiots lantern was
threatening to wipe the variety revues of yore off
the map. However, arguably more successfully
than any all-rounder of his generation (Silvers
was a comic, dancer and singer), he embraced TV
to become a pioneer of the nascent sitcom form.
More than 50 years after The Last Post sounded
at Fort Baxter and Bilko returned to Civvy St,
The Phil Silvers Show remains one of the most
influential comedies ever.
While its easy to rack up a series of firsts when
so little has gone before, the Bilko concept was
especially daring. Debuting just 10 years after
the end of WWII, audiences had never seen the
military lampooned so mercilessly, figures of
authority like Colonel Hall (a superb Paul Ford)
fleeced and flummoxed by a subordinate. And
although US TV networks, including Bilkos
home at CBS, strenuously denied there was
ever anything remotely resembling a colour
bar, it was rare to see such a racially integrated
cast as the platoon of squaddies.
As for Bilko himself, who would have thought
a borderline crook (albeit a silver-tongued one)
could become an instant hero with audiences?
Bilko set the template for small-screen wheelerdealers, from Private Walker in Dads Army to the
likes of Arthur Daley, Del Trotter and Timothy
Spalls short-lived Frank Stubbs. This is where
Silvers was key, his vaudeville background
helping him connect with the man in the cheap
seats; early episodes had him occasionally break
the fourth wall to speak directly to viewers,
making them co-conspirators, and his elastic
facial expressions were essential in driving
home the comedy of any given situation.
The fast pace and farcical elements of
vaudeville are evident in the breakneck speed
of the action, the scripts of creator Nat Hiken
(and a team of writers that included future
Broadway stalwart Neil Simon) noticeably
longer than standard sitcom fare a dense,
overwriting technique that John Cleese used
to equally brilliant effect in Fawlty Towers.
Such was the labour-intensive nature of 50s
US TV, The Phil Silvers Show notched up 142
episodes in four years, all of which can be found
in this 20-disc box, and theres hardly a duffer
among them. Sgt Bilko may not have triumphed
in every underhand scheme, but in terms of
comedy genius he more than earned his stripes.
EXTRAS: Lost footage, archive BBC doc, Silvers
8/10 chat show appearances, alternate
opening titles, commentaries. TERRY STAUNTON
DIGITAL EDITION AVAILABLE EVERY MONTH
DOWNLOAD NOW
www.uncut.co.uk/digital-edition
DONT
FORGET
TO RATE &
REVIEW!
UNCUT.CO.UK
ROCKING IN THE FREE WORLD

Roger McGuinn onstage
at the Passionskirche,
Berlin with his potted
plants and trusty guitars
SETLIST
FRANK HOENSCH/REDFERNS VIA GETTY IMAGES
1
2
3
4
5
My Back Pages
You Aint Goin Nowhere
Pretty Boy Floyd
Ballad Of Easy Rider
They Hung Him On
A Cross
6 5D (Fifth Dimension)
7 Mr Spaceman
8 Russian Hill
9 Dont You Write Her Off
10 The Grapes Of Wrath
11 Jolly Roger
12 Randy Dandy Oh
13 Knockin On Heavens
Door
14 So You Want To Be A
RocknRoll Star
15 An American Girl
16 King Of The Hill
17 Chestnut Mare
18 Beach Ball
19 You Showed Me
20 Mr Tambourine Man
21 Eight Miles High
ENCORE
22 Turn! Turn! Turn!
23 Leave Her Johnny,
Leave Her
ROGER MCGUINN
THE ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC, MANCHESTER,
NOVEMBER 7, 2014
A rock legends long, heroic yte from the music business.

Next stop, Manchester!
OGER McGUINN IS regaling

a packed house with an
anecdote about Bob Dylans
Rolling Thunder Revue.
Recalling the famous
Stateside jaunt of 1975-76, in which he
featured alongside the likes of Joni
Mitchell, Joan Baez, Ramblin Jack Elliott
and Mick Ronson, his fondest memories
are of the marathon four-hour gigs and
tour buses that rolled back and forth
like pirate ships. The story acts as a
prelude to Jolly Roger, a sea shanty
that fetched up, as a direct result, on
his subsequent solo album, Cardiff Rose.
Songs of the sea are a key source of
nourishment for McGuinn. The show
includes a fair smattering, dotted in
among more-celebrated tunes from
his illustrious days with The Byrds and
beyond. Even Dont You Write Her

Off, the gigs sole concession to 1979s
McGuinn, Clark & Hillman album,
made with two ex-Byrds, dives into
a sailing analogy.
Its all part of an overarching theme
to his professional life that offers a
refreshing alternative to the typical
model. As one of the first musicians
to map the potential of the internet,
McGuinn has been issuing online
product since the mid-90s, primarily
through his web page and as curator of
the music repository site, Folk Den.
Most intriguing, however, is the nature
of his touring operation. Not for him the
heavy-duty regimen of buses, backing
bands and roadies. Instead he plays
solo throughout the US and Europe,
travelling from city to city via
motorhome, train and the occasional

boat, in the company of his road
manager wife, Camilla.
All this is diarised in the couples
ongoing blog (http://rogermcguinn.
blogspot.com/), which places
McGuinns work into the context of
a wider travelogue. Its an interesting
paradox. On one hand, hes a direct
link to the oldest form of musical
entertainment: the wandering minstrel,
armed with suitcase and guitar, breezing
into town under his own steam. But this
autonomy can also be seen as something
thoroughly modern, a sustainable way
of living that isnt held accountable to a
record label. In the 80s I was on tour
with McGuinn, Clark & Hillman and
it wasnt very satisfying, he explains
later. Wed been flying around, running
trucks and everything, and I was tired of the band

