Home//UNCUT/August 2024/In This Issue
UNCUT|August 2024New king at NewportIT’S a festival scene, but an unfamiliar one. There’s no security presence. No VIP reception area or ostentatious backstage passes. No food stalls apart from an ice cream truck. Instead, there’s an abundance of lush green grass, and an air of calm. In fact, the only element of this picture you may recognise is the person at the centre of the photograph: singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, 24. The shot is one of several unassuming but important music images by the American photographer Edward Grazda. In 1964, after graduating high school, Grazda was working in his father’s office in New York when he and a co-worker – both Dylan fans – decided to make an unplanned visit to that year’s Newport Folk Festival. Grazda took his camera, and a single roll of…3 min
UNCUT|August 2024Jacken ElswythJACKEN Elswyth was always likely to be an alternative folk musician. Until recently, her parents were members of the band Sproatly Smith, at the centre of Herefordshire’s ‘Weirdshire’ folk scene; they’re also the two guests joining Elswyth on her new album, At Fargrounds. “It’s not exactly a standard narrative,” she smiles. “My parents aren’t old folkies who sang in folk clubs while I was young. We’re both approaching folk from a slightly oblique angle and doing something a bit strange with it. But it does mean that there is a connection there to the image of traditional song being something inter-generational.” Elswyth started out making drone-based guitar improvisations as a teenager but stopped performing for several years owing to full-time commitment to a doctorate in anthropology at Sussex University. “I…3 min
UNCUT|August 2024MIKE CAMPBELL“The songs I’m feeling right now, they want that raw energy” “THIS is my man cave,” says Mike Campbell, showing Uncut around his home studio. He’s being a little modest – not many man caves have hosted the likes of Tom Petty, Del Shannon and Roy Orbison, although the place he calls Hocus Pocus Recorders retains Campbell’s very personal sense of charming chaos. “Here’s my piano, signed by Little Richard,” he says, swinging the camera around. “This is the drum room, all set up and ready to go. Rickenbacker bass there in the background. Guitars everywhere, of course. It’s great for somebody like me who’s always writing. If I want to record, I don’t have to worry about setting up the mics – I just turn ’em on and go.…8 min
UNCUT|August 2024GEORGIA PEACHESJake Xerxes Fussell PARADISE OF BACHELORS, 2015 Fussell initially came to PoB’s attention with a proposal for a compilation of Choctaw fiddle music that grew out of his college folklore studies. But blown away by his own playing, they hooked him up with William Tyler to make a startlingly fresh collection of ancient folk blues. 8/10 What In The Natural World PARADISE OF BACHELORS, 2017 On his second album, JXF spread his wings, expanding from the confines of Southern traditional music to cover tunes by Duke Ellington, Jimmy Driftwood and – oblivious to the existence of The Byrds’ take – a version of “Bells Of Rhymney”. 8/10 Good And Green Again PARADISE OF BACHELORS, 2022 Fussell hooked up with English fingerpicker James Elkington and secured a guest spot from Bonnie…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024DEEP PURPLESTILL boasting three members of their classic Mark II lineup, Deep Purple are proving by far the most durable of British rock’s early-’70s behemoths. On their 23rd studio album, =1, they reprise the classic Purple sound, centred around an imitable guitar-organ blend now driven by Don Airey, who replaced the late Jon Lord in 2002. “He was Jon Lord’s biggest fan,” says founding drummer Ian Paice. “Without Jon, he might have still been studying classical piano.” Meanwhile, Belfast guitarist Simon McBride, who replaced American Steve Morse in 2022, is credited with adding punch to the new album’s sound. “American guitarists have a groove,” Paice reasons. “British guitarists are great at riffs.” As for the curious titles of both the album and galloping lead single “Portable Door”, Paice grins: “Only Ian…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024AMERICAN AQUARIUMThe Fear Of Standing Still THIRTY TIGERS 7/10 A DECADE or so after the Jason Isbell-produced Burn. Flicker. Die, initially conceived as the rowdy resignation letter of a band in perpetual crisis, American Aquarium sound more vital than at any point in their career. The Fear Of Standing Still is the kind of studio effort that aims to reflect the intensity of their live shows, an opportunity, as frontman and songwriter BJ Barham puts it, “to showcase how big and anthemic we can be”. The Southern six-piece return to producer Shooter Jennings – overseer of 2020’s decent-selling Lamentations – to help render the noise. They start smartly enough, the whole band leaning into the cowpunk-ish “Crier”, guitarist Shane Boeker peeling off into a howling, heroic solo. The song finds a…2 min
UNCUT|August 2024MABE FRATTISentir Que No Sabes UNHEARD OF HOPE 8/10 NOBODY can make a cello honk, slither, twang and gurgle like Mabe Fratti. In just a few short years, the prolific Guatemala-born, Mexico City-based musician, singer and composer has built an impressive international profile in experimental pop circles. Sentir Que No Sabes (which translates as “Feel Like You Don’t Know”) is her fourth album under her own name since 2020. Last year, she also released an album as half of Titanic, a jazzy avant-chanson duo project with her musical and life partner Hector Tosta (aka I La Católica), and another with the improvisational quartet Amor Muere. The 32-year-old Fratti has also worked with a promiscuous gallery of collaborators, from Berlin post-punk legend Gudrun Gut to Danish indie-rockers Efterklang, British post-folk singer Ben…4 min
