Home//UNCUT/February 2023/In This Issue
UNCUT|February 2023“He was free, anarchistic” KEITH LEVENE | 1957–2022“I FIRST met Keith at the Warwick Road squats, which even by the druggy standards of the day were pretty hardcore. It was late ’75 or ’76, so I was 17 or 18 and he would have still been a teenager, maybe 19. He had charisma and a great sense of humour, very intelligent. He was a Jewish guy from North London, privately educated, and I was coming out the East End, but he was more than happy to deal with me. There was lots of mad energy, we were probably both speeding. But we became friends. “At the time, everyone in the squats was doing the same archetypal punk thing, imitating the Ramones. I wasn’t bothered about punk music – I wanted to merge Tangerine Dream with heavy dub…5 min
UNCUT|February 2023Mountain timeJESSICA Dessner may be due some of the credit for the success of The National. “There’s a long tradition, from the time we were teenagers, of me playing music for my brothers that I think they should like,” says the poet, dancer, visual artist and sister to that band’s twin guitarists Bryce and Aaron. “I remember in early interviews they used to give credit to their punky older sister playing stuff, and my punky boyfriends coming around to teach them to play drums.” When Dessner began collaborating with Stockholm-based Norwegian singer and composer Rebekka Karijord, it was time for her to call in a return favour. “In 2018 we were all together at Aaron’s house for Christmas, and I said, ‘Listen, there’s this project I want to tell you about.’…3 min
UNCUT|February 2023Gaye Su AkyolGROWING up watching Xena, Gaye Su Akyol has become Anatolian rock’s warrior princess, armoured in lavish silver costumes as she leads her band of gold-masked musicians towards the outer limits of Turkish psychedelia, collecting fans including Iggy Pop along the way. She is also playfully sexual and queer-supportive, pushing the boundaries of acceptable female behaviour in Erdogan’s Turkey. The cover of her fourth album, Anadolu Ejderi, casts her as the titular Anatolian Dragon, with a serpent’s tongue in a burning world. Uncut meets Akyol in her apartment in Kadıköy, the Istanbul neighbourhood on the Bosphorus’s Asian side which has become a secular, bohemian redoubt from Erdogan’s reach. It’s a home filled with the passions of this artist’s daughter, from Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu’s Anatolian folkloric prints to an Iggy action doll.…3 min
UNCUT|February 2023Lawrence“I love the music world too much to reform Felt” “A MORE serious name for serious times,” says Lawrence, explaining the recent switch from Go-Kart Mozart to Mozart Estate as he shuffles into the Barbican with his takeaway cuppa. “I love novelty records but I wanted to hit a bit harder this time.” Indeed, there’s a more prominent seam of mordant social commentary on his latest effort, as well as an unexpected dalliance with what he calls “singer-songwriter stuff”, not heard since the final days of Felt. But the album still has a defiantly daft title – Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! And The Possibilities Of Modern Shopping – and kicks off with a song called “I’m Gonna Wiggle”. “Everyone’s done a wiggle song,” he protests. “Lou Reed’s done one, Bob Dylan’s done…9 min
UNCUT|February 2023MEG BAIRDFurling DRAG CITY 9/10 IT’S 20 years now since Meg Baird co-founded Espers in her home city of Philadelphia. With Baird sharing lead vocals with Greg Weeks, the band became a mainstay of New Weird America, striking a noble balance between psychedelic exploration and deference to the set texts of folk-rock. Espers fizzled out amicably in 2010, by which point Baird had already embarked on a solo career. However, lacking the extrovert quality of peers like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, Baird has always flown somewhat under the radar. All-acoustic debut Dear Companion (2007) seemed to suggest she was happiest reinterpreting folk standards; even the two original compositions on that record cleaved closely to the form. But since then, there’s been an ever-so-gradual evolution in her songwriting and a broadening…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023GUIDED BY VOICESLa La Land GBV INC 8/10 SINCE making their second comeback in 2017, Guided By Voices have continued to record at a vicious lick while maintaining standards of quality control that seem frankly unreal. La La Land is their 14th album since the band’s return, and they’re all good – sometimes great. Perhaps Robert Pollard learnt from the previous comeback between 2010 and 2014, a “classic lineup” reunion that never really delivered on the goodwill. When that fell apart, it seemed like the end of the road. In 2016, Pollard brought out a Guided By Voices album called Please Be Honest, which featured him playing every instrument. That didn’t really work either. So Pollard, who is nothing if not persistent, tried again, this time recruiting a band that included old…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023AMERICANA ROUND-UPOHIO quartet The Shootoutshave roped in some choice names for third album Stampede SOUNDLY MUSIC, out in late February. Ray Benson handles production, while he and his fellow Asleep At The Wheel bandmates pop up on “One Step Forward”. Other guests include Marty Stuart, Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale and The Mavericks’ Raúl Malo. Guitarist and lead singer Ryan Humbert guides the cast through a lively mix of Americana, honky-tonk and Western swing. Not to be outdone, Nashville-based singer-guitarist Sunny War has some seriously impressive help on her NEW WEST label debut, Anarchist Gospel. Overseen