experience. On the Rolling Thunder Revue,
Ramblin Jack had told me that the most fun he
ever had was when he threw the guitar in the back
of the Land Rover and went on the road with his
wife Polly, barnstorming around
the US. So I told Camilla that I
wanted to go solo from now on.
Not everyone is positioned to
do this, of course. As one of the
foremost figures of his era, a man
whose chiming Rickenbacker
came to embody the bold
possibilities of West Coast folkrock during his time with The
Byrds, McGuinns name still
carries a lot of clout. Hes
thankful, he says, for having
enough cachet to be able to
bypass the big promoters
entirely. Somebody offered us a
record deal a couple of years ago and we both went,
No! he grins, making the sign of the cross in
mock horror. Who do you think would get all the
money? Reaching for a Biblical reference, Camilla
likens this freedom from bondage to the Israelites
exodus from Egypt.
Their current tour is winding down after threeand-a-half months on the road. Its an itinerary
thats taken them from Belgium through to
Germany, Austria, the UK, Holland and back again
to Blighty for a final swing. The blog is stuffed
with informal accounts of inter-rail travel, balmy
beer gardens, broken escalators and historic
architecture, accompanied by Camillas artful
photos of Nuremberg, Cologne, Paris, London and

more. At some point we hope to take the blog and
put it all together in one collection, says Roger,
either electronically or physical print.
Its an informal approach that finds a mirror in
McGuinns stage show. This isnt a straight run at
the hits. Rather, its tied to another time-held folk
tradition: the storyteller. Each song is prefaced by
a pertinent yarn, almost all involving the kind of
casual namedropping thats
the preserve of true legends.
Dylan looms large. My Back
Pages and You Aint Goin
Nowhere, both elegantly
wrought Byrds numbers, raise
a chuckle as he recalls cocking
up the latter in 1968, prompting
Dylan to respond in fake outrage
by altering his lyric to Pack up
your money, put up your tent
McGuinn. Then theres the time
Peter Fonda gave Dylan a private
screening of the yet-to-bereleased Easy Rider, only for
Bob, unmoved, to scrawl a
couple of lines on a napkin and instruct him to
give it to McGuinn. Hell know what to do with it.
The result: Ballad Of Easy Rider. Later on we get
tales of Sam Peckinpah as a run-up to Knockin
On Heavens Door, McGuinns high-register voice,
delicately cracked at the edges these days,
imbuing the song with a plaintive air missing
from Dylans original.
This narrative aspect of McGuinns live show
works particularly well, though its something
hes refined and calibrated over the years. Its
become more autobiographical as Ive gone along,
he explains backstage. Pete Seeger was a big
influence. After he left The Weavers and went off
I always
wanted to be
like Pete Seeger,
telling stories
and singing
songs...
on his own, I was blown away by how wonderful

he was in concert. I kind of said to myself: Thats
what I want to do when I grow up. I really tried to
be a solo artist for many years, but found myself in
situations where that wasnt practical. But I really
always wanted to be like Pete, telling stories and
singing songs.
With all this going on, its easy to forget that
McGuinn is also a brilliant guitar player. The stage
set-up is simple a low stool, some potted plants,
two guitars, one acoustic, one Rickenbacker. The
bluegrass flurries of Woody Guthries Pretty Boy
Floyd are little short of dazzling. So You Want To
Be A RocknRoll Star is decanted so effortlessly,
all dashing chords and keening vocals, that you
wonder if The Byrds ever knew how great they truly
were. And Eight Miles High which has, he tells
us, grown from its Coltrane/Shankar origins to
accommodate a bit of Andrs Segovia, thrown
in just for fun is quite astonishing.
The lengthy preamble to Mr Tambourine Man,
meanwhile, finds him recounting how The Byrds
got together at the Troubadour, McGuinn meeting
Gene Clark and then this chubby little guy who
turned out to be David Crosby. Given that these
songs still mean so much to so many, and that
2015 will mark the bands 50th anniversary,
a Byrds reunion may seem like a logical step.
Crosby, certainly, has made no secret of the fact
that hed do it again in a heartbeat.
He may have a long wait, though: McGuinn is
having none of it. I understand it, he tells me
afterwards. But that would be going back, in
a way, to something thats not necessary. Camilla
and I really have a blast the way things are. Its like
a honeymoon. Im not afraid to talk about The
Byrds, I just dont want to be in The Byrds. As Paul
McCartney once said: You cant reheat a souffl.
ROB HUGHES
105
CAMILLA MCGUINN/MCGUINN.COM
Free Byrd: (c/wise

from above) McGuinn
in Berlin, travelling
the UK by train,
crossing the Thames,
and recording a radio
session in Belgium
Live
Andrew Fearn, left,
and Jason Williamson
working up a proper
head of steam
SLEAFORD MODS
100 CLUB, LONDON, OCTOBER 23, 2014
Which may be a
sshame although a
faintly intimidating
fa
figure, this is not
fi
just some bloke
ju
shouting abuse.
sh
Instead, his songs
In
are passionate and
ar
forensic, defining
fo
his position by
SETLIST
railing against its
the gesticulations
1 Middle Men
opposite. The Wage
of the hip-hop MC,
2 Jolly Fucker
Dont Fit attacks an
assume an intensity
employers shortquite their own.
3 A Little Ditty
termist mentality
Throughout, he runs
4 McFlurry
with passing swipes
his hands through
5 Jobseeker
at That speed freak
his hair part OCD,
6 Tied Up In Nottz
from The Kills/Jamie/
part expression of
7 Tiswas
Banal! Banal!.
inner rage.
8 Fizzy
Tonight, My
Whats strange,
Jampandy (chorus:
though, is that far
9 Routine Dean
The man is a
from being toxic, the
10 Donkey
wanker!) probably
atmosphere here is
11 The Corgi
does the job best. Here,
magnificent. True
12
My
Jampandy
over a thunderous
enough, compared
13 The Wage Dont Fit
beat, Williamson talks
to the support bands,
14 Pubic Hair Ltd
about his disdain for
Sleaford Mods sound
lad culture (That Ian
like Genesis, but the
15 Tweet Tweet Tweet
McCulloch terrace
energy apart from
bit), and getting a
during Tiswas,
latte in the French-style caf when
where someone appears to throw
out in the park, with his daughter
something is hugely positive.
in a pushchair.
Andrew Fearn, whose role onstage is
To be able to express that in a noisy
simply to nod along to the music and
room helps outline the Sleaford Mods
drink cans of Stella, seems key to this.
genius. Its not magical, but it makes
He radiates a genuinely good vibe,
compelling music from the details of
to the point where some quite drunk
how lives are really lived which has
person climbs onstage to give him
got to be good news for everyone who
a hug. No-one, it should be noted,
lives one. JOHN ROBINSON
goes near Jason Williamson.
2014s premier prole art threat. Wankers beware!
ROSS GILMORE/REDFERNS VIA GETTY IMAGES
NCE A VENUE for jazzers,