UNCUT|August 2024THE OLD NEW SOUTHDecoration Day NEW WEST, 2003 The first album with Jason Isbell features his title track, a wrenching blood feud narrative that’s one of his greatest songs; Hood’s gentle “My Sweet Annette,” a tale of romantic betrayal set in the ’30s, is likewise among his best. The Isbell golden era continued with 2004’s The Dirty South. 9/10 Brighter Than Creation’s Dark NEW WEST, 2008 Recorded after an acoustic tour, this deceptively dialled-down set opens on “Two Daughters And A Wife,” an aching Hood number about a mass murder. Shonna Tucker steps up to fill Isbell’s shoes as third singer-songwriter, adding new colours. A country pivot grown even more impressive with time. 8/10 American Band ATO, 2016 Released weeks before Donald Trump was elected US president, this pointed set proved to be…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024AtoZBAD BRAINS I And I (reissue, 1986) BAD BRAINS/ORG 8/10 Landmark punk-metal fourth from DC Rastas Bad Brains pioneered hardcore with the pummelling speed and precision of 1980’s “Pay To Cum”, splintered its fundamentalism with their equal faith in reggae, and helped lead black rock’s resurgence. Chops forged in a prehistory playing jazz-rock allowed them to repeatedly shuck punk straitjackets, and here they slowed the mayhem they’d helped spark, introducing metal and funk to the American underground. A template for Faith No More’s breakthrough sound is laid in passing, as the sludgy “Intro” drags the tempo into Sabbath’s doomy realm, before the title track revs up and back down, the tension between hardcore and metal’s culturally opposed approaches suggesting a new paradigm. “House Of Suffering” finds frontman HR’s resistant passion…14 min
UNCUT|August 2024FOUNTAINS OF WAYNEThe All Seeing Eye BLUE NOTE, 1966 His ninth album as leader features a stellar line-up, including Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hanco*ck and Ron Carter. Shorter is at the peak of his post-bop game with music that is tight and adventurous all at once. He’s already exploring the metaphysical too, as the album was meant to depictthe meaning of life. 9/10 Adam’s Apple BLUE NOTE, 1967 The mid- ’60s were a bountiful period for Shorter, with his very next album earning its place in the canon on the basis of “Footprints”, a composition of his that went on to become a modern jazz standard. The catchy title track and some introspective ballads round out the excellence. 9/10 Emanon BLUE NOTE, 2018 His final release for Blue Note, this sprawling three-disc set…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024FOREVER LOVEWHEN Johnny Echols thinks of his former school friend and bandmate Arthur Lee, his memory often flashes back to his mid-’60s pomp, when the band Lee led dominated the stage of the Whisky A Go Go, in the heart of Love’s Los Angeles. “The Whisky was home to us, our crowd was there,” Echols remembers. “We’d play four shows a night, six days a week. Then a matinee on Sundays. Arthur loved attention, so it could be the middle of June and he’d be wearing a fur coat, with one shoe and these coloured glasses. He had a reputation for being different. People would just come to see what he was going to do next. It gave us an aura of unpredictability.” It is fitting, then, that Echols chose to…18 min
UNCUT|August 2024BUYER’S GUIDE: RICH RUTHCALMING SIGNALS SELF-RELEASED, 2019 Much as Eno’s Another Green World – a huge influence on Ruth’s debut – represents the bridge between Eno’s pop career and his experiments with ambient music, so Calming Signals transitions Ruth away from the Kansas Bible Company towards New Age, spiritual jazz and minimalist pieces. 8/10 I SURVIVED, IT’S OVER THIRD MAN, 2022 Building on Calming Signals’ “Carrying It Around”, Ruth’s second album pushes deeper into consciousness-expanding music. The resulting invocations merged cosmic grooves with euphoric jazz trance, especially on “Heavy And Earthbound” where saxophonist Sam Que was given freedom to let rip. 8/10 WATER STILL FLOWS THIRD MAN, 2024 Sumptuous psychedelic rapture, as Ruth expands his horizons further, with Mikaela Davis’s astral harp and Jared Selner’s skronky, ecstatic sax vying against doom guitar drones…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024ART NEEDS A HOME“I DID some art dealing for a while and I’ve still got a lot of paintings and drawings that I bought when you could buy them. You can’t now. I’ve got Chagall and Dufy and Man Ray and Dalí, mostly drawings. You never know with Dalí though, because he’s the most forged artist in the world, but it’s got good provenance. I’m thinking of selling them all because I can’t be bothered any more – the insurance is more trouble than it’s worth. I’m just not attached to them. I have a little thing that looks like a Japanese netsuke, but it’s from a Kinder Egg. It was my grandson Zak’s when he was a little boy, and that’s the only thing I really love.”…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024NEW YORK STATE OF MINDCHRIS STEIN: Everybody encouraged me to write a book after Debbie’s memoir came out. I wrote a lot during COVID, when we were a little isolated. I haven’t really written anything this long previously, but I enjoyed the process. Did I have a routine? No, I don’t adhere to many routines in life! As a rule, I don’t read music books. I remember once being on an airplane and seeing some guy who looked like a f*cking lawyer reading Keith Richards’ Life and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of amazing…’ But I’ve read Debbie’s book and some of Richard Hell’s I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp, which was brilliant. Dee Dee Ramone isn’t known for being a writer, but his three books are fabulous. I started taking photographs…18 min
UNCUT|August 2024“I CONSIDER IT A MASTERPIECE”UNCUT: What’s your personal overview of Mind Games? ONO LENNON: To me, it sounds like he was working very hard to make a more polished record after what had been a period of raw rock’n’roll activism with Some Time In New York City. The fact that he was producing himself — and doing an incredible job without Phil Spector’s help, while in the midst of a separation with my mother — it must have been a difficult time for him. I think he really did an amazing job. The songs stand for themselves and after all these years have come to represent some of his best work to many fans. I had an amazing time overseeing the mixes and was really struck by the level of musicianship throughout. The band…4 min