by Andrija Tokic, the album features Jim James, Allison Russell, David Rawlings, Micah Nelson and members of The Raconteursand The Deslondes. Sunny moves through gospel, folk, country-blues, rock’n’roll and experimental music to fashion what she describes…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023HC McENTIREEvery Acre MERGE 8/10 “SHADOWS”, a standout on HC McEntire’s new album, ends with a muted chorus of frogs and crickets and other Carolina wildlife. It’s a stark yet vivid cacophony of natural sounds, which the singer-songwriter recorded near her former home in North Carolina. It arrives like quiet punctuation at the end of that gently despairing song, the “amen” after a prayer – yet you’d swear you could hear those noises throughout Every Acre, perhaps even on every album she’s ever made. In her solo career and stretching back even to her work with the bands Bellafea and the great Mount Moriah, McEntire has always found inspiration in the Tarheel countryside and in its long musical history: she has turned the state’s forests and hollers and rivers and snakes…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023NEW ORDERLow-Life (Definitive Edition) WARNER MUSIC “Pretending not to see his gun/I said, ‘Let’s go out and have some fun’” FEBRUARY 2023 TAKE 309 1 GONG (P42) 2 LIGHTSHIPS (P45) 3 GIRLSCHOOL (P46) 4 THE METERS (P48) 5 MEREDITH MONK (P50) REISSUE OF THE MONTH 9/10 IT is May 14, 1984, and as the UK Margaret Thatcher would like to see remoulded in her image tears itself apart, New Order are doing their bit on the angels’ side, playing a benefit at London’s Royal Festival Hall in support of the nation’s striking miners. At the climax, they unveil a song no-one has ever heard before, one they’re still writing there on stage, jamming with their sequencers. In time, this track will grow exponentially, to become the launchpad for the next chapter…7 min
UNCUT|February 2023GONGMagick Brother (reissue, 1970) BYG 8/10 HELPFULLY offering the disaffected acid heads of 1970 a reason to keep believing, Daevid Allen sang on the title track of his first LP: “If you’re feeling rather lonely and you wonder where you are, maybe you’re one of many from a faraway star”. A cosmic voyager every bit as far out there as Hawkwind, the footloose Australian ex-window dresser was the wrong side of 30 by the time he got to record Magick Brother. He and his space-whispering partner Gilli Smyth made up for lost time by pushing their psychedelic boat out that little bit further than most, Gong’s Aquarian Age vision coalescing into a surrealist pseudo-philosophy peopled by little green men from the Planet Gong sent to raise the consciousness of the…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023LIGHTSHIPSElectric Cables (reissue, 2012) GEOGRAPHIC 8/10 WHEN it comes to putting himself forward, Gerard Love is – if not exactly backward – elliptical at least. For his first solo album, released in 2012 on The Pastels’ imprint Geographic, he chose not to issue the music under a recognisable brand. “I wasn’t comfortable with using my name,” he says. “If there was merchandise, somebody walking around with a T-shirt with my name on it would be weird. My name kinda belongs to my parents, it’s not my choice. Also I didn’t want to bring too much attention to myself.” The other reason for Love’s coyness was that he didn’t want to undermine Teenage Fanclub, for whom he wrote such classics as “Sparky’s Dream” and “Ain’t That Enough”. But at that point…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023VARIOUS ARTISTSPerú Selvático: Sonic Expedition Into The Peruvian Amazon 1972-1986 ANALOG AFRICA SONIDO VERDE DE MOYOBAMBA Sonido Verde de Moyobamba ANALOG AFRICA 9/10, 8/10 ONE of the great things about an album like Perú Selvático is how it proves that the world is not just a more complicated place than one may presume, but a more surprising one too. Even devotees of the adventures in global crate-digging by Analog Africa – the Frankfurt-based reissue label that grew out of a clubnight in Dakar hosted by a peripatetic collector named Samy Ben Redjeb – will be delighted and possibly disoriented by the (re)discoveries to be made on the label’s latest compilations. With Perú Selvático, Redjeb provides a new wealth of detail and texture to a story he began several releases ago, as…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023MEREDITH MONKThe Recordings ECM NEW SERIES 9/10 IF Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek were the two improvising musicians who established the distinctive tone of the ECM label’s contribution to jazz over the past 50 years, the composers Arvo Pärt and Meredith Monk played an equivalent role for ECM’s New Series, the imprint under which the company’s founder, Manfred Eicher, gathers those of his artists who come under the loose heading of contemporary classical music. Monk, born in New York City in 1942, is a singer, composer, director, choreographer and filmmaker who began to develop her extended vocal techniques with solo performances in the early 1960s before founding her own multi-disciplinary company, The House, in 1968. Since garlanded with honours and awards, she belongs with Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno among the…2 min
UNCUT|February 2023Altered States“WHEN I sing this song, I get really emotional,” Margo Price says, standing on the makeshift stage in her band’s rehearsal space. It’s a drab, windowless warehouse, with a few couches tucked away in the corners and tables full of snacks and lukewarm Chinese takeout. Today, she and her backing musicians have been working on the transition from “Change Of Heart”, a country-rock barnstormer with a heavy riff, into “County Road”, a piano-led ghost story that recalls late-’70s Springsteen and serves as the tender heart of her fourth solo album, Strays. It’s a tricky tonal shift between defiance and remembrance, between kiss-off and eulogy, yet that contrast only makes “County Road” sound more haunted. Dressed in a black T-shirt with Bob Dylan’s silhouette on the front, a fannypack around her…15 min
