Around late afternoon on Saturday, End Of The Road enters its most suggestive state. By now it’s usually had its cerebral cortex prised wide open by some unhinged psych, massaged to a pulp by gentle alt-folk and mercilessly blended by avant jazz. It’s now palpable, submissive, ready for anything. Enter Jane Weaver, Cheshire’s nightingale-voiced toast of psych folk. Over her two solo decades – culminating in this year’s acclaimed, poppy Flock – she’s built up an adventurous canon, making for a broad-reaching, if variable, EOTR hour. When she slips into funk grooves on the likes of “The Revolution Of...
Three days in and it’s time to disrupt End Of The Road’s hitherto cosy vibe. Handed the unenviable midday slot in the Big Top, knotty post-rocker Kiran Leonard responds in typically uncompromising fashion with a set of largely new material, drawn from his upcoming double album, Trespass On Foot. The subject matter is not cheery – one song appears to be about a man dying of organ failure – but Leonard’s pained, intense performance is compelling. ORDER NOW: Nick Cave is on the cover of the October 2021 issue of Uncut Modern Nature, too, have decided to chance a set...
The sign reads, ‘Stand up comedy, by its very nature is not for little ears’. Uncut’s season of Q&As at this year’s End Of The Road Festival are being held on the Talking Heads stage, a venue more suited to late night comedians. While you wouldn’t want to risk a bunch up the bracket by calling Jason Williamson a stand up comedian, you could attribute him certain characteristics of the craft. In song, Williamson is a shrewd observer of life, with an ear for a good punch line. In conversation, the same is pretty much true. ORDER NOW: Nick Cave...
Here’s a selection of curios, amuse-bouches and things that have made us smile as we wander the End of The Road site… ORDER NOW: Nick Cave is on the cover of the October 2021 issue of Uncut The Festival Post Office Write a letter, post it in the letter box by the Big Top and get it delivered direct to your tent! ** 5 random overheard conversations “… I brought some night wear. But, really, what’s the point in getting changed?…” “… I’m with everyone so try and find us…” “… and so he took a full orchestra with him…”...
One might expect John Grant to emerge from lockdown like a butterfly from a cocoon – fragile but effortlessly fabulous. Any hopes of the electro visionary having used the pandemic to up his showman game to the level of his photo shoots, and formulating a spectacle resembling the wedding party of Wayne Coyne and Alison Goldfrapp, however, are quickly dashed. Grant’s recent fifth solo album The Boy From Michigan was a beautifully reflective work of childhood autobiography and national disgrace, and Grant’s accompanying show begins suitably restrained; initially static and subdued. No futuristic birdmen or neon-painted cybermen here, just...
When you get to the bottom, custom dictates, you go back to the top of the slide. Certainly when you’ve brought your three-year-old to End Of The Road festival – the boutique Dorset weekender for the discerning alt-rocker – and she spots the helter skelter from half a mile away. Ten quid and two dizzying descents later, you’re thankful for the opportunity to see 2021’s late-reviving festival season through fresh eyes. Though the more colourful extremes of the site are yet to open on Thursday – the pirate ship, Magic Garden and idyllic croquet lawn are all cordoned off with...
Nathan Salsburg lives on an old tree farm just outside Louisville, Kentucky, with his partner Joan Shelley, their newborn baby daughter, a cat, a couple of goats and a barnful of old 78s and roots reggae 45s. He has a dream day job working for the Alan Lomax Archive and a burgeoning reputation as an intrepid folk guitarist, having released three solo albums and backed up the likes of Shelley, The Weather Station, Shirley Collins and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. But there was still something missing. ORDER NOW: Nick Cave is on the cover of the October 2021 issue of Uncut...
For a while now, 51 years maybe, there’s been talk of de-Spectorising All Things Must Pass, of wiping away the reverb like grime from a golden murti. Phil didn’t make it easy, though: rather than adding effects during mixing, the layers of echo that cloud this motherlode of songs and jams are often baked onto the tapes themselves. ORDER NOW: Nick Cave is on the cover of the October 2021 issue of Uncut This 50th-anniversary edition, therefore, is not the clear and crisp version of All Things Must Pass that’s hovered in some people’s imaginations for decades like some audiophile...
Listener expectation is something that most bands who have stayed the course must contend with, choosing either to acquiesce to it, meet it halfway or defiantly turn their backs and wear the consequences. Liars, however, seem to have never even acknowledged its existence. A luxury long afforded them by their record label, maybe, but far more an indicator of their protean constitution. Over 20 years, change really has been Liars’ only constant. ORDER NOW: Nick Cave is on the cover of the October 2021 issue of Uncut Their 2001 debut was as an NYC-based four-piece, whose They Threw Us All...
During lockdown, Liam Kazar found new ways to make a living. With his regular gigs playing in Jeff Tweedy’s live band on hold, Kazar opened Isfahan – a delivery-only kitchen, named after a Duke Ellington song, whose cuisine is inspired by his Armenian heritage. ORDER NOW: Nick Cave is on the cover of the October 2021 issue of Uncut Such resourcefulness has been evident throughout Kazar’s career so far. As a teenager in Chicago, he was a member of Kids These Days, an eight-piece musical collective whose sole album Traphouse Rock was produced by Tweedy. Since then, Kazar has busied...