Given End Of The Road’s location in the heart of the Wessex countryside, there hasn’t been much actual folk music at the festival so far. That oversight is corrected on Sunday afternoon at the Garden Stage, although Jim Ghedi’s take on traditional song is not quite the easygoing ride some had maybe hoped for while lazing against a hedge. Playing his excellent recent album In The Furrows Of Common Place from start to finish, these are ancient (or ancient-sounding) tales of impoverishment, malady and loss, accompanied by mournful violin and double bass or the ominous drone of a harmonium....
Kudos is a ritzy oriental restaurant situated just outside Canterbury’s historic city walls on sleepy Dover Street. Peering through its lime green frontage at the pink orchids and foo dog statues inside, it’s hard to imagine that this place was once the crucible of the famous Canterbury Sound. Only if you’re looking for it might you spot a small Banksy-style mural of Robert Wyatt, once the drummer and vocalist for local R&B trailblazers The Wilde Flowers, who played this venue many times in its former life as rock’n’roll den The Beehive. ORDER NOW: Read the full interview in the October...
Faces have recorded 14 new songs together since reforming this summer, drummer Kenney Jones has revealed. ORDER NOW: Nick Cave is on the cover of the October 2021 issue of Uncut READ MORE: Kenney Jones on the Faces: “We were unmanageable!” The band – Jones, Rod Stewart and Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood – announced back in July that they would be reuniting to write new music after over 40 years apart. In a new interview with BANG Showbiz (via Contact Music), Jones gave an update on work on the new material. Advertisement “We’ve done about 14 songs, it’s a mixture...
“I thought Q&A stood for Quiche & Apples,” says Richard Dawson. “I thought I was gonna get fed.” Just one insight into the workings of Dawson’s brilliantly warped worldview, in a discussion packed with plenty. Over 40 minutes in conversation with Uncut’s Tom Pinnock the avant folk figurehead behind Hen Ogledd, Eyeballs and one of the UK’s most Beefheart-like solo careers touches on his childhood love of the feel of warm chips on his testicles. His idyllic rural life spent wild swimming with seals in the Tyne. His thoughts on golf: “It’s nice putting a ball in a hole,...
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...