the 100 Club is now more
associated with rawer
expressions of musical
freedom. Since the punk
festival held there in 1976, its become
a statement venue, rich in heritage
for those who would wish to claim
by association some of punks
revolutionary energy. To suggest, in
fact, that something is happening here.
Tonights Sleaford Mods show, while
incredibly good, suggests nothing of
the kind. The place isnt rammed with
scenesters. Its not sold out. Nor is the
company especially desirable: the
band play after power electronics
bands, both heckled throughout
by a woman screaming wankers!
at them. Its not an especially
aspirational scene.
Which all suits this Nottingham
duo nicely. Without doubt the years
unlikeliest breakout band, the
fortysomething Mods have received
critical acclaim, essentially, for their
sheer negativity. Their music, a
combination of primitive beats
(supplied by Andrew Fearn) and
ranted raps (delivered by Jason
Williamson), essentially presents the

view from the high street.
Its not transformative, and it doesnt
make the ordinary extraordinary. In
songs like Jobseeker and Routine
Dean, it simply presents the interior
monologues of characters frustrated
by bureaucracy, and of self-loathing
fuelled by consumerism. Live,
the momentum generated by the
parade of short, aggressive songs is
impressive. The crowd all have their
favourite moments of bitter empathy,
to which they scream along.
Williamson, meanwhile, a muscular
performer, works up a proper head of
steam. His arm movements, beyond
This isnt just some

bloke shouting
abuse these are
passionate and
forensic songs
LIVE
TEL: 020 3148 2873 FAX: 020 3148 8160
LIVE
For tickets to any UK gigs, tours or festivals please call the 24-hour Uncut Ticketline on 0870 160 1600
LIVE
TEL: 020 3148 2873 FAX: 020 3148 8160
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TEL: 020 3148 2873 FAX: 020 3148 8160
TOM MARTIN/NME
NME.COM/TICKETS
WHISKEY ISNT THE ONLY LEGEND

IN THE HILLS OF LYNCHBURG.
Some say, under certain October moons, when Lynchburgs Ghost Mountain is set aglow like an infernal
flame, the Wyooter emerges from its lair. An aberration of legend: winged, tree-tall, dreadful of gaze,
noxious of breath, and thirsty for the souls of men. When the wind is just right, you can hear its
desperate wails in the desolate night. And while no man has ever met face-to-face with this legendary
creature, its legend looms larger and larger each year. Just be glad you dont have to venture into the
haunted hills of Lynchburg to fetch our famous whiskey for yourself. Happy Halloween from Jack Daniels.
Halloween is scary enough. Drink responsibly.

2014 Jack Daniels. All rights reserved. JACK DANIELS and OLD NO. 7 are registered trademarks.
ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDES

Essential
guides
to the most
inspirational
artists of
our time
Available to order online at uncut.co.uk/store

or download digitally at uncut.co.uk/download
ALL
ISSUES
AVAILABLE
NOW!
Books
Reviewed this month...
Different Every Time:

The Authorised
Biography Of Robert
Wyatt
Marcus ODair
Play On: Now, Then,

And Fleetwood Mac
Mick Fleetwood &
Anthony Bozza
SERPENTS TAIL
7/10
9/10
HODDER & STOUGHTON
Mick Fleetwood with

Peter Green, Jeremy
Spencer and John
McVie, 1968
anger in him. It was more that sort of melancholy

about him, which I think has always been there.
ODairs account of the last four decades of Wyatts
life, music and growing politicisation in the 1980s,
is detailed enough to exhaust the casual reader, but
fans will be deeply moved and wholly absorbed by
it, the books publication assuming even greater
poignancy by the coincidental announcement in
last months Uncut that Wyatt has stopped
making music, a loss only made bearable by the
albums he leaves us with.
About 200 pages into Play On, Mick Fleetwood
remembers arriving at Sausalitos Record Plant
studios to start work on the album that became
Rumours. It came complete, he writes, with two
custom limos to transport recording musicians
wherever they might want to go, a speedboat for
their use, and a conference room with a waterbed
floor. There were tanks of nitrous oxide on hand.
There was also a loft, accessible through a large
pair of lips, with a bed in it and audio jacks next
to the bed so that a vocalist could record their parts
while lying between the sheets.
Fleetwood Mac were there for nine weeks from
February 1976 and came away with no more than
some basic drum tracks, all that was salvageable
from two months of subsequently well-documented
emotional mayhem, personal misery, sobbing jags
and too much cocaine. The making of Rumours, of

course, is central to the soap opera that Fleetwood
Mac was at the time and it gets a pretty good
retelling here. Better still, however, are Fleetwoods
descriptions of the bands even earlier traumas.
There are long and moving passages about the
decline of guitarist and songwriter Peter Green, who
had put the group together before throwing it all
away during a tour of Germany in March 1970,
ending up on a commune with a group of German
hippies, his circuits blown by too much acid and
delusional religious fantasies. They subsequently
lost slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer to a religious cult
in Los Angeles and guitarist Danny Kirwan to
alcoholism. Another guitarist, Bob Weston, was
sacked after an affair with Fleetwoods wife, Jenny
Boyd, sister of Pattie.
Even if Fleetwood Macs music makes you want
to bite bark off a tree, youd have to say Fleetwood
seems from this account of his life an engaging and
entirely likeable fellow, everybodys mate, barely
a bad word to say about anyone apart from a
conniving former manager, although he is still
noticeably cool about the philandering Weston.
His generous affability, however, lends an odd
breeziness to his various accounts of breakdowns,
addiction, destructive egos, and the long-running,
much-troubled saga of his first marriage, which
seems at times frankly interminable. ALLAN JONES
117
KEYSTONE
OR ROBERT WYATT biographer Marcus