UNCUT|August 2024KING OF GOSSIPONE evening in LA, Tony King was entertaining his host, songwriter Mike Hazlewood, by doing an impression of the Queen promoting an album. The stoned duo recorded a tape, which they played to John Lennon. As a long-time fan of The Goons and Beyond The Fringe, Lennon loved it. “He called me up and said he wanted me to do it as a TV commercial, so I had to get dressed as the Queen, going down to Western Costume on Halloween of all days to get a robe and a crown and put it together.” One of King’s previous jobs was at DJM, where he became friends with one Reg Dwight. By 1973, Elton John was a huge star but still friends with King. “Elton was impressed I was working…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024LAMBCHOPBarbican, London, June 1 THIS is Lambchop’s first London visit in five years, and they take no prisoners. Seven songs from most recent album The Bible are interspersed with seven from throughout their career, in arrangements determined by a trio format faintly resembling the band’s scuffling Nashville beginnings – Kurt Wagner on vocals, Andrew Barber on piano and Cole Davis on double bass – plus a six-piece choir directed by Blake Morgan. The soundworld, much reduced from The Bible’s spare but richly conceived palette, is rigorously fixed. Wagner has been stripping back and reconfiguring Lambchop ever since Nixon’s relatively maximalist, soul-powered success 24 years ago, gradually abandoning the band in favour of a more amorphous backdrop for his songs. Lately, even his voice has been interrogated by Auto-Tune. At the…3 min
UNCUT|August 2024REVIEWED THIS MONTHKINDS OF KINDNESS Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos Starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley Opens June 28 Cert To be confirmed 8/10 CHUCK CHUCK BABY Directed by Janis Pugh Starring Annabel Scholey, Louise Brealey, Sorcha Cusack Opens July 19 Cert To be confirmed 8/10 CROSSING Directed by Levan Akin Starring Mzia Arabuli, Lucas Kankava, Deniz Dumanli Opens July 19 Cert 15 7/10 THE NATURE OF LOVE Directed by Monia Chokri Starring Magalie Lépine Blondeau, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Francis-William Rhéaume Opens July 5 Cert To be confirmed 7/10 UNICORNS Directed by Sally El Hosaini, James Krishna Floyd Starring Ben Hardy, Jason Patel, Hannah Onslow Opens July 5 Cert To be confirmed 6/10…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024The best bar noneSENNHEISER AMBEO SOUNDBAR MAX £1,699 / go.stuff.tv/AmbeoMax UTTERLY convincing Dolby Atmos and DTS:X 3D sound, ample power and lots of inputs mean no other soundbar currently available can perform sonic feats with the solidity and confidence of this Sennheiser. The sheer room-filling scale of its sound is remarkable – and see also the more affordable (but still hugely powerful) Plus version. 10/10 SONOS ARC £899 Don’t expect this soundbar to do everything a multi-speaker Dolby Atmos set-up can do, but its up-firing and side-firing drivers give a real sense of cinematic scale. See also the much more affordable Ray model. 9/10 ROKU STREAMBAR £108 It’s a compact soundbar and a versatile streaming stick in the same box – and both parts of the deal work brilliantly well. This is the…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024AI can’t make itTHE ongoing controversy about artificial intelligence in the creative arts rose to a pitch with recent news surrounding Steve Marriott. Friends, family and fellow musicians are outraged by Cleopatra Records’ proposal, in conjunction with the late singer’s estate, to release ‘new’ recordings of unfinished demos using AI-generated vocals. “My dad certainly would’ve told them where to shove it,” says daughter Mollie Marriott. “When it comes to human expression, that’s not where AI belongs at all. It’s terrifying. No machine will ever recreate my dad’s songs.” Steve Marriott died in a house fire in 1991, aged 44, leaving no will. His estate automatically passed to his widow, Toni, leaving the rest of his family with no legal say in its administration. So far, various leading rockers have joined together in opposition…3 min
UNCUT|August 2024Peaks districtEVER since she she can remember, Chrysta Bell Zucht – now known simply as Chrystabell – has been embroiled in the vivid alternate realities of David Lynch. As a child, she would hear her parents reciting dialogue from Eraserhead to one another; as a teenager, she was transfixed by Twin Peaks. In the late 1990s, she was performing in the swing band 8½ Souvenirs when she was introduced to the director via an agent. The pair quickly hit it off and soon began working together. Chrystabell featured on the soundtrack to Lynch’s 2006 film Inland Empire before the pair collaborated on 2011 album This Train; she also had a recurring role as an FBI agent in Twin Peaks: The Return. Their creative partnership runs so deep that Chrystabell describes Lynch…3 min
UNCUT|August 2024Uncut PlaylistWILCO Hot Sun Cool Shroud EP DBPM “Ice tumblin’ in my plastic glass/Shouldn’t I be doing something?” Tweedy and co celebrate summer in all its guilty, indolent glory. JOHNNY BLUE SKIES Passage Du Desir HIGH TOP MOUNTAIN RECORDS Sturgill Simpson’s soulful new alter-ego proves adept at everything from heart-tugging epics to knockabout, scooter-riding capers. KRONONAUT Krononaut II PALOMINO When he’s not producing James or playing guitar for Brian Eno, Leo Abrahams makes mesmeric space-jazz with drummer Martin France. Out there, but also in here. TINDERSTICKS Soft Tissue CITY SLANG Stuart Staples’ crew at their best: tentative hip-shakers and (dark night of the) soul serenades, heavily freighted with exquisite sadness. ANDREW COMBS Dream Pictures LOOSE Spencer Cullum adds occasional pedal steel to this masterclass in songwriting economy, chasing a golden country-soul…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024Get 3 issues of UNCUT for £5*FREE CD WITH EVERY ISSUE