Hit Singles
Ezra Furman All Of Us Flames
Plenty of artists openly protest against their categorisation along genre lines, while many more just quietly resent it, but across five albums since 2012, Ezra Furman has unabashedly channelled the rock’n’roll classicism of Reed, Dylan, Young and (especially) Springsteen, while repurposing its power to a unique end. In the run-up to 2013’s breakthrough, the hectic Day Of The Dog, Furman, who came out as a trans woman last year, declared her ambition was to be like Elvis, Buddy Holly or Patti Smith, and though solo identity as a group leader was on her mind there, not glory, with the...
Lou Reed Words & Music, May 1965
In 1965, Lewis Reed was a half-formed thing. In fluctuating quantities he was a street poet, a reporter, a Greenwich Village folkie, a comedian, a pop hack. He had his own ideas, some of them borrowed, a few of them blue. He was an experiment. He wasn’t yet an original. Run the tape backwards – to 1963/4, say – and it’s evident that Reed’s metamorphosis was speeding up. Back then, when two years in pop history was an age, the Dylanisms came loaded with harmonica and deference to the workmanlike chug of the blues. Peer back further, into the...
Bridget St John From There / To Here UK/US Recordings 1974-1982
Speaking in the mid-1970s, singer-songwriter Bridget St John was aware that her personal musical golden age was over. “It’s not enough to make nice records anymore,” she told the Liquorice fanzine. “You’ve got to have a whole campaign behind you.” A slightly untogether free spirit, St John struggled to adapt to a more bread-headed world, with this 3CD boxed set, stacked with unheard recordings, capturing the Nico-voiced bohemian’s curious and woolly attempts to stay artistically upright in a time when being a John Peel show regular was no longer quite enough. ORDER NOW: Joni Mitchell is on the cover...
Arctic Monkeys announce new album, The Car
Arctic Monkeys have announced details of their new album, The Car. ORDER NOW: Joni Mitchell is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut The band’s seventh studio album, The Car features ten new songs written by Alex Turner, produced by James Ford and recorded at Butley Priory, Suffolk, RAK Studios, London and La Frette, Paris. The deluxe LP will be available on limited grey vinyl with a tip on sleeve and mounted gloss cover image via the band’s official store. An exclusive, custard coloured LP will be available at independent record shops and HMV stores. The Car...
Hear Bitchin Bajas’ new track, “Amorpha”
Bitchin Bajas are back, with their first new album since 2017’s Bajas Fresh. ORDER NOW: Joni Mitchell is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut Bitchin Bajas – aka Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Dan Quinlivan – release Bajascillators on 2xLP and cassette September 2 by Drag City. You can watch the video for “Amorpha”, from the album, below. Advertisement The band have also announced a run of American dates: Oct.12 – Minneapolis, MN @ Parkway Theater * Oct.13 – Iowa City, IA @ Trumpet Blossom Oct.14 – Rock Island, IL @ Rozz Tox Oct.15 – Milwaukee,...
The National: How we made “Bloodbuzz Ohio”
The National arrive in the UK this coming week, for their first tour here since 2019, to play All Points East and the Connect festival. To celebrate, here’s our piece on the making of their classic track “Bloodbuzz Ohio” from Uncut’s June 2020 issue. Now read on… In 2009, The National were burned out. They had toured solidly on the back of their Alligator (2005) and Boxer (2008) albums and found themselves in what guitarist Aaron Dessner calls “a dark place… It was exhaustion and everything that comes with being that fatigued,” he says. “Relationships were suffering. We almost...
Tall Dwarfs Unravelled: 1981 2002
Tall Dwarfs emerged among a handful of standout ’80s punk-adjacent acts from New Zealand, burbling up in the wake of iconic label Flying Nun’s founding; and they tread a familiar path – locally beloved, but otherwise more obscure, an intriguing and essential layer in the country’s cultural underground. They were born out of cult band Toy Love, who were at one point so popular they made the hop to Sydney, on the promise of a springboard to London, but were swiftly met and then rejected by head-scratching pub-rock punters who didn’t get it. Crestfallen, Dwarfs co-founders Chris Knox and...
Cass McCombs Heartmind
The ancient provocateur Diogenes – a kind of Grecian hybrid of Slavoj Žižek and Steve Bray – is one of Cass McCombs’ recent obsessions. Born two and a half millennia ago, Diogenes demonstrated his radical philosophy by living on the streets of Athens, sleeping in a ceramic wine vessel and offending the public with various stunts, all in the service of sticking it to the corrupt ruling class of the time. ORDER NOW: Joni Mitchell is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut McCombs’ fascination is understandable, for Diogenes could easily have stepped from his catalogue; say, from...
Loudon Wainwright III Lifetime Achievement
“How old is 75?” Loudon Wainwright III asks near the end of his new album, Lifetime Achievement. There’s a rickety banjo strumming in the background as he answers his own rhetorical question: “So old you’re barely alive”. It lands like a punchline, but Wainwright tempers that levity with an almost unbearable gravity. On the verses to “How Old Is 75?” he notes that he’s already outlived his mother by one year and Loudon II by 13. What does that signify? Nothing really. It’s just the math of mortality, which measures the quantity but not the quality of years: “With...Recent Posts
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