ODair, Wyatts life can be split in two
distinct halves, like the sides of an old
vinyl album. Side One of Different Every
Time therefore covers the years from
Wyatts birth in 1945 to the accident in 1973 that left
him at the age of 28 paralysed from the waist down,
a paraplegic, in a wheelchair. Side Two continues
the story into the new life he created for himself with
the astonishing support of wife Alfie, who became
his manager, carer and collaborator.
At first glance, Wyatts childhood was as idyllic as
he claims, carefree, happy and bohemian, although
for the first six years of it his father, George Ellidge,
remained married to his first wife and was largely
absent, Robert growing up with his mother and her
two children by a previous marriage. George, a jazz
fan who passed on his enthusiasm to his son, was
subsequently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the
family moving into a dilapidated Georgian manor
house in Kent, Wellington House, fabled hotbed of
the Canterbury Scene. Wyatt describes these years
as largely blissful, despite his fathers degenerative
illness, although over the Christmas of 1961, there
was a suicide attempt, Wyatts overwhelming sense
of failure perhaps early evidence of the melancholic
fatalism that would later manifest itself in periods
of grim depression.
As much as Pink Floyd, Soft Machine became
darlings of the London underground scene of the
mid-60s, toured America with Jimi Hendrix,
Wyatt enjoying the attendant debauchery He
and Noel Redding basically shagged their way
across America, remembers first wife Pam Howard
more than the rest of the band. Original bass
player Kevin Ayers left, allowing them to develop
their increasingly complex instrumental music, a
direction that eventually saw Wyatt estranged from
the group hed formed. By then, we simply couldnt
stand him, Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper
rather brutally remarked, looking back at Wyatts
enforced departure from the band in late 1971.
Following the collapse of his post-Soft Machine
band, Matching Mole, in September 1972, Wyatts
drinking, already prodigious, became totally
self-destructive. By the time he fell out of a window
during a party in a Maida Vale flat in June 1, 1973,
he was an accident waiting to happen.
For Wyatt, what happened was fantastically
liberating, the beginning of a new career that
began with 1974s Rock Bottom. It seemed to me he
almost embraced it, says Brian Eno, whose droll
commentary is a highlight of this excellent book,
considering the accident. I never saw any sense of
OBITUARIES
Not Fade Away

Fondly remembered this month
MARK BELL
Mark Bell,
2003
LFO founder and Bjrk producer

1971-2014
TS DOUBTFUL WHETHER the teenage Mark Bell, messing around

with drum machines with Yorkshire schoolmate Gez Varley, tapping
away at them like they were arcade games, making tapes to play for
our mates, foresaw the impact of his early musical experiments. One
of them, LFO, fell into the hands of producer and club DJ Martin
Williams, who swiftly discovered that it sent the dancefloor crazy. LFO
also served as the name under which Bell and Varley recorded, with their
throbbing techno taking its place at the forefront of the intelligent new
wave of electronica that became known as IDM. In 1990, LFO (short
for low-frequency oscillator) was issued as a single by the emerging Warp
label. It promptly shot to No 12 in the UK. Well-received debut album
Frequencies landed the following year, alongside a less successful 45,
We Are Back.
Varley quit to form Feedback after 1996s second offering, Advance,
leaving Bell to steer LFO as a solo project. By then hed already sent a
cassette of LFO tunes to Bjrk, with the intention of a possible collaboration.
The Icelandic singer duly enlisted Bell for Possibly Maybe on her Post
remix album, Telegram. It was the beginning of a professional relationship
that saw him serve on all of Bjrks subsequent studio albums (either as
co-producer, co-writer, programmer or mixer), from 1997s Homogenic
to 2011s Biophilia. He was also involved in two major Bjrk tours and
can be seen, floating in mid-air with a giant loom-like bass guitar, in the
Michel Gondry-directed video for Declare Independence. Another
high-profile hook-up came in between, when Bell produced Depeche
Modes Exciter.
Paying tribute to Bell, who has died after complications from surgery,
Bjrk wrote on Facebook: May your hypersensitive nature blossom fine.
And wherever youre at, hope youve got good speakers.
hooking up again with Young for

2005s Prairie Wind and on through
to Fork In The Road (2009). The next
couple of years saw him fill in for
the late Bruce Palmer on Buffalo
Springfields reunion dates. While
playing with Pegi Young & The
Survivors this summer, Rosas also
stepped in for Crazy Horses
European tour, replacing stroke
victim Billy Talbot. His other credits
include Jerry Lee Lewis, Etta James
and Ron Wood.
ANTHONY PIDGEON/REDFERNS; FRAZER WALLER/PYMCA/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Rick Rosas onstage

at the Hardly Strictly
Bluegrass Festival,
San Francisco, 2008
ISAIAH IKEY
OWENS
Mars Volta/Jack White keyboardist
RICK ROSAS
Neil Young/CSNY bassist
1949-2014
As one of the most in-demand
figures of his generation, Rick
Rosas holds the distinction of being
the only bassist to have played with
Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse
1974-2014
and CSNY. His association with Neil
Young stretched back to 1987, when
the pair met at Farm Aid. Rosas,
then a member of Joe Walshs band,
was invited to be a part of Youngs
latest combo, The Bluenotes.
He went on to feature on the
Eldorado EP and landmark
album Freedom. Rosas returned
to Walsh in the early 90s, before
The premature demise of Ikey

Owens, who suffered a heart attack
during the Mexican leg of Jack
Whites tour, has robbed the music
world of one of its most gifted and
prolific keyboard players. Hed
been with White since 2012, serving
on the Blunderbuss world tour.
More recently hed played on
follow-up, Lazaretto, and was

supposedly prepping a solo album,
recorded in Nashville. Owens had
made his name alongside Cedric
Bixler-Zavala and Omar RodrguezLpez as a member of The Mars
Volta. It was a tenure that lasted
from 2003 debut De-Loused In The
Comatorium to The Bedlam In
Goliath (2008), though he remained
as a touring player until 2011. He
also recorded solo as Free Moral
Agents and collaborated with a
dizzying list of admirers that
numbered TV On The Radios
Dave Sitek, Mastodon, Crystal
Antlers, Prefuse 73 and Shuggie
Otis. Onstage in Detroit, Pearl
Jams Eddie Vedder dedicated
Light Years to Owens memory.
JOHN HOLT
Reggae singer and songwriter
1947-2014
The key to John Holts longevity was
his capacity to move with the times.
Over a career that lasted half a
OBITUARIES
ALVIN STARDUST
Glam and rocknroll singer
1942-2014
ERNARD JEWRY HAD a curious habit of being in