UNCUT|February 2023Bra by CymandeA KEY scene in new documentary Getting It Back: The Story Of Cymande shows how DJ Jazzy Jay used to cut between two turntables to extend the exuberant breakdown of “Bra”, sending a Bronx block party into raptures. It’s no surprise that the track became a foundation stone of hip-hop, sampled by Sugarhill Gang, Gang Starr and De La Soul, as well as on Raze’s early house hit “Jack The Groove”. So who were the impossibly funky crew behind it? Surely they were from Harlem or New Orleans? Or maybe Kingston or Lagos? Nope. “Bra”’s co-writers Patrick Patterson and Steve Scipio grew up on the same street in Balham, south London, after their families emigrated to the UK from Guyana when they were kids. Coming of age in the late…11 min
UNCUT|February 2023IGGY AND THE STOOGES’ LAST STANDSCOTT Thurston stuck it out ’til The Stooges finally hit the wall, a full year after Raw Power’s release. Desperate weeks of midnight flits from motels and druggy self-destruction finally brought one of rock’s most notorious sagas to a close. “We had some pretty rough gigs,” Thurston deadpans. “We played this place in Michigan called The Farm, where somebody cold-co*cked Jim [Iggy], and that was the end of that show! The last gig, of course, was at the Michigan Palace.” Semi-bootleg Metallic KO – which outsold Raw Power in the ’70s – captured the show on February 9, 1974, where enraged bikers hurled bottles at the band and Iggy immolated “Louie Louie”. “Frightening? Somewhat,” Thurston considers. “But we had the attitude of being cool. It was really sad in its…2 min
UNCUT|February 2023Nothing But Heart“WE’VE always had the two voices, mine and Alan’s, I guess those have maybe been the constants in Low,” Mimi Parker told Uncut in 2018. She was discussing the band’s 12th album, Double Negative – an astounding reinvention that blasted the band’s trademark harmonies with gales of sound and distressed electronic textures. Uncut’s Album Of The Year, this most radical departure in a career defined by exploratory detours nevertheless sounded like Low, precisely because it featured those two voices. “We realised that we’re always going to have those, which means we’re always going to be recognised as Low.” When Parker died in November after a two-year battle with ovarian cancer, it was not just the passing of a beloved vocalist, but perhaps it also marked the end of one of…12 min
UNCUT|February 2023“HAVE YOU SECURED YOUR LOAD CORRECTLY?”NEIL Young is out theresomewhere. The only problem is, nobody seems to know where. Two minutes before Uncut is due to meet Young on Zoom to talk over his astonishingly productive 2022, there’s a call from his team. “Neil asks can we put it back a little? He’s driving right now.” No problem. Whereabouts is he? “Yeah… Not actually sure.” Some hours later, another of Young’s ground crew struggles heroically – but in vain – to hook up a connection. As various technical options are attempted then aborted, Uncut asks where Neil is right now? “Uh, East Coast somewhere… I think.” Eventually, we’re given the number of the phone Young carries in his pocket – a device, as he will later explain, that was fundamental in the creation of his…30 min
UNCUT|February 2023“THEY WERE THROWING STUFF AT US!”“TO NIGHT’SThe Night was us working through the deaths of our friends, Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry, both gone from drugs. It was kind of a concept album, and kind of a wake album. It didn’t take all the pain away. But it was a journey that helped get through a lot of it. “When it came out, Neil took it on the road. We went to the UK, we did the Rainbow Club in London. He stuck to his guns and just played the album. The audiences were yelling for his hits – they were throwing stuff at us. We had 16-inch glitter boots tacked to the piano and we had a palm-tree roadie with a light bulb on a palm tree. Neil was doing a lot of rapping…2 min
UNCUT|February 2023KENDRICK LAMARO2 Arena, London, November 8 THE lights dim and, after support sets from Tanna Leone and Baby Keem, the audience at the madly cavernous O2 is at fever pitch. It’s a wonderfully diverse crowd: teenage white kids moshing; older black guys nodding, ready to follow the intricate flow word-for-word; women decked out in their finery, dancing ecstatically. The screen to the side of the stage lights up to reveal… an ad for a mobile payment app, with Kendrick Lamar sagely relating business advice from old white billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dallio. “Slow money wins the race,” he nods. “Invest in yourself…” It’s not the last time tonight in a triumphant, beautifully conceived and above all immensely controlled show that Lamar defies expectations. There’s none of the bloodshed or glittering…3 min
