On the Rollercoaster tour of early 1992, it seemed that if Damon Albarn couldn’t get past My Bloody Valentine, he was going to try and get over them. Or possibly under. Such was his athleticism as Blur presented their opening act set of post-Baggy, pop-psychedelia, it seemed as though while the Jesus and Mary Chain, and Dinosaur Jr were there as musical diversions, Blur were partly there for sport. BUY NOW: The Ultimate Genre Guide to Shoegaze On that night, as others on the tour, lots were drawn as to the order of the bill – as per the...
Blues has always been a vital channel of protest and nonconformity, and in recent years a powerful new group of artists have risen up to rail against the problems of the 21st century. There are plain-speaking singer-songwriters such as Buffalo Nichols, whose self-titled debut is our Album Of The Month, Tré Burt, Amythyst Kiah and Allison Russell; guitarists like Gwenifer Raymond and Cameron Knowler taking on the instrumental might of the blues; and those harnessing the raw, ragged power of the sound, from The Black Keys to Eight Point Star. CLICK HERE TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED DIRECT...
One of the many wonderful things about End Of The Road festival – and if you weren’t following it last weekend, you can catch up with all our coverage here – is how it reignites a hunger for new music. You can hear a couple of our discoveries from the festival below, along with plenty more terrific new stuff that’s been easing our descent back into homeworking normality this week. From the invigorating (Johnny Marr, Chelsea Carmichael, Ill Considered) to the emotive (The War On Drugs, Shannon Lay, Sufjan Stevens, Courtney Barnett covering the Velvets) to the utterly serene...
The Waterboys have announced details of a new box set, The Magnificent Seven: Fisherman’s Blues/Room To Roam Band, 1989-1990. ORDER NOW: The Rolling Stones are on the cover of Uncut’s November 2021 issue Comprising 5 CDs and a DVD, the box is due for release by Chrysalis Records on December 3. You can pre-order by clicking here. Advertisement The box set covers a particularly fertile period for the band – from spring 1989 to summer 1990 – when the band’s core line-up of Mike Scott (vocals, guitars, piano), Steve Wickham (fiddle/mandolin/organ), Anto Thistlethwaite (saxophone/mandolin) Colin Blakey (organ/piano/whistle) and Trevor Hutchinson...
It starts with a shudder – an exhalation of electronic noise, like the moan of a poorly grounded amp. There’s a lurch, a crunch, a seasick squall of feedback. And then Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker’s vocals swoop in, shadowed by a rasping, electronic beat that builds and builds in intensity. “Only a fool would have had the faith/Though it’s impossible to say I know,” the pair chorus. Just at that moment, the song tips over the line into cacophony before finally abating. The song is called White Horses. It’s the first track from Low’s 13th album Hey What,...
Even punk didn’t want The Stranglers: the movement for damaged outcasts drew the line at these Surrey brutes, seen as too thuggish, ancient, sexist and straight. Before that, pub-rockers too thought themselves above this glowering crew, with their corduroy-wearing biochemistry graduate singer, 37-year-old jazz drummer with a taste for home-brewing, a brooding bassist ever itching to use his karate skills, and a hippie keyboardist whose unfashionable solos inspired flashbacks of the verboten Doors, though he expressed a preference for Yes. Such faces certainly didn’t fit Malcolm McLaren’s Situationist programme, leaving them as uncomprehending rock press pariahs, blindly lashing out...
You can watch McCartney 3,2,1 in any order. It’s not sequential. But it just so happens that the exchange that takes place at the top of the first episode tells you what you can expect from Disney+’s six-part Maccamentary. Rick Rubin asks Paul McCartney, “Are you up for listening to a bit of music?” And Paul, sitting opposite him in a low-lit warehouse space where someone has conveniently left a mixing desk, says, “Yeah, what have you got?” ORDER NOW: The Rolling Stones are on the cover of the November 2021 issue of Uncut And that, in essence, is the...
Revelations come from the most unexpected corners. For Michael Kasparis, who runs Glasgow’s Night School imprint, the keys to the kingdom of late Scottish songwriter Jackie Leven were gifted to him by friend and label artist Molly Nilsson. “I instantly knew I was listening to a miracle,” Nilsson writes in the liner notes to Straight Outta Caledonia, of her first encounter with Leven’s music. “The best song ever written.”That song, “The Sexual Loneliness Of Jesus Christ, long considered one of Leven’s greatest, leads Straight Outta Caledonia. The experience of hearing the song for the first time was so profound...
Considering Christine McVie’s huge success with Fleetwood Mac, penning songs that would stay in the UK and US charts for months on end, this treasure of a debut album is curiously unknown. In 1970, Christine Perfect – the maiden name by which she was still known, at least professionally – was performing with Chicken Shack, dabbling with her husband’s band Fleetwood Mac, then led by Peter Green, and also finding time to record and release this bluesy delight on, naturally, Blue Horizon. ORDER NOW: The Rolling Stones are on the cover of the November 2021 issue of Uncut Christine Perfect...
Stevie Nicks has made her first public statement on her bandmate and ex-partner Lindsey Buckingham‘s exit from Fleetwood Mac three years ago. ORDER NOW: The Rolling Stones are on the cover of Uncut’s November 2021 issue READ MORE: Lindsey Buckingham shares triumphant new song “Scream” The guitarist was fired from the veteran group back in 2018, and was replaced by Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell and Crowded House’s Neil Finn. At the time, it was reported that his exit came following “a disagreement over the band’s upcoming tour”. In July this year, Buckingham blamed his exit on Nicks,...