SUBSCRIBE NOW SHOP.KELSEY.CO.UK/UCP724 Call 01959 543 747** and quote ref: UCP724 SCAN ME TERMS AND CONDITIONS UK Direct Debit and Continuous Credit Card offer only. *3 issues for £5 is a trial price on an Uncut subscription. After your first 3 issues, you will pay £33.80 every six months. Offer ends 31st August 2024. Your subscription will start with the next available issue after your first payment is received. Uncut is published 13 times per year. If you decide to cancel your subscription we will put a stop to any further payments being taken and will send the remaining issues you have paid for. Prices correct at time of print and subject to change. As part of your subscription you will receive the free weekly…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024AtoZA LILY Saru l-Qamar PHANTOM LIMB 8/10 Exquisite electronic tapestries woven from traditional Maltese folk music After various intermittent releases on other labels, James Vella – the founder of Brighton-based experimental imprint Phantom Limb – finally comes home with this latest iteration of his shape-shifting musical alter ego A Lily. Rooted in Vella’s family heritage, Saru l-Qamar is an inspired fusion of ambient folktronica and the Maltese “ghana” tradition of poetic narratives sung in the island nation’s unique Semitic language, which draws on Arabic, Italian and English. Interweaving antique archive recordings with 21st-century sonics, sepia-tinted beauties like the radiant “Tħallinix” and the gently hypnotic “Kemm Nixtieq Li Qed” are swamped in dreamy delay and haunting analogue nostalgia. STEPHEN DALTON ACTRESS Statik SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND 7/10 Absorbing 10th from UK techno doyen…28 min
UNCUT|August 2024BEAK>>>>> INVADA 8/10 EXPLAINING why they chose to eschew the industry norm of issuing singles or promo tracks in the run-up to the surprise release of this, their fourth album, Beak> declared that they were making “music for the ‘heads’”. Rather than signalling any kind of exclusivity, the tag is in effect listening advice: this is transportive music, so start at the beginning and listen through till the end. A holistic approach isn’t new for the trio, though they’ve fine-tuned it down the years, from the jam-y nature of their 2009 debut, with its strange, sudden bursts of energy, to the more complex, strings-augmented >>> nine years later. What’s remained largely the same – and has become a defining characteristic – is the general air of unsettlement, spread by a…4 min
UNCUT|August 2024AMERICANA ROUND-UP“I’VE been travelling all my life in search of whatever I find,” says Joe Ely. “Revisiting some of my studio files, I noticed there were a lot of songs I’d written on the road about travelling.” The West Texan legend has now collated several decades’ worth of ideas for Driven To Drive (RACK ’EM RECORDS/THIRTY TIGERS), due in August. Joining him are accordionist Joel Guzman and fiddler Richard Bowden, amongst others, while Bruce Springsteen guests on “Odds Of The Blues”, inspired by an after-hours joint in Lubbock. Steep Canyon Rangers return in late August with their first in-concert offering, Live At Greenfield Lake (YEP ROC). Recorded on home turf at an amphitheatre in Wilmington, North Carolina, it finds the bluegrass sextet on fine form, showcasing killer harmonies and dextrous musical…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024LOUIS ARMSTRONGLouis In London VERVE 8/10 WHEN Louis Armstrong arrived in Britain in 1968 for a cabaret residency at the Batley Variety Club, he wasn’t exactly hip in a brave new world that had just discovered the transgressive pleasures of psychedelia and headbanging blues-rock. Who was this old jazz guy called ‘Satchmo’ who had knocked “Lady Madonna” off the top with the preposterously sentimental “Wonderful World”? During his visit, Armstrong also filmed a concert for BBC Television which this reviewer remembers being greeted with paroxysms of parental delight while their 14-year-old son hid away in an upstairs bedroom with his Beatles and Stones. Back then it was called the “generation gap”. Today, our ignorance of foundational cultural history simply seems embarrassing. Armstrong’s health had been in decline for some years, and…2 min
UNCUT|August 2024VARIOUS ARTISTSFrom Where I Stand: The Black Experience In Country Music (reissue, 1998) WARNER MUSIC NASHVILLE 8/10 ONE of the first stars of what became the Grand Ole Opry was a black harmonica virtuoso named DeFord Bailey, who could make the instrument sound like every oily, chugging mechanism on a speeding locomotive. “Pan American Blues”, from 1927, may be the ultimate showcase for his feats of ventriloquism, and it made him a star on the radio and eventually on TV. Bailey helped define the Opry as the premiere showcase for country music, but he was fired in 1941, either for breaking a song-publishing deal or for being black, depending on who’s telling the story. Bailey’s sad tale has come up a lot lately, especially after Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter stoked the debate…2 min
UNCUT|August 2024NEW LOVEGEORGE WALLACE: This unprecedented collection of Arthur Lee/Love recordings were made during the last 15 years of his life – from 1990 until Arthur’s final studio recording, in the summer of 2005. In a Memphis hospital in 2006, after a long battle against leukaemia, Arthur gave his wife, Diane, two CDs he’d compiled and asked her if she would oversee the release of the songs after he was gone. Arthur Lee Is Love Just To Remind You is comprised of the songs that Arthur put on the CDs. Sourced from Arthur’s trove of tapes, the music covers his wide-ranging taste and adeptness, from Forever Changes-style, haunting strings and brass-adorned productions, to Arthur at the piano, playing Ray Charles-inspired licks and singing with glorious, soulful abandon. Baby Lemonade, who Arthur anointed…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024HOT SOURCETIM HECKER Sometime during the pandemic I got really into Tim Hecker. Particularly his albums Harmony In Ultraviolet and Ravedeath 1972. He blurs