UNCUT|February 2023HIS OWN CREATIONPUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED “THEME” (from Public Image/First Issue, 1978) “Public Image” was the clarion call to the post-punk revolution, but the first track of PiL’s debut album was the full Levene manifesto: nine minutes of viciously beautiful futuristic guitar assault, like endless sheets of glass smashing on a concrete floor. The Edge, Thurston Moore, Kevin Shields and pretty much every alt.rock guitarist you care to name was taking notes. PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED “POPTONES” (from Metal Box, 1979) PiL’s finest and most disturbing moment, Levene wrapping barbed-wire guitars around Jah Wobble’s momentous bassline. He also ejected the original drummer and played the psychotically lurching rhythm himself. “When you’re both in dysfunctional worlds and you find this moment of absolute clarity, you’re out of time and space,” says Wobble of the song’s…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023A QUICK ONETwo thumbs up for our deluxe, updated Ultimate Music Guide to Paul McCartney. Celebrating Paul’s 80th birthday year, and his 60th as a recording artist, it covers all his solo work from McCartney to McCartney III, with selections from our archive of classic Macca interviews. It’s in shops on December 15, but buy direct from us at Uncut.co.uk/single to receive an exclusive McCartney gift… Still on sale is ourquarterly special, The 500 Greatest Albums Of The 1960s…. Ranked!. It’s not only an impressive list to debate, it’s an indispensable guide to how music was made in that decade… A new Teardrop Explodes boxset is coming on March 24. Culture Bunker 1978-82 compiles all the great Liverpool group’s singles and B-sides, plus four additional discs of demos, outtakes and live tracks……1 min
UNCUT|February 2023UNCUT PLAYLISTYO LA TENGO This Stupid World MATADOR Everything you’d want from a Yo La Tengo record at this stage: noise, tunes, tenderness, regret, sage advice, goofiness, smudgy motorik jams… and yoyo moves! SPENCER CULLUM Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2 FULL TIME HOBBY Nashville’s Essex expat trundles further down his idiosyncratic folk-jazz path, with contributions from Rich Ruth, Erin Rae, Caitlin Rose, and a verse in Japanese from Yuma Abe. H HAWKLINE Milk For Flowers HEAVENLY “With the elegance of Nero/Made divine by feeling zero” – Witty knockabout pop, glumly sung, in the vein of the album’s producer, Cate Le Bon. MODERN STUDIES “Cassandra” EP FIRE Experimental follow-up to February’s rousing We Are There LP, working “parallel to the myth” – but still with great songs. Grab the limited-edition cassette! YOUNG…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023ITALIA 90“WE were keen not to beconstrained by genre conventions,” say Italia 90 of their debut album Living Human Treasure. “We drew upon different styles, from more obvious reference points like goth rock and new wave through to classical and Latin music - to bring balance and thematic depth.” The album, which ricochets around playfully and noisily, is intended to “create something forward-looking that draws recognisably from the past”. This ownership of pulling from influences and sources, the band feel, is a more honest way of striving for something pure. “We didn’t set out to avoid innovation,” they say, requesting to speak collectively. “But rather thanaiming to create something totally new, you’re more likely to end up making singular music if you combine your influences to create something that’s more than…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023THE BROTHER MOVES ON$/he Who Feeds You… Owns You NATIVE REBEL 8/10 WHAT does protest music sound like in contemporary South Africa? Under apartheid it seemed a relatively straightforward affair: a call for the dismantling of an avowedly racist system. Even playing jazz – a music that implicitly challenged the strictures of racial segregation – became a subversive political act. It made South Africa the crucible for some of the most fiery and passionate jazz to emerge in the second half of the 20th century. Now a generation of musicians and writers are addressing the messy issues that face the Rainbow Nation 30 years after the end of apartheid: the corruption of Jacob Zuma and other ANC leaders; the country’s rampant hom*ophobia; the failure to address the AIDS epidemic; the stubborn continuation of…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023VIDEODROMETokyo, 1985 (DVD 1) Previously released as Pumped Full Of Drugs, this show from the band’s first tour of Japan finds them battling new gear and unanticipated cultural differences, as the audience claps politely after each song, then sits in complete silence until the next. But the mounting frustration feeds a demonic energy. Opener “Confusion” rarely sounded better. Manchester, 1985 (DVD 1) Filmed as a live drop-in for the BBC’s weekly music show Whistle Test, this is only three tracks (and the last is partially reconstructed from un-broadcast footage), but it’s an invaluable snapshot of New Order playing at home in their club, the Haçienda, in its pre-acid days. The Velvets-y “As It Is When It Was” wouldn’t be released until the following year’s Brotherhood. Toronto, 1985 (DVD 2) There…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023Q&AHow did you meet Daevid? In spring 1968, I saw a Soft Machine concert at Palais de Sport, as a trio with Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge, and the next day I met Daevid. A German actor called Hans who was in the Living Theatre introduced me. We went to a camping place in Paris and Daevid told me a lot of stories about Planet Gong, and the Submarine Captain and the Pot-Head Pixies, and I came over with my flute and we played music together for a few hours – it was brilliant. Magick Brother was recorded in Autumn 1969; do you consider it a Gong album? It’s not a Gong album; it’s a Daevid Allen album. It’s kindof Gong, but Gong was not properly open yet.