the right place at the right time. In the early 60s
Shane Fenton And The Fentones were due to
audition for the BBC when their singer, Johnny
Theakston, died from rheumatic fever. Theakstons
mother asked Jewry, the bands roadie, to take his place. The
new Shane Fenton went on to lead the group through a spurt
of hits for Parlophone, the most successful being Cindys
Birthday. But Jewry blew a major opportunity when he
turned down Brian Epsteins invitation to record Do You
Want To Know A Secret?. Billy J Kramer soon took it to No 1.
The rest of the decade was spent amid the relative
anonymity of the club scene. It wasnt until 1973, through
songwriter Peter Shelley, that his second chance arrived.
Shelley had written and recorded My Coo Ca Choo as
Alvin Stardust, ostensibly to promote his new Magnet
label, but panicked when Top Of The Pops came calling.
Ex-Fentones manager Hal Carter suggested Jewry, who
swiftly adopted the persona, complete with black leather
gear, monstrous sideburns and trademark leather gloves.
Stardusts tongue-in-cheek machismo struck a chord with
the public. The tune was the first of several major hits,
alongside Jealous Mind, Red Dress and You You You.
Having again faded from view, the 80s saw an unlikely chart
return with Pretend and I Feel Like Buddy Holly. At the
time of his death, he was readying his first album in 30 years.
century, the Jamaican singer made

the successful transition from
rocksteady to reggae to dancehall.
His voice was a contributing factor,
helping broaden reggaes appeal
in the early 70s via albums that
combined string arrangements
with his silky tenor. The most
popular was 1974s covers set, 1000
Volts Of Holt, which spawned a UK
Top 10 hit with Kris Kristoffersons
Help Me Make It Through The
Night. He began his solo career in
1963, cutting sides for Leslie Kong
and Vincent Randy Chin, before
joining quartet The Paragons.
From the mid-60s onwards they
scored a number of rocksteady hits
for producer Duke Reid. Chief
among them were Ali Baba,
I See Your Face and Holts
own The Tide Is High, later
a global smash for Blondie.
The 80s saw him embrace
dancehall (Fat She Fat) and
address social issues (Police
In Helicopter).
trad-jazz boom. 1960s debut hit,

Summer Set, kicked off a run of
nine Top 30 singles in three years.
By far the most successful was
Stranger On The Shore, initially
written for his daughter Jenny, but
co-opted as the titular theme for a
BBC TV drama. Bilks arrangement,
backed by the Leon Young String
Chorale, hung around the UK
charts for 55 weeks. It also made
him only the second British artist
(after Vera Lynn) to top the US
listings. After largely sticking to the
cabaret circuit, he re-emerged in
1976 with another major hit, Aria.
In later times he appeared on a trio
of Van Morrison albums: Down The
ACKER BILK
Clarinettist, vocalist
and bandleader
1929-2014
Acker Bilk claimed that his
distinctive clarinet style was the
result of losing two teeth and
half a finger as a child. It was a
vibrato-heavy sound that found
a perfect home in the post-war
Acker Bilk at
the peak of his
fame in the
early 60s
Alvin
Stardust,
1973
Road, Whats Wrong With This

Picture? and Born To Sing: No Plan B.
the most prominent being 1990s

The Complete Saxophone Player.
RAPHAEL
RAVENSCROFT
STYLE SCOTT
Session saxophonist
Reggae/dub drummer
1956-2014
1954-2014
His association with Gerry Rafferty
spanned three albums between
1977 and 1980, but Raphael
Ravenscroft will forever be
remembered for his inimitable
sax riff on Baker Street. The
international mega-hit gave
Rafferty a reputed yearly income
of 80,000 in royalties. For
Ravenscroft however, a
sessioneer working under
Musicians Union rates, his
reward was a one-off payday of
27.50. Not that it appeared to
bother him at all. He was more
irritated by the fact that, to his
ears, his famous solo was
slightly out of tune. Aside from
Rafferty, he recorded and
performed with Pink Floyd,
Marvin Gaye, America, Kim
Carnes, Mike Oldfield, Robert
Plant, Hazel OConnor and,
more recently, Duffy and Daft
Punk. In 1979 he issued a solo
LP, Her Father Didnt Like Me
Anyway, and co-wrote the
theme of revamped TV soap
Crossroads eight years later.
Ravenscroft was also the author
of several musical tuition books,
The Roots Radics were arguably

reggaes most influential backing
band of the late 70s and 80s.
Comprising bass player Errol
Flabba Holt, guitarists Eric Bingy
Bunny Lamont and Noel Sowell
Bailey, keyboardist Wycliffe
Steely Johnson and drummer
Lincoln Style Scott, the group
helped forge the path from roots
to dancehall. They played on key
recordings by Barrington Levy,
Bunny Wailer, Israel Vibration
and Gregory Isaacs, including the
latters signal albums Night Nurse
and Out Deh!. Scott, who was
shot dead at home in Jamaica,
began in the Jamaica Military
Band before joining The Roots
Radics in 1978. Around the same
time, while backing Prince Far I
during a tour of the UK, he met
producer Adrian Sherwood. This
led to appearances on a couple
of African Head Charge LPs, before
Scott became a full-time member
of Sherwoods experimental Dub
Syndicate in 1982. The following
decade he started his own Lion &
Roots label, primarily as an outlet
for Dub Syndicate material.
ROB HUGHES
119
LETTERS
Feedback
Email [email protected] or write to: Uncut Feedback, 8th Floor, Blue Fin Building,
110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU. Or tweet us at twitter.com/uncutmagazine
SPEEDED-UP VOCALS!
FREE JAZZ! KAZOOS!
The news of Robert Wyatts
withdrawal from music is really
sad [Uncut 211], but is a chance to
celebrate five decades of consistent
brilliance. Robert is one of the truly
irreplaceable originals. Hell be
missed. One can only hope that
Roberts health improves and that
he and Alfie have a long and happy
future together. If he decides
eventually to return to the studio,
what a bonus that will be.
In the meantime, what a collection
of work we have to savour. Needless
to say, Rock Bottom stands out as
one of modern musics great
masterpieces. To quote a reviewer on
its re-release, I envy anyone who is
about to hear it for the first time. But
just a few quibbles with regard to
your Album By Album feature.
Why The Soft Machine instead of
the infinitely superior, wonderful
Volume Two? And why Matching
Mole instead of Little Red Record?
Can I also put a word in for The End
Of An Ear, which always seems to
be regarded as the runt of the litter?
Speeded-up wordless vocals, free
jazz, clattering percussion kazoos!
Sounds unpromising? What you
get is a warm, playful, immersive
experience and I love it. Time for
reassessment, please.
I look forward to reading the great
mans biography and hope there
are a few more chapters yet to be
written. Rarely has the tired old
clich national treasure been
so appropriate.
Charles Lambert, via email
GIVE OUT (TICKETS)