the lines between experimental and ambient, creating extremely active and visceral soundscapes that are a huge inspiration. ASHRA TEMPEL/MANUEL GOTTSCHING Gottsching’s playing and productions embody a trance-like quality I find myself chasing. Ashra’s New Age Of Earth and Gottsching’s E2-E4 are huge touchstones for my musical palette, no matter what I am working on. SUNN 0))) Of all the drone/doom metal acts that inspired me while working on Water Still Flows, Sunn 0))) showcases the most primal, minimal version of the genre. The guitars and amps are recorded immaculately too – it feels like your head is pressed up against the amplifier. CRYPTOPSY On tour in late…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024Lou BarlowLOU BARLOW contains multitudes. He began his musical journey as a member of Boston’s teenage hardcore band Deep Wound with J Mascis, with whom he then went on to form Dinosaur Jr. Leaving the band after three albums following a bust-up with Mascis, Barlow devised lo-fi home recording projects Sentridoh and Sebadoh, until the latter evolved into an influential ’90s indie-rock band. A modest and self-deprecating character, Barlow says acclaim came as a surprise. “I’ve never felt like people really wanted Sebadoh,” he says. “It was kind of like we forced the issue. At the peak of Sebadoh’s success, he formed alt.folk duo The Folk Implosion, who briefly flirted with the Top 40, before finally releasing records under his own name. Ahead of a new Folk Implosion album, Walk Thru…13 min
UNCUT|August 2024BRIGHT LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!“MY husband Steve was an agent, so I’ve met a lot of people through him. Jeanne Moreau, she was fantastic. What was she like? Oh, you know, she was Jeanne Moreau! A very smart, talented woman, very French, very enigmatic. She had terrific presence – in a restaurant people would stare. I knew Peter O’Toole very well; he was very like John Grant, such a clever man, there was nothing he didn’t know. And such fun. Steve handled Clint Eastwood too, all these people, so I got to meet them as well. You don’t think of it at the time, but it was incredible to spend time with them. Nobody reads a book in Hollywood, so I used to sometimes write synopses for them and say a movie is about…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024“THEY ALL HIT IT OFF”A GUY started showing up dressed in a neat suit with a Lucha Libre–style wrestling mask. This was Arturo Vega, a Mexican artist who was living in a big loft right around the corner from CBGB’s on Second Street. Artie had a great aesthetic. He was the first one I ever saw leave toys in their clear plastic packaging and then hang them like artworks. He had a way of narrowing focus on an everyday object until it became something bigger. A series of large paintings of supermarket-food-price ads were an homage to Andy but also something more stripped down and raw. He did a series of brightly coloured swastikas that became a statement about the cheerful embrace of evil. Arturo quickly befriended the Ramones and they all hit it…2 min
UNCUT|August 2024EVOLUTION IN THE HEADWHEN John Lennon entered New York’s Record Plant studios in August 1973, he had to prove himself all over again. His last album, Some Time In New York City, had been critically panned for its ragged, rock ’n’ political sloganeering. At the same time, he was under surveillance from the FBI, while US immigration authorities were trying to deport him because of his anti-war activism. At home, his relationship with Yoko Ono had hit a rocky patch. A sorely needed reset came with Mind Games – an album that he enthusiastically described as “Imagine with balls”, but whose subtle beauty soon became mired in the continued chaos surrounding Lennon. “I grew up listening to it without realising it had to some degree been overlooked when it came out,” says Sean…26 min
UNCUT|August 2024CHANGE OF MIND“AISUMASEN (I’M SORRY)” (ELEMENTAL MIX) This pared-down mix places greater focus on Lennon’s beautiful vocal, backed by Ken Ascher’s organ and subtle swashes of pedal steel by Sneaky Pete. An intense, moving mix of one of Lennon’s most personal songs. “TIGHT A$” (OUTTAKE) A good-natured jam, brilliantly performed by a group of musicians who demonstrate an intuitive grasp of the material and their own individual roles in forging a collective sound. “MEAT CITY” (ELEMENTS MIX) The Elements Mixes zero in on a single musical element, in this case the rhythm section: check Gordon Edwards’ bass and the frantic twin drummer-sound of Jim Keltner and Rick Marotta. “BRING ON THE LUCIE (FREDA PEEPLE)” (RAW STUDIO MIX) A live-in-the-studio mix sees the Plastic U.F.Ono Band deliver an unvarnished version of one of…1 min
UNCUT|August 20243 ISSUES FOR $10*SUBSCRIBE NOW SHOP.KELSEY.CO.UK/UCP624US Call toll free 1 888 777 0275** and quote ref: UCP624US TERMS AND CONDITIONS *North America Continuous Credit Card offer only. *3 issues for $10 is a trial price on an Uncut subscription. The actual price you pay may vary based on the US$ / UK£ exchange rate on the day you order your subscription and any exchange commission fee applied by your card provider. After your first 3 issues, you will pay the equivalent of UK£49.99 every six months converted in to $US using the exchange rate on the day of the transaction. Offer ends 31st October 2024. Your subscription will start with the next available issue after your first payment is received. Uncut is published 13 times per year. If you decide to cancel your…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024SCREENKINDS OF KINDNESS Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos are the most sensational actor-director partnership since Luis Buñuel met Catherine Deneuve. She has brought warmth, screwball humour and mainstream appeal to his often-chilly arthouse absurdism. Meanwhile, he has encouraged her into erotic and philosophical realms unusual for an all-singing, all-dancing, all-American actor who chose to name herself after Baby Spice. On the face of it, Kinds Of Kindness looks like a backwards step in their creative pas de deux. It reunites Lanthimos with Efthimis Filippou, the writer responsible for the savage surrealism of his early, funny-peculiar stuff: Dogtooth (isolation and parental abuse), Alps (acting and death), The Lobster (love and animals) and Killing Of A Sacred Deer (surgery and sacrifice). Across three distinct stories, it enacts a kind of greatest hits…8 min