…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023“IT WAS LIKE JACK KEROUAC”PART rock bio, part country-music picaresque, and part exploration of grief and motherhood, Price’s first book, Maybe We’ll Make It, chronicles her life leading up to her mid-2010s, as she left the family farm to find her fortune in Nashville, met her husband, lost a child, and wandered the States playing shows for whoever turned up that night. “When I wrote the book, initially I didn’t have any chapters,” Price says. “I just wrote a long, 530-page manuscript with no chapters and no ending. It was like Jack Kerouac — all on one scroll. I just had to get it out. “I was refining the book while recording Strays. They mirror each other, with similar themes. There’s a song and a chapter called ‘Hell In The Heartland’. The book is…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023GIMME DANGER!In 1972, The Stooges were on life support. Dropped by Elektra after Fun House flopped, they returned home to Detroit to lick their wounds. There, a new version of the band took shape, with James Williamson, second guitarist since 1970, replacing Ron Asheton at Iggy’s right hand. Invited to London by David Bowie and his MainMan management, Iggy seized the chance to rejuvenate The Stooges. Written while roaming West London’s leafy streets, Raw Power became a blueprint for the city’s punk explosion a few years later. On the 50th anniversary of its release, the album remains a masterpiece of slashing guitars and savage, misanthropic blues. “I realised that there was almost no-one in the world who wanted to save The Stooges,” Iggy tells Uncut. “I knew that there were a…14 min
UNCUT|February 2023The MetersFOR much of the past 60 years, the four musicians who make up The Meters have been a constant thread in New Orleans musical history. While still in their teens, all four – Art Neville (piano and organ), Zigaboo Modeliste (drums), George Porter Jr (bass) and Leo Nocentelli (guitar) – were the house band in Allen Toussaint’s studio, playing on big singles by Lee Dorsey, Ernie K-Doe, Betty Harris and Professor Longhair, and touring with Otis Redding. Initially known as Art Neville And The Sounds, they renamed themselves The Meters in 1965 and built up a following as the hottest funk band on the circuit. Paul McCartney and Led Zeppelin hired them to play private parties; The Rolling Stones enlisted them as a support act for six months; and they…13 min
UNCUT|February 2023Mimi Parker: The Lost InterviewIN January 2013, Low sat down for a chat about their latest album, The Invisible Way, recorded at The Loft in Chicago, with Jeff Tweedy. Alan Sparhawk was running late, so Mimi Parker gave a rare solo interview – which has remained unpublished until now. UNCUT: You’ve worked with some prominent producers. What role does a producer play for Low? MIMI PARKER: We’re always willing to take any advice we can get, because Alan and I have been working together a long time. It’s nice to get a different point of view. We’ve always been pretty organised when we go into the studio. We do our best to rehearse a lot and get the songs where we think they should be. But we have an open mind. We’re willing to…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023“NEIL CUT OFF A PIECE OF HIS FINGER!”NEIL Young and Crazy Horse first hooked up with producer Rick Rubin a quarter of a Ncentury before they made World Record together, back in 1997, when they assembled at the historic Ocean Way studios on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood for a few days of sessions that have remained locked away ever since. “I haven’t heard the recordings since then,” Rubin says. But he remembers some details vividly. “Neil accidentally cut off a piece of his finger a few days before the session, so he couldn’t play guitar. I assumed we would cancel the sessions – but Neil had an idea to play harmonica through his guitar amp! I can’t remember what it sounded like, but I do know I never heard anything else quite like it before or since.”…2 min
UNCUT|February 2023HARVEST TIMEEVEN for fans who know just how conscientiously Young has documented his activities across his entire career, the sheer wealth and detail of the footage that makes up the two-hour documentary accompanying the 50th-anniversary edition of Harvest is astonishing. Shot between January and September 1971, the film captures every aspect of the recording of the album in close-up: following Young and his ragtag family of cohorts from the famous sessions conducted in the barn at his bucolic Broken Arrow ranch in Northern California, across the ocean to a grey London for his collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra, musicians separated by a common language as they attempt to capture “A Man Needs A Maid”. Finally, it lurches back to Nashville, for further tracking and overdubbing sessions amid a cast of…2 min
UNCUT|February 2023FILMSGLASS ONION Released in the winter of 2019, Knives Out already feels like one of the key texts of the Trump era – a deliciously confected grown-up entertainment, of the kind you thought Hollywood had forgotten how to make, that unerringly skewered the paranoid vanities of affluent white America. The wit of its construction, the verve of its performances – in particular Daniel Craig as Kentucky-fried gentleman sleuth Benoit Blanc – and the popular nerve that it touched meant that a sequel and even a franchise felt inevitable, and Glass Onion, “a Knives Out mystery”, once again couldn’t be better timed. As Elon Musk fritters billions demolishing social media empires, the new film takes us to the luxury Aegean Covid bubble of a vainglorious tech tycoon and the motley crew…6 min