BUT DONT GIVE UP
The recent appalling news of the
death of Robert Throb Young set
me thinking of an encounter I once
had with him which predated most
of the Primal Scream mythology
and bore no relation to it; it was an
encounter which told of an open,
generous spirit.
It was November 1987 and I was
in Glasgows Griffin pub with my
friend Terry. Teenagers in thrall to
the independent (not indie, please)
scene which still had a toehold
in the city, we spied his newly
acquired but already distinctive
mane on the far side of the bar.
Pre-Screamadelica, he may still
have been comparatively unknown,
but we were sure we recognised him
True original,
Robert Wyatt
in thinking that he has been on the

front of Uncut on more occasions
than the entire female sisterhood of
rocknroll? I think there have been
about four or five female cover stars
in your history and I am probably
being generous by including
Fleetwood Mac. Its really not
acceptable, you know. Otherwise,
I like your fine publication.
Alistair Littlejohn, Edinburgh
WELL RESPECTED
KINKS?
and boldly requested an autograph

following confirmation. He asked if
we had tickets for a BBC recording
the Scream were doing a few days
later, and we lamented our inability
to secure any. His reply? Youse are
going to get tickets. He disappeared
and returned with them a minute
later, enabling us to make our way
to Queen Margaret Drive for the
recording of the now largelyforgotten, but nevertheless on
YouTube, FSD, which was shown
(in Scotland only, I believe) the
following summer.
My favourite memory is the song
that was never shown a cover
of The Stooges Loose, which
wasnt an obvious move at the
time, with Rickenbacker-wielding
James Beattie still in the lineup,
but in hindsight hinted at their
future. They followed it with
Gentle Tuesday, but then had
to stop for around 20 minutes
while the confetti shower which
announced it rightly deemed
a fire hazard was cleared up.
RIP RY. This is how you should
be remembered.
Paul Gallagher, via email
NO NEED TO ARGUE!
As I much enjoyed all the old rocker
gaff in the December issue, namely
a Neil Young review, a Big Star piece,
the Robert Wyatt overview and the
Bob Dylan spread, I was somewhat
disappointed with the clickbait
nature of the Bonnie Prince Billy
piece on the last page, this being the
real reason I purchased your issue.
This was certainly nothing more
than Will Oldham taking the
mickey, and Uncut in cahoots
probably he never mentions The
Cranberries in the excellent booklength interview by Alan Licht, for
example. So not only was your
Bonnie Prince Billy piece
relegated to one page, it was also
mostly nonsense. If Oldham wishes
to make good on his desire to
become a comedian, perhaps he
should actually write some funny
jokes and join the club circuit.
Blair Reeve, via email
I have just received my
subscription copy of Decembers
edition and find Bob Dylan on the
cover again. I have nothing against
his Bobness, but would I be correct
The Kinks made five 10/10 albums

Face To Face (1966), Something Else
(1967), The Kinks Are The Village
Green Preservation Society (1968),
Lola Vs Powerman (1970), Muswell
Hillbillies (1971). The writers in your
magazine have no problem when it
comes to celebrating other bands
from the same era, and to calling
their albums classics and
masterpieces but that never
happens with The Kinks. You seem
to have a problem understanding
how good these albums are I
think its a bit embarrassing.
Lately, its been Lola Vs
Powerman which got 7/10 in the
October issue. Before that, it was
Muswell Hillbillies. Your writers are
obviously not sensitive and
intelligent enough to understand
a masterpiece when they hear it.
I love your magazine, but Im getting
really tired that these Kinks albums
never get the same respect as, for
example, Beatles, Stones and
Who classics.
Mashed And Anonymous, via email
I CANT BE
SATISFIED
So the ever-expanding Stones
back catalogue has been added to
by yet another two superfluous,
and no doubt expensive, live DVD
boxsets from 1975 and 1981, has it?
Pardon me if I dont appear too
excited by this news. Given the
impending 50th anniversary on
January 15, 2015 of The Rolling
Stones No 2, would it be too much
to hope for the CD release of their
first two British albums? As, in
chart terms, they are still far and
away The Rolling Stones most
successful LPs (12 and 10 weeks
at No 1, respectively), some
might consider their standing
in the groups career a tad
more important.
Sean Perrott, Walthamstow
CROSSWORD
Not strictly feedback, but you may
be interested. At Oxford University
in the 60s, the big way to celebrate
the completion of your degree and
three years at the university was
to go to one of the colleges
Commemoration Balls. In 1964, the
word on the music grapevine was to
get to the Magdalen College Ball. The
big draw had been advertised as
Freddie And The Dreamers, but the
eventual lineup offered plenty
more, with a clue being given by the
police cordon around the college
entrance keeping the crowds back.
Musically, a total of 10 bands kept
us entertained during the night. In
the Cloisters Night Club we could
dance and smooch to Tomaso Y
Latinos and the Mellotones. The Jazz
Marquee offered three sets each by
Johnny Dankworth and Tubby
Hayes and their bands. The
Ballroom gave us Ian Stewart and
his Orchestra and, incredibly, John
Mayall & The Bluesbreakers. Much
of the action, and anticipation, was
however focused on the Cabaret
Marquee. Here the lineup was the
Falling Leaves (Oxfords top RnB
band of the time), Freddie And The
Dreamers, John Lee Hooker and
three sets by The Rolling Stones.
The lovely Vivien and I were
working our way through the
chicken and ham salad when all
conversation was drowned out by
the unmistakable, deafening and
hypnotic riff of Bo Diddleys Mona.
It could only mean one thing the
Stones were in action. We rushed
down to the marquee and found
ourselves just feet from the stage. For
reasons we can only guess at, Keith
was not in a state to play lead guitar
and Brian Jones had been promoted
from rhythm. Why dont we hear
more about what a great guitarist he
was? Bill was impassive and Charlie
unusually lively. Mick tried to wind
up the audience with comments
about wealthy toff thickos, but soon
gave up. Mona lasted the best
part of 20 minutes they were
thankfully unable or unwilling
to get out of the groove of those
repeated diminuendos followed by
a crashing return to full volume. An
awesome musical experience which
I rate among the best of over 50 years
listening to live music.
Geoff Bush, via email
IS IT TOO LATE FOR