UNCUT|August 2024ALSO OUT…ROSE RELEASED JUNE 28 The Killing’s Sofie Gråbøl and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo director Niels Arden Oplev team up for a road-trip movie featuring sisters, mental illness and unconditional love. WHAT REMAINS RELEASE JULY 5 Fine artist Ran Huang makes his feature debut with this Scandi-noir loosely based on the story of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, starring Andrea Riseborough and Stellan Skarsgård. HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS RELEASED JULY 5 The spirit of silent slapstick is revived in this winningly daft curio about an applejack salesman on a mission to become America’s greatest fur trapper. SLEEP RELEASED JULY 5 A pregnant woman becomes worried when her husband’s sleeping sleep-talking escalates to grotesque behaviour in this comic thriller from Korean director Jason Yu. DESPICABLE ME 4 RELEASED JULY 5 Will…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024BOOKSIN Ted Kessler’s To Ease My Troubled Mind, the reader has their work cut out keeping up with the shifting identities of Wild Billy Childish. It is not the real name of the garage-punk pioneer of the Medway sound, nor that of the outsider artist who became an overnight success after 40 years when one of his paintings sold for £163,800. Childish is a punk rock moniker, given to him by his friend “Button Nose” Steve Simmons. If he hadn’t become Childish, Billy might have been stuck with the rather less exciting pseudonym Gus Claudius, though he can also be found at various times and in particular circ*mstances representing himself as Jack Ketch, Sir Quentin Gaydish, Gus Honeybum, “Danger” Bill Henderson or Corporal Kunt. Childish’s building society account is held…4 min
UNCUT|August 2024SAVE OVER £50*Receive our deluxe 148-page authoritative guide to the revolutionary Beatle SUBSCRIBE TODAY! Order online at shop.kelsey.co.uk/UCP824JL Call 01959 543 747*** and quote ref: UCP824JL SCAN ME TERMS AND CONDITIONS UK Direct Debit and Continuous Credit Card offer only. *Pay £33.80 every six months and save £55.90 in a full year if you do not cancel. Savings based on the standard Basic Annual Rate of £123.50 which includes the cover price (£6.75) plus Kelsey Media’s standard packing and postage price per single issue (£2.75) for one full year (13 issues). Offer ends 31st August 2024. Your subscription will start with the next available issue and you will receive 6 issues in your first 6 months. Prices correct at time of print and subject to change. As part of your subscription you…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024Not Fade AwayDENNIS THOMPSON MC5’s hard-hitting drummer (1948–2024) DENNIS Thompson attributed his uncompromising style to MC5’s formative days on the local dance-party scene in 1960s Detroit. “The drums weren’t mic’d, but the amps were cranked on 10,” he explained to the Detroit Free Press. “They were drowning me out… I had to play as powerfully as I could to break through that wall of sound.” Nicknamed ‘Machine Gun’ thanks to his explosive approach, Thompson helped power the MC5’s ascent from noisy covers band to proto-punk agitators, aligning themselves to socio-political causes and appearing regularly at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, site of 1969’s incendiary debut, Kick Out The Jams. Recalling the two-night stand that yielded the album, Thompson told Uncut in 2007: “I played harder than I ever played in my life… Both nights…8 min
UNCUT|August 2024FeedbackPRECIOUS STONES I was at The Rolling Stones’ May 2 performance at New Orleans Jazz Fest, and your reviewer hit the nail on the head. I’ve seen the Stones well over a dozen times since 1969 in small and large venues, and they sounded and moved as well as I’ve ever seen them. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and tears of joy streamed down my face as they launched into “Start Me Up”, “Get Off Of My Cloud” and above all “Out Of Time”, as I love hearing rarely played chestnuts. Having them bring out Irma Thomas was the icing on the cake, and at her Sunday Fest performance she thanked Mick and the boys. By the way, she made the dress she wore out…5 min
UNCUT|August 2024CrosswordHOW TO ENTER The letters in the shaded squares form an anagram of a song by John Lennon. When you’ve worked out what it is, email your answer to: competitions@uncut.co.uk. The first correct entry picked at random will win a prize. Closing date: Thursday, July 18, 2024. This competition is only open to European residents. CLUES ACROSS 1 Album by The Fall. There’s a clue there somewhere if you can work it out (9) 6 “Washed away out of sight like ____ in the rain”, Del Amitri (4) 10 “I know a girl with the ______ _____/She’s got enough, she’s got too much”, 2004 (6-5) 11+14A A single mistake made by Pink Floyd during A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (3-4) 12+15A Woo. Charming Franz Ferdinand getting personal (4-2-3) 14 (See…2 min
UNCUT|August 2024From Harlesden they come“IT was a complete accident,” says filmmaker Mark Warmington, explaining how he came across the remarkable story of the Cimarons, the UK’s first indigenous reggae band. He was living and working as a cameraman in Brent when someone at the council suggested he speak to Cimarons guitarist and co-founder guitarist Locksley Gichie. “When he told me about who they’d worked with and what they’d done, it was just incredible.” The result is Warmington’s film Harder Than The Rock, which tells how the Cimarons formed in Harlesden, took reggae around the world, worked with everyone from Bob Marley to Paul McCartney, but ultimately disappeared under the radar – something that the documentary is seeking to put right. As Gichie says, “It will mean that all our blood, sweat and tears haven’t…3 min