UNCUT|February 2023Not Fade AwayWILKO JOHNSON Fiery Feelgoods guitarist(1947-2022) WILKO Johnson was resurrected several times in his later years. In 2009, Julien Temple’s Dr Feelgood documentary Oil City Confidential rescued the band’s guitarist from career oblivion, reminding viewers of his electric-shock stage presence and poetic mind. Ironically, a terminal cancer diagnosis in 2013 would raise his career to even greater heights, as people began to realise what might be lost. “I could contrive to feel miserable in the Garden of Eden,” he later reflected. “Whereas, the valley of the shadow of death – it’s not all downside!” An album with Roger Daltrey, Going Back Home, hit the Top 3, and a farewell tour concluded with the balconies of Camden’s KOKO bouncing with communal love. One second opinion and tumour-removing op later and the dead…10 min
UNCUT|February 2023FEEDBACKEmail letters@uncut.co.uk. Or tweet us at twitter.com/uncutmagazine END-OF-YEAR LOW I’m heartbroken at the news of Mimi Parker’s passing. What a gorgeous voice and a wonderful person, just so freaking sad. Much love to Alan and the extended Parker/Sparhawk families… and anyone that was spellbound by her sound. Robin J, Wodonga, Australia We were also heartbroken by Mimi’s passing, Robin. We hope Stephen Deusner’s piece on page 82 is a suitable tribute to her and the incredible music she and Alan made. Incidentally, with the passing of artists like Keith Levene, Nik Turner, Wilko Johnson and Gal Costa, this month feels like a heavy way to end the year. Although it’s scant consolation for their loved ones, I’m sure that many of us have been sent back deep into their respective…5 min
UNCUT|February 2023CROSSWORDHOW TO ENTER The letters in the shaded squares form an anagram of a song by Neil Young. 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: Wednesday, January 11, 2023. This competition is only open to European residents. CLUES ACROSS 1 An Arcade Fire album please. That’ll be all for the present (10-3) 9 (See 19 across) 10 Drags mat on somehow for Suede to perform album (3-3-4) 11 (See 4 down) 12 Sleepy John _____, US bluesman who influenced Robert Plant and John Lennon (5) 13“I’m giving you a _____ call to tell you how I feel”, London Grammar (5) 15 Pete _____, former man in The Loft who recently spent some…2 min
UNCUT|February 2023Ivor the IngeniousHAVING enchanted The Beatles as lugubrious would-be bus conductor Buster Bloodvessel during the making of Magical Mystery Tour, Ivor Cutler received what he considered an indecent proposal from one of the Fab Four to work with their children as a private tutor. The sporran-dry Scottish humorist said he turned the offer down “on socialist principles”, adding: “What made their kids more special than other kids?” Released to commemorate what would have been his 100th birthday on January 15, Bruce Lindsay’s new biography A Life Outside The Sitting Room shows how Cutler was far too determinedly strange to be anyone’s pet eccentric. The Glaswegian’s surreal poems, songs and meditations on his Govan childhood entranced generations, from the smart set at Peter Cook’s Establishment club to generations of John Peel listeners. Cutler’s…3 min
UNCUT|February 2023“Mick wanted me”IT was 3am in LA and Harvey Mandel was in bed when he got the call from Mick Jagger. The Stones were recording in Berlin, Mick Taylor had left and they needed a guitar player – could he get there the next day? That’s how Mandel found himself recording two songs (“Hot Stuff” and “Memory Motel”) for Black And Blue in what was essentially an audition for joining the Stones. “Mick wanted me,” Mandel recalls. “If it was up to him, I’d be a millionaire. I was one thread from being a Rolling Stone and that last thread was Keith Richards, who f*cked me. He wanted Ron Wood, who was his buddy. Bill Wyman liked my stuff, he wanted me to get the job, they all did. It was just…3 min
UNCUT|February 2023There’s A World1 FRAN Palm Trees We begin this month with a slow-burning triumph from Chicago’s Maria Jacobson and her band. Taken from their second album, Leaving, it’s an existential, atmospheric waltz that finds the songwriter lamenting, “How can I give it away?/Wanting it to last another day…” 2 THE BAD ENDS Thanksgiving 1915 If getting REM’s Bill Berry back behind the kit wasn’t impressive enough, the debut album by Mike Mantione’s Bad Ends is excellent in its own right. Here’s a sprightly piece of chiming, heartland garage rock, a highlight of The Power And The Glory, reminiscent of the Truckers, The Replacements and – of course – their drummer’s old band. 3 THE MURDER CAPITAL Ethel Gigi’s Recovery is the second album by this Dublin five-piece, and a massive evolution from…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023SHIFTY ADVENTURES AND MORE…BLACKACETATE EMI, 2005 2003’s HoboSapiens was strong, but this was Cale’s best in decades, a dynamic, experimental exercise in guitar-driven rock. “In A Flood” is his brilliant take on Americana, complete with slide guitar, Dylan phrasing and spare Fender Rhodes, while “Sold Motel” is greasy grunge the way only Cale could do it. 8/10 SHIFTY ADVENTURES IN NOOKIE WOOD DOUBLE SIX, 2012 Dystopian funk was the name of the game here: a departure of sorts at the time, but compared with Mercy, Shifty Adventures… today sounds shockingly breezy and commercial. Perhaps a sign of Cale, not for the first instance, being way ahead of his time. 8/10 M:FANS DOUBLE SIX/DOMINO, 2016 This reworking of 1982’s Music For A New Society allowed Cale to ‘correct’ one of his most legendary and…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023WHITEHORSEI’m Not Crying, You’re Crying SIX SHOOTER 8/10 PRIOR to forming Whitehorse in 2010, married couple Melissa McClelland and Luke Doucet had each made a string of singer-songwriterly albums that followed all manner of musical directions. Both also had a shared history in Sarah McLachlan’s band, while Doucet was, for a time, leader of Vancouver indie-rock types Veal. The varied stylistic elements of their work seemed to find an ideal home in the fluid sensibility of Whitehorse, whose first few releases veered from tape-loop folk to roots-rock to a bluesy kind of cinematic noir. Eight albums in, Whitehorse now prove themselves masterful exponents of timeless country. I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying is an album that follows a lineage that runs from the likes of George Jones and Melba Montgomery to…2 min
