Hit Singles

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Thurston Moore By The Fire

The mission statement that accompanies this album might seem like an uncharacteristic hippie flex, but anyone who’s paid even slight attention to Thurston Moore’s output down the decades will recognise it. Here, then, is a newly urgent formulation of a long-standing belief in music’s ecstatic power (Sonic Youth, certainly, can be defined as much by their reach for transcendence as by their transgression). “This recording offers songs as flames of rainbow energy,” Moore writes, “where the power of love becomes our call. These are love songs in a time where creativity is our dignity, our demonstration against the forces...
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John Lennon The Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide

“You may say I’m a dreamer…” Every album reviewed. Unmissable archive interviews rediscovered. A revolutionary solo journey, in full. Presenting the definitive 148-page tribute to the former Beatle, on what would have been his 80th birthday. Order a copy here. Advertisement
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Send us your questions for Margo Price

In a tweet this weekend, Margo Price admitted to shedding a few tears at the kitchen table because she missed playing live so much. With her recent third album That’s How Rumors Get Started pivoting towards anthemic, Tom Petty-ish classic rock, you can understand why she’s been desperate to hit the stage. Yet Price has been doing more than anyone to keep music alive this year, hosting numerous at-home livestreams – often with her musician husband Jeremy Ivey – and recently venturing out for a full-band show, sadly minus the audience, at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville (with very special guest...
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Matt Berninger: “I’d love to be able to rebrand myself, but I can’t”

The current issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here – features a candid interview with The National frontman Matt Berninger, who has finally got round to releasing a solo album, Serpentine Prison, with help from Booker T Jones. In this extract, Rob Hughes attempts to discover if the “sad-sack, grungecore guy” has finally lightened up… For years, Berninger had been stockpiling old songs he wanted to cover. The list was up near 450. He met up with Jones at Earthstar studio, in Venice Beach, and started work. Some covers were successful...
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Ronnie’s

The first voice you hear in Oliver Murray’s exemplary documentary about Ronnie Scott’s jazz club is that of a man called Simon Cooke, welcoming the patrons at the start of an evening in Soho. As gigs go, Cooke’s is one of the toughest. He is not a tenor saxophonist who has played alongside some of the great figures of the music’s history. He is not a superb stand-up comic, steeped in the deadpan wit of the old Jewish East End. He did not struggle for decades to found the club and keep it going in an often hostile climate....
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Gillian Welch & David Rawlings All The Good Times

Even before the coronavirus pandemic began in earnest in the US, Nashville was reeling. In early March, a series of vicious tornadoes whipped across Tennessee with winds of up to 175mph. In a frighteningly short time, ancient trees were uprooted, sturdy buildings and homes were reduced to rubble and 25 lives were lost. In Music City, USA’s Five Points neighbourhood, the historic Woodland Studio, built in 1967 and the site of countless classic sessions, had its roof peeled off like a can of sardines, exposing the interior to a torrential downpour. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, who have owned...
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In Her New EP Handle With Care Sophie Fay Speaks Her Mind With No Filters

Bold – check. Unapologetic-check. Explosive-check. Mindblowing-check. Soul-torturing-check. Fresh and edgy yet the same time born to be mainstream- check!  New underground artist Sophie Fay’s new EP Handle With Care is just so good that saying it is good is an understatement. The young artist with no intention of going viral or creating the hype does both with her new release Handle With Care. Sophie is your new Kurt Cobain in that sense. Actually, she has more in common with Cobain than just the intentions. Her new Ep is emotionally awakening and exposing.  In her new EP Handle With Care,...
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The Pretty Things Bare As Bone, Black As Blood

It seems The Pretty Things weren’t quite done when they played their final show in December 2018. Despite announcing their retirement as a live unit with a sell-out bash at London’s O2, some 55 years after they first began, sessions for a new studio album were already afoot. The project only fell through when it became apparent that lead singer Phil May, his appetite for performance restored, wouldn’t be able to tour it due to ongoing problems with emphysema. Keen to press on with recording, the band eventually decided to unplug the electrics and, for the first time in...
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Prince Sign O’ The Times

It’s jarring to hear Prince’s speaking voice at the beginning of “Power Fantastic”, one of the many vault tracks included with this reissue of Sign O’ The Times. “Just trip,” he instructs the assembled musicians, his voice low and casual. “There are no mistakes this time. This is the fun track. Might not be the one we keep, but we’ll just have fun playing it.” What follows is a floridly psychedelic meditation on the power of music, as Prince documents his own compulsion to create. A slightly edited version of the song appears on the 1993 comp The Hits/The...
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Idles on Ultra Mono: “It took a lot of screaming matches to get it right”

Idles’ highly anticipated new album Ultra Mono is now in shops – and so is the latest issue of Uncut, in which the band talk with typical candour about the making of their big statement record and their compelling journey up to this point. You can also order a copy of the magazine online by clicking here. In the meantime, here’s a taster of Michael Hann’s eye-opening encounter with the Bristol bruisers: The principal recording for Ultra Mono took place in just eight days, at La Frette Studios, an hour north of Paris, a favoured location of Nick Launay...
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