UNCUT|August 2024A Quick OneLook what you made us do! Just in time for the UK leg of The Eras Tour, the latest addition to our Ultimate Record Collection series celebrates Bon Iver and The National’s most famous collaborator, Taylor Swift. Covering every album and every single, as well as the definitive Taylor timeline, it’s in shops now – or you can order direct from us at shop.kelsey.co.uk/uncut… Also available now from the same places is the massive, 172-page Definitive Edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to Fleetwood Mac. Featuring a great, long-lost Stevie Nicks interview, it also explores each album in depth, detailing every step of the band’s journey to multi-million-selling greatness, solo careers and reformations. Don’t stop!… MC5’s fourth album, Heavy Lifting – 53 years in the making – will finally be…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024A JOHN LENNON EXCLUSIVE!THIS month’s Uncut CD is rather special. Compiled exclusively for us by the John Lennon estate, it features nine songs taken from the deluxe Mind Games boxset. Why nine, you may ask? Nine was Lennon’s favourite number – present in songs like “One After 909” to “Revolution 9” and “#9 Dream” – and Mind Games was recorded during a period when Lennon and Yoko Ono were re-engaging with their interests in esoteric subjects, exploring everything from palmistry to numerology. The deluxe Mind Games boxset includes brand new mixes, outtakes and audio documentaries that explore the evolution of each song, from piano demos recorded at Lennon’s home in Surrey through recording sessions at New York’s Record Plant to the final master. Before we reveal the tracklisting for our CD, here’s a…5 min
UNCUT|August 2024JAKE XERXES FUSSELL“Look up, look down that long, lonesome road/Hang down your head and cry…” When I’m Called FAT POSSUM ALBUM OF THE MONTH 9/10 EVERY Wednesday afternoon, Jake Xerxes Fussell hosts a radio show with his pal Jefferson Currie II on WHUP FM, a community station in Hillsborough, North Carolina. They play songs from far and wide – a recent episode moved quite naturally from Bob Dylan’s “Hearts Of Fire” to Nigerian soul music to Swedish fiddle to June Tabor singing “Pork Pie Hat” – but they have a particular passion for songs of the American South, interpreted in the most expansive sense. Though they are both learned students of American folklore, they’re at pains to distance themselves from hidebound notions of authenticity and antiquity. “As much as we cherish our…6 min
UNCUT|August 2024SHELLACTo All Trains TOUCH AND GO 8/10 EVEN beyond Steve Albini’s recent passing, the sixth Shellac album is a recording touched by mortality. On one song, “Tattoos”, he mutters threateningly about raising a vigilante army of ghosts, and describes time as waiting like a hunter, primed for the kill. The album ends with “I Don’t Fear Hell”, in which Albini opines wryly on the devil’s lair and sings of a joyful “leap into my grave”. Another key song is “Wednesday”, in which a broken man’s life story is concisely assessed. At the end we learn he recently shot himself in his kitchen. At 27 minutes in length, with its savage guitar attack and early mention of “urine, blood and hair”, you might assume Shellac were on-side with Thomas Hobbes’ take…4 min
UNCUT|August 2024LIANA FLORESDESPITE drawing from music that’s 50 or 60 years old, Liana Flores emerged through the very Gen Z medium of TikTok. “I’ve always tried to keep social media at arm’s length,” she insists. “I uploaded some songs on YouTube as a teenager, then ignored that account for years. Then I recorded a song under lockdown, uploaded it to TikTok, and it suddenly blew up.” That song, a minor-key waltz called “Rises The Moon”, has since had more than a million views, attracting dozens of cover versions. It even earned her a contract with US label Verve, one-time home of her hero Antonio Carlos Jobim. “I inherited my love of Jobim from my mum, who’s from Amapá in the north of Brazil. I got obsessed with Jobim’s songwriting: the timelessness, the…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024REDD KROSSIT’S been 45 years since the redoubtable Redd Kross formed in 1979 in Hawthorne, California. Jeff and Steven McDonald were still kids – 14 and 11 respectively – but it was the beginning of a five-decade odyssey where they burned through hardcore, went glam and perfected power-pop. For the brothers, their new, self-titled double album – presented in tribute to “that other band’s self-titled double album”, as Steven winkingly puts it – is the perfect entrée into their world, giving the listener a taste of everything they do. “We were planning on it being a very tight, 12-song record, but it just went really well,” says Steven. “The vibe was there.” They also decided to run with the idea of double-album-as-statement: “Go big or go home!” Jeff says. “We saw…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024NEIL YOUNG WITH CRAZY HORSEEarly Daze REPRISE 7/10 ‘‘HERE we go. Rolling, take one. What’s the name of this, Neil?” Off-mic, on the other side of studio glass, you can just about catch the reply: “‘Down By The River’.” Of this track – shortly to be better-known as the nine-minute finale of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Neil Young’s first album with Crazy Horse – it can be said that all concerned got it pretty much right the first time. Young’s epic murder ballad allows one of the greatest rock’n’roll bands to properly flex, Crazy Horse’s ominous rumble preceding the eruption of Young’s guitar solo – which, like many since, prompts wonderment at how much Young can wring from a single, repeatedly squeezed note. The rest of the excruciatingly titled Early Daze, a collection…4 min