UNCUT|February 2023KALI MALONE FEATURING LUCY RAILTON AND STEPHEN O’MALLEYDoes Spring Hide Its Joy IDEOLOGIC ORGAN 8/10 KALI MALONE isn’t an artist afraid of the monumental. An experimental musician whose work has for several years explored the relationship between sound and its environment, she has composed for choirs, gongs and a massive lute called a theorbo; worked on epic installations, and in colleges, churches and a Swedish nuclear reactor. On record, her ambitions haven’t been small either. Her first major work, Sacrificial Code (2019) was a double album which explored the shared territory between longform organ drones and what felt like a post-rave ambience. It was music with opportunities for both long contemplation and emotional release, which you could imagine accommodating a solemn choir or a hard-charging remix. Sacrificial Code didn’t only offer immersive music, it also took it…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023DAVE ROWNTREEIt must be close to a record for the longest gap between debut album with a group and debut album as a solo artist – fully 31 years between Blur’s opening shot, Leisure, and Dave Rowntree’s first solo effort, the new Radio Songs. “I’ve always written songs,” says Rowntree. “But it was the confidence I found in the success of my film-scoring career, coupled with the space that Covid lockdowns made in my life, that made it happen. Now I’ve done it, I’m wondering why I waited quite so long.” So will listeners. Radio Songs defies a rich lexicon of jokes about the solo works of drummers: it’s a collection suffused with glorious downbeat melodies, andcongruent lyrical wistfulness. “It’s autobiographical,” Rowntree confirms. “It’s a solo album after all, so that’s…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023NICK GARRIEAs Nick Garrie admits, to describe his musical career as a stop-start affair would be an understatement. One revered cult album in the late ’60s followed by a long hiatus before a brief reappearance under the pseudonym Nick Hamilton in the ’80s - then another lengthy silence while he ran a hot-air ballooning business before he eventually re-emerged in 2009 with his first album of new songs in more than 20 years. Summer Nights, recorded in an impromptu session shortly after the arrival of the new millennium, servedas a staging post to his full-time return. “We were in a lovely village in north Portugal where we picked tomatoes,” he says. “I was watching a guitarist in a local bodega when the owner - a fierce 80-year-old with a big stick…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023VARIOUS ARTISTSArtificial Intelligence (reissue, 1992) WARP 8/10 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE was not the first compilation Warp put out – that was Pioneers Of The Hypnotic Groove, a round-up of the Sheffield label’s key early tracks, in May 1991. But 30 years on, it’s the one that fans remember, largely because of its cultural impact. It helped define not just a new style of electronic music, bringing together self-taught misfits such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, Richie Hawtin and B12, but it also ushered in Warp’s second phase which would come to shape the label’s identity. After the bleep techno boom with local heroes Forgemasters and LFO, Warp devoted its 1992-’94 Artificial Intelligence series of artist albums to a more abstract and graceful sound that had greater emotional resonance. This new kind of otherworldly…2 min
UNCUT|February 20232023 ALBUMS PREVIEWPETER GABRIEL TITLE: i/o LABEL: Real World RELEASE DATE: 2023 At last! Two decades in the planning, the rightful heir to 2002’s Up SPEAKING to Uncut in 2020, Peter Gabriel suggested that new music may not be too far away. “Although I’ve been writing a lot, I’ve had various other distractions and other projects, so I’m very slow in actually finishing things,” he admitted. “There’s a big backlog of ideas that are unfinished but I’m now getting enough lyrics done, which is often where I slow down. I’m looking forward to getting an album out.” Gabriel had been dropping hints about his activities for some time, usually via his social media channels. As far back as 2002, not long before the release of Up, Gabriel announced that another album of…34 min
UNCUT|February 2023AN ORIGINAL OUTLAW“JESSI Colter was a musician and country singer in the ‘70s. She was part of that whole outlaw country movement, with her husband Waylon Jennings, although she gets overlooked too often. She’s on that [Wanted! The] Outlaws recorded with Waylon and Willie Nelson and Tompall Glaser. She ministered Johnny Cash back in the day, when he was going through his terrible problems with substance abuse and just feeling lost. She was a big part of that world. “Jessi’s in her seventies, but she still sounds so good. I produced a record for her called Standing On The Edge Of Forever, and my band played on the whole thing. We did it here in Nashville, and her son Shooter Jennings mixed it. She has all this memorabilia at her house in…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023THE RAW AND THE COOKED“I FELT up to the task of producing Raw Power while we were making the music,” Iggy