ME TO GET OUT A
BIT MORE?
Herman Lansink Rotgerink asks
[Feedback,Uncut 210] Who on this
planet knows the name of Peter and
Robin Sarstedts brother? Well, I do.
I also know that Robin Sarstedts
name is actually Clive. Im 54; is it
too late for me to get out a bit more?
Simon Betts, Leicester
One copy of
Neil Youngs new
album, Storytone
TAKE 212 | JANUARY 2015

4
EDITOR John Mulvey

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michael Bonner
ASSOCIATE EDITOR John Robinson
ART EDITOR Marc Jones
SENIOR DESIGNER Michael Chapman
PRODUCTION EDITOR Mick Meikleham
SUB EDITOR/WRITER Tom Pinnock
PICTURE RESEARCHER Phil King
EDITOR AT LARGE Allan Jones
10
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COVER PHOTO: Jeff Chiu/AP/Press Association

PHOTOGRAPHERS: Gered Mankowitz, Ed Miles,
Jo McCaughey, Bill Ellison, Ross Halfin,
Chuck Boyd, Shamil Tanna, Pieter M Van Hattem
THANKS THIS ISSUE: Adrian Callaghan (picture
research), Vikki Baker, Matthew Clewley,
Zoe Black, Mark Golley, Bonnie Levetin
28
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CONTRIBUTORS Jason Anderson, Ben

Beaumont-Thomas, Tom Charity, Leonie
Cooper, Jon Dale, Stephen Dalton, Andy Gill,
Nick Hasted, Mick Houghton, Rob Hughes,
Trevor Hungerford, John Lewis, Damien Love,
Alastair McKay, Geoffrey Macnab, Gavin
Martin, Piers Martin, Andrew Mueller, Garry
Mulholland, Sharon OConnell, Louis Pattison,
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Romney, Bud Scoppa, Peter Shapiro, Hazel
Sheffield, Laura Snapes, Neil Spencer, Terry
Staunton, Fiona Sturges, Graeme Thomson,
Luke Torn, Stephen Trouss, Jaan Uhelszki,
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Williams, Nigel Williamson, Jim Wirth,
Damon Wise, Rob Young
31
DISPLAY ADVERTISING
HOW TO ENTER
The letters in the shaded squares form an anagram of a song by Neil Young. When youve
worked out what it is, send your answer to: Uncut January 2015 Xword Comp, 8th floor,
Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 0SU. The first correct entry picked at
random will win a prize. Closing date: Monday, December 29, 2014. This competition is
only open to European residents.
CLUES ACROSS
CLUES DOWN
1 Continual moving waters, but still Waters

not there (3-7-5)
9 Did you ever see a woman coming out of
___ ____ ____ with a frog in her hand, 1975
(3-4- 4)
10 King Crimson album, and what crimson is
(3)
11 (See 18 down)
12+16D Ive nothing much to offer, theres
nothing much to take, 1986 (8-9)
14 Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a
midnight _____, Leonard Cohen (5)
15 Formed by Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty
in 1988 (3)
17 Staying motionless and silent to Joy
Division music (5)
18 (See 25 down)
19 Become tired of albums by James Taylor
and Yello (4)
20+21A Ardent admirer of keyboards used
on album by Creation band Silverfish (5-3)
23 Without any requirement of a number by
indie band Alfie (2-4)
24 Two Door Cinema Club number not
entirely sung (3)
25 One of the 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover
proposed by Paul Simon (3)
27 Take cover off REM album (6)
29 Change of heart by Black Sabbath for their
original name (5)
30 A bit of embellishment on one of the Bad
Seeds (5)
31 The Moody Blues found themselves On
The Threshold Of A _____ (5)
1 One clot turns up for a rapper (4-3)

2 His albums include Gorgeous George
and Understated (5-7)
3 Without any alternative, Gene Clark
released this album (2-5)
4+17D Now you dont seem so proud about
having to be scrounging for your next meal,
1965 (4-1-7-5)
5 (See 22 down)
6+26D Corals May arrangements are altered
to take in some Steely Dan music (5-4)
7 The actual articles on indie band that
released The Bushes Scream While My
Daddy Prunes (4-6)
8 They came from Nowhere in 1990 (4)
13 Unable to see either The Sundays or Icicle
Works performing their albums (5)
16 (See 12 across)
17 (See 4 down)
18+11A Theres a price to pay for getting fed
up with Green On Red (2-4-5)
22+5D Heavenly situation for Peter Greens
album (2-3-5)
25+18A Glaswegians who took A Walk Across
The Rooftops (4-4)
26 (See 6 down)
28 Editors album, An ___ Has A Start (3)
ANSWERS: TAKE 210

ACROSS
1+20D Give My Love To

London, 7 LA, 10 Adventure,
11 Blood, 12 Tell Her No, 14
Choke, 16 New, 17 TOS, 18
Lovefool, 19+34A Del Amitri,
22 Freedom, 24 Rain, 25 Code
Red, 28 Yes, 29+21A Tender

Prey, 31 Eden,33 Adele, 35
Mogg, 36 YMCA.
DOWN
1 Giant Steps, 2 Viva Las

Vegas, 3 Manchild, 4+24D
Lou Reed, 5 Veedon Fleece,
6 Tobacco Road, 8 Andrew,
9 Moron, 13 River Man,