UNCUT|August 2024WAYNE SHORTERJuJu/Odyssey Of Iska (reissue, 1965/1971) BLUE NOTE 9/10, 8/10 WAYNE SHORTER’s career contains virtually the entire history of the second half of 20th century jazz. He cut his teeth with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers and eventually became the band’s musical director; he helped crystallise the emerging new sounds of Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet and often composed for Davis; and he co-founded the pioneering jazz fusion group Weather Report. Not only was he an absolute master of the saxophone (originally on the less common soprano, then switching his focus to tenor) but he also redefined jazz composition, penned a number of pieces that have since become beloved standards, and has won numerous awards, including several Grammys. He died at the age of 89 in 2023, but his spirit…4 min
UNCUT|August 2024EVERYTHING FLOWSWHEN he was 21, Michael Ruth travelled overseas for the first time, leaving the American Midwest to visit Cambodia as part of a college overseas study programme. The experience had a lasting impact not just on Ruth, but the music he makes. “A classmate and I went to this rural village near the Vietnam border, about 10 hours away from Phnom Penh,” he begins, sitting in his East Nashville home studio. “They told us we were going to be teaching computers to these students, but when we got to the village there was no school, no electricity, no running water. The villagers were animist – they believed in spirits, in the animals and all living things. While we were there, they spent a week building this shrine out of bamboo,…17 min
UNCUT|August 2024The Light Fantastic“‘OBSCURE singer and journalist killed’,” says Linda Thompson, imagining the headlines as she takes Uncut’s arm to cross the perilous Fulham Road. “Mind you, it might help the new record… Gold before I’m cold!” While Thompson is not quite a household name, “obscure” is way off the mark: along with her then-husband Richard, she was responsible for a clutch of folk-rock classics – 1974’s I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, ’75’s Hokey Pokey and Pour Down Like Silver and 1982’s Shoot Out The Lights – that have all steadily increased in sales and acclaim in the decades since they first appeared. “Fifty years since Bright Lights?” she exclaims, genuinely surprised. “f*ck! How frightening.” There are carpenters at her Chelsea flat, so Thompson is taking Uncut to a nearby…15 min
UNCUT|August 2024“When The Revolution Comes”by The Last Poets“OUR poetry basically came from the people,” says Abiodun Oyewole, co-founder of black radicals The Last Poets. “‘When The Revolution Comes’ was taken from a popular expression on the streets of Harlem in the late ’60s. That line is what makes the poem happen. And it was very interesting to see how it developed.” Formed on May 19, 1968 – the late Malcolm X’s birthday and six weeks after Martin Luther King’s assassination – The Last Poets arose from the civil rights movement, but demanded a more extreme approach to self-determinism. A Harlem writers’ workshop known as the East Wind served as HQ, a place where poetry, music and political insurrection coalesced, inspired by Amiri Baraka’s militant Black Arts Movement. The raw concision of The Last Poets’ work found its…11 min
UNCUT|August 2024“SOUNDED FANTASTIC”IN February of ’75 the Dolls started a series of shows at the Hippodrome, a club up on Fifty-Sixth Street, under the auspices of Malcolm McLaren, who was now managing them. I don’t know any of the backstory of how the Dolls transitioned from longtime early manager Marty Thau to Malcolm, but several years earlier I’d gone with Eric to the Chelsea Hotel, where Malcolm had turned one of the rooms into a showroom for his clothing. This was during his Let It Rock period and some of the Dolls’ members, including David, were there hanging out so they all were aware of each other already. Malcolm quite successfully styled the band and the shows. The Dolls were all dressed in coordinated red leather and vinyl outfits and their backdrop…2 min
UNCUT|August 2024BOXISMON the 10th floor of the Universal office building in London’s King’s Cross, Uncut watches as Simon Hilton – who has worked with Yoko since 2002 and as creative director works alongside Ono and Sean Ono Lennon on the reissue series – opens the Mind Games Super Deluxe Box and starts taking out the contents. He still hasn’t finished 45 minutes later. The box takes the form of a 13” Perspex cube, within which fans will find a further nine boxes containing all manner of music and paraphernalia exploring different facets of the Mind Games story, from I-Ching coins to artefacts from Nutopia, including a folded white flag and brass plaque. The creative team riffed on the two words of the album title – “mind” and “games” – to produce…4 min
UNCUT|August 2024“IT WAS PROPHETIC”“I REMEMBER John showing me a collage at the Dakota one day. He had it on the mantel, about the size of an album cover. I remember being surprised he had used a photo I had taken of Yoko around the time of Approximately Infinite Universe for a possible album cover. John used it without telling me, putting it on the side so Yoko looked like a mountain. In the foreground was this Polaroid that May took of John with a suitcase. He cut that out and glued it on the board with the mountains and the sky and the sun and the moon. “John made a lot of collages. He would cut up magazines and put them together in different ways. He made a ton of these but because…1 min
UNCUT|August 2024JOANNA NEWSOMThe Masonic Lodge At Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Los Angeles, May 27 THE final night of Joanna Newsom’s seven-date stand at Hollywood Forever Cemetery brings out an impressively starry guest list. John C Reilly, Beck and Courtney Barnett all mingle by the merch stand, but that’s really nothing: Cecil B DeMille, Judy Garland and Johnny Ramone are still outside. This storied graveyard’s Masonic Lodge, built in 1927, provides a fittingly theatrical setting for Newsom’s rebirth, four years on from her last headline shows. We enter past cages where iridescent peaco*cks, free to roam the grounds during the day, dote over baby chicks. Inside, antique chandeliers illuminate the restored wooden beams and the small, circular stained glass window that gives the room its sanctified air. On the stage are a pair of…5 min