recalls. “But as soon as we finished I became drained and unsound. So it was going to be impossible for me to mix that thing correctly. I was carrying these two giant boxes of 24-track tapes around London. Later, I carried them to America. I became obsessed. The treble couldn’t be trebly enough. The bass couldn’t be low enough.” Instead, Bowie took the helm in a rushed, violently treble-heavy mix which left the Ashetons almost inaudible. This became Raw Power’s most distinctive feature. “That toppy, screechy sound with hardly any bottom end was what punk was all about,” argues Jim Reid. “A lot of weird things going on in it sonically are accidental…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023SUBSCRIBE TO UNCUT AND SAVE UP TO 50%!CHRISTMAS OFFER! ● NEVER MISS AN ISSUE ● DELIVERED DIRECT TO YOUR HOME ● FREE CD EVERY MONTH ENDS DECEMBER 24 SUBSCRIBE ONLINE AT UNCUT.CO.UK/SUBSCRIBE Or call 01371 851882 and quote code UCPRXS22 LINES ARE OPEN MONDAY – FRIDAY 9AM – 5.30PM Direct Debit offer is available to UK subscribers only. £20.99 payable by six monthly Direct Debit. Offer ends December 24, 2022. Please allow up to six weeks for delivery of your first subscription issue. The full subscription rate is for 12 months (12 issues) and includes postage and packaging. If the magazine ordered changes frequency per annum, we will honour the number of issues paid for, not the term of the subscription. For enquiries please call: 01371 851882 or e-mail: support@uncut.co.uk.…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023“We’re not Kansas!”“SEE-THROUGH” LONG DIVISION, 1995 A perfect example of Low’s musical economy, as they craft a powerful performance with only a few notes and even fewer lyrics Kramer: “Through a glass wall at Noise New Jersey, I watched in utter amazement as Mimi laid her soul bare on this song. First take. Flesh and blood. Mathematicians often describe the rapturous understanding of how the universe works as ‘knowing the mind of God’. Once or twice in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, there are similar raptures of understanding. True euphoria is so very rare in the recording studio, but on that day I heard the simultaneous sounds of bliss, sadness, elation, and perhaps even a modest understanding of the mind of God.” “NOTHING BUT HEART” C’MON, 2011 A true family affair, with…2 min
UNCUT|February 2023CAT POWER SINGS DYLANRoyal Albert Hall, London, November 5 JUST as Bob Dylan steps on stage at Bournemouth International Centre for the final date of his ecstatically received UK run, Chan Marshall begins her ballsy reconstruction of his fabled 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert. You might wonder exactly which Albert Hall show is being recalled. Is it the infamous “Judas” gig, billed as The Royal Albert Hall Concert on the widely circulated bootleg LP but actually taped at Manchester Free Trade Hall? Is it the May 26 show, released in 2016 as The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert? Or is it the following, still more combative night, when a fan howled, “Drop dead, Dylan!”, after which he ceased touring for eight years? The way Marshall talked in a recent interview, it’s all…5 min
UNCUT|February 2023ALSO OUT…AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER RELEASED DECEMBER 16 In the first of what are promised to be a further three much-delayed sequels, James Cameron returns to Pandora to find Jake Sully and the Na’avi defending their homes from a terrifying new threat. WILDCAT RELEASED DECEMBER 23 Unexpectedly moving story of a young US army veteran who finds relief from PTSD by travelling to an Amazonian wildlife rescue centre, where he’s entrusted with an orphaned baby ocelot. THE PALE BLUE EYE RELEASED DECEMBER 23 Christian Bale and Gillian Anderson star in a murder mystery set in 19th-century New York, featuring a youthful Edgar Allan Poe. I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY RELEASED DECEMBER 26 Naomie Ackie stars in this Whitney Houston biopic directed by Harriet’s Kasi Lemmons. Stanley Tucci plays Clive Davis…1 min
UNCUT|February 2023BOOKS“I’M starting all over again and working upwards,” beamed Paul McCartney optimistically, midway through a ramshackle 1972 European tour which saw his new band Wings stagger from gig to gig aboard a converted double-decker bus. “It’s like boxing, you don’t fight Cassius Clay your first time out.” Getting back into fighting shape was something of a struggle for McCartney in the years following The Beatles’ split, with Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair’s impossibly deep dive The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1 – 1969–73 relaying his attempts at self-rediscovery in unprecedented detail. Desperately unhappy at the turn of the decade (“You don’t shave, and it’s not to grow a groovy beard, it’s because you can’t be f*cking bothered,” he recalled), his first attempts at solo recording, McCartney and Ram, received a lukewarm…4 min
UNCUT|February 2023Mike ScottBOB DYLAN Blonde On Blonde COLUMBIA, 1966 The first song I ever remember being moved by was “Blowin’ In The Wind”. But it wasn’t Bob Dylan’s version, it was Val Doonican’s – I was about five or six years old and it was on the TV. I don’t know why it moved me, but I suppose that’s the power of poetry. I came to Bob a few years later when a student of my mother’s played me Blonde On Blonde. My favourite song was “Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” – the sway of the rhythm, the romance of the organ, the buttoned-down emotion of the players that was so strong in Nashville music in the ’60s. As an 11-year-old I didn’t understand any of that, I just recognised something that…5 min