15 Kele, 23 Anthem,
26 Orbit, 27 Emery, 30 Drag,
32 Dim.
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XWORD COMPILED BY:
TrevorHungerford
121
MY LIFE IN MUSIC
Michael Gira
Jim Morrisons sex slave? Nina Simones bootlicker?
The Swans frontman confesses his musical passions
The first non-rock
record to blow me away
My favourite Nico album
Lamas And Monks
Desertshore 1970
Tibetan Ritual Music 1967

In 1973 or 74, I was living in California, in
this closet I was renting from an English lady.
She used to play me lots of records that Id
never heard before. On this, theres very low chanting and they play gongs
and blow these terrifying six-foot trumpets. This goes to a very, very deep
kind of place. Its very beautiful, its fragile and elemental, and it takes you
to the place you need to be.
The whole album is beautiful, actually

incredible. John Cales arranging on it is
astounding its little pieces of cinema. People
have this disparaging view of Nico as a singer,
and I guess theyre only familiar with the first Velvets album, as her singing
is impeccable here. Its very cold and very emotional simultaneously, as
she was as a person Janitor Of Lunacy is spine-tingling. When stuff is
that dark, it doesnt really depress me, it kind of lifts me.
A song from a
transporting album
A record Ive
rediscovered
The Doors
Led Zeppelin
The Crystal Ship 1967
Kashmir 1975
My brethren were starting to take acid listening

to The Doors debut as it came out, and at 13
I got it I might have taken acid when I was
12. The Crystal Ship is just an absolutely beautiful piece of music. My
wife has found an a cappella version online, which is just unbelievably
beautiful. If I was gay, Id be Jim Morrisons sex slave. At the time, when it
was completely fresh and new, it was really a transporting experience.
In my youth I had the first four albums, but

lately, my wife has been devouring Led
Zeppelin. And I realised, How fucking good
are they? Its impossible to deny. If you listen to Kashmir very loud, its
just unbelievable. Jimmy Pages guitar is lyrical and soulful, just beautiful. I
dont understand what Robert Plant is saying, though I suppose thats a good
thing. I dont know the lyrics I think theyre about hobbits or something.
A canon thats always

inspired Swans
A mind-blowing
Krautrock song
Howlin Wolf
Popol Vuh
Smokestack Lightning 2011
Wehe Khorazin 1981
This is a wonderful boxset, it contains pretty

much everything worth getting. I mustve
heard the Wolf in the 60s, but the person that
first made me aware of him was our first drummer in Swans, Jonathan
Kane. The blues in Howlin Wolf was primal and undeniable and I dont
think its possible to replicate if youre white. But it inspired us in our early
days. I put it on when Im depressed and it kind of helps.
INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK. PHOTO: MATIAS CORRAL
Nico
This opens an album, Sei Still, Wisse Ich Bin,

thats the soundtrack to a short film Florian
Fricke made. This piece sounds like Gregorian
mixed with Eastern music. Its beautifully arranged, just a stunning piece
of very I almost said pompous, but its not pompous in the least, its very
grand. Fricke is one of the unsung heroes of Krautrock this is about as
mystic as you can get, but its not corny in the least, its really beautiful.
A cover version by
a true individual
An album by an idol
Nina Simone
Suicide 1977
Suicide
Strange Fruit 1965

Her rendition is probably superior to Billie
Holidays. It just has so much resignation,
bitterness and anger, and you can smell the
rotting corpses when she sings it. The way that Nina sings is unparalleled
in popular music. She inhabits a song in a truly stellar fashion. If given the
chance, Id hire myself out to her as the person who licks her boots clean
every night. She was just such a strong, spiritual person, a total individual.
This is a beautiful jewel placed in modern

culture that deserves to be there forever. I saw
Suicide in Los Angeles in 78. The stage was
level with the audience, and these LA punks
were spitting directly into Alan Vegas face while he was singing. And hes
saying, Thank you very much. Early Swans were influenced by Kraftwerk
or Suicide or Throbbing Gristle as much as any rock music. If I ever had an
idol, I guess Alan Vega would have been it in the early days.
Swans To Be Kind is out now on Mute. They play Drill festival in Brighton (Dec 4-7), Nottingham Rescue Rooms (8) and London Roundhouse (May 21, 2015)
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Life is full of strange delights/And in the darkness we find lights/To make our way back home again

AC/DC: Its always been do or die! 40

Reunions? I dont want

LEE BAINS III

22 Albums Of The Year

33 Reissues Of The Year

T SOME POINT in October, I started receiving emails from record labels

96 Film & DVD

118 Not Fade Away

122 My Life In Music

John Mulvey, Editor. Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey

COVER: JEFF CHIU/AP/PRESS ASSOCIATION

4 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

JACK BRUCE | 1943-2014

FIRST MET Jack when I was a poet in the

songs were by Jack and myself, with the possible

JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

JACK BRUCE remembered by his

Pink Floyd fans

ROB VERHORST/REDFERNS; REX FEATURES

Jack Bruce, left, with

iit might have been the

6 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

ODDY HOLDER REMEMBERS Slades

were throwing that history and heritage away.

The New Album

Free Super Saver Delivery and Unlimited One-Day

Their journey took them from the

Were bridging 100

SARAH LAW FOR THE 78 PROJECT

N APRIL 2010, the New York-based filmmaker

FROM THE MAKERS OF

INTO THE VALLEY!

HE FLYER PROMISED free

The Deeply Vale

5, when the Boss

ON THE STEREO THIS MONTH

WERE NEW HERE

Lee Bains III

w, I got nervous writing all these

Lee Bains III

12 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

Mike Scotts latest musical

The Animal Collectives most

Interview: Michael Bonner

DENNIS COFFIN; BEN STANSALL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

14 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

are now with agencies, but not the

Page, left (circa

Zeppelin remasters finished, for all

Ill be playing guitar. That we

Nobody had done

Everything You Need Babe.

sold rrecords. Its just like you see

DENNIS COFFIN; PAUL REDMOND/WIREIMAGE

16 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015